Fearing God

Florentino Ariza from Love in the Time of Cholera, an infamous novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, at one point receives the question of whether or not he believes in God. He quickly responds with a negative but then pauses to reflect before saying, "But I'm afraid of Him."

It would seem that we, as Christians, believe in God, but are not really afraid of Him. During a conference someone once defined the fear of God as being not a chronic cowardice but rather a constant consecration. That sounds very nice and it's well alliterated but I don't really think that's the point of fearing God. In fact, I'm not too sure it can be well defined. Nothing about God really can. He seems to sort of defy definition and even explanation often falls short. God is definitely a God of description. He can only be described, pictures of Him painted with words. Even so the fear of God is not a real easy concept to understand. So I turn to Lewis. He seems to be able to describe it best, Lewis often does.

"The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock."

Fear of God is found whenever a Man returns to the Dock and stands before his God and Judge.