fearing god

fearing god, don miller says, is like standing on the edge of the grand canyon. even though you are leaning on the guard rail and know you won't fall, it's the sheer size and magnificence that makes you afraid. likewise, the fear of god is that feeling you get when you start to think about god being the creator of the universe. to him, i'm like a grain of sand in the ocean. heck, the earth is like a grain of sand in the ocean when you look at the universe as a whole, so i'm a grain of sand in an ocean in an ocean. yet i'm not afraid of god in the sense that he's going to hurt me, but rather because he is truly huge and magnificent.

lately, i've been thinking a lot about god, and what it means to fear god. i saw a video clip of pope shenouda the other day that really got me thinking. in case you don't know, pope shenouda is patriarch of the coptic orthodox church in egypt. egyptian christians have had a long history of persecution in egypt, and lately things have been getting worse and worse. perhaps because of the unrest involving the presidential elections (the muslim brotherhood wants an islamic state) or the anti-islamic sentiment which has been rising all over the world since sep 11. in any case, pope shenouda has had to deal with the unrest and try to be as diplomatic as possible, so not to offend anyone and cause an upheaval. so for the last decade, if anything happened to an egyptian christian, he would always remind us of our christian ideals, to forgive, to be non-violent, to love our enemies. but this video clip was a little different, it startled me a bit. it's only about 10 seconds long. he is sitting in the cathedral, on the throne of st. mark, and he points his hand out into the crowd, as if pointing it to the world itself. he says, "be careful as not to incur god's wrath. god waits and waits but if he becomes angry, the bible says, It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." to which the crowd starts a fearful applause.

obviously god isn’t out to get us though. he isn’t waiting for us to trip up and make mistakes so he can punish us. god is love. but the idea is this. our god is not the interfering kind. he gave us free will so that we can make our own decisions. if those decisions mean not believing in him, then so be it. if those decisions mean that we hurt one another, then so be it. he will always be knocking on our doors so that we might let him in and he will always be looking for his lost sheep. but what he won’t do is send a lightning bolt from the sky to stop this guy from murdering this guy or to stop me and you from making a bad decision. all we can do is ask him to forgive us when we make mistakes and luckily he is extremely forgiving. but at the same time, god knows the difference between sin as an inherent weakness of our humanity and sin which is of another nature. the word 'evil' comes to mind when thinking about this type of sin. you can't argue that blowing up dozens of innocent church goers, dressed up in their best, praying for a good and blessed year, is anything short of evil under any pretense or circumstance. this is what we should fear. not to feel total remorse for those people, no matter what religion or ethnicity we are, is what we should fear. please god forgive us and do not be angry with us. protect us from those who do not love you or your creations. protect us from those who do not know what they are doing. like the hot coals that burn your incense, let these trials be used to purify our souls lord.