By Fr Ron Rolheiser, OMI
God is love. If this is true, and it is, then why are we afraid of God, and why are we afraid to die?
We live in too much fear of God and death. From where does this come? Why should anyone be afraid of coming face to face with love?
This fear is not something that is simply the product of bad religion which can give us a distorted concept of God. Bad religion can play a role in creating an unhealthy fear of God in us, but there are more salient factors at play here.
First, unless we have been extremely blessed in how we have been loved, all of us struggle with a deep fear that we are somehow unlovable, undeserving, and unable to stand morally and psychologically naked before pure love. So, it’s understandable that we stand in some fear before a God who is pure love and not surprisingly fear facing that God when we die. I say this with compassion. For most of us this is simply our human condition, and bad religion does not lie at the deepest roots of this. What lies at its deep roots?
Our congenital struggle with love. In essence, our struggle is the struggle of the biblical Jacob who spends a night wrestling with an unknown divine force. What’s the force? An angel? God? Yes, both of these, but ultimately, he is wrestling unknowingly with love, and that’s why near the end of the struggle when it has grievously wounded him, he finally realizes what he is wrestling with and now clings to it and begs for its blessing. That’s our deep struggle with God, with love.
However, bad theology sometimes does play a role because of our misunderstanding of the biblical counsel “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom”. (Proverbs 9.10)
The theology and catechesis of my youth (much of it very healthy) did contain however, and quite strongly, a motif of unhealthy fear. God was to be feared. God noted our sins, counted them, and kept a strict record of them in a book. We would one day have to face God, with that encounter searing our souls, and answer for those shortcomings. Moreover, there was also the fear of going to hell after death. No matter our sincerity, we might die in a state of mortal sin and be condemned to hell for all eternity. The theology and catechesis in which I was baptized and raised, despite all its other goodness, instilled an unhealthy fear of God in me. I suspect this is true for many of us.
But isn’t the fear of God the beginning of wisdom? Shouldn’t we stand before God in fear? Yes, but only in a certain type of fear.
Fear has many faces, some healthy, some not. We fear the playground bully, fear getting a serious illness, fear physical pain, fear losing someone in death, fear our own death, and fear judgment for our shortcomings. That’s one face of fear.
But there’s another, the fear of being unfaithful, the fear of betraying someone we love, the fear of being calloused and boorish and keeping our shoes on before the burning bush. That’s the type of fear which is the beginning of wisdom. That’s a healthy fear in the face of God and of love.
St Paul, in speaking of grace, in essence puts it this way: We shouldn’t try to be good so that God loves us. Rather, we should want to be good because God loves us! For example, in a marriage, we should want to be faithful not first of all so that our partner doesn’t stop loving us. Rather we should want to be faithful because our partner loves us. That’s holy fear, fear of betraying love, the beginning of wisdom, a healthy fear of God and of love.
As well, today we have an ever-expanding literature that recounts the experience of people who had been clinically dead and then were resuscitated and brought back to life. In basically every instance, the person who had been dead and then resuscitated, didn’t want to come back to his or her earthly life. Virtually everyone describes being met by a warmth, a light, and an embrace of love that surpassed anything they had ever experienced in this life. None experienced fear.
God is never a tyrant, a bully, arbitrary, legalistic, cold, without warmth, and without full understanding and compassion. We only need to fear betraying that goodness. My image of standing before God after death is the image of a newborn baby being picked up by his mother for the first time or the image of a grandparent beaming at his or her grandchild trying to coax a smile from the toddler. We needn’t fear facing God before or after death. It will be an experience of meeting pure, unconditional love. Then, like the biblical Jacob, we can finally stop wrestling with love and cling to it instead.
Used with permission of the author, Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser. Currently, Father Rolheiser is currently serving as President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas. He can be contacted through his website, www.ronrolheiser.com. Follow on Facebook www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser.
