The day of this essay's posting is Halloween -- a time to make fun of fear, which is one way to deal with that often crippling human phenomenon -- kind of like holding one's breath whilst passing the graveyard.

A first century CE philosopher called John wrote of fear: Φοβος ουκ εστιν εν αγαπη, αλλ' η τελια αγαπη εξω βαλλει τον ψοβον. I give it to you in the Greek because the statement first came to human beings in that language.

When translated into English, it sounds like this: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear." It has been pietized (yes, I just coined a word) and so overworked in Christian circles that it tends to come out sounding a bit like, "There, there, now." 

Yet it is a potent assertion. The key words are "perfect love." Understanding the word "perfect" is essential to understanding the statement. It is the Greek τελια, which does not mean "perfect" as the word is used in our culture, i.e. without flaw as in "a perfect circle."

An adjectival form of the verb τελεω, τελια connotes that which has come into its fullness, has evolved into its mature, adult form. St. Paul spoke of thinking and reasoning as a child but once having become an adult, putting away the immature nature of both thought and reason.

The noun "love" and the verb "to love" in common parlance can be bent to serve a multitude of intentions. "I love chocolate" is to "I love my life's partner" as Mark Twain's lightning bug is to lightning.

To love and to be in love in a mature and thoughtful way is to love and to be in love at full capacity -- depending, of course, on what one means by love. The first-century writer who gave us "perfect love casts out fear" was using a particular Greek word for love -- spelled and pronounced in our alphabet "ah-gah-pay."

Αγαπη as distinguished from ερως (erotic or possessive emotion) and ψιλια (mutual regard) is more about intention than emotion. One could say that αγαπη is by its very nature τελια -- that is, mature in the fullness of responsibility and possibility.

Such love is beyond tough. It is that of the toned sinew: strong, resilient, both ready and willing to take on whatever force is arrayed against it -- not for the pride of triumph but for the sake of the one or ones loved.

It is thereby a love that "casts out fear." The verb "to cast out" is more telling when heard in the Greek: εξω ("exo" as in "out" or "outside") βαλλει ("ballei") as in "ballistic"). To "go ballistic" against that before which one would otherwise cower is to look it in the face and propel it outside or beyond the force of gravity, thereby negating its baleful potential.

What is to be feared that perfect love could blast permanently into outer space?

Maybe something akin to what on March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt described thus to a nation on the precipice of economic collapse: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Then as now, the remedy was "perfect love" -- that is, the matured, fully able and willing strength to take on the phobia (direct from the Greek φοβος, meaning "that which prompts flight"). Startle a sitting bird with so much as a footstep or a crackle of a twig, and off it goes.

The kind of intention that does not take flight, that does not immediately think of self but others, is that, matured and supple love.

In a time marked by such scourges as Ebola, ISIS, the Taliban, rapacious corporations, gunmen on the loose and an unstable economy, what is wanted and so much needed is the love that casts out fear.

It is that kind of quality and character people want in their leaders -- if they only knew it -- not the dishonesty of pie-in-the-sky promises that will not and in any event could probably never be kept. Wanted are leaders who will not sound retreat when the shadow of fear falls across the common path.

In turn, the rest of us need to resist flight, dispel the shadow by staring down the terror that Roosevelt aptly pronounced as "nameless, unreasoning [and] unjustified," and then get on with what needs to be done.

Therewith: perfect love doing its thing.