Loving, Fearing

I was glad that God (I thought) had opened the door to something that I wanted very much – something I almost ached for, something I prayed for. In a very short time, with confusion, I’ve given up on it in fear of the Lord. The fear is real.

I’m flawed, and my understanding of the Lord is flawed, and no doubt that’s where the confusion comes from. But the only course that I can take is the one that, rightly or wrongly, I think that I should take.

But at least an essay sprouts in the ashes.

1. Everybody needs a Zipporah.

Maybe Moses was so crazy-in-love with his sons that he couldn’t bear to inflict the pain of circumcision on them. So on his way back to Egypt, God tried to kill him. Zipporah his wife saved Moses by circumcising his son and touching the foreskin to Moses’s "feet" (a euphemism for genitals). She said, "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!" (Exodus 4:25 (NRSV).) God left Moses alone then.

2. Touched by an angel, almost.

Baalam son of Beor, a prophet of God, was on his way to the Moabite king. The king had summoned him to curse Israel, so that the Moabites might defeat them in battle. An angel stood in Baalam’s path, ready to kill him. He could not see the angel, but his donkey could. The donkey balked three times, and Baalam beat it twice and made it go forward. The third time the donkey balked, it couldn’t go to the left or right, because the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow place with his sword drawn. So the donkey sat down under Baalam.

Baalam beat the donkey with his staff, and donkey spoke to him. Then Baalam looked and saw the angel. It terrified him, and he lived. But later he helped Israel’s enemies against the Israelites. Maybe his new donkey was less glib. He was killed by the Israelites while he was among the Midianites.

The most frightening part of this strange story is that before his near-fatal trip to join the Moabites, Baalam refused to go with them; but when they importuned, he consulted God, and God told him to go. Yet God was angry that he went. (Numbers 22.)

3. A place of threshing.

King David angered the Lord by conducting a census of the military-aged men of Israel and Judah. God sent a destroying angel against David’s kingdom. The angel killed 70,000. David saw the angel as it stood above the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. (2 Samuel 24.) (In the parallel account in1 Chronicles, the threshing floor belongs to Ornan the Jebusite.)

The angel stood with his sword stretched over Jerusalem. David feared the angel. Instructed by the angel, he built an alter on the threshing floor and sacrificed to the Lord. Then the Lord told the angel to sheath his sword. It was there that Solomon built the temple of the Lord.

This story in 2 Samuel 24 begins, "Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying ‘Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.’" (NRSV) 1 Chronicles 21 begins, "Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to count the people of Israel." (1 Chronicles 21:1 (NRSV).)

4. A place of sifting.

After the last supper, before he went to the Mount of Olives, where he was arrested, Jesus said to his disciple, "Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." (Luke 22:31 (NRSV).) The metaphor "sift all of you like wheat" is interesting when you remember that God stayed his destroying angel on the threshing floor of Araunah (or Ornan).

5. Love or fear?

Should we fear God or love him? The Bible says both. "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28 (NRSV).) "‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment." (Matthew 22:37-38 (NRSV).)

To say that we should fear God makes me feel spiritually primitive compared to my friends who walk only in the love of their loving father. It does. I’m told that the most frequent phrase in the Bible is "fear not". I trust that’s true. But it also feels weird to want to apologize for saying that it’s right to do what the Bible says, and the Bible plainly says, "Fear the Lord."

We might think that it’s one or the other, but we can hold both thoughts. That’s possible if we think of a destroying angel in our path, with his sword drawn, and his eyes on our necks. And God holding him back. We love God for his protection; we fear him for the possibility that he might withdraw that protection.

It’s possible if we think of Satan demanding to beat us like stalks of wheat and to toss us into the air, to blow away like chaff. We love Jesus for praying for us, but we fear that he won’t.

6. Primitive.

Still, some people reject the idea of fearing God as a primitive idea for primitive people who cling to a primitive form of Christianity. A highly-regarded seminary professor said vehemently that God is always for us.

That was many years ago. The professor and I happened to be interested in the same woman. I had no business chasing her, because I was not her equal; he had no business, either, because he was married. He once asked me if I was being "good", and it seemed to be a taunt.

The right answer would have been "Yes" and "No", but if I had answered him I would have said "Yes" and believed it. And if he had asked me if I feared God, I don’t know what I would have said, but the truthful answer would have been "No". Two decades later, after what I think was my flight from my duty to God, after mental illness, and after several attempts to kill myself, I have learned to fear God.

Maybe it’s plausible to say that fear is a primitive response to God. But I needed it for the primitive part of me, and I still do. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." (NRSV.)  Our spirits love; we need fear of the Lord to keep our flesh from overwhelming our spirits.

7. And yet.

But it has to be fear and love.

Since my time of madness, I’ve been exasperated because it seems that people take God’s mercy for granted. After my hope was restored, I labored to do right, to live up to the professor’s taunt, to be good. (I’ve mentioned the professor twice. Bless him. I was acquainted with him maybe two decades ago; I have no idea who he is today, and he may be a very good man. He was a good man then, at least in part, like me.)

Early Sunday morning a few weeks ago, I thought that God wanted me to go to both the early and the late services at my church. I thought that was crazy, and that the pastor would see me sitting in both services and think that I was a tool. And I didn’t know for sure that I was getting guidance, and I didn’t know for sure that it was from God. I decided to go to the early service, and then to pray about whether to stay for the second service. Based on what happened later, I think that God was behind this.

The sermon was about the grace of God. I didn’t like that; as I listened I mentally thumbed through my ideas about obedience being the important lesson for the comfortable in our time.

The sermon arose out of the pastor’s experience with watching sailboats on a lake in a park. The metaphor described how the boaters succeeded least who tacked straight into the wind. And it seemed plausible that God really had spoken to him in his place of need in that park. But as I listened, I realized that the sermon touched me, too, in my place of need.

Of course, the sermon was mostly the same in both services. But here’s the thing about the first service, the service that normally I don’t go to. Afterward, an elderly woman came up to me. She asked me if I was Ian that she knew from swimming at a certain pool in Riverside. I told her that in some ways she was right, because Ian is a variant of the name Jon, and I was a swimmer, but I was not the man she knew.

I felt affection for her, so I asked her name. It was Grace.

8. Summing up.

I hope I’ve learned not to bet against the mercy of God, but not to take his mercy for granted. Maybe to love God and to fear him is another way to say that.

9. Prayer (by John Newton).

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
and grace my fears relieved;
how precious did that grace appear
the hour I first believed.