Fear of God is not about following a requisite list of rules so that you pass the test to get into heaven. Faith in Christ is about bringing God's kingdom NOW in preperation for AFTER-NOW (?) and striving to live more like him, which is done through thought and deed, but not acruing a list of "spiritual chores" to avoid the punishment.
I believe hell is a real place, I believe that people go there. I don't like it, it's not my job to decide who does/does not, and we're cheapening our faith if we believe otherwise. Salvation is real and hopefully we can show that the path to that is filled with love and obedience, not fear and intimidation.
Hopefully i've given you somethin to chew on. Gimme feedback.
Peace.
3 comments:
I would have to say that I agree with most of what you had to say. I do think that I have a little different understanding of The Fear of God than you do. Well, you started down the same understanding as me in your first post but then kind of strayed.
To me it is not fear as in being scared into doing something. But rather a fear of awestruck(?) respect. I think you were correct in saying that we should not be motivated by the fear of punishment. The real question is "do you love Jesus or do you love Jesus simply for what he can do for you?"
To me, as I said earlier, the character of Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia (the books not particularly the movie) is a great, not perfect, example of the nature of Christ.
Hey Bud...January 4th, your on the verge of a no content comment as well...lol.
You know, this is amazing stuff. And strangely enough, I identified more with your analogy then anything else. Hehe. It makes sense to me.
I think that my biggest fear with God would be that he would let me do things my way. that would be the worst. Imagine if God just said "Run, go, have fun! And good luck when you get into trouble! I'll pray for you or something!"
It'd be terrible, and scary, and lonely. (sigh) I'm glad I fear God in a good way, not in a bloody nose God will smite me sort of way. Although he really could.
Post a Comment