To Fear the Loving God?

Have read commentaries suggesting that the 'fear' of God might be better translated as 'awe'  In my usage that comes closer to fear than reverence does, but does not preclude the realisation that we are loved and can respond with love.

One thread of the TNT discussion that really struck me was that of testimony and counter-testimony in scripture and the resulting imperative that we continually work out what our faithful responses will be in different circumstances. 

thanks for a great podcast!

on another note, the zombie sermon comes incomplete if played from the page, and does not appear in iTunes at all when i go to refresh the podcasts?

I fear G-d when I survey the inescapability of my own situatedness and the contingency of my understanding of the the world/my place in it, and when I am awakened to the terror of the holy Otherness of the divine. It is humbling, it makes me shut up, and I proceed to act with a fear and trembling under the realization that I have very little idea what it means to make manifest G-d's infitite love through my life. It is not a fear of punishment or wrath. It is rather a fear and a horror of the thought of the pain I may be perpetuating in the world through my broken understanding of what it means to love.  

Any intelligible, responsible theology must include a theodicy that confronts God’s capacity for terror. One response is to embrace God’s terror as an inexplicable mystery, something necessary and acceptable, ultimately becoming something good via God’s omnibenevolent unchanging nature. Sure it looks evil and terrible, but since it is God, it must be good. Another response is to reject God’s terror as inescapable human projection, something tragic and understandable, not a reflection of God’s nature and love, but of human brutality seeking divine sanction. It is evil and terrible, but it’s not God, it is humans acting badly and blaming God. A third response seeks to hold God accountable for the evil that God does. The evil is not explained away as part of God’s ultimately good master plan; nor is it simply human culpability projected onto divine innocence. The terror is real, it is evil, and it is God.

Luke 12:42-48 ... "... that servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. ... Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required ..."

My martial arts teacher was like that. He is actually about the most caring, loving person I have ever dealt with. The scariest thing about him was that his opinion of how I could be doing was way higher than mine. He never beat me; rather he got me to beat myself.

Fear isn't my attitude towards God; it's my attitude towards the possible consequences of my own sinful nature. I forget to get ready and generally mess up a LOT, and sometimes it's important.

Regarding the Philippians passage, perhaps what is essentially meant is take your new life in Christ seriously, recognizing The One at work in you.  We don't necessarily have to use the words "fear and trembling" which produce a more negative tone.

As I see it, the only way we read that passage otherwise is the result of an historic Protestant hermeneutic.

That said, I now quote the popular 20th Century theologian Alanis Morissette:

"Can blindly continued fear induced regurgitated life denying tradition be overcome?"

I think reverence is a part of it, but there's more to it  than that. When God revealed Godself to Isaiah, Ezekiel, John, etc., they were all terrified before they were told to not be afraid.

I think to be that close to something/one so fundamentally different and massive elicits a fear response by default which God then immediately calms. A very weak analogy: I remember standing on a subway platform for the first time when the train came in at full speed preceded by the air it was pushing. There was a moment of fear.

Yo @bo 

To 'fear God' cannot essentially mean to have anxiety about God's dealings with us because that certainly does not make God as 'nice as Jesus' and so the common idea I was taught was that fear = ‘reverence’. I cannot think that the idea of reverence should conflict with the ideas put forward on HC but it can be misinterpreted - so I would say that 'to fear God is to reverence God which does not mean ... etc etc'. In the light of Process Theology's disaproval of Almightiness, Kingdom and other athoritarian views of God which imply concepts of Gods dealing with us unilaterally the ideas of 'reverence' and 'honour' are good correctives to an over familiarity with the Divine Presence.Those are my thoughts ... (although I must say I am on a particular high since the Robert Mesle podcast where he quotes Whitehead's “The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar” - it's so brill to have God as a good friend :o)