Fear of God

For most of my life I viewed God as someone who was cruel. In my view, “my god” was spiteful, emotionally-manipulative, and unstable. My god was full of condemnation and eagerly awaited a chance to pour out his holy wrath on anyone as soon as they made the slightest little mistake.

Would I have told any of this to a perfect stranger? No way! I would not even agree that I truly thought this way until a few years ago. I believed I had a healthy, reverent fear of who God was and what He could/would do to me.

To better understand, and before you begin writing a comment telling me all of the ways that I thought and believed incorrectly, allow me to share some background that may better help us both understand exactly where all of my beliefs started and why I came to the conclusions that I did.

My understanding and fear of god was built around the hellfire and brimstone sermons that were screamed over pulpits, and the emotional camp altar calls that warned me of the impending rapture. The stories I heard about the Creator of the universe revolved around His wrath against the people who had disobeyed him and how He would send sinners to burn in a fiery lake for all eternity.

Hell was without a doubt the most absolutely terrifying place in the world. I have had nightmares about hell at least once a week since I was six years old. When I was young the very conservative Pentecostal church my family attended put on a play about a man who went to hell. The production of dramatic plays was a yearly event for our church. It was an all hands on deck evangelism strategy that brought in blacksliders and sinners and ended in an altar call every night. Since all tv and movies were forbidden, the dramas were a form of entertainment that every person in the church could partake in, and every family did just that.

In this particular play a man made a series of bad choices and every poor choice put a new nail into his coffin. Eventually when he was dramatically killed in a horrific car accident (because of drinking alcohol for the very first time) the final nail was put into his coffin and he was sent to the flames of hell where he pleaded with God to forgive him, but it was too late.

Demons dressed in black hoods showed him all of the mistakes he had made, all of the lies he had told, the bad things he had done, and how he had disappointed God and doomed himself.

I remember sitting by my grandmother’s side during the first night of the play and watching the dramatic strobe lights and ominous music take over our church platform as a representation of hell.

I was horrified. I wet my pants. (Okay technically I wet my skirt because I was not allowed to wear pants.)

After that night every time I would close my eyes at bedtime I would see the haunting images of a black hooded figures moving across the stage and down the aisles while red flood lights and a flickering strobe light flash over the entire sanctuary to a soundtrack of crying and screaming.

The screams and cries on that soundtrack lived in my head on repeat.

The concept of hell petrified me.

I could not escape my fear of the fiery underworld, nor could I escape near constant reminders that a place where souls would burn and scream for all eternity existed.

Hell was a horrible place that was talked about in Sunday school classrooms and on platforms every single week. I would sit through Sunday night sermons as a child and hear our pastor screaming about the deep pits of hell. My pastor would yell until he was red in the face and then organ music would whale until people ran around the pews.

Camp Meeting skits and sermons reminded me that my fear was a good thing. On more than one occasion my young ears heard men behind the pulpit say that “I should fear the Lord. I should be afraid of hell! I should know that God is not a big soft teddy bear.” An emphatic “ha!” always seemed to follow with the loosening of a tie.I would turn worried eyes to family members who were standing and applauding all over the sanctuary as a hell filled with the gnashing of teeth was spoken of.

I did not want to go to hell. No one wanted to go to hell.

No one wanted to disappoint God and be banished the lake of fire below.

My parents were gracious and comforting anytime that I brought my nightmares and fears about hell to them, they would talk to me about salvation and assure me that since at only eight years old I was already baptized and spirit filled all I had left to do was my best before God and maintain a life full of holy righteousness and obedience.

But, my fear would not go away and my nightmares did not end.

I did not feel any sense of security. I only felt fear.

Preachers screamed across wooden pulpits so loudly that spit flew down into the altar space “You have to do every little thing you can do to stay out of hell. God is a jealous God. Do not walk the line! Be obedient to God. God did everything for you and you owe Him everything you have.”

My salvation was an essential thing that I had to work hard to keep, my god’s love had to be kept. I grew to believe that not only was my god’s love conditional, but it was incredibly easy to lose his love, favor and his acceptance. I believed that if I lost those things then I would also lose my salvation.

This was the mindset that I grew up with. I did not understand that this was my mindset however; I believed that my god was not a soft and cuddly father figure, but I also did not believe that I saw my god as a tyrant or a bully.

Catch that careful wording there? I did not believe that I saw my god as a tyrant or bully. I never would have used those descriptions of God. Never. I never would have seen my own view of God as harmful or incorrect either. But it was.

My belief was that I had to go above and beyond for my god because of all that he had done for me. I did not think that my soul was drowning under the unswimmable weight of soul crushing fear I was carrying around with me. But it was.

I was fueled by fear of punishment and everything I heard told me that was a good thing.

I knew the Bible story of God leaving the 99 sheep to rescue one lost sheep and would tell the masses about it, but I also knew the story I heard over the pulpit, the story of the good shepherd breaking the legs of his disobedient sheep so that they would not wander off again.

Structure, sacrifice, discipline and even punishment were all commonplace in my world. The idea that my god would intentionally bring something painful and harmful into my life, that he would purposefully try to break my leg (or my will) was a belief ingrained into the very core of who I was.

Every single negative or inconvenient thing that happened in my life became the wrath of my god punishing me for my shortcomings. It became a first hand example of the wrath of my god and how he could poor out judgement on me for my failures to not do, serve or become enough.

Perhaps it was something as simple as secretly thinking a piece of jewelry was actually pretty instead of condemning it. Perhaps it was something as large as a lie, or feeling and acting on the desire of lust. I knew that my god would not spare the rod and would discipline me until I conformed and became exactly what he wanted me to be.

My fear would compound itself with feelings of guilt and shame.

All of my life I professed and preached that God was love and wanted desperately to rescue all of humanity from the sin that they found themselves ensnared in to every lost sinner and church goer that I met. My voice and my lifestyle on the outside was so very loud.

Subconsciously however, deep inside of my naïve heart and mind I did not actually view “my god” as a loving or as a savior. The god I was serving had already rescued me since I had been lucky enough to be born into a home that introduced me to him. I was a Bible-quizzing and quoting, set-a-part, born-again, holy roller that had been blessed to have been raised on a church pew and had never had to experience an evil, god-less world.

I proudly taught that God loved all and wanted to save everyone so that they could serve Him with their lives. It was the serving God after that initial loving and saving experience part that I struggled with fully understanding.

I walked around on eggshells and was constantly trying more and more to “impress” or “please” my god. My dresses grew longer to please him. My hair style grew larger in order to please him. I stopped eating certain foods and talking to certain people in order to please him. I began worshiping in a very specific manner, a style which I was told that my god wanted me to behave in.

My fear that I was not doing enough to please him grew every single day.

My feelings of shame, worry, and guilt overwhelmed me.

My fear of a punishment and banishment to hell because of my shortcoming would not leave.

This is the part where modern day me steps in and allows a chance to sigh from all of the heavy and fear based beliefs that I have just shared with you. It’s been a heavy few paragraphs. It has been a tremendously vulnerable and honest few paragraphs as well.

As an adult who has come to re-learn who God is and what His nature is I can look back at my younger view of my god and see several flaws. I can see the danger in my beliefs and practices.

I can see how it started and grew.

I can see where the understanding began to crack and break apart.

My very understanding of the Savior of the world was built upon fear.

Fear is not the foundation of a loving relationship.

Fear is not going to build a healthy relationship.

And fear will not sustain a relationship.

A relationship built upon fear will break. Any relationship built on fear will break.

The fear will break the relationship, or the fear will break you.

To be perfectly honest that is what happened to me. The fear that I held onto and built the most important relationship in my life upon was not stable and it broke. I broke.

My fear led me to push as hard as I could to be more and do more.

My fear drove me to build up walls and learn to present the perfect exterior image.

My fear taught me to hide.

My fear pushed me to put all of the weight of my security and my salvation onto the choices that I made and the things that I did. I became responsible for my own salvation.

I love this lesson explained by gotquestions.com on fear and love;

“First John 4:18 says that “perfect love casts out fear.” The whole verse says this: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” The context here is important: verse 17 says, “This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.”

The “fear” that perfect love casts out is the fear of God’s judgment. We know that Judgment Day is coming, but those who are in Christ know the love of God, which drives away fear of condemnation. The dismissal of the fear of judgment is one of the main functions of God’s love. The person without Christ is under judgment and has plenty to fear (John 3:18), but, once a person is in Christ, the fear of judgment is gone. He is reconciled to God, and “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

Part of understanding the love of God is knowing that God’s judgment fell on Jesus at the cross so that we can be spared: “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). Jesus’ sacrifice propitiated (appeased) God’s justice and won His good favor (1 John 2:2, ESV). Jesus spoke often of His mission: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17). The only person who must fear judgment is the one who rejects Jesus Christ: “Whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (verse 18).”

I’m not perfectly healed from my brokenness. I am not completely free of fear or worry either, but day by day I am coming to a stronger and better understanding of who I am and who He is.

I have come to understand that my ideas of fear as a younger person were rooted in the fear and expectancy of a punishment that has already taken place. My ideas of fear were based on rules and requirements of men and not of the Creator of the universe. My fears themselves were based on scripture that was twisted out of its context and presented with manipulated emotions and a dramatic painting of condemnation.

No amount of working or doing, no action that I can or will take will better secure my salvation. I cannot earn my own security or salvation.

Knowing that the weight, shame and punishment that have been such a heavy part of my world for so long are not actually supposed to fall on my shoulders or be my burden to carry changes something buried deep inside of me.

The perfect love of God that I used to profess on the outside covers each one of us after we find ourselves coming to Jesus and experiencing salvation. His love is not something that is easy to lose. Our security and salvation in who He is and what He has done, not in what we do to please Him.

My relationship with my Savior now is being built from the ground up.

I am learning who God is and what His attributes are. I'm not learning them from sermons or dramatic skits, but from His word.

In His word I am finding an omnipotent and omnipresent God who is perfectly loving and perfectly just at the same time. In scripture I am discovering a King who created the entire Universe and then took the weight and the shame of every sin upon Himself.

So yes, I was broken, and in many many ways I still am.

But I am no longer afraid of the punishment that my childhood god would smite upon me for thinking the wrong things or wearing a skirt that flashed my knees.

1 John 4:18 (ESV): 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.