Church, let’s talk about fear
(Specifically, our fear of God…)
To this day, one of the most famed sermons preached on American soil was by a Reformed and Presbyterian minister named Jonathan Edwards. During the height of the religious movement known as the First Great Awakening, Edwards preached his famous sermon in Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1741, The title of this seminal address? “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
In his sermon, Edwards preaches that an enraged God regards each of us as nothing more than a lowly, “loathsome” spider. In horrifying detail, Edwards describes an all-powerful and fearsome deity who precariously dangles unregenerate humans by a thin thread over the burning fires of hell. “O sinner!” Edwards implores. “Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in a hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell!”
Is this not a terrifying image?! No wonder Edwards’ sermon was reported to have had such a powerful effect that his audience began openly weeping and crying out in response.
Nevertheless, to quote Grandpa Abe Simpson, “It was the style at the time!” Sermons out of the Great Awakening were typically replete with so-called “fire and brimstone” imagery. Yet, the fact that Edwards’ sermon remains famous today has had lasting effects on the Presbyterian tradition as a whole. Reformed and feminist theologian Lynn Japing describes as Edwards’ sermon as “leaving students of American literature a fascinating and disturbing example of what it means to be Reformed.”[1]
So Church, let’s talk about fear. Let’s talk about the obvious tension between purporting to believe in a God of forgiveness and love — while also being deeply fearful of a vengeful, wrathful God. We Presbyterians have historically placed great emphasis on the belief in divine power and providence over all creation. But what if this all-powerful God in whom we confess is also a harsh, eternal judge, ever eager to number our sins and find us wanting? In that case, every step of faith is a fearful step. Then, every step of faith yields potential mistakes and stumbles — and maybe even the potential of straying off the right path once and for all.
Fear impedes the Church. It binds and shackles believers from speaking truth to power and for acting out our convictions. It prevents us from taking risks. It hampers us from embracing change. Fear is so debilitating that it causes believers to turn inward, to look away from those in need, and to silence our prophetic voices just when the world needs them the most.
Karl Barth states, “Fear is the anticipation of a supposedly certain defeat.” If we believe our God is so willing to cast us off forever into a fiery inferno, why wouldn’t we be so terrified of our own demise that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy? It is so easy then to interpret daily hardships and life’s tragedies as divine retribution for our sins. Or to interpret the struggles of a congregation as divine judgment upon its belief system or practices. After all, the frail thread that protects the spider from the flaming abyss is almost sure to break. It’s just a question of when.
But wait! There is another side to fear.
Proverbs 9:10 states: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In this verse, fear takes on a qualitatively different meaning. Here, “fear of the Lord” refers to awe or reverence. This characteristically biblical definition of fear as “divine awe” pops up again and again, not only in scripture but also in our Reformed tradition.
Though Jonathan Edwards may appeal to fear in order in order to bring anxious listeners to conversion, Edwards also has a very positive vision of the fear of God. A common theme in Reformed theology is the reverence of God’s glory in our daily experience. To stand in fear and awe of God is to behold the might and splendor of God’s creation. It is to recognize just how much we have been given in this world. True fear of the Lord should instill our hearts with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for God’s abundant mercy and grace. After all, Lynn Japinga reminds us that, above all else, grace is at the heart of the Presbyterian faith. She states, “We are afraid, and we have forgotten that the Reformed tradition speaks more of grace than of sin, more of God’s delight in humankind than of God’s displeasure.”
Over and again, the voices of scripture implore us, “Fear not!” When the disciples first see Jesus walking on the water, they are filled with abject terror. But Jesus reassures them, “Take heart, it is I! Do not be afraid.” When we imagine God as some fearsome judge with unknown intentions for us, then we do not imagine the God of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has a face: a face of compassion, a face who weeps with us, and a face that suffers for us. In Jesus Christ, we see God’s face of love. In Jesus’ voice, we hear his words of assurance cut through our anxiety: “Do not be afraid.” Through Jesus Christ, we have freedom from fear.[2]
In sum, “fear of the Lord” is the humbling sense of reverence we feel at the feet of a merciful God. In fear and awe before our Marker, we should not divorce an arbitrary God of wrath from the face of God in Jesus Christ, the One whom loved the world so much that he literally died to saved us. As it states in 1 John 4, “God is love,” and “Perfect love casts out fear.”
Thus, love sends the Church out into the world to proclaim a comforting word, just as Jesus reassured the disciples on the stormy seas. Love propels us outward, to turn to those in need, and to speak the truth, loudly and prophetically, just when the world needs to hear it the most. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” Thus, we begin to understand the wise truth that we are not alone in this world, that God made us for Godself, that we are made for one another, and that God delights in us and wants us to flourish together.
So Church, do not be afraid. It’s okay for us to step out in faith and to welcome change. We should take risks in seeking how to be a countercultural Church that rejects fear, instead of living into its worst impulses. We are not like spiders dangling over a flame, just moments away from disappearing into the abyss forever. We are God’s children, made loving in God’s own image. And in the name of Jesus, nothing separates us from God’s love. Nothing.
As it says in Deuteronomy 31: “It is the Lord who goes before you. God will be with you; God will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear.”
[1] Lynn Japinga, “Fear in the Reformed Tradition,” in Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), p. 3.
[2] Robert Leigh, Freedom and Flourishing (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2017), p. 221
