Fear...a Destructive, Debilitating Defeating, Diabolical Power that Controls too many of God’s People!

An indictment against the religious system that has a lot of merit is, “religion has been, responsible for wars, hatred, murder, division of people, racism, cover ups regarding sexual sins including the abuse of children, robbing people of their dignity and money, extortion, fear mongering, condemnation, shunning, judging, lying...etc.” The sad part about it is that the indictment is somewhat true!

Religious authorities who misuse and abuse their man-appointed positions of power to propagate devil inspired devilish acts against people...whether it be the Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts, who murdered young women charged with witchcraft, John Calvin who murdered Servetus and Calvinists who murdered countless Anabaptists, the inquisition who murdered supposedly heretics on a regular basis, John Edwards and other preachers who manipulate people for their own agendas, all misused their perceived God given power and are guilty of spiritual manipulation, control, and misuse of authority.  

I am of the opinion that the spirit behind these atrocities and acts of terror of the religious institutional churches, is rooted in fear because of the religious spawned idea that a angry, hateful, punishing, eternal damning God kindles that fear.

Religion does not view God as a consistent God of love therefore, it does not believe that God “is love” even though scriptures declare it and they mouth it on times. Thus, religion cultivates a theology of a revengeful God to be feared and projects that fear on people in order to manipulate and control them by the “God is love...BUT”, phrase. 

Fear does not always express itself in the form of physical brutality against people as some in the christian religion did in the past and religious extremist still do today.  For instance, Mr. Jonathan Edwards never advocated the persecution of either heretics or unbelievers, but he nonetheless remains one of the revered preachers in history all the while being a great apostle of fear mongering. In his address “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a sermon that is revered by preachers all over the world as the greatest sermon ever preached, even though he evoked such fear in the congregation he addressed that some people actually passed out in the service.  Here is a excerpt from that sermon:  “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.” 

If you are thinking that this thinking is not prevalent today here is direct quote from a pastor’s recent sermon: “Some of you, God hates you. Some of you, God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think it’s funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is “meritous” (I think the word he's looking for here is "meritorious"). He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you, He hates them too. God hates, right now, personally, objectively hates some of you.” 

Here is another recent quote from a fundamentalist church group; “Thank God for 8 more dead troops. We are praying for 8,000 more.  We will picket their funerals in their home towns in respectful and lawful proximity thereto...We’ve turned America over to the fags; They’re coming home in body bags.”

Is this the “love of God that brings people to repentance”?

Wow...can you shout “AMEN” to such accusations that makes God out to be  more hateful to people than Hitler was to the Jews...at least Hitler’s punishment of the Jews was temporal...whereas God hates people so much that His punishment of them is eternal. Does those sermonized hate inspired words inspire you to sing “Such love, such wondrous love, that God should love a sinner such as I, how wonderful is love like this”!

I am in no way suggesting that ALL religions spew our such hatred and trash, thank God they don't.

Clearly, Edwards and others need not to kill to terrorize people. Their believing that God looks upon human beings, created in the His image, as “worthy of nothing else” but everlasting damnation is a perversion of the gospel. 

Imagine growing up in a church where preachers, Sunday school teachers, witnesses for God (all good people, but in the grips of the religious message of fear themselves) try repeatedly with less eloquence than Edwards displayed, but with no less fervor...to frighten people out of hell by accepting salvation. Thank God that most people in the grips of fear are far better than the message they sometimes preached, and most of them even had a good deal to say about the love of God.  

The theology in most institutional “churches” is essentially a message of fear, and God’s love always turned out, within the context of that theology, to be conditional in one way or another. It is the proverbial God loves you...BUT syndrome!

There is a “gospel tract” that emphasizes in bold faced, capital letters:  “GOD HATES YOU.”  The message here is to evoke a terrible fear into people; then offer them a means of escape. But then, according to that teaching, vindictiveness and wrath remain ultimate facts about God.  If we accept Christ as our savior...understood as responding to the preacher’s plea for salvation, or submit to the authority of some denominational church hierarchy...God’s vindictive attitude towards us will change; but if we do not accept Christ, or if perchance we should die without repenting of our committed sin even though we are believers, God’s vindictive attitude will never change and we will be stoked in the everlasting fires of hell for ever.  First evoke a terrible fear; then offer a means of escape. Is that the the good news gospel!

This twisted gospel, the message of fear, that is preached over pulpit of different segregated denominational churches, where God in His wrath and anger is essentially someone to fear, not because He wants to to purify us, but because He will reject us and dam us forever and ever and ever. Because Jesus Christ provides a means of escape, we are suppose to experience a sense of relief, perhaps, but not a heartfelt love for the one we have learned to fear. Scripture tells us that it is the “love of God that brings repentance” not the fear mongering threat of damnation in hell! Is it not better to love people out of hell than to scare the hell out of people?

 

Religious institutions in the grips of fear has little to offer those desperate for a word of comfort and hope, little except more hopelessness, more pain, more misery, and more fear. The gospel, if true, really would be, as the word itself implies, good news...indeed, the best possible news for those of us in our present human condition.  

The gospel presents, for our consideration, a vision of God and the world that makes one want to shout with joy, a vision that can free us from all of the fear and the guilt and the worry within which we so often imprison ourselves or are imprisoned by the philosophies of men.  That vision may not always satisfy our wishful sentiments, but it does satisfy our deepest yearnings; it may at times devastate human ambition and pride, but it could never, ever devastate human hope.  

In her book, the nineteenth century writer, Charlotte Bronte, captures with a haunting accuracy the coldness and emptiness that sometimes passes for the gospel message.  

“Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines - election, predestination, reprobation - were frequent; and each reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it

seemed to me - I know not whether equally so to others - that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid  dregs of disappointment - where moved troubling impulses or insatiate earnings and disquieting aspirations.  I was sure St. John Rivers— pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was— had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all

understanding; he had no more found it, I thought, than had I.”

Perhaps few people in this life have found the “peace of God which passeth all understanding”; many who claim to have found it prove by their actions that they have not yet found it, especially when they are face to face with death.  But according to the Gospel of Christ, as I have come to understand it, we will eventually find such peace, either in this life or in the next, but only after we finally understand God’s grace and love.  As we learn our lessons, in some cases after much travail and hardship, we will find that in the end, (even though it is available in this life yet, we have not found it) “perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (I John 4:18).  And just as “perfect love casts out fear,” I am convinced the post-cross message of God’s grace and love, when rightly understood, is the best inoculation against the religious theology that exasperates and provokes our fear.