What Lies Behind Fear?
Discover the Hidden Treasure in Confronting Your Doubts
For Benjamin William Hastings, confronting fear has been like a long standoff with shadows he avoided for years.
During a candid conversation with Family Life Radio, Ben spoke to us about a metaphor that reshaped how he viewed fear and doubt—dragons. It began while reflecting on a particularly dark season of life, when his internal struggles with faith and identity felt overwhelming.
“I’d been avoiding my doubts for years,” he admitted. “But they hadn’t gone away. They’d only grown larger in my mind.”
That season of avoidance eventually gave birth to a song called “Dragons,” inspired by mythology where dragons are often portrayed as terrifying creatures guarding something precious.
“In every story, the dragon guards a treasure—whether it’s gold or a princess. And the only way to get to that treasure is to go through the dragon,” he explained. “I started to wonder—what if the thing I’m most afraid of is actually standing between me and something valuable?”
That’s when I realized the dragons I feared weren’t all that fierce after all.
Ben realized he had built up his fear of confronting doubt to be far worse than the doubt itself. When he finally chose to sit with those questions—really look them in the face—he discovered that the resolution came much faster than he expected.
“It took me 45 minutes to reconcile something I’d been avoiding for years,” he said.
The song “Dragons” closes with a lyric that encapsulates the heart of Ben’ revelation: “The dragons I feared weren’t all that fierce after all. Compared to the fear, the dragon was actually quite small.”
In other words, the fear of confronting the doubt had become bigger than the doubt itself.
“It’s funny,” he said. “When I finally faced what I’d been running from, it wasn’t as scary as I imagined. But the longer I avoided it, the more power it had over me.”
Courage to Confront the Quiet Things
The dragons aren’t just metaphors for Ben—they’re spiritual realities. Fear, doubt, identity, failure, performance—all the things that quietly fester beneath the surface of faith.
“I think a lot of us avoid the hard stuff. We bury it. We don’t want to admit we’re struggling, especially if we’re in leadership or ministry,” he shared. “But you can’t heal from what you refuse to face.”
Name your dragons and dare to face them.
The process of writing “Dragons” proved to be an act of courage—a reclaiming of ground long occupied by unspoken questions and unchallenged fears. And the treasure? Clarity. Peace. Maybe even a little bit of freedom.
Ben isn’t suggesting every fear will disappear with a single song or a sit-down journal session. But he believes the journey toward healing begins with honesty—with naming your dragons and daring to face them.
“If there’s something you’ve been avoiding,” he said, “ask yourself: what’s on the other side of that fear? What treasure might be waiting there?”
Sometimes, the thing standing between you and the life God is calling you to isn’t the dragon. It’s your fear of meeting it.
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