The Holy Gift of Fear: Why Our Children Need to Fear

I was 29, she was 27 (I think). The moment presented itself perfectly. No one was around, just the two of us. We’d had a great conversation, some beautiful nonsense, the kind that characterises dating couples. But it was getting late. Time to go. We hugged. It was supposed to be a short farewell hug. But it lingered. When we pulled apart, I saw in her eyes what she saw in mine. Fear. I tried to say something, but my throat was dry. The confidence I had just seconds before the hug drained from me. I did not know what to do with that moment. I had never felt such strong sense of anxiety before. It was a warning. I wanted to ignore it. I wanted to keep her a little longer in my arms, but the warning was strong. It spread from my eyes through my throat, down my spine and weakened my arms and feet. Then she helped. She calmly pried herself from arms and headed for the door. We were both saved that night.

There’s a peculiar verse in Deuteronomy 9 that arrests the heart of any parent who reads it carefully. Verses 4 to 5 remind Israel that they’re not conquering Canaan because of their own righteousness. Rather, the giants are being displaced because of their wickedness, because they had done too much to annoy God, because they had no remorse whatsoever.

This raises an uncomfortable truth: God destroys people who don’t have remorse.

And remorse, we discover, is born from fear.

The Misunderstood Virtue

In our modern parenting culture, fear has become a dirty word. We’re told to raise confident children, empowered children, children who feel safe and secure. And whilst these aren’t wrong aims, we’ve thrown out something ancient and essential in our pursuit of them: the fear of the Lord.

But here’s what we’ve forgotten: the fear of God is not a bad feeling. It’s a good feeling. It’s a protective feeling. It’s the feeling that grips your chest when you’re about to step off a cliff, the visceral alarm that yanks you back from destruction.

I’ve experienced this myself. There have been times, opportunities really, when sin presented itself attractively, similar to the story shared above. And even if I got a taste of it, I was gripped by such overwhelming fear that I couldn’t proceed further. I couldn’t reattempt it.

That fear wasn’t my enemy, it was my guardian.

When Conscience Goes Silent

For some people, this protective mechanism doesn’t exist. Their conscience has gone silent. Perhaps they sinned once, felt the fear, but pushed through it. Then they did it again and got away with it. Again and again, until the alarm stopped ringing altogether. The fear that once protected them has been systematically dismantled through repetition.

For others, they never learnt to fear in the first place. They grew up in environments where certain sins were never called what they were. “It’s not a big deal,” they were told. “Everyone does it.” “Don’t be so uptight.” And so they never developed the healthy alarm system that the fear of the Lord provides.

This is precisely what happened to the Canaanites. They had suppressed remorse so thoroughly, committed such evil so repeatedly, that they had become irredeemable. Their fear had died, and with it, their capacity for repentance.

Teaching Fear, Cultivating Remorse

When my daughter says “I’m sorry” after doing something wrong, sometimes it comes from fear. And I’ve come to see that this isn’t something to apologise for or quickly rush past. Fear is doing exactly what it’s designed to do, it’s building remorse.

Fear teaches her that actions have consequences. Fear shows her that some boundaries aren’t arbitrary but essential. Fear helps her understand that there’s a holy God who sees, who cares, and who will hold her accountable.

The writer of Proverbs knew this: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). Not the middle. Not the end. The beginning. You cannot build wisdom on any other foundation.

Fear Protects, Fear Preserves

Here’s what the fear of the Lord does practically:

Fear protects us from consequences we can’t yet imagine. A child doesn’t understand sexually transmitted diseases, addiction, or the soul-deep scars of betrayal. But fear can keep them from the path that leads there long before they comprehend why.

Fear preserves our capacity for remorse. Each time we override our conscience, we dull it slightly. Fear keeps us from taking that first step, the second, the hundredth, the steps that would eventually deaden us to conviction entirely.

Fear keeps us from evil when desire makes it attractive. We live in a world that presents sin as pleasure, as freedom, as self-actualisation. Fear cuts through the marketing and reminds us of reality.

The Balance We Must Strike

Of course, we’re not meant to raise children who are paralysed by terror or who see God as a cosmic abuser waiting to strike them down. The fear of the Lord exists within the context of His love, His mercy, His patience.

But neither can we raise children who have no trembling in their souls, no awe before holiness, no healthy dread of the consequences of rebellion.

The Canaanites perished not because God was cruel, but because they had no remorse. They had killed their fear so thoroughly that they couldn’t turn back even when judgement stood at their gates.

Reflection of a Parent

So, I must raise a child who learns to fear. Not a cringing, servile fear, but the kind of fear that preserves life. The kind that makes you pull your hand back from the fire. The kind that keeps you standing when temptation whispers, “Just this once.”

I want my daughter to feel that grip of holy fear when she’s about to step into darkness. I want it to stop her, to turn her round, to send her running back to the light.

Because fear, rightly understood, is one of God’s great gifts to His children. It’s the alarm system in a dangerous world. It’s the guardrail on a mountain road. It’s the still, small voice that says, “This way leads to death. Choose life.”

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And wisdom, ultimately, is knowing how to live well and die well, how to avoid the fate of those who suppressed their remorse until it was too late.

May we have the courage to teach our children to fear, knowing that in doing so, we give them one of the most precious gifts a parent can offer: the capacity to turn back before it’s too late.