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.
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