 | Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com. |
Religion
2009-02-01 14:22:00
Love God or fear Him?
Question: Which is more important: to love God or to fear Him? I don’t see how itis possible to do both at the same time and to the same extent.
Answer: In the Gospels Jesus teaches that we are “to love God above all things.” Throughout the Bible, we find statements that “fear (reverence) for the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Probably you understand the word “fear” only in a limited meaning: an emotion aroused by danger, evil or pain, apprehension, dread; to be afraid. The dictionary gives also another meaning: reverence or awe. It is this latter meaning that the Bible intends, when it encourages us to fear God: reverence and respect Him, hold Him in awe. In this latter sense we can understand that fear, reverence and love are two sides of one coin. They define our relationship to God. We love God above all things and therefore we reverence and respect Him. We reverence and
respect whatever we really love.
In human relationships, we reverence and respect especially those persons whom we love. God is our loving Father. We are his children. Just as we love our parents for the good they
provide for us, so we also respect and fear them. But, when we are naughty or do something we know is bad, we fear them in the first sense of that word: we are afraid of them on account of the punishment we know will follow our wrongdoing. At times, when a son or daughter is bad, a loving parent must inflict on that son / daughter an appropriate punishment for the evil that child has done. In
punishing a bad child, the parent does not cease to love that child. Indeed, often the parent will remark with sincerity: “This hurts me more than it does you.”
Thus, when we sin we have reason to fear God for his just punishments, which necessarily are a consequence of sin; and yet we still love God. And God continues to love us, even when He inflicts punishment for sin. If we truly love God, we fear to offend Him, and that is a reverential fear. So also good children fear to offend good parents, and usually that is also a loving fear.
Fear of the Lord is a Gift of the Holy Spirit, Who is essential Love. That gift is understood as the virtue of Reverence and Respect, which are parts of the virtue of Love.
