The Magnificent Terror: How Fear of God Conquers All Other Fears

There is a curious and rather comical thing about the modern man which would be instantly apparent to any visitor from Mars, or, for that matter, to any honest observer from the Middle Ages. This thing is simply that while our age has abolished the fear of God, it has become frantically afraid of practically everything else. We have achieved the remarkable feat of becoming simultaneously the most irreverent and the most timid civilization in history. We have cast off what our ancestors called "the fear of the Lord," only to find ourselves trembling before a thousand lesser terrors that would have seemed absurd to a medieval peasant or a Puritan farmer.

The modern man, having declared himself too sophisticated to fear the Almighty, now lives in mortal terror of microbes, of public opinion, of economic uncertainty, of social embarrassment, of technological obsolescence, and—most pathetically of all—of being thought old-fashioned. He has traded the magnificent terror of standing before his Creator for the shabby anxieties of standing before his neighbors. He has exchanged the fear that makes men great for the fears that make men small.

Now this is not merely an historical curiosity or a matter for theological speculation. It strikes at the very heart of what has gone wrong with our daily domestic lives, our politics, our education, and our attempts at social reform. For the fear of the Lord, properly understood, is not one fear among many, but the fear that drives out all other fears—or rather, that puts all other fears in their proper and predominantly unimportant place.

The first thing that must be grasped about the fear of the Lord is that it is a fear that makes men fearless. This is not a contradiction but a psychological and spiritual reality as definite as the fact that a man walking on solid ground does not fear falling through the floor. When a man truly grasps that he stands before the ultimate Reality, before the source and ground of all existence, before infinite Love that is also infinite Justice, he discovers that everything else shrinks to its proper proportion.

Consider the medieval knight, that stock figure so beloved of our romantic poets and so misunderstood by our realistic sociologists. The knight feared God; and precisely because he feared God, he could charge alone into a host of enemies, could face torture and death with a song on his lips, could look a king in the eye and tell him he was wrong. The source of his courage was not the absence of fear, but the presence of the right fear. He had settled the one great question of existence—his relationship with eternity—and therefore the smaller questions of time and mortality held no power to paralyze his will.

The same principle applies to that figure equally misunderstood by the modern mind: the Puritan mother, raising her children in what we are told was grim terror of divine wrath. But visit the actual homes where this "grim terror" reigned, read the actual letters and diaries of these supposedly cowering victims, and you find something rather different. You find men and women who could face plague and famine and persecution with a tranquility that our therapeutic age, with all its anxiolytic medications and self-help manuals, cannot begin to achieve. They feared God, and therefore the devil himself could not make them afraid.

But observe what happens when this central fear is removed. Modern man, having congratulated himself on his emancipation from religious superstition, finds himself enslaved to a dozen degrading superstitions that would have seemed contemptible to his supposedly ignorant forefathers. He bows down before the idol of public health with a devotion that would shame a medieval relic-worshipper. He lives in terror of social disapproval with an intensity that makes the Spanish Inquisition look like a gentle debating society.

Take the matter of germs, about which our age has developed a positive mania. The medieval man, who believed that his life was in God's hands, would wash when washing was convenient and possible, but would not hesitate to drink from a common cup or embrace a leper if charity required it. He had proportioned his fears correctly. But the modern man, who believes his life is in his own hands and those of the medical profession, lives in a state of perpetual anxiety about contamination that would have been considered a form of insanity in any previous age.

Or consider the curious terror that grips the modern parent when faced with the possibility that little Johnny might be traumatized by discipline, might develop complexes from moral instruction, might suffer irreparable psychological damage from being told that some things are right and others wrong. The old-fashioned parent, who feared God's judgment on his stewardship of the child's soul, could apply discipline with firmness and confidence, knowing that temporary tears were less important than permanent character. But the new parent, who fears only the judgment of child psychologists and social workers, hesitates and temporizes and worries himself into paralysis, terrified that any decisive action might prove to have been wrong.

This principle extends even into the realm of economics and politics, where the absence of the fear of God has produced not boldness but a peculiar kind of cringing that calls itself prudence. The businessman who does not fear divine judgment on his use of wealth becomes desperately afraid of any fluctuation in the market. The politician who does not fear answering to a higher authority becomes pathologically obsessed with opinion polls and focus groups.

It is worth noting that the great economic reformers of history—the men who actually changed things rather than merely talking about changing them—were men who feared God more than they feared economic consequences. William Wilberforce could attack the slave trade because he was more afraid of divine judgment than of the sugar lobby. The early trade unionists could face blacklisting and imprisonment because they feared God's wrath at injustice more than they feared their employers' wrath at resistance.

But the modern reformer, armed with statistics and sociology but unarmed with any transcendent point of reference, becomes cautious precisely where he should be bold, and bold precisely where he should be cautious. He will hesitate to make any definite moral pronouncement about economic justice (for fear of being thought unscientific), but he will confidently reorganize the entire structure of society on the basis of theories that are largely untested.

The same principle applies with particular force to the matter of the family, which is, after all, the foundation of any healthy society. The parent who fears God knows exactly what he is trying to do: he is trying to raise children who will be fit for eternity as well as time, who will be good as well as successful, who will have souls as well as careers. This gives him a definite standard, a clear purpose, and therefore the courage to act decisively.

But the parent who fears only the world—who is afraid of what the school will think, what the neighbors will say, what the experts recommend—has no fixed point of reference and therefore no confidence in his own judgment. He becomes the victim of every educational fad, every psychological theory, every piece of advice offered by people who may know something about children in general but know nothing about his children in particular.

The result is that the modern child, supposedly liberated from the tyranny of religious authority, finds himself subjected to a dozen more capricious tyrannies: the tyranny of the peer group, the tyranny of the media, the tyranny of whatever happens to be fashionable in pedagogical circles at the moment. The old-fashioned child who was taught to fear God was thereby taught that there were some things more important than being popular, some truths more valuable than being accepted, some goods more precious than being approved.

In the political realm, the abandonment of the fear of God has produced not the bold democracy that was promised, but a peculiar form of collective cowardice that calls itself pragmatism. The politician who does not fear divine judgment becomes desperately afraid of human judgment—not the judgment of justice or truth, but the judgment of expedience and popularity.

This is why our political discourse has become so remarkably timid and evasive. No one dares to say what he really thinks about the great moral questions of the day, because everyone is afraid of the consequences. We get politicians who speak in focus-group tested platitudes, who take positions only after consulting polls, who treat principles as if they were merely matters of marketing strategy.

But the statesman who fears God can afford to tell the truth, because he knows that there are worse things than losing an election. He can take unpopular positions when justice requires it, because he serves a constituency larger than his district. He can make enemies when necessary, because he knows that the ultimate judgment is not rendered at the ballot box.

Perhaps nowhere is this contrast more evident than in the realm of education. The old-fashioned schoolmaster, who feared God, knew exactly what he was trying to accomplish: he was trying to pass on the accumulated wisdom of civilization, to form character as well as intellect, to prepare children for citizenship in both earthly and heavenly kingdoms.

This gave him the authority to teach with confidence, to discipline with firmness, and to make moral judgments without apology. He was not afraid to tell a child that he was wrong, because he served a truth larger than any individual opinion. He was not afraid to require difficult things, because he knew that souls are strengthened by struggle.

But the modern educator, who fears only professional disapproval and parental complaints, becomes paralyzed by uncertainty. He dare not teach anything definite for fear it might be disputed. He dare not require anything difficult for fear it might cause distress. He dare not make any moral judgments for fear they might be thought narrow. The result is the educational chaos we see around us: children who know facts but not wisdom, who have information but not understanding, who have been schooled but not educated.

The way forward is not to multiply our modern fears, but to recover the one fear that drives out all the others. This does not mean a return to obscurantism or fanaticism—the fear of God, properly understood, is the most reasonable of all fears, because it is based on the most fundamental of all realities. Neither does it mean a retreat from the world, but rather the acquisition of the one thing that makes effective engagement with the world possible: a fixed point of reference that does not shift with every wind of fashion or wave of opinion.

The man who fears God is not afraid to think boldly, because he knows that truth is not threatened by investigation. He is not afraid to love deeply, because he knows that human love reflects divine love. He is not afraid to fight injustice, because he knows that righteousness has cosmic significance. He is not afraid to admit when he is wrong, because he serves a judge who values honesty more than consistency.

Most importantly, he is not afraid to live fully, because he knows that life has meaning beyond its immediate circumstances. He can take risks because he knows that failure is not final. He can make sacrifices because he knows that what is lost for the right reasons is never truly lost. He can face death because he knows that death is not the end of the story.

This is the magnificent terror that our age has lost and must recover: the fear that liberates, the terror that gives courage, the awe that enables men to stand upright in a world that is constantly trying to make them bow down. Until we recover this holy fear, we shall continue to be enslaved by unholy fears—and our civilization will continue its curious progress toward becoming simultaneously the most irreverent and the most timid society that has ever existed.

The choice before us is not between fear and courage, but between the fear that enslaves and the fear that liberates. We must choose our terror wisely.

~The Seekers Quill