Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom but fearing for God is the zenith of foolishness. Our faith journey needs to begin with awe for who He is and not embarrassment for who He is not. We admire the Guy and want the world to love Him but instead of introducing Him as He is we feel compelled to give Him a cultural makeover. We like His work ethic and His ability to do cosmic construction work but find Him a bit embarrassing at cocktail parties. Jesus told us that He had overcome the world so why are we obsessed with making Him surrender to it?

The Christian modernists were probably genuinely concerned that science and materialism would do away with God so they made Him into a watchmaker instead of Someone to spend time with. They allowed Him a one-time creation lecture, but instead of giving Him office hours they just assigned the Book of Nature as required reading for the rest of the term. They treated Him like a tottering tenured professor by ushering Him into an office where He could contemplate His navel, but then locked the door so that He couldn’t get out and start running the Universe(ity).

Christian postmodernists, on the other hand, didn’t like the fact that Jesus claimed He was the way, the truth and the life so they made Him into the most tolerant human being, even though he consistently called out hypocrites and those who tolerated sin. They didn’t want Jesus to be the exclusive way of salvation so they made Him into everybody’s BFF. They allowed Him God consciousness but forbade Him from being God. They lifted Him up as the ultimate seeker but wouldn’t allow Him to be the Sought.

If we think God has a PR problem then we will find ourselves acting like His personal image consultant. God has always been countercultural so when we make Him culturally acceptable we are creating a God who doesn’t exist. One of the biggest problems with Christianity today is that we don’t have enough confidence in the Gospel to change the world, so we allow the world to change us. If He is the God of the universe then we don’t need to fear for Him because He is a big boy and can take care of Himself. But if we truly want to know Him, we must have a healthy fear of Him because in order to hear we must first fear.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. (Proverbs 9:10)

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash