fear

God and Fear

So…the Bible says you should “fear the Lord your God”. And it also says that “God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear.” So, what do we do?

We first have to ask ourselves what “fear” is.

In the context of the first verse, to me, fear means respect. You know how powerful God is, and you respect this. It does not mean we are scared of Him, like the second verse would suggest. Yes, God is not a Spirit of fear. He’s not here to scare anybody. He’s not here to make us tremble. He loves us.

If you are scared of God, know that God doesn’t want you to be. This fear is not good. It doesn’t make sense to be afraid of God. I seriously don’t think it’s okay to be afraid of God, even a little bit. It’s just not what God is about. He’s here to protect us from fear and to comfort us. He’s not going to turn around and have you fearing for your life.

People view God as this all powerful being that could snap at any moment if we do something wrong. God is patient. Yes, we should be following His commands, but, that’s because we love Him. That’s what He wants for us. He doesn’t want us to do things out of fear. He doesn’t want us to do things just to avoid punishment. There are consequences for our sins. That’s the reality. If we do something wrong, we need to learn from it. That’s what a good punishment is.

Yes, 2 Timothy 1:7 says this: For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And Deuteronomy 6:13 says You shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him and shall take oaths in His name.

But, in terms of these verses, and for the point of my post, this verse really sends it home:

Hebrews 12:9 says this: Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?

Matthew 10:28 is another good one.

Look, the point here is that, fearing the Lord your God is a wise and fine thing to do. He gave us a sound mind. You can’t have a sound mind and be scared. Fear is for the weak. Love doesn’t fear. God is love.

I know this may seem hard to get, and perhaps this is just my opinion based on how I did interpreted the Bible verses. So please, if there is anything you can show me that says that we should literally be afraid of God, let me know. I never claim to be all knowing. Until then, I’m going to continue to not be afraid of my Lord God.

-DALANEL

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Dante’s Opinion: Are There People Who Aren’t Afraid of Anything?

Before we get to the question, I would like to welcome you to the first post of Dante’s Opinion. Just a quick review of what it is in case you don’t know: Dante’s Opinion is where I search the internet for questions that people ask on sites like Yahoo! Answers and answer them here. Today, we’ll kick off the feature with a couple of questions.

The first one is asked my Matt:

I know that there are people who aren’t afraid of the dark, horror movies, and death, but are there those who aren’t afraid of anything? Like some kind of chemical thing in their brain that makes it so that fear just doesn’t register? I understand that fear is a survival instinct that’s part of your fight-or-flight instinct, but are there people who just don’t get scared or don’t panic at all?

I want to say no. I don’t think such a person exists in a normal state. Perhaps if the person were a sociopath. But, even then I don’t think so. For that person, certain emotions may not register. But, I think fear is just a part of life. At least, this life here on Earth. I think I can vary as well. Some people may get scared but just have great composure. Like, a fire fighter. He’s probably a little scared for his life but he’s still able to keep it together to fight the fire. So yeah, I think there’s a little bit of fear in everybody.

Our next question is by Imperial Rex:

Would a sentient alien (extraterrestrial) be able to accept Christianity as their religion?

Oh wow. First answer is yes. I’ll tell you why. This only makes sense if you believe that God is all powerful and created the universe. Now, in all of God’s power and glory, I believe that there may be other life forms on other planets. And, these aliens probably have experienced Jesus in a way. I could believe that. However, upon more consideration, there is one thing about humans: We’re made if God’s image. So, are there other creations on other planets that are also made in God’s image? This simple question that Rex asked can go so far but I’ll sum it up here:

It’s all up to God. If God decided that Earth wasn’t the only place where you can be saved…or I should say, if He feels like Humans are not the only people that can be saved, then so be it. We’ll probably never really know until we meet extraterrestrials and see what they live by. Really good question and I might dedicate an entire post to this.

So that’s it. That’s Dante’s Opinion. If you have questions you want me to tackle, go to my Ask Dante page and we’ll go from there. As for the answers I provided here,

They’re just my opinion!

-DALANEL