Pastor Wilson writes, The Fiasco of No Fear and while it is a rather good piece, it is much like attempting to build a house with only 3 corner stones, a 3 legged house.
I agree, all true, one reason why we are so afraid of absolutely everything in the world, from covid to secular government, from death to taxes, from racism to social justice, is because we don’t fear God properly. Our eyes are on the dark things of this world and not on the power and glory of God.
The problem being, fear of God is unlike any other fear, it’s more like that much overused word from my generation, “awe-some” as in awe inspiring. “Awe” is defined as, “an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like.”
I like to stand at the top of cliff, a safe distance from the edge of course, look down and just take in all the awesomeness. Often the water is glistening at the bottom with snow capped peaks in the distance and it is all very beautiful. It is a tiny bit scary, much like being out in the vastness of the ocean can feel a wee bit scary. I used to enjoy a good roller coaster too, especially an old wooden one with the creaky bolts. So there are many examples of joyous fear, of celebratory reverence and admiration for what is grand, sublime, and extremely powerful. THAT is what fear of God is like. It’s a good fear.
The problem being, many people “fear God,” they fear Him so much they run as far away as they can. They don’t love Him, in fact they tend to mock and ridicule religion, faith, and Christians themselves. Mockery is how we make scary things smaller and less scary. Sometimes much like a kid covering their eyes and pretending there is no scary monster in the closet, they will simply deny His very existence entirely. Wayyyyy too scary.
We people tend to use fear to control one another, to enforce respect, even to mandate love, but God is not like that at all. He is not a people, with all our ego, pride, and insecurities. He doesn’t want us to fear Him like we might fear disease or death or taxes. He wants our love, He wants to be seated in our affections, He wants to be a Father and He wants to stick closer then a brother.
Flat out it is we of the church who have taught that obedience comes from fear, going way back beyond the Puritans. Over and over again we have gotten this all wrong. Heck, not that long ago we were burning one another at the stake attempting to inspire a proper fear of God!
I just laugh at “cancel culture.” Where do we think that originated? In the church.
And so it should come as no surprise that we arrive today and find ourselves living in a culture that values fear based obedience above and beyond wisdom, love, and common sense. We don’t love the “why” of the rules, we love the rules themselves and we’re tripping over one another eager to virtue signal how compliant we are. More yellow dots to stand on please, and let me wear two masks, and look, look, I have my papers!
“Perfect love casts out fear.” Or as the song goes, ’twas grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace my fears relieved.
For much of my life I have assisted older people with new fangled technology. A bit amusing, but there has always been a screen somewhere that says, push the green button to cancel this transaction. Without fail, they will push the green button “because it told me too!” Did you want to cancel your transaction? No! Then why did you push the green button? Because if I unquestioningly obey the machine, bits of dog chow will come out.
Why is mindless obedience more important than patience, reading comprehension, or learning new skills? Because they are terrified of the machine, the computer, the ATM, the credit card reader. They don’t realize that it does not reward quick, mindless obedience like a human might. In fact, that quick, mindless obedience and eager desire to please by following instructions perfectly is what makes phishing scams so successful.
I love our elderly, no disrespect intended, I’m am just saying that obedience rooted in fear doesn’t make the kibble drop better, it just makes you repeat the same silly mistake over and over again. Grace is what greases the skids to wisdom, grace is what teaches our heart to fear, and it is Jesus who said, “if you LOVE me, you will keep my commands.”
If you’re simply rooted in fear you’ll just keep pushing the same green button until the cows come home or the chickens come home to roost, as they now have.
This is so good. “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10) – yet scripture instructs us repeatedly “Fear Not!” – Our modern English interpretations of old English translations can be detrimental to our spiritual health.
Love God; love each other. It is about love, not fear.
Amen!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Amen! 🙂
LikeLike
I am not afraid of cows, but I do have a healthy respect for them.
LikeLiked by 2 people
LOL! Here’s the problem with that. Respect is probably wise and good, but that’s still not love. I respect cows too, but I still boil their bones and make broth. I just “love” cows…..especially slow cooked with some garlic and olive oil. I am laughing here, but respect and love are just not the same thing. Even the demons believe. In fact, they tend to take God at His word better than we do.
LikeLiked by 2 people
True. Come to think of it, I’ve never met anyone who denied the existence of cows.
LikeLiked by 4 people
@dumbestblogger
Given the number of people who cannot tell the difference between a boy and a girl, I suspect many of the people who don’t deny the existence of cows just think they are big sheep. And we don’t want to know what they do with sheep.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hmmm…
LikeLiked by 1 person
@insanitybytes22
You sure do like picking on Pastor Wilson.🙂
I went over an read his post.
Think about a couple of quotes.
Both of those quotes came from Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was no Gentle-man. In fact, he treated my Irish ancestors murderously, but Cromwell was the best military leader of his era. In part, that was because Cromwell was fearless, but I expect what was just as important is that better than most he understood men.
Most of us are complicated in this sense.
I doubt we can find anyone who isn’t complicated in that sense. Even before the silly virus scare we wore masks. We hid motives and our feelings even from ourselves. We weave our emotions, our feelings, our motives, our words and so many things into patterns, designs and excuses until no one can explain them.
What do we think? Is it what we say and write? God knows.
If we love God, that love does cast out fear, especially something relatively trivial, like the harm one of our fellows might do to us. However, because our faith is weak, our love is weak. So, that plain, russet-coated Captain, even though he lacked the polish of a gentleman, was something special.
Consider the origins of the words fear and reverence.
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=fear
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=reverence&ref=searchbar_searchhint
Let’s give Pastor Wilson some credit. He is a bit like that plain, russet-coated Captain. Because God is so strange to us, most of us can only revere our Lord. For us to love God, He had to come to us as a man in the form of Jesus. And that was 2,000 years ago. So, we now must mine from the Bible something of the man and the God we can learn to love.
We are each unique. Wilson doesn’t express his love for God quite the way anyone else does, but he does express it. Only God knows how big and genuine Wilson’s love for Him might be. The same I can say for myself.
The cancel culture, BTW, predates the church. That bloody thing is as old as the fear of man by man.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha! I think I do enjoy picking on Wilson. The beatings will continue until morale improves, too! I do give him credit, instead of calling all the jellyfish people “girls” this time, I see he has changed his wording to “vertebrates.” That’s huge and a gracious accommodation, indeed.
You know how the Bible says, ”…the Lord chastens everyone he accepts as his son?” Your comment just made me realize I have not written a single post about Joe Biden, but I’ve written a few dozen about Wilson. That’s because one of them is not worthy of my attention.
We need to love the Lord with all our being. Love looks different and has many personalities, but if it is exclusively military, hierarchal, and fear based, it is missing the mark.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@insanitybytes22
That’s funny!
We can carry that idea a bit too far. We can, like certain so-called Progressives, complain about America and expect Americans to accommodate its enemies because we don’t America’s enemies to change. Or we can demonstrate unconscious racism and other forms of bigotry with our low expectations for those for we have judged deficient
However, it seems you have high expectations for Pastor Wilson. I hope he realizes you think of him that way.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good word! The ONLY thing I don’t question is God’s love for me. 🙂
“And fear can go to hell
Shame can go there too
I know whose I am
God, I belong to You”
(“Prophesy Your Promise” Bryan & Katie Torwalt)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, I like that song! I heard a really good rendition of it not long ago.
I’m delighted you don’t question God’s love for you! I’ve spent a life time doing exactly that, which is probably why this issue tends to provoke me. Also, I’m often surrounded by people who seem to believe that God hates them, so they’re just going to hate Him right back. But I’ve got faith, I’ve been watching Him work, and there’s some healing coming!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You are right that our fear of God should be a holy awe, not a runaway terror. It is the sinners who will say, on the Day of the Lord, “Hills, cover me; mountains, hide me from His sight.” We who know him will rejoice to see him coming in his glory. But faith without awe also lacks something essential–those folksy conversations with “my Good Buddy upstairs” don’t match the reverent and awesome tone of the Psalms. As for that verse from “Amazing Grace,” I have a friend who corrected it to, “God’s Law has taught my heart to fear, His grace my fears relieved.” J.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL! Now I’m going to have to sit down and have a chat with your friend, Salvageable! While I totally understand why changing that verse has a certain kind of logic behind it, it’s still all wrong. All wrong. The law does not teach our heart to fear and never has. Our prisons are over flowing and sin is still quite popular. Fearing the law will not save you, but loving the Law Giver will.
LikeLike
The reason people keep pushing the same button is the last fifty times they had to to get anything done. Now some dumb innovator has decided to alter the machines, and then another one altered it another way, and ad infinitum. One prominent place you see this is with debit machines. You just want to pay for your groceries, but God knows how because this machine at this store doesn’t look like the other 50 innovations. But trying to be tech compliant just makes life easier so you don’t hold up the line. I think that’s why people have been so compliant re Covid — they don’t want to hold up the line — but all the Covid rules started becoming more and more nonsensical. They made no sense. Fear? Hell, no. Aggravation. I guess there are people out there who fear diseases. I must not hang out with that sort.
My solution to nonsensical rules is just to ignore them. There are parallel societies in the US who do just that….quietly, with no fuss. They just do what they want. I quail at the idea of treating God that way, though there are people who do, not acknowledging that his rules are anything but absurd.
Anyway, sorry to practically write my own post in the comments. Your blogs inspire me, I guess.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m honored you would feel inspired. I pretty much disregard dumb rules….but not with God. Over and over again He has proven to me to have good intentions towards us and logic, truth, beauty, behind what He has designed. His rules are never “dumb.”
LikeLike