Hahaha. This thread proves my point, pigeon. u/mrexreturns
The false notion is that Christianity induces a fear based view.
Both fear and love towards God co-exist in the Christian, and MUST. By the fear of the Lord men depart from evil, we never outgrow the need for that but we learn to REPENT, making our need to lean on this aspect less and less frequent. The path of the just is like the shining light, that gets brighter and brighter unto the perfect day, another passage from Proverbs.
Basically what happens is as we grow in the Lord, fear gets swallowed up by Love :) In fact one telltale sign of the Love of God at work (rather than other types of love) is that it never displaces the fear of the Lord. They coexist
BUT
Christianity should never be "fear based." Everyone first comes to God as a lion; specifically, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. God put an Angel with a flaming fiery sword at the entrance to Eden after kicking Adam and Eve out of it, to make sure they weren't getting back in; I'm sure that was a scary sight! And it worked: had Adam and Eve been thinking about going back into Eden, they saw that and REPENTED! They changed their mind and decided it would not be a good idea, which is exactly what "repent" means. Without the fear of the Lord they wouldn't have departed from that particular evil.
Christianity does have paradox. And mystery! But if your Faith is actually based on fear something's horribly wrong, and hopefully you're being driven by the Holy Spirit to address that right quick ..."
Hahaha. This thread proves my point, pigeon. u/mrexreturns
The false notion is that Christianity induces a fear based view.
Both fear and love towards God co-exist in the Christian, and MUST. By the fear of the Lord men depart from evil, we never outgrow the need for that but we learn to REPENT, making our need to lean on this aspect less and less frequent. The path of the just is like the shining light, that gets brighter and brighter unto the perfect day, another passage from Proverbs.
Basically what happens is as we grow in the Lord, fear gets swallowed up by Love :) In fact one telltale sign of the Love of God at work (rather than other types of love) is that it never displaces the fear of the Lord. They coexist
BUT
Christianity should never be "fear based." Everyone first comes to God as a lion; specifically, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. God put an Angel with a flaming fiery sword at the entrance to Eden after kicking Adam and Eve out of it, to make sure they weren't getting back in; I'm sure that was a scary sight! And it worked: had Adam and Eve been thinking about going back into Eden, they saw that and REPENTED! They changed their mind and decided it would not be a good idea, which is exactly what "repent" means. Without the fear of the Lord they wouldn't have departed from that particular evil.
Christianity does have paradox. And mystery! But if your Faith is actually based on fear something's horribly wrong, and hopefully you're being driven by the Holy Spirit to address that right quick ..."