In order to understand certain specifics and details, it is helpful to start with general statements that have the character of axioms. Therefore, if we want to understand why people do what they do and why people are the way they are, we should refer to human nature. Nothing explains human nature better than the first words about man in the Bible—God’s Word.
Human nature in outline
The term “human nature” is commonly understood as what is innate in a person—in contrast to what is acquired through individual and social experience. In philosophical terms, human nature refers to a set of traits that distinguish and differentiate humans from animals. These traits primarily include the ability for rational and symbolic thinking, self-awareness, free will, the capacity to distinguish good from evil, and the ability to express thoughts in language. These characteristics, in some way, reflect the nature of God Himself.
According to the Holy Scriptures, we were created in the image and likeness of our perfect Creator. A loving God created humans as perfect beings capable of forming relationships and communities with their Creator, who is love. Through the Holy Spirit, humans became participants in the sinless nature of God. However, our perfect human nature was distorted by the sin of the first humans. From that moment, sin became a part of our nature. Therefore, our nature is egocentric, selfish, self-centered; meaning humans are born in a condition that separates them from God, inclined more towards evil than good. Hence, human egocentrism is the root of all the evil that happens on Earth.
The beginning of the cosmic catastrophe
The contrast between the second and third chapters of the Book of Genesis is truly shocking and difficult to comprehend. In the second chapter, man stands in the image of God. Although man was created by God from the most ordinary substance—dust—Adam was the “son of God” (Luke 3:38), the king and ruler of the Earth, everything on Earth being subject to his dominion. Adam was the firstborn on Earth and also its ruler. Thus, we see man as a being full of trust and love for his Creator, deriving joy and pleasure from being in God’s presence and possessing a perfect relationship with God.
However, in the very next chapter, a cosmic catastrophe occurs when man chooses his own way of life. From that moment on, man is filled with fear and anxiety, fleeing from God, trying to hide in a safe place far from Him, only to discover that it is not God from whom he must escape. He learns, in the hardest way possible, that there is no safe place apart from God.
From that moment on, everything begins to fall apart and becomes corrupted: the relationship between Adam and Eve, their relationship with God, their relationship with the created ecosystem. Their own minds are corrupted, and their bodies undergo an irreversible process of decay.
Fear— the fundamental emotion
“Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ So, he said, ‘I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.’ ” Genesis 3:9, 10. This is the first question that the Lord God asks sinful man. From the moment man suffered defeat and chose disobedience to God, we see God searching for man, in contrast to other world religions, where man seeks God.
God’s question, “Where are you?” is timeless. At every moment in the history of this world, God asks this question to man: “Man, where are you?” As Abraham Heschel put it: “This question returns incessantly, like a quiet, gentle echo of a quiet, gentle voice; a voice not expressed in words or in the categories of the mind, but ineffable and mysterious, just as ineffable and mysterious is the glory that fills the whole world.”1 In Adam’s response, we experience the indescribable tragedy of the situation in which our first parents found themselves. Adam and Eve are filled with pain, sorrow, uncertainty, a sense of their own misery and guilt, and they experience fear and anxiety. Their entire being is filled with fear, becoming a fundamental human emotion, and anxiety will constitute our whole self, our fallen nature, our existence.
Multidimensionality of Existential Anxiety
Each of us experiences anxieties. We have likely experienced anxiety regarding death, whether anticipating our own or that of a loved one. It is natural for us to feel apprehensive about death, because death is our enemy; it is something absolutely unnatural in the sense that it was never part of God’s plan for man, who was created for eternal communion with his Creator, to die. Fear and anxiety have the same source, yet they are not the same. Anxiety is a sense of terror about an undefined source; it is, therefore, fear of nothing, of nothingness. Its object is non-existence. Anxiety of non-being, of non-existence, of nothingness, of eternal death, is the existential awareness of the possibility of one’s own non-being. In this sense, this anxiety is a natural state for man and for all of creation, which, through the fall of man, is subject to death.
Fear, in contrast to anxiety, is always focused on a specific object, such as illness, pain, rejection by someone, or death. One can oppose fear and fight the object of fear. However, anxiety has no object; after all, it concerns nothingness, so it cannot be fought on one’s own. Although fear and anxiety are different from each other, they are, however, mutually connected.2 Therefore, what defines us as humans, as expressed by philosopher Martin Heidegger, is the awareness of being-toward-death.3 The only certain fact in human life—as obvious as it is—is death. The Bible explains it this way: “For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing.” Ecclesiastes 9:5
Let us try to imagine what the first humans experienced on the day when they took the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and heard God approaching them. The sinner’s sense of dread as he stands before the holy, living God is crushing; it is absolutely terrifying. Man felt his total dependence on his Creator and, at the same time, his utter nothingness, manifested in the awareness that he is merely a creature composed of “dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27).
Three Types of Anxiety
Paul Tillich—the author of the book The Courage to Be—distinguished three types of anxiety, corresponding to three directions from which the threat of nothingness arises. This triple threat manifests in consciousness as the anxiety of:
- fate and death
- emptiness and the loss of meaning, and
- guilt and condemnation.4
Anxiety of Death
The anxiety of fate and death is a fundamental anxiety ingrained in our existence. As Tillich notes: “Even if the so-called proofs for the ‘immortality of the soul’ were convincing (which they are not), they could not convince existentially. Existentially, every person is aware of the complete loss of their ‘self’ caused by biological death.”5 Therefore, the only hope for a Christian to overcome this dreadful anxiety of nothingness is found in Jesus Christ alone, for immortality can be received only through the resurrected Jesus Christ—through resurrection on Earth’s last day. Our hope for our resurrection is the certainty of what we have not yet seen or experienced, but being convinced that Christ conquered death and rose from the confines of His earthly tomb, we believe that in Him we, too, will overcome death, rising to eternal life.
Notice that various religions offer the promise of eternal life in one form or another—but without any basis in fact. Only Christianity believes the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as a fact to support its offer. This is best proven by the development of Christianity itself from its beginning to the present day. If Christ had not risen and appeared many times to His disciples, they would have simply returned to fishing, and Christianity would have died with the death of its founder. Who wouldn’t prefer to go fishing rather than be persecuted—plunged into a pot of boiling oil—or die—crucified upside down—for a dead messiah who deceived us? Think about that.
Anxiety of Meaninglessness
The anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness arises when a person perceives their life and the world as devoid of meaning. The sense of meaninglessness automatically triggers the experience of worthlessness, even threatening the possibility of suicide.
Anxiety of Condemnation
Morality and personal conscience are penetrated by nothingness, causing the individual to experience anxiety. Tillich stated directly that everyone is called to live a worthy, moral, and responsible life. A sense of guilt arises, of course, when a person acts against their intentions and values, and additionally realizes that they are morally doing wrong. The more people act against their moral calling, the more they accumulate a sense of guilt, which can lead to despair due to the loss of their purpose and to a sense of condemnation that strikes at the foundation of life.
Condemnation seems absolute to a person, and, therefore, its burden is felt as being nearly unbearable. A person tries to avoid the feeling of guilt and condemnation in two ways: either by rebelling against the moral demands he once espoused and falling into lawlessness, or by trying to strictly adhere to moral principles, and falling into legalism. However, these attempts cannot completely silence the sense of guilt and condemnation.6 The number of people who have rejected God, rebelled against moral principles, and ultimately died in despair is terrifying. It is equally terrifying how many nominal Christians, who try to fulfill all moral and religious requirements ultimately do not find peace.
Renewal of Communion with God
We can triumph in Christ over our sense of guilt and condemnation only by understanding that we can do nothing to save ourselves from this condition, and that we must accept the grace and perfect forgiveness for our sins offered to us by Jesus Christ alone. Only in Christ can we overcome the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness, and only in Christ can we conquer the anxiety of nothingness.
For this to happen, one cannot run away in fear and anxiety before God. A personal encounter with God through faith is necessary. This requires, as Tillich stated, the courage of trust, more specifically, the courage to believe, despite our unworthiness, that we are accepted, received, and justified by God.
It is worth noting how different this orthodox Protestant, biblical approach is from that of the Roman Catholic Church and its traditions. The Roman Church, in fact, administers a system of fear and anxiety over guilt, condemnation, and death. It is a system that, by its very nature, feeds on the fear and anxiety of its subjects, drawing benefits from it in the form of totalitarian knowledge, power, and wealth. This is a church in which there is no hope for the certainty of salvation, despite the constant efforts of believing Catholics through the Church to appease God and be saved. The Roman Church brings Catholics to a sense of inevitability, claiming that, essentially, outside the Roman Church, there is no salvation, unless non-Catholics are unaware that the Roman Church is the only conscious path to salvation, but even then, “if they achieve salvation, it is not outside Christ, but through Him; and not outside the Church, but through it, for they are connected with it in a way known only to God.”7 And so the circle closes. Outside the Roman Church, there is no salvation.
In other words, outside the Roman Church, in the context of salvation, there is nothingness, non-being, nihilism, the culture of death, while at the same time, the Roman Church keeps its subjects in a state of absolute dependence and absolute uncertainty. This causes Catholics to be, in reality, hostages of Catholic theology, and at the same time, victims of Stockholm syndrome.
Fear as a Tool of Power
It should come as no surprise that fear is an emotion that is well-suited for use in political and religious manipulation strategies. Managing fear is one of the oldest and most effective methods of social engineering. We observed its application during the so-called coronavirus pandemic—the largest social experiment in the history of our planet, in which the individual and society were subjected to full state control, while states were controlled by global structures and organizations.
We also observe it today, in connection with the climate hysteria served to us by these global structures, i.e., the globalists. The message is this: if we do nothing, we will all die. However, if we dig into the true goals of the ecological agenda, we will discover that it’s not about the climate, but rather about building a global political-economic-religious system. Who tirelessly promotes a centrally-controlled global power system based on collectivism, socialism, and ecumenism? The answer: The Papacy.
Socialism is the content of papal encyclicals, and the desire for totalitarian control over each individual and everyone collectively is the ancient policy of the Roman popes. Standing in the way of this papal goal is the world of institutions and ideas that grew out of the Protestant Reformation, i.e., individualism, capitalism, civil liberties, human rights such as freedom of religion and conscience, and the idea of the separation of church and state. Therefore, the goal of the papacy is to destroy all of this and restore full—now global—power to the papacy.
To achieve this goal, the papacy needs a global crisis. An ecological crisis is perfect for this. Every crisis causes anxiety, uncertainty, fear, and dread in people. What can be done with such masses of people filled with fear and anxiety about a global catastrophe? Of course, this fear can be directed, it can be managed.
Crisis and Fear Management Mechanism
Human fear and anxiety caused by a specific crisis mean that social moods can change very quickly. The rulers of this world know perfectly well that crisis leads to change. Therefore, crisis, which is an inseparable element of human fear, anxiety and uncertainty, has often been used in history as a means to achieve political or religious-political goals. Classic examples of fear management include propaganda campaigns against “witches” and “heretics” during the religious wars in Europe, “Jewish conspiracies” during the economic crisis of the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, or from recent history, the false propaganda regarding the “COVID-19 pandemic.”
Managing a crisis, or in essence human fear, encourages people to adopt solutions that they would not have accepted otherwise, in accordance with the principle that a crisis contributes to change and a controlled crisis causes a controlled change. To achieve this, leaders provoke conflicts, use sabotage (e.g., Nero ordered Rome to be burned down, and Hitler ordered the Reichstag building to be burned down), or publicize a problem (terrorism, epidemics, economic crisis, migration crisis, ecological crisis), and then propose a previously prepared solution to the problem. In this way, they achieve their goal while having broad support from society.8
The Deadly Consequences of Fear Management
The effects of using fear management as a brutal method of political manipulation are simply dramatic for society. Basic social structures, interpersonal trust, solidarity, trust in the rule of law or democracy are being eroded or even destroyed. But that is not all. A society functioning in crisis, in which people are filled with fear, uncertainty and anxiety, turns against those social groups that appear to be the source of the crisis or are stigmatized by political or religious leaders as the cause of the crisis. Rational arguments cease to work and demons awaken. The ultimate effect of fear and hatred against stigmatized social groups, regardless of how innocent they turn out to be, can even be their extermination, as proven by the above historical examples.
The Final Crisis
Ellen White announced the coming of the final, global crisis: “The agencies of evil are combining their forces and consolidating. They are strengthening for the last great crisis. Great changes are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements will be rapid ones.”9 I am convinced that the key to understanding the final crisis is human nature subjected to brutal control by the rulers of darkness and their political-religious executors of their will. People will be so terrified that they will demand global solutions that would provide them with a sense of security. In this way, the global crisis, through the management of fear by the political-religious rulers of this world, will lead to global changes.
Our Lord Jesus Christ announced that on earth there will be “distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Luke 21:25–27). And to His church, Jesus addresses a solemn appeal: “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near” (Verse 28).
Jesus calls us and encourages us not to cower under the influence of fear and anxiety, but to stand bravely, straight, with our heads held high, our faces set like flint looking forward to the coming salvation.
Marcin Watras lives with his wife and two children in Katowice, Poland. He is interested in the philosophy of religion and trends in society.
Endnotes:
1 Abraham J. Heschel, Bóg szukający człowieka, publishing house Esprit 2015, p. 174
2 Paul Tillich, Męstwo bycia, publishing house Editions Du Dialogue 1983, pp. 41–43
3 Martin Heidegger, Bycie i czas, publishing house PWN, Warszawa 1994, pp. 354, 355
4 Paul Tillich, Męstwo bycia, publishing house Editions Du Dialogue 1983, p. 46
5 Ibiden, p. 47
6 Ibiden, pp. 55, 56
7 Stworzenie i człowiek, www.pgsiedlce.diecezja.gda.pl/cykl-katechez-niedzielnych-20461/kosciol-jest-konieczny-do-zbawienia-23990, accessibility: 13.03.2025
8 Jonatan Dunkel, Apokalipsa, publishing house Orion plus 2001, p. 98
9 Ellen G. White, Testimonies, Vol. 9, 11