Will Fear Make You Wise?
Larry Hart, Curtal Friar
What Are You Doing Here
The Baltimore Catechism asks the question, “Why did God make you?” with the expected answer being: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” If you believe in God maker of heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1), and if you believe God is love (1 John 4:16) then you also believe, even if you do not always feel it or grasp its weight as a logical necessity, that you were created by love, in love, and for love, and that when you die you will awake in the light of love (Romans 8:14-18, 37-39). You were made for love, not fear, “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
I find myself cringing whenever I hear a preacher or Bible teacher extolling the virtue of fear––the ugly emotional agitation that comes from the belief that something, or someone, is dangerous, and likely to hurt us, make things difficult for us, or cause us pain. That may not be exactly what preachers and teachers have in mind, but that’s what fear is and what fear does according to modern English dictionaries. Fear, in this sense saps our energy and robs life of gratitude and joy. So, I invariably wonder if the proponents of this English dictionary definition of fear are aware of how many people sitting there in the pew politely listening to their exegesis of fear are struggling, given the statistical probabilties, with alcoholism (theirs’s or a family member’s), the trauma of childhood sexual, psychological, or physical abuse, rape, domestic violence, clinical depression, an anxiety disorder, or serious illness. Admonishments to fear God in this sense, are unlikely to induce health, hope, or healing in anyone who has come looking for the peace of God in a church service. As William Barry, S.J. notes, every psychotherapist is aware of the many people taught to fear God in childhood who grow up thinking of God as always snooping around after their sins, trying to catch them in the slightest wrong or error so as to punish them, people who are in dread of God, and grow up “hating vice more than loving virtue.” The opposite, of course, should be true. Barry quotes the psychoanalysts Henry Guntrip:
The enjoyment of God should be the end of all spiritual technique (practice); and it is in that enjoyment of God that we feel saved not only in the Evangelical sense, but safe: we are conscious of belonging to God, and hence are never alone; and, to the degree we have these two hostile feelings disappear. . . . In that relationship Nature seems friendly and homely; even its vast spaces instead of eliciting a sense of terror speak of the infinite love; and the nearer beauty becomes the garment with which the Almighty clothes himself.
But how about those passages of Scripture that urge fear and obedience? “Fear God and keep his commandments” (Ecclesiastes 12:13 NIV). “Fear God, and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come” (Revelation 14:7 NIV). “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28 NIV). “The fear of the LORD (Yahweh) is a fountain of life” (Proverbs 14:27). “The fear of the LORD leads to life” (Proverbs 19:23). “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10 NIV). ” And he said to the human race, ‘The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding’” (Job 28:28). The story of Job is a helpful place to start the search for an answer.
The Meaning of Fear in the Wisdom of Job
The Book of Job is a masterful piece of literature, a poetic drama which provides a simple case study of what it means to fear God. It begins by identifying Job by name, geographically, and spiritually. I quote Job 1:1 here from Edward L. Greenstein’s Job a New Translation:
A man there was in the Land of Uts––Job was his name; and that man was whole (in heart) and straight (of path), and fearing of Elohim and turning from evil.
That Job live in the Land of Utz or Uz means he lived literally in the “land of the wise”––a place known for its learning and wisdom. In Lamentations 4:21 Uts, or Uz, is associated with Edom, and in Jeremiah and Obadiah 1:8, Edom is recognized as a center of wisdom. Job lived in a place and among a people noted for their wisdom, but Job is himself a person noted for his wisdom––people come to him to settle their disputes, and to ask for advice. He is an elder, a sage, a satrap who sits with leaders, “judges,” and the learned at the city gate for that very purpose. Everyone knows him and respects him for his fair and just judgements. When Job speaks everyone listens (Job 29:7-29). He not only asserts like Israel’s other sages that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Job 28:28) but is himself someone whose wisdom comes from fearing God (Job 1:2).
The word for “fearing” in this first verse of Job, “yirah,” originally meant, as already noted, to shake, quake, or tremble. But many experiences may leave one trembling––a threatening danger, an acute crisis, clinical anxiety, dread, relief, ecstasy, awe. intense delight or pleasure, or an experience of the numinous––the mysterium tremendum. “Yirah“, as well as the other words for fear in Hebrew must, therefore, be understood in light of the context in which they occur, and because theology is essentially the study of God and the relationship of God and humanity, fear must be understood theologically––as an inexplicable awareness or consciousness of God.
Besides being an attitude, a feeling, or an emotion, fear in the Old Testament is the observance of moral and ethical standards, as well as religious rituals and ceremonies. So, when Abraham and Sarah move to Gerar Abraham tells Sarah, who is evidently a beautiful and desirable woman, to say she is his sister rather than his wife. It may be, Abraham reasons, that there is “no fear of God there,” and they might decide to kill him and take Sarah (Genesis 20:11-13). By “no fear of God” Abraham clearly means there may be no conventual morality in Gerar such as is common to civilized human beings.
Derek Kidner says that theologically, in regard to our relationship with God, “‘The fear of the Lord’ is that filial reverence which the Old Testament expounds from first to last.” Fear, in this sense is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7, 9:10; Psalm 1 11:10; Job 28:28). It is this “filial reverence” that William Barry seems to have in mind when he writes of what he calls the Abba / Amma experience––an experience of being held by an awesome power with which one is completely safe––like being held in the arms of a loving mother or father.
There can be little doubt for anyone who has read Job, that Job experiences the full range of what Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, a religious or spiritual experience of God as The Holy, the numinous, the ineffable mystery in the presence of which one both trembles and is fascinated, before which one may feel both frightened and strangely drawn or attracted, before which one may simultaneously feel both like fleeing from and drawn to. There can be a frightening sense of overwhelming power, yet also of being completely safe in the hands of that power. Job is fearing of God it that he lives a life of moral and ethical integrity, reverences God by following the precepts of the Torah, and knows the mystery of God’s presence––the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
Word Colors
There are not many Biblical Hebrew and Greek words for fear, but they each have numerous colors, synonyms, or definitions. The primary Greek words for fear are phobos and phobeo, which can be translated as “fear,” “dread,” “terror,” “panic,” “timidity,” and “alarm,” but also as “wonderful,” “stupendous,” “reverence,” “respect,” and “awe.” Phobos” is the word used in the Septuagint (the 3rd century Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew) for passages like Psalm 111:10, “The fear of the Lord.” The Greek term “theosebeia” (Theos, God,” and “sebomai,” to worship) which is used in 1 Timothy 2:10 is translated variously as: “women professing godliness,” “women who have reverence for God,” and “women who worship God.” It sometimes was used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew “yirat.” But it is Philippians 2:12 and Paul’s use of phobos there that is more relevant to our investigation of fear as reverence and awe.
Fear and Trembling
I have no idea how many sermons I heard preached from Philippians 2:12 as I was growing up, or how many times I heard it quoted in sermons taken from other texts. Since I always heard it read from the King James Version that is how I will quote it here. It reads: “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Now, I want to be clear. I do not mean to suggest that the intention in the preaching of this text in the church in which I grew up was to frighten me or anyone else. I think the self-educated preachers I heard, were good people, for whom daily life was often difficult, and who saw life, death, and eternity as serious matters requiring serious attention––otherwise you are likely to make a mess of life and end up in hell––which I still think is true only in a little different way than what they thought.
However, Paul’s urging of Christians to “work out their salvation with fear and trembling” is more about the joy of seeking to know and follow the will of God than it is of being terrified of judgment. We know this because Paul uses “fear and trembling in 2 Corinthians 7:15 to mean just that. And in Ephesians 6:5 Paul says: “Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ.” Although it is possible to argue fear and trembling in Ephesians means something like “shaking with dread and terror,” that really wouldn’t make sense given the context. It is obviously more about serving with respect. The word “phobos” (“fear”), as already noted and as seen with the Hebrew “Yirah,” has a wide range of meanings––terror, dread, reverence, respect, awe, and like “yirah” is a neutral word so that whether it is meant in a positive or negative sense can only be determined by the context in which it is used.
“Fear and trembling ” is what is known as a hendiadys––an idiom (a phrase in a language which means something different from its literal meaning but understood because of common and popular use. A hendiadys is an idiom in which a verb is intensified by being linked by “and” to a synonym. An example in English would be “I’m sick and tired.” What is being intensified in Paul’s use of the phrase in Philippians is reverence for God, the worship of God. Philippians 2 is a very positive passage and interpreting “fear and trembling” as living in fear of hell simply does not fit as well as understanding fear as reverent awe.
Someone may wonder if this doesn’t contradict Matthew 10:28 where Jesus says: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” It should be sufficient to say that in this passage, in Matthew 10, Jesus is not talking specifically about the fear of God, but how his follower should face persecution. In effect, Jesus says there, “Don’t worry about what people might do to you for speaking the truth, for sharing my message, if you want to worry about something worry about your relationship with God.” Eugene Peterson therefore translates this verse as: “Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life—body and soul—in his hands” (Matthew 10:28 MSG). It reminds me of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writing of how spiritual growth and transformation was possible in the brutal Gulag camps, which were meant to strip away all vestiges of human identity, only by letting go of the idea that one had to survive at all costs. That is the spirituality of courage and beauty Paul describes and encourages in Philippians 2.
The Fear of God in Hebrew Poetry
The simple fact is that from the beginning to the end of Holy Scripture, to fear God is to reverence God. Above I quoted from the first half of Psalm 33:8 NIV, “Let all the earth fear the LORD,” but I withheld the second line in verse eight which is, “Let all the people of the world revere him.” The beauty of Biblical poetry is not found in rhyming schemes, as in English, but in parallelisms where the words of two or more lines of a text are directly related in some way. The Beatitudes of Jesus in Matthew 5 are cast in this Hebrew form of poetry. There are actually several types of parallelism in Hebrew poetry, found mainly in the Psalms and Proverbs. For example, there is synonymous parallelism where the second line or part repeats what has already been expressed in the first line while varying the words, and there is antithetical parallelism in which a statement is followed by its opposite. Notice below how in Psalm 133 each verse is extended by the next, and how the first line of each verse is extended by the second line of the verse. I find it intriguing that structured in this way simple Hebrew poetry, song, chant, or whatever you want to call it, loses none of its beauty regardless of the language it is translated into. Here, then, are the first nine verses of Psalm 33 where this parallelism tells something important about what it means to “fear God.”
Psalm 33 (New International Version)
1 Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Praise the Lord with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.
4 For the word of the Lord is right and true;
he is faithful in all he does.
5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.
6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;
he puts the deep into storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the people of the world revere him.
9 For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.
What is central to this Psalm is not that God demands in a loud scary voice to be praised. But that God is praiseworthy. The psalmist finds the beauty and wonder of God stunning. “6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.” God’s precepts are astonishing, “his love is unfailing,” and will not let of us no matter what hell we have got ourselves into. Everything about God fills the heart with an amazement and joy that wells up from deep within heart and soul and bursts out in guitars, banjos, keyboards, and drums, and happy song. So, verses 8:
Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the people of the world revere him.
It is impossible to miss. To fear the Lord is “to revere” Him. Or, as the New American Standard Bible translates: “To fear the Lord is to “stand in awe” of Him.”
Let all the earth fear the Lord;
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
It is not just that fear and reverence are made synonymous by the poetic parallelism of the psalmist, although that should be quite enough to show us fear is reverence, but that both “fear” and “revere” or “awe” in Psalm 33 come from the same Hebrew root––”yirah.” Language scholars who understand not only the vocabulary and syntax of a language (how a language is structured), but also know linguistics, the science of language and how a language relates to the behavior of the people who speak it, are able to open vistas for us as we read Psalm 33:8 that would not otherwise be available to us. Thet help us to understand that “the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom,” is not like a student being afraid she might not pass an exam, or a small boy that he might get beat up by a mean bully at school, or Jean Paul Sartre’s character in the Wall who, left to think through the long night of his impending death before the firing squad in the morning, wets himself. It is not the fear of a tyrannical God whose expectations cannot be met, but, again, it is the experience of becoming lost in immense wonder, astonishment, and awe. I do not know when or where you have had such experiences. For me they have occurred in a Giant Redwood Forest, standing on a high ridge overlooking the surreal Badlands of South Dakota, walking on the beach, in a simple chapel, in worship, and in my own daily private prayers and meditations. One of the best film portrayals of the experience is in the Tom Hank’s film Joe and the Volcano when Joe, lost on a makeshift raft on the sea, battered by blistering sun and waves, so weak from hunger and thirst he can hardly lift himself, sees the full moon rising, looking so huge and low that it could be easily touched by barely raising a hand. Joe, who has not known to this moment what it means to feel gratitude or to really be alive, staggers to his feet, reaches his hand up to the moon and says, though he is half dead, “Thank you God, thank you for my life.” Those who have had such an experience will know, unless the experience was lost on them, what the Scriptures mean when they say: “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10 NIV).
Fear: The Beginning of Wisdom
Whenever I hear someone expounding on the fear of God, on fear as alarm, panic, dread, agitation, or terror as the path of wisdom and of “salvation,” perhaps quoting from Job: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom” (Job 28:28), or Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” or maybe “The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, to turn one away from the snares of death” (Proverbs 14:27) maybe along with, “The fear of the LORD leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction; he will not be visited with evil” (Proverbs 19:23), there is a question that rises spontaneously and as naturally as breathing within me: “If perfect love casts out fear,” as it says in the First Epistle of John, then how is “The fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom.” If fear leads to spiritual enlightenment and progress, why does Isaiah say, “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you'” (Isaiah 41:10 NIV). And why is that in the parable of the talents the servant who winds up in “outer darkness” is the one who is afraid and acts cowardly rather than boldly and confidently? The answer is so obvious I will not repeat it. If you find the question’s resolution elusive just sit with it quietly for a while.