Fear is never a good religious motivator.
In fact, fear in the religious world is just downright toxic. It’s bad news. It foments very bad religion. So many people have been impacted in horrific ways by the fear mongering of religious Fundamentalists.
Screaming preachers (God's agents of fear) instilling fear into the hearts of prospective converts is something we all should loath. Threatening people with an eternal hell is nothing more than ecclesial malpractice as far as I am concerned.
In fact, I have never met anyone who was frightened into God’s kingdom by threats of an angry vindictive God who seems to enjoy the thought of punishing recalcitrant humans.
Fear in the political realm is also as bad, although I must admit it is sometimes an effective motivator. For reasons unclear to me people seem to respond to dark negative narratives spun by opportunistic politicians. But this is a topic for another time.
So for now I want to address the use of fear as a religious motivator.
You see, spreading fear in the religious arena of life is especially egregious. It is destructive to the human spirit. It drives people away from God rather than to him, as some of its fear practitioners believe.
This is why I believe it is no accident that the Bible’s most frequently used mantra is “fear not” or “do not be afraid.” Have you ever wondered why this is so?
Well I am going to suggest that it is because fear has a way of distorting one’s reality. It has a way of creating false pictures in our imagination. Just like little children who are afraid of the dark, fear creates false impressions in their mind’s eye, thus shadows come to life as the frightful boogey man.
Fear that is intentionally used as a motivator to get people to conform to certain religious values or to accept a particular religious way of life is especially dangerous and toxic. There are countless stories of young adults who have fled from Christianity because fear was the main entree on their church’s menu.
If fear can distort one’s reality, as I believe it does, then it definitely can distort one’s understanding of who God is and how God behaves towards us.
When a person is exposed to fear as a religious motivator God can become a sulking far off deity waiting for an opportunity to zap the offender with a cosmic taser gun. You may find this a bit silly but when one’s perception of God is so distorted by fear then anything is possible in the human imagination.
Some people rely on the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) to help shape their image of God. Fundamentalists are particularly prone to envision God through the Old Testament lens.
Of course this is strange since Jesus is a much more accurate example of who God is and how he behaves. When I was a young man I read a book written by a radio preacher who was well known for his Fundamentalist rants. He often bragged about his method of reading the Scriptures with strict literalism.
Well in this book he claimed that Jesus spoke on the subject of everlasting damnation or hell more so than any other topic. Well this is simply not true. In fact, if there was one topic that Jesus spent less time discussing than any other topic it was the afterlife—where one goes following death.
He indeed talked about it but it was far from being his most frequently used topic.
I have often found great comfort in the words of the Apostle Paul whenever someone attempted to use fear to motivate me, particularly as it relates to God and my relationship with him. Paul had a much healthier view of God than the Fundamentalist preacher mentioned above:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
According to Paul God’s love is inescapable. His love penetrates every crack and cranny of our lives. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ, not even sin; not even or worse moments in life can pry us from the grip of God’s love; not even our worse day can dislodge us from love’s grip.
With God there is nothing to fear! Don’t let anyone tell you anything different! There is really nothing to fear from God!
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