There are two themes that run throughout the first books of the Old Testament and, if you think about it, the entirety of the Bible: fear and love. I could pick from numerous passages, but for the purposes of this post, I'll use Deuteronomy 10:12.
Fear is to be afraid or frightened. When a person is scared out of their wits, this feeling tends to overwhelm a person's thought processes. Most of us look for a quick exit strategy -- something to quell the fear.
Scared people tend not to make quality decisions. We make snap judgments. We tend to respond with anger or frustration. We find it next too impossible to see things from another's standpoint because we are gripped in dread. Trembling fear takes over our whole being and pushes out almost every other possible emotional response.
Love originates from altogether different place. While fear sends our emotional system into panicked chaos, love comes from the tender and quiet part of us. Love comes from the center; fear comes from the outer edges.
In many ways, fear is a slayer of love.
Consequently, a love born out of fear is not really love at all. It is merely a mechanism by which we might hope to make the fear go away. It is a superficial emotion that does not originate from the center.
So, if someone fears God, how can they truly love God simultaneously?
To see what other questions I've asked about the Christian Bible, go here.
And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soulThese commands are mutually exclusive. How does one truly love what one fears?
Fear is to be afraid or frightened. When a person is scared out of their wits, this feeling tends to overwhelm a person's thought processes. Most of us look for a quick exit strategy -- something to quell the fear.
Scared people tend not to make quality decisions. We make snap judgments. We tend to respond with anger or frustration. We find it next too impossible to see things from another's standpoint because we are gripped in dread. Trembling fear takes over our whole being and pushes out almost every other possible emotional response.
Love originates from altogether different place. While fear sends our emotional system into panicked chaos, love comes from the tender and quiet part of us. Love comes from the center; fear comes from the outer edges.
In many ways, fear is a slayer of love.
Consequently, a love born out of fear is not really love at all. It is merely a mechanism by which we might hope to make the fear go away. It is a superficial emotion that does not originate from the center.
So, if someone fears God, how can they truly love God simultaneously?
To see what other questions I've asked about the Christian Bible, go here.
I always thought that the "fear" of God was like respect, like respect for the law...or maybe the way one might "fear" say, an "awesome" volcano, but may worship (love) it as well. (I'm thinking of Madame Pele, Hawaiian volcano goddess.)
ReplyDeleteInteresting that Eastern traditions (e.g.,Buddhism) talk about fear and desire as things to overcome. Really, they come from the same source. When you get beyond them, you are left with love (a loving heart, lovingkindness, ai xin). (I'm thinking of the Dalai Lama, Tibetan mountain god-king.)
(I like the typo in graf 4, about a "quick exist strategy"! Or is it intentional, very clever?)
The fear I'm reading about in the first books of the Bible is a quaking fear -- the kind of fear that comes from knowing this God can strike you down at any given moment.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't until later that it evolves -- though inconsistently, at best -- into a reverence sort of "fear".
As to the typo in paragraph 4, it is just that, a typo (which I will now fix). :-)
You are reading, I assume, an English translation.
ReplyDelete"It is important to note that in translations of the Hebrew Bible, "fear" is a somewhat imprecise translation of the Hebrew word "ירא," which is sometimes close in meaning to "respect" or "be in awe of."
This from Wikipedia, but I recall it was a point made in my undergraduate Biblical History classes. I think most Biblical scholars (but maybe not fundamentalists) regard the OT as history of the Jews and the development of a religion, which Jesus later came to repudiate, distilling all the Leviticus/Deuteronomy stuff and the view of God to much simpler ideas: love God, love your neighbor.
yep i was taught that the "fear" mentioned referred to reverence more than actual fear. however, i don't know a single christian who does not somewhat fear god/judgment, because of the "sin" factor.
ReplyDeleteagain, this makes much more sense read in a cultural context. god is an ever evolving character throughout the bible.