Time to Drop It
Excerpt from Psalm 128
“Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in God’s ways.”
Reflection by Felix Carrion
I would suggest that what often passes for pleasing God is really a fearful effort to appease God. To appease is "to calm or pacify, especially by granting demands." If your God is a demanding, exacting, and punishing God, to be feared more than loved, then you may feel compelled to give this God what he/she demands--or else.
But if your God is to be loved much more than feared, then what you desire to give this God is the gift of your very best. This makes for a rapturous relationship with God, which is better for our hearts. In climates of religious justifications for hate and violence on all sides, it is time to begin taking poetic license with this verse of scripture and re-writing it altogether. I know some will want to keep qualifying the word “fear” in this verse to mean devotion, awe, wonder, and even love. But why not just go there from the get go: drop the word, drop the notion, drop the theology.
Let me personalize it a little bit. The last thing I want is for my sons, Lucas and Aaron, to fear me. I don’t ever want them to experience me as a frightful parent. If anything, I want to be a forgiving father. I want for them the joy of being in a loving relationship with their dad who is ecstatically pleased that they don’t ever have to fear him, but instead can feel and trust the unconditional love he will forever have for them. I think this would go a long way in shaping the foundation of their happiness.
But if your God is to be loved much more than feared, then what you desire to give this God is the gift of your very best. This makes for a rapturous relationship with God, which is better for our hearts. In climates of religious justifications for hate and violence on all sides, it is time to begin taking poetic license with this verse of scripture and re-writing it altogether. I know some will want to keep qualifying the word “fear” in this verse to mean devotion, awe, wonder, and even love. But why not just go there from the get go: drop the word, drop the notion, drop the theology.
Let me personalize it a little bit. The last thing I want is for my sons, Lucas and Aaron, to fear me. I don’t ever want them to experience me as a frightful parent. If anything, I want to be a forgiving father. I want for them the joy of being in a loving relationship with their dad who is ecstatically pleased that they don’t ever have to fear him, but instead can feel and trust the unconditional love he will forever have for them. I think this would go a long way in shaping the foundation of their happiness.
Prayer
O God, carry us into a relationship beyond fear and demands into a rapturous relationship of love and joy with you. Amen.
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