There is no cruelty in God, and none in me.
1. No one attacks without the intent to hurt.
²There are no exceptions to this.
³When you believe you attack in self-defense, you are affirming that cruelty protects you and keeps you safe.
⁴This means you believe that harming another sets you free.
⁵And that in attacking, your condition improves, and you become more secure and safe from threats and fear.
2. How insane is the idea that attack could shield you from fear!
²For it is attack that breeds fear, and nourishes it with blood to swell and rage and make it grow.
³You do not escape from fear by attack—you guarantee its presence.
⁴Today we learn a lesson that can save you more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine.
⁵And it is this:
⁶You make what you defend against.
⁷And by your defense against it, you make it real and inescapable.
⁸Lay down your arms.
⁹Then only will you see it was not real.
3. You believe you attack an enemy outside yourself.
²Yet as you defend yourself, you make an enemy within.
³An alien thought at war with you, dividing your mind into two camps that seem completely irreconcilable.
⁴For Love, your real Self, now has an “enemy,” a supposed opposite.
⁵And fear, the stranger, now requires your defense against the threat that what you really are presents to it.
⁶If you examined the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds along its imagined path, you would perceive the premises on which the idea that fear protects you rests.I
4. First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source.
²For you are the one who attacks, and must have first conceived of the attack.
³Yet what you attack is outside you, separated from your mind by space and time.
⁴You then attribute to it the attributes of Love—
⁵for fear becomes your safety, and protector of your peace.
⁶You turn to it for comfort, and for rest, and to relieve your doubt about your strength, and hope that it will give you quiet sleep.
⁷You strip Love of all its attributes and make it fear’s servant, and its slave.
5. Love asks you to lay down all defense, as merely foolish.II
²And your weapons fall away to dust.
³For that is what they are.
⁴With Love as enemy, must cruelty become a god.
⁵And gods demand that those who worship them obey their dictates, and refuse to question them.
⁶Harsh punishment is meted out relentlessly to those who ask if those demands are sensible or even sane.
⁷Their enemies are always those who try to see another point of view, and they are always right, because they are merciful and just.
6. Today we look upon this god of cruelty objectively.
²And we note that, though his lips are stained with blood and fire seems to rage around him, he is but a carved idol, made of stone.
³He has no power.
⁴He does nothing.
⁵We need not challenge him.
⁶For he has no might.
⁷And those who see in him their safety have no guardian, no strength to call upon in danger, and no mighty warrior to fight for them.
7. This moment can be terrible.
²But it can also be your liberation.
³You make a choice, standing before this idol, seeing it exactly as it is.
⁴Will you return to Love what you sought to take from it and give to this cruel image?
⁵Or will you make another idol to replace it?
⁶For the god of cruelty takes many forms.
⁷You can always find another.
8. But do not think that fear is the way to escape from fear.
²Remember what the Course has said in the Text about the obstacles to peace.III
³The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing—the solid wall, impenetrable, fearful, and beyond surmounting—is the fear of God Himself.IV
⁴This is the basic premise which makes the idea of fear a god.
⁵For those who worship fear are really in love with cruelty.
⁶And Love now seems to be invested with cruelty.
9. Where does the totally insane belief in gods of vengeance come from?
²Love has not confused its attributes with fear’s.
³But those who worship fear must see their own confusion in “the enemy” of fear—
⁴and its cruelty as now a part of Love.
⁵What, then, could be more fearful than the Heart of Love Itself?
⁶Its holy lips, now stained with blood; its fire a searing flame of hate.
⁷God has become what you would have Him be: the source of fear, the Avenger of your sins.V
⁸The executioner who slaughters with His wrath the Son whom He created as Himself.
10. You who believe that God is cruel must now decide if you will keep this image that you made.
²One last time you look upon this bit of stone you made and call it god no longer.
³You have reached this place before, but you chose that this cruel god remain with you in another form.
⁴And so the fear of God returned with you.
⁵This time you leave it there.
⁶And you return to a new world, unburdened by its weight.
⁷Behold it now with eyes that see—
⁸and look upon the world with vision that your choice has given back to you.
11. Now your sight belongs to Christ, and He looks through you.
²Now your voice belongs to God and echoes His.
³And now your heart remains at peace forever.
⁴You have chosen God in place of idols, and your attributes, given you by your Creator, are restored to you at last.
⁵You have heard God’s Call, and you have answered.
⁶Now fear has given way to Love, as God Himself replaces cruelty.
12. Father, we are like You.
²In us there is no cruelty,
for there is none in You.
³Your Peace is ours,
and we bless the world with what we have received from You alone.
⁴We choose again, and choose in favor of all our brothers,
knowing they are one with us.
⁵We bring them Your salvation, as we have received it now.
⁶And we give thanks for them who make us whole.
⁷In them we see Your Glory,
and in them we find our peace.
⁸We are holy because Your Holiness has set us free.
⁹And we give thanks to You.
¹⁰Amen.
I If fear is justified, love makes no sense. It is impossible to fear and to love; love and hate cannot coexist. Where one is, the other is not.
You may feel fear—and it is understandable that you do not wish for that experience—but you must know that you cannot simply rid yourself of fear by wishing it away. That is impossible. There is no state or condition devoid of both fear and love. None. You cannot replace fear with nothing, for nothing is merely another form of fear.
When we consider fear and love from an ontological point of view, we are looking at what exists and what does not exist, the real and the illusory, the present and the absent. Love is one of the three aspects of Being, and therefore it is what exists—the only thing that exists. Fear is not a fact nor an entity, but a consideration: the consideration of an absence, a whim of a sick mind.
You will say, and rightly, that fear is very real in your life. But perhaps you have not stopped to question whether your life itself is real. Of course, you take that for granted, yet this Course tells you in a thousand different ways that it is not so: your only real life is the one you share with God. Everything else is fantasy—and take no offense at that, for this is precisely the happy news, the gospel of Jesus: “My Kingdom is not of this world.”
The ultimate cause of all your fears is your insistence on being right when you assert that the latest foolish idea to cross your mind is true. It is not. But your stubbornness in believing your own fantasies always ends up trapping you. When you feel fear, realize that the feeling is the logical conclusion of a delusional story you have told yourself. Notice how many things you have had to assume as true in order to reach that dreadful ending. None of them are true, but for you they are—and pity the one who contradicts you, for you will instantly turn him into your enemy, believing he threatens those precious offspring born of a deranged mind.
Fear is certainly justified if the world you see is real and functions as you believe it does. You cannot escape fear without questioning your way of seeing the world. Quite simply, it is impossible.
This Course rests on accepting a very simple idea: there must be another way of seeing all this. Until the mind sincerely opens to that possibility, nothing can be done. But it is equally true that once it does, the way is cleared for a mind willing to learn and to change.
Cruelty is not in the world, but in the perception that projects fear upon it. This Lesson dismantles with precision the false logic of the ego that attacks in order to defend. In reality, every attack reveals a prior choice: the choice to see threat, to believe in separation, to fear Love.
Jesus leaves no ambiguity: defense does not protect you from fear—it perpetuates it. If something seems threatening, it is because it has first been judged so. Therefore, the only sane response is gentleness—not as passivity, but as power that has no need to be right. Gentleness is not weakness; it is spiritual lucidity, the strength that lies in defenselessness, the strength of one who no longer sees any need to judge.
To accept that in God there is no cruelty is to accept that in oneself there is none either. And that disarms any temptation to project guilt, attack, or punishment. Innocence is not built; it is revealed when you stop attending to and subscribing to the ego’s interpretations of reality.
II You will not eliminate fear from your life unless you replace it with love. In truth, you are not replacing one thing with another, for fear is merely the absence of love. You are simply addressing a lack and placing love where it was indeed missing.
If you want never to feel fear again, love. There is no other way. Nothing else will work. But it is equally true that once you love, it will be impossible ever again to know fear. Understand that when you are asked to love, you are not being asked for anything extraordinary; you are merely being urged to be yourself—to live—for to exist is to live, and life is love, and fear is but the absence of life. If you fear death, for example, do not worry in the least, for that only means you are not truly alive at all. Then why should death concern you? What makes you think you live now? What do you fear losing? Are you afraid of losing the fear you now feel? Do you not see that this is madness?
Remember: if you want to stop being afraid, you must stop believing that what you think is true. Do not feel insulted by this. This Workbook told you so right at the beginning. In Lesson 10 you learned: “My thoughts mean nothing.” Realize that this Course is utterly rational, built on true premises that lead to certain and demonstrable conclusions. The decisive proof is that it can completely transform your life and make you happy. But you must be very honest and consistent with its principles.
When you feel fear, acknowledge it, but do not accept or justify it, for that fear will lead you to anger, cruelty, and attack. None of that is justified, nor can it ever be, because it is based on false premises you have accepted with excessive naïveté. When you feel fear, think that there must be another way of seeing that situation, and ask to be shown what it is. Then quiet your mind completely and listen. The answer is there even before you ask. Perhaps you do not yet have the mastery to hear clearly the Voice of the Holy Spirit—which is your own—but by now you certainly should have enough to begin listening, and the result will not be long in coming.
When that happens, your life will not be perfect, for you will likely discover with surprise that you still choose to go your own way rather than follow the guidance of One who knows what is best for you. But now you will know with certainty that happiness is within reach, and that only fleeting impulses to continue your old habit of wanting to be right stand between you and it.
Today, too, is your lucky day, for today’s Lesson ends with a beautiful prayer—one you have surely earned.
III “The Obstacles to Peace” is Section IV of Chapter 19.
IV The fear of God is the fourth and final obstacle to peace, and the hardest to overcome.
V Deuteronomy 32:19–25 “The Lord saw it and spurned them, because of the provocation of His sons and His daughters. And He said: ‘I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness. They made Me jealous with what is no god; they provoked Me with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are no people; I will provoke them with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled by My anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap disasters upon them; I will spend My arrows on them; they shall be wasted with hunger, devoured by plague and poisonous pestilence; I will send the teeth of beasts against them, with the venom of crawling things of the dust. Outside the sword shall bereave, and inside terror; it shall destroy both young man and virgin, the nursing child with the man of gray hairs.’”
With such literature, it is not difficult to understand how the fear of God arose. Do not inherit the ancestral fears of ancient devout peoples who confused their rightful longing with the idea they had of themselves.