The paradoxical relationships of fear and faith and fear and courage are never wholly resolved in our temporal lives. Indeed, “fear is better than no God,” wrote MacDonald, “better than a god made with hands. [At least in] fear [lies] deep hidden the sense of the infinite.”15 While fear may sweep us into nothingness, it is also the condition under which a finite and sinful human being finds the faith and courage to yield herself up entirely to God. Baptism is an initiation into and the beginning of a whole new way of being, a way of being whose ultimate end is life unspoiled by fear and
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