Why fear God?

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The beginning of wisdom is fear of God

– Proverbs 1:7
 
He is our Father. As the Bible tells us, just as we reverenced our own fathers and they corrected us, God will lead us into all truth and holiness.

God bless,
Ed
 
I never want to ask myself that question…for fear of God showing me why I should fear him.

I was going to put a smiley after that statement because it sounds silly…but I decided against it.
 
=Robert Sock;6920724]The beginning of wisdom is fear of God
Click to expand...
– Proverbs 1:7
Click to expand...
WHY?

Because God knows our every thought, word, action: past, present and future.

God to b God MUST BE Just an fair.

Four of the Seven Sacraments ALL INSTITUED BY CHRIST have a role in the remission of our sins.

ONLY THE CC has the Sacrament of Known forgiveness of sins,[Cnfession …John 20:22-23] and the means to even erase the lasting effect of our sins.[Indulgenses]

Love and prayrs,
Pat
 
Once when driving though a local wild life preserve I saw a lion cub lying on his father’s paws scratching his head on his father’s fang. I wouldn’t try that, but he was assured of his father’s protection and felt safe in his care. On the other hand he feared his father enough that he would not chomp down on his paw.

It struck me that it is the same with God and me. I feel safe in His arms, but I fear Him enough not to offend Him with a mortal sin.
 
We should not fear God.

We should fear Divine Justice if we have lived a life of mortal sin.

Although God does not send us to hell - we choose that path - God nevertheless has established the “rules” by which we must obey to at last enjoy the beatific vision.

Yes, I acknowledge the distinction may be one of semantics, but God is pure love and one has nothing to fear from pure love. God simply established the way for man to experience that love, namely, God’s “justice system”: Divine Justice.
 
Jesus says his yoke is easy and his burden light. He also said love God with all your heart.

Jesus suffered and died for our salvation, and felt the wrath of God for us. I will never understand the mystery of the redemptive suffering that Jesus endured for sin, but I try to remember Jesus’ love and remember to love God.
 
Rochester,

This is WHY God became man incarnate and died:

This was part of my post in another thread about salvation. The other guy said he finally read something that made sense to him 🙂 Made me feel good, so I hope you understand as well:

I don’t know you, so I have no idea what your knowledge is about this fundamental Catholic doctrine. I will assume that you don’t know (but it is only an assumption - I am NOT saying you don’t know).

Catholics “break down” getting into heaven into two things that must occur:
  1. Redemption
  2. Salvation
Redemption

As God was infinite love, Adam’s and Eve’s injury to him was also infinite. Their ACT was not infinite - it cannot be, as they were human. But to hurt an infinite being is to cause an infinite amount of harm.

So how does one seal the breach between man and God? God did it (which he did NOT HAVE TO DO) by becoming man. But as he was man and God, then all acts done by him as a man were infinitely good. But to also show us his depth of love for us, God, as man incarnate, suffered immensely for us in the physical sense of his being a man who was wipped, mocked, spat upon, and finally crucified.

The Passion that Christ endured served as payment (that is, redemption) to God to heal that breach. Of course, God accepted that act of his Son as completed and satisfied 9remember - Jesus said “it is finished”, and God said, he was “well pleased” with his son.

Thus, Jesus did something that no man could do - redeem mankind in the eyes of God. That was an objective, supernatural act that benefitted EVERY LIVING HUMAN, WHETHER CATHOLIC, PROTESTANT, ORTHODOX - EVEN ATHEIST.

Salvation

Now, we get to the “saving” part. Protestants seem to “combine” Christ’s act of redemption (crucifixion) with a SUBJECT “thing” that must occur: salvation. And for salvation, MAN IS NEEDED. Man benefitted from the objective act of redemption, whether he wanted it or not, but man does NOT benefit from salvation, whether he wanted it or not, because MAN MUST PARTICIPATE IN HIS OWN SALVATION.

Remember, the bible states that man “should work out your salvation with fear and trembling”. Now, does that sound like “once saved/always saved”? Does that sound like the hard-core fundamentalists who say “I KNOW I am going to heaven”. My response is, "really? That’s funny, because Christ said only God can look into the window of a man’s soul, and thus only God can know who will be saved (he already knows because of his ominiscience - but that is an entirely different topic).

It is MAN who must work on his salvation, in cooperation with God, by living as Christ taught, believing as Christ taught, and being contrite when one has sinned. Now, if we did everything we are supposed to do, we can have a pretty good idea if we are bound for purgatory or hell (and if purgatory, then it is automatically heaven in the end) at any moment in our lives (or we SHOULD know the state of our soul - if we don’t, we have some serious problems).

So when distinguishes between redemption and salvation, we ARE like fundamentalist protestants when we and they say that “only God could have done what he accomplished on the cross”. That is very true. But we don’t call that act alone “salvation”. We call it redemption.

Thus, a quick guide to Catholic teaching on redemption/salvation.

I hope I made sense.
 
Scripture, the revelation of God, teaches us that obeying God is very important and that not living according to God’s will brings spiritual death, i.e. eternal separation from God.

I think it is in Luke 16 or 17 that Jesus describes the torment of hell. The rich man is there and it is an existence of constant torment. The man’s friends may be there, too, but it is evident that they are of no consolation to him. The rich man’s existence is one of eternal regret.

In the Old Testament, everyone must repent and atone at least once a year on the Day of Atonement. That is their holiest day of the year. They set aside everything for this one action and prayer, to demonstrate their desire to rectify their lives with their faith in God.

But, that is the minimum. We need to have God constantly before us, to develop and exercise spiritual maturity, to return our souls spotless to Him as we received them. We must make an accounting for our lives.

If we walk around in life without a healthy fear of a lot of things, like germs, mistreating other people, taking excessive risks, etc. we will pay the consequences, even in this life.
How much moreso it is that we shall pay eternally for lives that constantly and deliberately run against the will of God.
 
Fear of God is the awe of knowing ones place in the presence of one so powerful, so vastly superior. And yet while awe is always called for, fear of punishment is eliminated as we grow in the knowledge of God and come to realize His unconditional love, and we increase in our capacity to return that love.
 
Shouldn’t we fear God out of Love for Him? Not that we fear His retribution, but that we should love Him so much that we fear letting Him down.

For instance, do you ever fear that you may disappoint or let down your spouse? Do you fear their pain and sorrow? It’s not because you are afraid of your spouse, per se, but that you simply do not wish them to be disappointed.

I am reminded of this each time I say the Act of Contrition:
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend thee, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love…
 
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