Edgework

Permit me to stay with the book, A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community (2017), by John Pavlovitz, a little while longer. While reading his second-last chapter, “Fear Less” (161-168), I had a profound sense that Pavlovitz was giving words to the fear-based approach to faith I have lived with for much of my life. But more than that, he was pointing toward a “fearless” approach to faith that I have begun to experience in more recent years.

Recently I read about someone who actually took the time to find out how often the term, “fear not” or some variation of these words, appear in the Bible. Believe it or not, she found that this thought appears 365 times – often enough to claim one for each day of the year!

The call to experience faith fearlessly comes into sharper relief when one has in fact moved to a place where fear no longer holds the power it once did. I take note that my spiritual journey has taken me increasingly to that place where fear has lost its power. There is no question that fear was omnipresent for most of my youth, especially before I had that wonderful encounter with God when I was sixteen. But even after that “conscious conversion” experience I can see from this vantage point in life how fear frequently raised its ugly head in my life and in the lives of others around me.

Fear of failure, pain, rejection and ultimately fear of God often are not far from the foreground as we go through life, even as followers of the God who told us to “fear not.” In early years, as it was in my case, that fear is often rooted in what I now see as a flawed theological landscape on which we grow up. In later years, even after a sincere commitment to follow Jesus, fear often lies close at hand. I have written before about how this came to light in the context of a small group meeting which I was leading. The question I was instructed to ask was, “What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of God?” Nine persons, from young adults to seniors, all gave some variation of an answer that God was to be feared; God was a monster, angry, merciless, a stern judge or vindictive.

I was dismayed! I felt that the church had not done a good enough job of communicating the heart of God’s intent that we should “not fear.” I understand that some of the problem lies in a misuse of language. Too many people understand the admonition to “fear God” in the sense that we have good reason to be afraid of God because of what God is capable of doing to us if we don’t get it right. Virtually all biblical scholars agree that “fear” in this context refers to concepts related to “reverence or awe,” not fear in the sense of being petrified. Such fear is not a good foundation on which to grow spiritually.

I will now quote at length from Pavlovitz’s writings because his words delineate so clearly what has been my experience.

I grew up believing that God loved me dearly. I also grew up believing God was very angry with me. I was taught that God personally created me and yet was immediately displeased by my sinfulness. So my very earliest identity was forged in the crucible of this unsettling duplicity: I was both adored and resented by my Creator. As a child I lived in the tension of being the object of both the wrath and the love of God simultaneously.

For simply “being,” the problem was me. Apologize for my inborn transgressions and I earned the right to be God’s child. One wrong move, one doctrinal deviation, one errant belief, though, and I would be toast. Living always in paradox, I learned that I had a tender caring Maker…who…was never far from destroying me for the birth defect I’d inherited somewhere in the process.

I was first pronounced guilty before God, and then made to feel guilty for the cross: responsible for Christ’s death because of my filthy mess…Guilt is a hell of a drug to try and come off of. The detox can be brutal.

For much of my life, this guilt, pressure, and fear of exposure had left me fairly exhausted. But I am slowly but surely walking into a new story, gradually but most definitely jettisoning those things that don’t ring true anymore and traveling much lighter. My reverence for God has never been greater, my wonder never more full, my desire to know my Maker never stronger…Life now is not a test to try and “reach” God, but an opportunity to notice God. I am seeking Jesus more deeply than ever – not to escape punishment, but to discover life as it is best lived.

I am walking in the safety and security of trusting I never was the enemy of God…

Hell is a pretty terrible thing to build a faith on anyway. Living each difficult day here in a fire-and-brimstone spirituality rooted in your own filth is a fairly tragic way to spend your few short decades on the planet, yet that’s what far too many Christians do and have been doing for hundreds of years…they have grown up from birth firmly planted in the belief that God is out to squash them – because he loves them…The whole thing runs primarily not on love but on damnation.

I know how disorienting it is to be compelled to cling to a loving Creator while simultaneously being taught to be terrified of what that Creator wants to do to you if you don’t cling correctly.

Refuse to feel the guilt for this road. You know how you got here and you know Who is with you – and for you. Fear not.

Enough said! Love, not fear, is the best foundation for spiritual growth.