FEAR GOD?

A few weeks ago Arlena and I were visiting with her Mom and taking her to lunch. As we drove to the restraint, we passed two men standing on corner holding signs. One read, one word in each line from top to bottom, “Fear God, Repent or Burn” The other sign said something about Jesus Christ being the name of our savior and not a cuss word, as if I needed to know that.

If we had not been on our way to lunch and had not been at an intersection and had I not been driving and thus unable to say anything to the men holding the signs, I would have stopped and asked one simple question of the one telling me to fear God. I would have asked, “What does Jesus say is the greatest commandment?” I assume, biblical expert and teacher of wisdom that he purported to be, he would have answered, “Love God above all else…”

Before he could have finished his sentence, I would have interrupted and said, “Bingo!” and got in my car and driven off. “Love God,” Jesus said and Jesus was only repeating what was/is said in the Old Testament about our relationship to God and neighbor. Scripture tells us that we are to stand in awe of God, but it does not require that we fear God, not in the least.

We are to love God. There is no way in the world that we can love God if we fear God. We cannot love someone we fear. That is an impossibility. Living in fear that we will offend God, frightened that if we die in sin we will burn in hell, is no way to live and not a way of life that God would either demand or expert from us. Perhaps those two sign-holders were out proselytizing because they were repenting of their sins and hoping this God whom they feared would forgive them and save them from the fires of hell. That is only a presumption on my part, however.

The truth is that God loves us unconditionally. God’s love for us does not depend on our returning that love. God certainly hopes that we do in the way we live out our lives. But God will not stop loving is if we do not. As human beings we may cease loving someone who has deliberately hurt us and sometimes, if the truth were told, we do. But God never does and never will.

We do not love God and others because we are afraid of what might happen to us if we do not. We love God because God first loved us. We love our parents because they first loved us. We do what is right not because we are afraid that we will be punished if we do not. Rather we do what is right because we do it out of love, because of God’s love for us, because the love of others for us, because we love.

None of this is to say that we do not do or say that which is unloving and selfish. We all do and we will all continue to do as long as we live. But the more we realize how much God loves us, the less selfish we will be and the more loving we will become. The only thing we need to fear is that we will forget how loved we are. Sadly, I think, that is what those two sign-holders have forgotten.