Do you fear God?

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Tis_Bearself

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Today’s Lenten meditation by Fr. William A. Barry, SJ, reads as follows:
Overcoming Our Fear of God

The psalmist writes, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Psalm 111:10) But the fear of the Lord extolled by the psalm is a far cry from the fear instilled by religious teaching, which leads people to keep their distance from God. The psalms surely were not written to keep people far from God, but just as bad news sells better than good, so too, hellfire and brimstone make for more compelling teaching and preaching. But I believe that God is shortchanged by such teaching and preaching tactics, and so are we.

If I’m honest with myself, do I find that I fear God?
How does this fear affect my relationship with God?
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I was just curious as to how people on CAF would answer the two questions at the end.

I feared God a lot a couple years ago. I had come back to the Church the previous year after spending a lot of years doing some pretty bad sins. I went to Confession, figured I was forgiven and everything was fine. I also went to a lot of Year of Mercy shrines that year. Then one night I woke up in the middle of the night and happened to start reading some stuff about Purgatory online and realized I was not out of the woods so to speak just because I now went to Mass on Sundays and confession every month. I felt I would need to do more.

At this point now I don’t fear God in the sense of being afraid of him. I fear him more in the sense that I feared making my mom mad when I was a teenager because she would really blow up. I knew she loved me but she would still blow up spectacularly. But I find it more motivating to think how much a sin would hurt Jesus’ feelings. I don’t want to make Jesus sad. I would prefer to make him happy.

So, how would you all answer the two questions at the end of the daily reflection?
 
But that’s not a reason for fear. It just means you can’t get anything done without him, something I’ve learned very well since I struggle a lot.
 
My fear might be irrational. I fear God will punish me for things I’ve done wrong, or just for failing in some areas of my life (prior to coming back to the Church). I also fear that he doesn’t love me. I doubt that I am worthy of his love.
 
There are some Jews, for the most part Orthodox I believe (though certainly not all), who really fear Gd in the sense of believing they will be punished, both on earth and in the afterlife, for each and every transgression they commit. I am not one of these. I believe Gd takes into account the struggles we face and perhaps loves us all the more for confronting our weaknesses and attempting to correct them, however imperfect our attempts may be. In other words, we get credit for our perseverance despite the setbacks and doubts we encounter along the way. The High Holy Days are Days of Awe, but they are more than days of “fear and trembling”; they are rather days of hope and the promise to appeal to our better angels in the year ahead, even though we recognize our potential failure to do so at the outset.
 
I believe in context to the Hebrew language, “fear” is meant to hold in awe, or treat with reverence, rather than meaning “to be afraid of”.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
At this point now I don’t fear God in the sense of being afraid of him. I fear him more in the sense that I feared making my mom mad when I was a teenager because she would really blow up. I knew she loved me but she would still blow up spectacularly. But I find it more motivating to think how much a sin would hurt Jesus’ feelings. I don’t want to make Jesus sad. I would prefer to make him happy.
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This seems closest to what I experience. I fear disappointing God. I fear letting Jesus’s sacrifice for me go to waste. I fear falling short.
 
As I understand “fear of God”, it means a filial fear. The type of fear that a child would have of disappointing a parent. Not the servile fear that a slave would have for a master.
 
I have always been confused about why the Bible says we should fear God and love God. I have never understood how it’s possible to do both. When I fear someone, I do not love them. I may pretend to love them because I’m afraid of them, but I don’t really feel love. The people I love I do not fear at all. They’re the ones that make me feel safe and loved.
 
It makes more sense if you think of “fear” as “hold in awe” or “treat with reverence” as Fog said above.
Or think of it as how a child would feel towards a parent who was loving and kind but sometimes said “no” or got justifiably angry at the child’s behavior. Even a loving parent would punish sometimes, in proportion to the child’s misdeed. It’s different from love for a peer who doesn’t have authority over you.
 
Aquinas11 said:
I do what He says. And when I don’t, I ask for forgiveness.
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Is that the sum total of your relationship with God?
Fr. Barry is coming at this from the Ignatian perspective that God wants us to be his friends, and not so much his fearful subjects.
Are you still able to regard God as a friend or a loving parent or whatever works for you, other than just a commander who tells you what to do and if you don’t do it you might go to Hell?

I brought this up partly because it seems a lot of people on this forum have this concept of God where you have to follow all the rules in his rule book to the letter or he will send you to Hell on a moment’s notice, which seems like an odd, Fundamentalist way to approach God.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Is that the sum total of your relationship with God?
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Of course not, I couldn’t give the “sum total” of my relationship with God in a post, no matter how long
Tis_Bearself said:
Fr. Barry is coming at this from the Ignatian perspective that God wants us to be his friends, and not so much his fearful subjects.
Are you still able to regard God as a friend or a loving parent or whatever works for you, other than just a commander who tells you what to do and if you don’t do it you might go to Hell?
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I have friends. The nature of a friend is they give advice which you are free to accept or reject, without consequence. The nature of a friend is also that you are equal with them.
Tis_Bearself said:
I brought this up partly because it seems a lot of people on this forum have this concept of God where you have to follow all the rules in his rule book to the letter or he will send you to Hell on a moment’s notice, which seems like an odd, Fundamentalist way to approach God.
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The supreme irony is that this post is akin to a “Fundamentalist way to approach God”, i.e. if you don’t “regard God as a friend or a loving parent” you’ll be characterized as “odd”.
 
It’s odd to me because I wasn’t raised to think that God was looking for a reason to send me to Hell all the time.

I guess if there’s some Catholic out there who was raised in the rule-book-following way, it wouldn’t be odd to them, but I don’t understand how you grow in your faith with an attitude like that.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
At this point now I don’t fear God in the sense of being afraid of him
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I would put my answer the same way. I grew up feeling that, not only must I literally fear Him, but that there were roadblocks placed in the way which were deliberately meant to trick me into losing out. Dr Anders, raised a Protestant, said that he once felt that this life was akin to taking an advanced math class and that you could go to hell for not knowing the right answers. I no longer have any sense of fear over God, and would describe my relationship as one of an affectionate, cooperative understanding.
 
SugarMagnolia said:
The people I love I do not fear at all. They’re the ones that make me feel safe and loved.
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This is exactly as we should feel toward God. Anything else means too much Calvinism has seeped into our way of thinking.
 
“Fear” and “hold in awe” are quite different. If the phrase “hold in awe” is correct, then why not say “hold in awe”? Why say “fear”? I could understand if we were just looking at an old translation. We know there are inaccuries in old translations. But the NABRE also says fear. So I have to assume that the most accurate English word is fear.
 
I think the point someone made above is that “fear” in the Jewish context meant something a little different than our conception of “fear” today.

Servant of God Fr. John Hardon defined “Fear of the Lord” as the desire not to offend God, and also used the analogy of God being a loving parent who you don’t want to offend, but at the same time you don’t live in fear of them harming you. That seems to make sense.

www.learnreligions.com

A Gift of the Holy Spirit: Avoiding Offense to God

Learn more about the fear of the Lord, the last gift of the Holy Spirit, which is the confirmation of the virtue of hope.
www.learnreligions.com www.learnreligions.com
 
I get that the connotations of words changes over time, especially such a long time. Is this a linguistic fact though? Do modern Jews read the word “fear” as meaning something different in the Bible than in everyday English?

I don’t really know my Bible, so now I’m wondering what, if anything, the New Testament has to say on this subject.

PS: I find the analogy between children and parents questionable. I’m not so sure children’s not wanting to offend their parents is anything other than fear of consequences imposed by a strong being upon a weaker one. That’s fear in the usual sense of the word.
 
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