Fear of the Lord

Growing up, I heard this at Mass, in the readings and psalms. The problem is that I was uneducated, and tend to be a concrete thinker, so I thought that we were supposed to fear Jesus. So I did. I was afraid of Him. I was scared to death that He was going to send me to hell. Loving Jesus was the farthest thing from my mind. And as a result I hated Mass, hated being Catholic, and couldn’t wait until I turned eighteen so I could stop going to church.

But Jesus didn’t give up on me. He gave me an unwavering belief in the True Presence of the Eucharist. He gave me a good heart, and a genuine love for people. He gave me God moments, which I needed a lot more then. He kept calling me. So I was stuck between experiencing His love at times but then going to Mass and hearing that I needed to fear Him.

Even when I hit college, and grew in my faith, I was always stuck in this love/fear relationship with Jesus. Half the time, I would love Him and talk about how much He loves us, and then the other half of the time, I was talking about how He would punish us for our transgressions. As a result, I was judgmental. I would tell people that they were sinning, tell them that they needed to stop that or God would send them to hell. I would be fearful and compulsive about my own sins and failings and worry that I needed to shape up or face hell. I was serving a God of love out of fear.

And it showed. When people looked at me, they just heard judgment, condemnation. They didn’t hear love. They didn’t know that Jesus loved them, because I didn’t give them that message. So my message of “love” was false. I didn’t know it at the time, but they did. I am convinced that I didn’t win any new disciples of Jesus with that attitude. And who can blame them? The truth is that I really didn’t love God fully either. I only thought I did.

And then, thanks to Rich (my then-boyfriend and now-husband) everything changed. We were talking about natural disasters. And how I thought that God would send natural disasters as punishments for when people were sinning. And Rich looked at me and said, “Do you really think that a God of Love would do something like that?”

That blew me backwards. I had never, not once, stopped to think about how my love/fear relationship with God made absolutely no sense, not until Rich said those words. So I prayed on it. And prayed on it. And prayed on it some more. And I realized that I was wrong, and had been wrong my entire life. I had “known” Jesus my entire life and yet never truly had known Him at all.

I thought that I was supposed to fear the Lord, but actually the translation means to fear hurting the Lord. That we are called to love Jesus so much that we fear hurting Him, but we aren’t afraid of Him. And that’s when I realized that what I believed didn’t make sense. It is impossible to reconcile the Man hanging on the Cross, His arms outstretched to save our souls, to the obscure, omnipotent being that will send someone to hell the moment they step out of line.

That’s when I started to really learn who Jesus is. I stopped thinking of Him as a punisher and started thinking of Him as what He is—a Loving Savior. That changed my entire life, my entire perspective, the way I hope to bring people to Christ, the way I saw my future… everything. He became my friend. He became the love of my life. Because the truth of the matter is that He always comes in mercy before judgment. And that’s when I learned that is what I had been missing, and what I needed to start doing. Because if I, a cradle Catholic, had no love for a god of judgment and condemnation, then nobody else would either, especially those who don’t know Him or think that God hates them!

The truth is that I fear hurting my family and friends. Not because of punishment, or that they’ll never speak to me again, but because I care about their feelings. That’s what I was missing with Jesus. Before, I was afraid to sin because I was afraid of hell. Now, I don’t want to sin because I don’t want to hurt Jesus. Because He is my family, and He is my friend.

That’s also why I can’t—won’t—judge anyone. That’s why I won’t tell them “you’re a sinner, stop this or you’re going to hell!” Instead, I tell them, “Jesus loves you.” Because the truth of the matter is that until they truly love Jesus Christ, they won’t want to stop sinning. It doesn’t work the other way around—stop sinning to avoid hell. I know… because it didn’t work on me. That’s what I told myself my entire life. And it just made me miserable.

I’m a holier person now for one simple reason—I’m madly, deeply, completely in love with Jesus Christ. Am I perfect? *snorts with laughter* No. I screw up daily, multiple times daily, even. I’m the first to admit it. But despite that, I love Jesus, and I’ll keep trying, and I’ll shout it until I’m hoarse that Jesus’ love for us is unconditional and unending. That we don’t need to fear Him. That He is merciful. And that the only thing we should fear is hurting Him, because Jesus doesn’t want to lose us. He’s worked too hard to save us. We mean everything to Him.

Let’s allow Jesus to mean everything to us.