“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God”
In this longer piece, Daniil Kalinov, a student of the Seminary, reflects on the concept of fear in general and the notion of “Fear of God”. This essay is based on the short talk that Daniil gave in the affiliate community in Ottawa in October.
As my recent experiences have shown me – it is quite scary to give a talk! Many people seem to agree on this. In fact, fear of public speaking is one of the major anxieties that, together with many others, (fear of rejection, fear of sickness, fear of the future, etc.) plague our modern society. Accordingly, one can easily find a lot of advice on dealing with fear: how can one find calmness? How can one escape anxiety? Yet, it seems to me, another question is not asked or answered often enough: Does fear have any meaning? Is fear a purely negative thing that one needs to free oneself from as soon as possible? Is there anything positive to fear?
In my experience, this question is also not dealt with thoroughly enough in our Christian Community circles. Especially one, arguably ultimate form of fear – “Fear of God” – is rarely spoken about. Jon Madsen’s translation of the New Testament, that we often use in our circles, conveniently translates the Greek term φοβέομαι as “awe” or “reverence”, when it is used in relation to God or spiritual beings. And, of course, such a translation is justified. The English word “awe” did initially have a much stronger connotation of “fear” and “horror” in it. Yet, today, “awe” has much more “wonder”, “amazement”, “reverence” and “worship” in it. And so, the full manifold meaning of this word in Greek is obscured by such a rendering. (Here Jon Madsen, faithfully follows the German translation of Emil Bock that often renders φοβέομαι with “Ehrfurcht”, which is roughly equivalent to “awe” and “reverence” in English.)
It is also easy to grasp how nowadays one can be quite “allergic” to the concept of “Fear of God”. We are past the point, where we would like the word “fear” to describe our relationship with the divine. We don’t want to be scared into faith by “fire and brimstone” sermons. And we can not believe that God would want us to fear him. On the contrary, we know that His being is Love. And yet, it’s hard to debate that Fear of God seems to have played an important role in the life of many Christians, and we can’t fully scratch this concept away from the New Testament. Could we find an additional depth to it? Could understanding “Fear of God” actually help us find meaning in our everyday fears and anxieties?
A Reworking of Rudolf Steiner’s “Wrath of God. Grief of God”, by an unknown artist
What do we actually fear? Superficially, it is often easy to answer this question: there is usually a situation, a person, an animal, or an object that causes fear. For example, I could be afraid of giving a talk. Yet, why am I afraid of that? It might be because I am scared of forgetting what I wanted to say, or, for example, of stuttering. And that might be caused by my anxiety and concern about how the audience will react. Will they judge me? Will they reject me? One can easily spin such sequences of thought and try to find the ultimate cause of fear. Often one would arrive at the fear of death (physical or metaphorical). But then, why does one fear death?
It seems that one of the essential features that unites all those fears is one thing: the unknown. We don’t really know how the talk is going to go; we don’t know how people will react to our actions, and most of us don’t fully and experientially know what awaits us at death. Conversely, when something radically unknown and unexpected enters one’s life (like an unusual noise in the kitchen at night), anxiety can quickly arise in the soul.
Yet, when one is faced with the unknown – like our example of giving a talk – one could react to it in different ways. One option is to try to escape the unknown, to eradicate it. To this end, one could just cancel the talk and be done with it. Or one could write down the text of the talk and read it aloud, hiding from the audience behind the sheets of paper. Or one could try to take into account everything that could go wrong, and thereby lose oneself in the hive of never-ending anxious thoughts. In fact, it is precisely this desire to escape fear that leads to poor decisions or an overflow of anxiety. The only other option is to face fear, to embrace it, to enter into the unknown, and allow the unknown to unfold itself. But how could anyone do that?
To answer that question, let us first look at what a meeting with the unknown could entail. Besides the unknown that one faces, there is also the world of the known. It is one’s picture of the world, the representation of how things are and how one fits into the structure of the world. The known surrounds one like a bubble, a home, and makes the world manageable. But now, as the unknown approaches, one is faced with a real danger. The unknown could destroy this world that we have built for ourselves; it could wreak havoc on it and make things unmanageable. If this is the only possible outcome of the encounter, one is fully justified in trying to escape the unknown and protect one’s world of “the known.” However, there is another side to it. The unknown is also a “message” from the real world. It is something that comes towards one from the beyond. It brings something from outside of one’s “bubble”. Now, it could, of course, destroy this “bubble”, if one’s representation of the world is incomplete or wrong. But it can also bring one into the encounter with what is true, into communion with reality.
In Biblical terms, one could call this world of the known – the world of the idols. These idols “are creations of human hands” (Psalm 135:15). And they make the world predictable. If I need the rain to come, I should sacrifice to this idol; if I want the land to be fertile – to that one. Yet these idols are not fully real. “They have mouths, but cannot speak, have eyes, but cannot see” (Psalm 135:15), “they can neither eat nor smell” (Deuteronomy 4:28). They are not alive. It is the Living God, who is the Lord of Reality, the God who “holds your life in his very hands” (Daniel 5:23). But just because he is living, I can not fully predict what he will bring towards me in my life. In a certain sense, this God is the radically Unknown. And as the author of the letter to Hebrews says: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God” (Hebrews 10:31).
“Abraham and Isaac on the way to the place of Sacrifice“, by Marc Chagall
Could Abraham and Sarah expect a son to be born to them at such an old age? They weren’t able to conceive how such a thing is possible, even when a messenger of the Lord told them that the son is going to be born. And could Abraham expect that God would ask him to offer up his son, Isaac, his only son with Sarah, for whom Abraham has waited for such a long time? As he was ascending Mount Moriah to give Isaac back to God through the flames, was Abraham calm and peaceful? Or was his soul rather full of “fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) as he followed his beloved son on the steep mountain path, the knife and the kindling for the fire in his hands? But, somehow, Abraham had trust in his God. He had faith that no matter what the Lord brought him in his life, it would turn out for the better. He did not fully know what God had in store for him. Yet he knew that God is good.
It is this Faith, this Trust that could allow us to welcome the unknown, face the fear that it brings with it, and harbor the courage to go through the gate of fear. And Christ can lead us to such Faith. Through his life, his being, his death and resurrection, he has revealed that what lies at the foundation of the world is Love. And that mysterious being who stands behind all things that come to us in our lives is Our Loving Father.
This Father doesn’t want us to fear him. Yet, fear can often be a natural reaction when we find ourselves in his presence. But “he is full of compassion to all those who fear him” (Luke 1:50). He will not leave us alone. The fear that we could experience towards him, if we don’t try to escape it, if we allow ourselves to enter it; this same fear can become a gateway to a fuller, more real experience of his love for us. The “Fear of God” can become the beginning of the “Knowing of God”, of entering more deeply into the relationship with God. Or, as the Book of Proverbs puts it: “The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).
Our Author:
Daniil Kalinov is originally from Moscow, Russia. During the last 7 years of his life, he mostly lived in North America: first, as he was studying mathematics in a Ph.D. program in Boston; and later as a student of the Seminary of the Christian Community. Last year, he did an internship at the congregation in Hanover, Germany.