Suspended nearly 1,000 feet over the Canadian Rockies, thrill seeker Spencer Seabrooke set the solo slackline world record in 2015. Let me make something clear—slacklining isn’t tightrope walking. It’s “slack”, meaning the thin nylon strip moves and sways with Spencer’s movement, causing him to fall and catch himself multiple times over the 210-foot crossing. In the following interview, Spencer describes the experience as “euphoria” and choosing to “not live in fear.” The secret to the death-defying stunt was to forget the threat. He actually had to convince his mind that gravity doesn’t exist. Spencer intentionally wrapped his mind in the illusion that there was, in fact, nothing to fear.
It’s a spectacular accomplishment, but pause to think what it would be like if everyone lived like Spencer Seabrooke. Imagine the entire world suddenly became experts at ignoring the law of gravity and you can imagine the pandemonium that would ensue. There’s a reason we get that queasy feeling when we stand too close to the edge of a cliff—it’s your God-given instincts telling you that your body is in imminent danger.
What does it mean to have “the Fear of God”
When it comes to our thoughts of God, many people seem to go about life with Spencer-Seabrooke-syndrome. We like how it feels to push healthy fear out of our minds. Spencer even seems to be quoting a Christian catchphrase, about “not living in fear”. However, when we open our Bibles, we encounter people with a very different way of thinking. Reading the Old Testament and the New, people appear to think of God similarly to how we think of the law of gravity. He is foundational, grounding the world and allowing for life, but at the same time, He is “an all-consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29).
In the Bible, the fear of God has two sides, between believers and unbelievers (Deut. 10:20–21 cf. Is. 33:14). For the unbeliever, fear of God has to do with God’s wrath and is wrapped up in the dread of God’s judgment (Exod. 15:7; Matt. 3:12). When the Bible speaks about the believer’s fear of God, it has less to do with the terror of judgment and more to do with reverent awe. “Revereing” someone is different from just respecting them. You can respect anyone at a distance, but reverence implies a deep love and desire to be close to the object of our reverence. This attitude towards God for believers still does not discard the idea of fear of God’s judgment against evil and sin—in fact, that’s a major part of why we have reverent awe for God!
How can we love God and fear Him?
But, isn’t it unhealthy to have fear for the same person you love? Many Christians want to avoid talking about biblical fear of God because it may evoke thoughts of abusive relationships or the memory of a violent father. These are painful realities for many people, but they are very far from what we mean when we talk about the fear of God. Unlike earthly fathers, God is perfectly good and different from humans—“holy” is the word we use for this in Christian contexts. God is “holy”, and the dreadful thing is that humans are not. We are full of sin and evil and everything that rebels against God and His order, and until we are joined to Him, we cannot have any life.
The proverb teaches that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Prov. 9:10 NIV). Wisdom, in the Bible, means knowing how to live well in God’s world and according to God’s order. “The fear of the LORD”, then, is how you live rightly in the real world. It’s acknowledging a fundamental fact to life: that God is there and I am not Him. He is above me, I am below, and without His mercy, there would be no life in me.
The Bible is packed full of examples of how people weasel their way into God’s shoes. Oftentimes, these characters put on the appearance of gold-studded godliness in the process of usurping God’s role. We see it in the Tower of Babel, the Golden Calf, and the election of Saul as king of Israel, to name just a few (Gen. 11; Exod. 32; 1 Sam. 10). The Bible teaches from cover to cover that humans have a selective memory problem. We willfully refuse a healthy fear of God and put ourselves in His place—seeking power, dealing out judgment, and allowing our thoughts and desires to be irrefutable. Read about the man described in Psalm 36, and how his whole life is punctuated by moral evil because he does not fear God, even while God provides for his good (It’s also good to read Psalm 37 in conjunction).
Now, don’t think I’m describing especially “evil people”, the Hitlers and Saddam Husseins of our world; this broken way of thinking is at the core of every human heart. In Romans 1, Paul takes time to describe in excruciating detail a list of human sin, prefacing it with how humans “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” and “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God” (Rom. 1:25, 28). When people do not fear God, the entire foundation of their thinking is warped, and nothing they build on top of it can stand.
This doesn’t just go for unbelievers. It’s possible for you to not fear God and still allow room for Him in your thinking (though that room might be an insignificant servant’s quarters). Religious people are often the most susceptible to this fatal fallacy, brokering deals with God in exchange for good behavior and church attendance to game the cosmic system. Jesus didn’t mince words with these sorts of people: “hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence!” (Matt. 23:25 HCSB). I’m humbled to remember that Jesus spent most of His time calling religious hypocrites to repentance. We cannot forget that the good news Jesus preached wasn’t just that we could escape punishment from an angry God, but that we can actually be saved from this lethal way of thinking about God (Matt. 11:27; John 8:19–24, 14:9–23).
Life isn’t about me. It’s about God.
Getting back to this original schema, where God is King and I am His servant, where He is Creator and I am His creature, where He is Father and I am His child, is essential—and it’s not as easy as we like to think. You can’t decide to run a 5k after years of sitting around. There needs to be some serious training. Getting ourselves to really believe that there is a God and I am not Him requires an intentional overhaul of our minds. It starts with surrendering to Christ and then taking a sober look at ourselves in order to fix our thinking with Christ’s power in us. We have to flip our mental scripts so we can sincerely say, “life isn’t about me, it’s about God”. Doing it on your own is impossible, and God won’t do it for you. But there’s good news! He is ready to give you the strength you need for the work of renewing your mind.
Here’s a good first step. Set aside 5-10 minutes to kneel or sit in silence, undisturbed. As you quiet your mind, imagine our huge planet spinning in the solar system. Then imagine our sun, then zoom way out and try to imagine the enormity of our galaxy, and beyond that, the cluster of galaxies our own lives in. Concentrate on the real enormity of God that outgrows all these things. He is not only bigger, but He created and continues to sustain all reality (Is. 40:26; John 1:17; Col. 1:17). Now, zoom way back down to where you’re sitting. God sees you, knows you, intended you to exist, and has a place for you in His enormous reality. Allow yourself to really feel the tension of living under the eye of our enormous, holy, and fearful God, who still accepts you and has a real plan for you. Experience what it is like to fear God, to revere Him, while knowing that you are accepted by God.
Stories Shape How You Believe
Very good! Thank you so much for tackling a difficult subject that we struggle with.( By that I mean, we seem to swing between two extremes.) Well written, and challenging!
Linda’s post challenged me to read this thru and God used it as a healing ointment. God bless your talent to continue to bless all God’s to cross your path.