Teach me to fear?

Several months ago, Amanda and I decided to rescue a second dog as a way to socialize our neurotic first dog Chara. So we brought home this absolutely adorable Pit Bull who we named Tobias. Now, from the start Tobias was hard not to love. From what we were told, he hadn't exactly had the best life. They found him tied up on a concrete slab down in the inner city of Baltimore. He was deathly thin from lack of food and his ears had no fur from where the bugs had eaten it all off. We loved him from the start. The problem was he didn't respect us. At first we though he might have hearing problems, but we quickly realized that he just wasn't listening. We decided that obedience training might be the answer, so we enrolled him in a weekly class where Amanda could learn how to work with him.

At the first session, Amanda learned that the reason that Tobias would not listen was because he wasn't afraid of her. In fact, over the months that we had him, we had basically given him everything we thought he could want. We denied him nothing. As a result we had trained him to think of us as his servants. Now, if we wanted him to learn to listen, we first had to break his spirit. We had to teach him to fear. This was not an easy process, particularly since Amanda is so affectionate towards our dogs. The idea that we had to break his spirit was hard for us both. But Amanda was told that this was what was best for him. So she began the hard process of breaking his spirit and teaching him to fear her. I could tell that it was hard for Amanda to do some of the things needed to break him. In fact if someone were to watch her use the techniques she learned, they might think it were downright abusive. But slowly but surely, Tobias began to respond and he has begun to listen.

In many ways, this method of breaking our dog, reminds me of how God has disciplined His people throughout history. Many times, people would become spoiled by God's provision and become lax in their view of Him. They seemed to think that God would always protect them simply because they were His people. God had interesting methods of stirring fear in His peoples' hearts. When the people of Babel refused to spread out and populate the earth as He had commanded, God confused their languages so they couldn't communicate with each other anymore. Later on, after God had delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt, the people, forgetting how he had already provided for their every need, complained in the wilderness that they didn't have any food or water. So God sent poisonous snakes to kill many of the people. When the people were too afraid to go into the land of Canaan, God promised that because of their unbelief, every single one of that generation would die in the wilderness. When they finally did enter into the land, a man named Achan took some treasure from the city of Jericho (after God had expressly forbidden it). So God had Achan and his whole family killed. When Nadab and Abihu burned "strange fire" to the LORD in the tabernacle, fire came out from the alter and consumed them. Later, when David committed adultury with Bathsheba, David begged for his life and God granted it...but the child of the adulturous relationship died. Ecclesiastes 3:14 states that "God has so worked that men should fear Him." (NASB) Yet how many people truly do?

As I look at our culture today (especially in the church), I notice a lax attitude toward one's relationship with God. We as Christians, in this country, have not been truly aquainted with persecution or oppression for what we believe in. Many of us would probably equate this with God's provision. But what has that led to? How many people truly fear the consequenses of their sin? Church has become a religious practice that we seem to do with little reverence. I was teaching High School Sunday School and we were discussing what God thinks of sex. One of the students suggested that God doesn't care about premarital sex because it is simply a non-issue in today's culture. I must admit, I wasn't surprised by such a response since that's pretty much seems to be the opinion of the church at large. But, God has called us to holiness as a way of reflecting his holiness. Yet, many people have a distorted view of what holiness means. The phrase I hear over and over again these days is" God just wants us to love everyone." Wow. I'd agree with that if it didn't stop there. Love is not enough if our personal lives do not reflect the holiness of God. As one of my professor's is apt at saying, "emphasis not exclusion" (i.e. We should not "emphasize" God's love to the "exclusion" of God's wrath.)

I responded to this student by stating that I was surprised that something that God didn't care about would have the potential for such horrible physical consequences. It's interesting that sexually transmitted diseases exist in the first place. When you think about a monogamous marital relationship...there is absolutely no physical consequenses, because you can only contract an STD from another person. Two people who have only ever been with eachother can't give one another an STD. So where did these STDs come from? Were they an accident? Or were they created? And if they were created, what was their initial purpose? I'm beginning to believe that they were created as a way to garner fear in the immoral.

People don't fear God anymore. Turn on the TV. Open the newspaper. It's not hard to see. So if no one fears God anymore, how will God teach us to fear Him? Looking at history, we can easily see that God's method of teaching his people to fear him was pain. I can see this in my own life and I can see it in the lives of those around me. God causes us pain as a way of getting us to look to him for help. God's blessings are useless if they only move us away from Him and cause us to see Him as only a provider and not a sovereign God with the power to destory us.

Phillipians 2:12 is a very controversial passage in the Bible that says, "work out your salvation with fear and trembling." For many people they see this as pointing to a "works-based" salvation where you must continue to work at it and earn your way into heaven. I really don't see it as very difficult at all. If, as Ecclesiastes 3:14 says, God wants people to fear Him, what good is our salvation if we lose our fear of God. We all need a healthy dose of fear for God in our lives. As with Tobias (our dog) we still love him although we taught him to fear us. And he still knows that we will provide for him. He is still happy to see us when we come through the door (so I know he still loves us). But his obedience to us must be rooted in his fear of us. Likewise, I know that God loves me despite His discipline. I love God, therefore I want to obey Him, but because I still struggle with sin, it is very difficult for me to obey against my sinful nature. So how then will I obey God? My obedience must also be rooted in my fear of Him. How will I learn to fear God? He must teach me.