Archbishop of Sydney

The Fear Of God

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
2/4/2006

A recent survey of young people showed that many saw God as an undemanding helper in time of need; always on call, like a parent who spoilt his children.  This is not the Judaeo-Christian God.

The Scriptures claim that those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways are blessed and that only those who are genuine in their search for understanding and insight will understand the fear of the Lord.

How can we and why should we fear a good God?

Everyone is frightened at some stage or other, by hostile aggression, the prospect of pain or death, or simply by growing old and weaker.  We don’t have to learn any of this as it comes naturally.

The truly brave are not those without fear, who might simply be rash or brainless, but those who conquer fear.

In fact the Old and New Testaments have many examples where people are urged not to be afraid.  It has even been claimed that there is one such text for every day of the year!

The fear of God is different from these fears for at least a couple of reasons.  God is not hostile to us, nor aggressive.  He is neither cranky nor capricious, nor cold and indifferent.  Jews and Christians believe God loves us despite the immense suffering in the world.

The fear of God has to be learned as it doesn’t come naturally.  Someone has to teach us or show us and this can be done badly.  When I was young, some seemed to teach that God was terribly strict, even cruel, and would punish us forever with hell fire, even for commonplace, if serious sins.  God is not a monster, not even like those fierce headmasters of yester year who could put the fear of God in us!

We learn an adult fear of God by obeying the commandments, doing good and striving to know the truth.  But why should we fear God at all if God is so good and reasonable?

Reverence and awe might be better words, but we fear God because He is a mystery of love; “The Mystery” in fact, radically different from us and beyond us.  Although we follow Jesus in using male terms for God, God is neither male, nor female, but Spirit.  He is not only creator of the universe, but able and willing to forgive every crime or sin where there is genuine repentance.  The God who loves us, also makes demands of us, requires standards we sometimes do not meet and does not prevent us from excluding or rejecting Him.

In God’s light we shall see ourselves as we are and this might be painful for us.

Those who fear and reverence God for reasons like these are blessed, while those who think God to be an old wimp at their beck and call are in for a surprise!