Hello, I was asked this question yesterday and i didnt know how perfect answer it.
Someone asked me: "How can one love God above all things when Jesus says: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”. How can we love most what we fear most?
Please someone help me.
Have you ever noticed the amazing fact that most modern “religious educators” try to remove the very thing the Bible calls “the beginning of wisdom”? I mean, of course, fear—“the fear of the Lord.”
An army of modern psychologists is on the side of the educators rather than on the side of the Bible—at least, in America. For Americans desperately want to be wanted, like to be liked, need to be needed. (“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world,” you know?)
Then sometimes I think the situation couldn’t possibly be that bad, that clear-cut. I must be misunderstanding these modern religious educators. Perhaps the fear they want to erase is not the fear the Bible speaks at all. What they say is that this biblical fear really means only respect, and the fear the bad old days instilled was terror. Is this true? I think both parts of the claim are untrue.
First, what the Bible means by “the fear of the Lord” is far deeper than mere “respect.” You can have respect for policemen, and for debating partners, and even for money. But the “fear of the Lord” is something that takes its specific character from its object, from the Lord. It is awe. It is worship. It is wonder. It is absolute adoration. It is “islam,” total “submission” to God. This is precisely the thing absent from both modern religious education and from modern liturgy. The reason is simple: You can’t give what you don’t have; you can’t teach what you don’t know yourself.
The second part of the claim is also false. The church did not instill terror in the past, nor is traditional religion based on terror. You have terror toward an enemy, like cancer, or a lion, or a bullet. It is a dead, dread, doomsday kind of feeling. “The fear of the Lord” is exultant and wonderful.
The church used to instill this awe. The main reason she is so weak and wimpy today is because she no longer instills this awe. For this awe is “the beginning of wisdom” and the heart of all true religion. Kreeft
peterkreeft.com/topics/fear.htm
