Being Afraid of God is a Feeling We're Not Meant to Live With

What is God like?

Is he a harmless grandfatherly figure, comfortably reclining on a cloud? A bohemian shouting about love (or wrath) through a megaphone on a street corner? An enigmatic entity who wound up the universe like a clock and now watches, disengaged, from afar? A scowling judge with a gavel? A thunderous tyrant surveilling our every move?

As Christians, we all too often approach God in a posture of fear, as if he were just another capricious deity in the ancient pantheon. And we tend to approach our faith as if our actions are more important than God’s character. But what if, instead, we based our faith and actions on God as he really is—a loving Father who sacrificed his only Son to save us from our sin.

That’s what this book is about.

Sometimes, to grow in our understanding of God, it’s helpful to view him in contrast, to consider what he is not like. That’s the approach we’ll take here. Specifically, we will compare Christianity with the pagan context that surrounded the early church and discover how—even today—many Christians tend to view God the same way the ancient pagans viewed their deities.

We don’t intend to treat the God of the universe like just another god—thus the “accidental” part of Accidental Pagans—but the result is the same: We live in fear instead of freedom.

Ancient paganism was saturated with fear. Consider what the apostle Paul found when he first brought the gospel to Athens, the intellectual heart of the Roman Empire. In a city full of temples and statues, Paul made a revealing discovery: an altar devoted to an unknown god. Apparently the people were so afraid of offending the gods that they created an altar to any deity they might have missed—just to cover their bases. . . .

As strange as all this might seem to us in the twenty-first century, we’re often not much different. Our faith is consumed with worry that we might somehow offend the God we wish we understood better. Our prayer lives and our spiritual impulses reveal that we sometimes think of God as aloof, unpredictable, or stingy, and that he is only concerned with certain areas of our lives. But this is not the type of God we find revealed in Scripture or in the life of Christ. A fear-driven faith sounds more like ancient paganism. . . .

In my years as a pastor, I’ve found that many believers live in a constant state of anxiety, worry, even dread. Just like in ancient paganism, a low-grade fear quietly coils around their hearts, constricting their freedom in Christ and stealing their joy. This has become plain to me through countless conversations with Christians of many backgrounds. Often, when someone comes to me because they’re struggling with an aspect of their spiritual life, we discover some kind of fear they’re responding to underneath the turmoil. When we excavate a little deeper, it becomes clear they’re afraid not only of their circumstances, but of God himself and what he might do to them. . . .

Fear is a normal and healthy human emotion. It activates us in times of danger. It helps to keep us safe and secure. Fear of God in the traditional sense—that is, having a sense of awe or reverence toward him—is good, beneficial, and biblical. But being afraid of God is a feeling we’re not meant to live with. This kind of fear goes all the way back to the garden of Eden. . . .

As a consequence of sin, human beings became afraid of God. We were never meant to feel this way about him, but sadly many of us do. If we’re not careful, fear can creep into our lives of faith, and our understanding of what God is like can begin to depart from the truth. We may be more afraid of God than we realize, but we don’t have to live that way. Jesus came to earth and willingly gave his life to rescue us and to prove how loved we are—to open the door to a genuine and life-giving relationship so we can know and trust God and be known by him. As Jesus’ beloved disciple John put it, “Love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear” (1 John 4:18, NLT).