In my previous post, I mentioned my attempts in my teenage years to come up with a good definition for explaining the Biblical concept of "the fear of the Lord." One definition that I have increasingly found helpful over the past couple of decades is found in Proverbs 8: 13, where it says: To fear the Lord means that we hate evil. If we truly love and respect God, we will truly hate the sin and evil that break His heart. That definition sounds so simple, and yet it's so easy to get confused about what it looks like in practice.
I remember, back in Southern Africa, sharing an illustration to help the teenagers reflect on where they really stood in this matter. Imagine, I said, that I have a problem with being overweight. Tired of tight jeans and feeling out of breath when walking in hot weather, I go to the doctor and ask for his help to deal with my weight problem. After a few diagnostic questions, the doctor decides that some diet changes may be what's needed. Looking at his list of things that tend to cause weight gain in the culture, he advises me to be careful about how much I eat and, in particular to avoid the three baddies of butter, beer and ice cream.
And so I head home with my new plan of action to lose weight. Now I can tell you right from the start that doing without butter is not going to be a problem for me. I'm kind of allergic to butter and margarine (they make me feel nauseous) and so I'm not going to be the slightest bit tempted to eat it. Same thing with beer; despite living in nations where beer production and beer drinking are part of the culture, I have to confess that I just can't stand it. I can't even bear the smell of beer. And so I can move forward with confidence as far as butter and beer are concerned. I absolutely hate them and so I know that I'm not going to waste any time at all struggling with the temptation to consume them.
When it comes to ice cream, on the other hand….. I have to admit that I'm rather a fan of ice cream. It may even deserve a place on my list of "favourite foods." I have delicious memories of particularly good ice cream shops where I lived in Vienna, in Cape Town, and now here in Malaga. I may agree with the doctor's advice that I need to give it up….. but in all honesty, I cannot say that I hate ice cream. Saying that I love ice cream is probably closer to the truth. And so, if the opportunity presents itself, it's quite possible that I would be faced with the temptation to eat some ice cream… even though the doctor has told me not to. You see, I hate the consequences of the ice cream (being fat, the tight clothing, the health issues that come with obesity….) but I don't hate the ice cream itself.
And, when you stop to think about it, this is the attitude that many people, even Christians, have towards sin. We hate the consequences of the sin (the feelings of guilt or shame, the embarrassment of being found out, the punishment we might get, the ticket for speeding or the prison sentence for stealing, the broken relationship resulting from our unkind words…) but we don't hate the sin itself. If we did, we'd steer clear of it, just like I avoid butter and beer! And so, if we think that there might be no consequences to our sin - if we think that no one will find out, or we can reason to ourselves that it's not doing anyone any harm, or it's not going to be embarrassing because "everyone else is doing it, too" - then we probably will struggle with temptation and sometimes, maybe often, we'll simply give in to that temptation and go ahead and sin in secret! Because we only hate the consequences and we don't truly hate the sin itself.
What we forget is that no sin is secret; it's always observed by our all-knowing God. And no sin is "without consequences." Even if we reason that it's not going to hurt anyone else, sin will always damage us ourselves and, most serious of all, our sin will break God's heart and cause Him great pain. We see that mentioned over and over again in the Old Testament.
And so this definition of the fear of the Lord, in Proverbs 8: 13, makes a lot of sense. If we truly love and respect God, if we have the fear of the Lord in our lives, then we will hate sin and evil and will want to avoid them with everything in us. We'll no longer be motivated to see what we can "get away with." Instead, we'll be motivated to pursue holiness and righteousness because those things honour God and help others to see His reality in the 21st century.
King Saul, in 1st Samuel 15, only cared about pleasing the people and being well thought of by others. He feared the people more than he feared the Lord, and so it was an easy thing for him to rationalise his disobedience and make excuses for it. And he wasn't alone in this; as we read the Old Testament, we see that generations of kings after him "did evil in the sight of the Lord."
If we truly fear the Lord, we'll be a lot more conscious of how we speak, of what we watch on TV, of what's going on in our thought life, etc, etc. We will hate any evil thing that causes God pain, and we will want to live to bring joy to His heart.
Have you ever wondered what people might say at your funeral, after you're gone? I guess it will depend on who happens to be there at the time. But I once read a little phrase in the Bible, a description of a little known Old Testament guy called Hananiah, who was appointed to a specific task because, "He was a man of integrity and he feared God more than most people do." When I read those words (in Nehemiah 7:2), I knew right away that this is what I wanted to be true of my life. No matter what else is said about me, whether positive or negative, I hope that this one thing will be evident: she had the fear of the Lord and the hatred of evil, perhaps more than most people do.
Sadly, that wasn't true of Saul, and my daily readings now are moving on to chapters about a different kind of guy altogether - someone who wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but who is described as a man after God's own heart. Watch this space!
