Fear of God

Duane here has an interesting video on the fear of God:

This one is a bit longer than typical and brings up something that was on the back of my mind.

He makes a pretty good correlation that this should be the fear that you’d disappoint, or offend your father, as opposed to the fear that you did something and got caught.

I like some of his observations about churchians – you see the praise and wordship team up on stage and they are singing “I love you Jesus” and the like. But you generally don’t see much weeping or repentance. Repentance is out of style these days, and Jesus as your BFF is. Although, I’ve seen a fair amount of tears at altar calls when I’ve been to Baptist services. And I’ve also seen those people just as petty and hateful the next Monday. This ties into an earlier video where he used Isaiah chapter 1 to point out that God isn’t interested in your prayers while you are marinated in sin. You need to get things right first.

As I get older, I think of these things.

The Roman Catholic mass starts off with a penitential rite, where we say:

I confess to almighty God, and you my brothers and sisters that I have greatly sinned. In my thoughts, in my words, in what I have done, and what I’ve failed to do. Through my fault. Through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary, ever-virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

In what I have done, and what I have failed to do.

Indeed.

In many of the near death experiences, we learn that we see our entire life in context. What we did, what we didn’t do, what the second, third order effects of our actions or inaction was. Who was hurt that we had no clue about? That’s the thing that terrifies me. I can think of a number of things I did decades ago that could and did change the course of my life. But what of the things I didn’t know, or didn’t see?

Whoa.

In Catholicism we have confession, where you tell the priest your sins and they are absolved. But that doesn’t mean you are free of them. It means you probably won’t go straight to hell for that mortal sin, but you’ll still have to pay for it in some way. The act of contrition and a few hail marys the priest gave you for penance won’t cut it. This ties into that other video he had on forgiveness. You need to seek it before you get it. The prodigal son didn’t comeback and mutter “Sorry Dad” while looking at his feet. He fell on his knees, apologized, and offered to work as a laborer. Many such examples in the Gospels. Repentance is all through it.

Sometime during the video he points out that there is very little repercussion these days for things we do, so we can’t even conceive that there’ll be a bill for that down the road. Very true. Certainly our leaders and betters never have to account. They simply don’t know or care.

Interesting stuff.

One thinks about such things whilst getting old.