How much do you really hate it?

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!

Who do you respect more?

The fact that this is my fourth blog posting this week from the fifteenth chapter of 1st Samuel is probably a reflection of how much the insights from that story shaped and influenced my life back in the 1980s. Probably the biggest thing was the understanding this passage gave me about what the Bible means when it speaks of the "fear of the Lord."

The "fear of the Lord" is a strange sort of term - especially when you consider that the God who loves us so much tells us that we are not to fear because He is with us. The commands, "Fear not," " Do not fear," "Don't be afraid," and other variations of the same, appear more than 100 times in the Bible. So, having the fear of the Lord in our lives is obviously not the same thing as being afraid of God. God's love for us is perfect and the New Testament tells us, "There is no fear in love, because perfect love casts out all fear. A person who fears has not fully experienced God's perfect love." (1 John 4: 18)

I remember, as a teenager, grappling with how I would explain the meaning of "the fear of the Lord." I came up with the definition that, "The fear of the Lord is when I love God so much that I have a holy fear of doing anything that would hurt Him or make Him sad." It's a horrible feeling to know that you have hurt someone, perhaps a friend or family member, that you deeply care about. Another definition that I wrote in one of my teenage journals was, "The fear of the Lord is when I respect and honour God so much, that I care a lot more about what He thinks than about what my friends think." Believe me, as you learn to care more about God's opinion than people's opinion, when you care more about disappointing Him than about disappointing your school friends, that's a powerful antidote to teenage peer pressure. I saw that in my own life, and I've had the privilege of seeing it in the lives of dozens of young Christians over the past three decades.

I used to pray daily for wisdom and for the fear of the Lord. I had a little piece of paper - sometimes in the cover of my Bible, sometimes taped to the wall next to my bed - that said, "Don't forget to pray for the fear of the Lord." What prompted me as a teenager, and as a young woman in my twenties, to pray so regularly for this particular characteristic? I think it was the revelation I had, from this episode in the live of King Saul, of what it looks like when we don't have it, and how tragic the outcome can be if the fear of man is stronger than the fear of the Lord in our lives.

We left Saul (see this morning's posts, below this one) at the point where he was making excuses for his "partial obedience" and blaming others for the fact that he hadn't fully followed through with what God asked him to do. The prophet Samuel tells him, "Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, God has rejected you as king." At these strong words, and at the prospect of losing his kingship, Saul is shocked into self awareness and finally acknowledges his disobedience. "I have sinned," he says in 1 Samuel 15: 24.  "I violated the Lord's command." He even goes on to identify the root of the problem: fear of man. Was he acknowledging a deeper issue in his life or was he still making excuses when he said, "I was afraid of the people and so I gave in to them." ?

Saul feared the people more than he feared God; he cared more about what the people thought than about what God thought. It was on noticing this dynamic, back in my reading of the 1980s, that I saw a clear illustration of what the writer of the proverb meant when he said, "The fear of man will prove to be a dangerous trap for us, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe."

But it's what happens next that perhaps made the biggest impact on me. Desperate at the thought of losing face and losing the kingdom, Saul grabs at Samuel's garment and it tears. Samuel uses this as a prophetic picture of how the kingdom will be torn from Saul and given to someone else. (verses 25 - 29.)  Yet, even then, Saul cares more about saving face in front of the people than about being in right standing before a holy God. He says, "I have sinned, but please honour me before the elders and the people." (vs 30) And so Samuel goes back with Saul to worship the Lord… but for Saul, it's kind of a charade. He's worshipping God outwardly, but in his heart, he hasn't been unreservedly committed to obeying the word of the Lord.

I was probably only in my early twenties at the time, but I remember feeling very shaken by this graphic example of how the fear of man works itself out in a person's life. It further cemented my desire, born in my teenage years, to be a person who fears the Lord more than anyone or anything else; to be someone who cares more about what God thinks than about what others think; to be someone who is willing to acknowledge sin, publicly if necessary, rather than hiding it and trying to "save face."

Thirty years have passed since then, and I've discovered that the journey of fearing the Lord and responding to Him with willing and wholehearted obedience is a journey that lasts a lifetime. There will always be new frontiers, new challenges, new temptations to compromise and settle for second best. Of course, they look different as we grow older; perhaps they're more subtle. Respecting and honouring God the most needs to be a lifelong choice; perhaps there will even be seasons where it needs to become a daily choice again. But the good news is that it becomes more instinctive. As our love for God grows over the years, our desire to honour and please Him in all things will grow too…. and we will more naturally obey Him quickly and unreservedly.

And the fear of the Lord brings so many blessings with it. Try a Bible study on it some day. It's a key to wisdom and knowledge, to life and health, to protection and safety, to rest and satisfaction. My desire for 2014 has not changed all that much from the things I wrote in my teenage journals: I still want to honour God more than anyone or anything else, and bring joy to His heart by life choices that are in alignment with His character and ways.