Father Laurence Freeman, in a recent article entitled Muddling Through, writes about what our
grandparents and their grandparents, to say nothing of earlier translations of
the Bible, called the fear of God. The fear of God, says the Bible, is the beginning of wisdom[1]. But “fear”, often as not, connoted being
afraid of God. They saw the world and
human events as under the control of God.
What happened was what God ineffably willed – disease, wars, pregnancy
or childlessness, a nice sunny day for the church picnic, or for your granddaughter’s
wedding... You have heard this sort of
talk. Prayer then becomes a matter of
conveying our hopes to this all-powerful God.
Death is understood as God “taking” you.
So God gets both feared and blamed.
This kind of religion, the only kind millions of people know, owes more
to superstition than to anything Jesus lived or taught.
Secularism deals with this uncertainty of events by
strategies of planning and control. If
there is no one to blame, then it was an Act of God. You plan your wedding day so that
nothing will go wrong. You may plan
your family for the right balance of male and female, at the right intervals, and
plan your lifestyle accordingly – may it all go as you hope. I suppose most of us have had annual ‘flu
shots, as a sensible defence against the virus… I presume it wasn’t any fear
that God might zap us with influenza.
But “fear”, Father Laurence points out, is a bad
translation. Fear evokes punishment or
guilt, or the fear of getting hurt. If
something bad happens it must be because we did something wrong. A hefty chunk of American religion – but there
are echoes of it in NZ too – adds the corollary: If you prosper and have a “successful” life,
you must have done something right. God
is rewarding you… the so-called prosperity gospel, hopelessly unlike
Jesus. When some tragedy occurs, often
as not you will hear the lament, “He didn’t deserve that…” -- as though it
would have been understandable if he had.
In Hebrew thought, fear of God is not about being
frightened. It is about wonder and
curiosity, awe and excitement at seeing how our familiar world can be changed. It is what you experience when a child is
born. You are now encountering new ways
of being. God makes all things new[2]. English language finds it hard to express
this. In the prayer of silence and
stillness, letting go not only of words and images, but also being ready to let
go of fear and any need to control, we may find life becoming suffused with
confidence. This is how Fr Laurence puts
it:
In saying the mantra, we recognize and accept the muddle of our minds and lives. We find ourselves becoming less fearful. We walk through the minefield of life with a lighter step. In that acceptance we begin to see potential and pattern in chaos. We remember that the Spirit of God can do what management consultants cannot. It brings cosmos out of chaos…
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