When I look at Christianity I see lots of fear. It seems to have become a religion based on fear. Preachers tell us to be afraid, be very afraid. Fear God and fear punishment for sin and fear Judgment Day and most of all fear going to hell. Fire and brimstone preachers have learned that fear keeps people in the pews and in their particular form of Christianity. At least it used to. People are wising up to the scare tactics. They do not work the way they used to. But still many preachers try to keep people under control by making them afraid to step outside of the parameters of their particular type of Christianity.
Remnants of this fear continue in people’s hearts and minds long after they have left fear-based religion behind. This is especially true if we were trained to fear when we were young. It is difficult to let it go. I run up against this all the time in people I talk to about Christian nonduality. People who have left fundamentalism are still afraid that they might be wrong, that they have fallen away from the true faith, that they have backslidden, that they have committed apostasy, that they are going to hell for leaving their church. They can feel the fires of hell licking at their heels long after they have left the idea of hell behind.
Christians are hesitant to think outside the box of Christianity. It feels dangerous to them. They are hesitant to read the scriptures of other faiths. They are hesitant to explore beyond the Bible. That voice in their head makes them afraid that if they start to question some doctrines of Christianity, then they are falling away from the faith, and Satan is deceiving them to believe in doctrines of demons. They are afraid that if they start to explore other philosophies, then they are starting on a slippery slope to hell.
The worst part of this fear is that it robs us of the spiritual joy that is our birthright. In response to all that fear, I say, “Fear not.” That is the message of God in the Bible, and it can be our experience in the spiritual life.
It is said that the phrase “fear not” or its equivalent is used 365 times in the Bible, one for every day of the year. That sounds like a Christian version of an urban legend to me. It seems too convenient. And what about leap year? But preachers find that the meme comes in handy, so no one fact checks it too carefully. Anyway when I did a search for words like fear and afraid and scared, I found lots of admonitions not to fear in the Bible, especially spoken by God or the messengers of God. I don’t know if there are 365 or not, but there are a lot.
Yet when I look at Christianity I see lots of fear. It seems to have become a religion based on fear. Preachers tell us to be afraid, be very afraid. Fear God and fear punishment for sin and fear Judgment Day and most of all fear going to hell. Fire and brimstone preachers have learned that fear keeps people in the pews and in their particular form of Christianity. At least it used to. People are wising up to the scare tactics. They do not work the way they used to. But still many preachers try to keep people under control by making them afraid to step outside of the parameters of their particular type of Christianity.
Remnants of this fear continue in people’s hearts and minds long after they have left fear-based religion behind. This is especially true if we were trained to fear when we were young. It is difficult to let it go. I run up against this all the time in people I talk to about Christian nonduality. People who have left fundamentalism are still afraid that they might be wrong, that they have fallen away from the true faith, that they have backslidden, that they have committed apostasy, that they are going to hell for leaving their church. They can feel the fires of hell licking at their heels long after they have left the idea of hell behind.
Christians are hesitant to think outside the box of Christianity. It feels dangerous to them. They are hesitant to read the scriptures of other faiths. They are hesitant to explore beyond the Bible. That voice in their head makes them afraid that if they start to question some doctrines of Christianity, then they are falling away from the faith, and Satan is deceiving them to believe in doctrines of demons. They are afraid that if they start to explore other philosophies, then they are starting on a slippery slope to hell.
The worst part of this fear is that it robs us of the spiritual joy that is our birthright. In response to all that fear, I say, “Fear not.” That is the message of God in the Bible. Sure, there are plenty of times when the presence of God prompts fear. That is why God has to speak the words “Fear not!” The presence of God shakes us to our core. It shakes the ego off its throne. That is scary.
That has been the experience of my life. I have experienced “fear and trembling” in the presence of God. The times I got closest to God are the times I was scared out of my mind. I literally went beyond the mind. That is the good thing about godly fear. The apostle Paul wrote: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” There is nothing wrong with holy fear as long as you don’t let it stop you from approaching God. In my life the fear of God was the beginning of wisdom, just like Proverbs says. But it is only the beginning. It is not the end of wisdom. You certainly do not want to stay in fear.
We are to go beyond fear to love, for the bible also says that perfect love casts out fear. That wonderful verse in John’s first letters says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”
Sure Hebrews says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But if you read the context of that verse you see it is addressed to the ego who is putting itself up against God. Yes, it is fearful for the ego to fall into the hands of the living God. It means ego death and that is scary to the one who identifies with ego. To the ego God looks like all punishment and vengeance and fear. And fear-mongering preaching is ego-preaching. Its source is ego and it is directed toward the ego, which is afraid of everything.
The good news is that we are not the ego. So let the ego die. Let it scare itself to death if it wants. That is a good thing. Watch the ego as it writhes in a hell of its own making. What happens to the ego cannot hurt you. That is what the psalm means when it says, “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you… Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place, No evil shall befall you…”
The fear in your mind cannot touch the real you, the True Self, which is beyond mind. So there is nothing to fear from fear. Let the ego be afraid it wants to. It has nothing to do with you. Let the fear-mongering preachers and teachers try to scare it back into submission. They cannot harm you. They are in an earthly hell of their own making and want others to be in that hell of fear. Let the ego go and let fear go with it. Then let your true self, your spirit, lose itself in God, which is its nature.
When Jesus approached his death, first he felt fear about the upcoming torture and pain of the Cross. That is only natural. All of us would feel that fear. It is the natural response of the body that wants to survive, and it is the natural reaction of the ego that wants to survive also. Jesus struggled with that very human fear in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest. The gospel says that his experience was so intense that he wept tears of blood. “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground”
This prayer in the Garden was the death throes of the ego. But later on the cross Jesus prayed without fear, “Into your hands I commit my spirit." When we commit our spirit – our true Self - to God, then there is no longer anything to fear. There is no self, only God. The perfect love of God casts out all fear. Jesus died in Gethsemane before he died on Golgotha. When you die before you die, there is nothing left to fear in death.
When you have died to self, there is nothing to fear in God, who is your true life. The psalmist said, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” So the key to overcoming the remnants of fear-based religion that linger in so many hearts is to let it come and go. Let it wash over you. Let it do its worst. It is just the ego after all. It is not who you really are. Do not fight the fear. Resist not evil, Jesus said. Let it come and go. Let it wash over you like a flood and leave. That is what Jesus did on Gethsemane. That is how Jesus dealt with fear.
But then later on the cross Jesus felt a final attack of fear, and he cried out, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” Interpreters want to explain this verse away somehow, but this was real. This is how Jesus was feeling. Jesus was not an emotionless zombie. He experienced the full range of emotions, which is why his example is so relevant to us. His ego was going through it final moment of dying on the cross. That is the meaning of the cross. It symbolizes the death of body and psyche. The death of the ego is a process, and that process right up to our earthly death. That is what the Cross teaches us. Those spiritual teachers and gurus who want you to think they are perfect are frauds. Jesus was authentic. That is why I call Jesus my Lord.
We think the ego is dead, and then it peaks its head out one more time at the worst possible time. That happened to Jesus, so we can expect it to happen to us. But in the end perfect love wins. Jesus surrendered his Spirit to God. He died, and then there was resurrection. Which is a whole other episode, which I have done before and will undoubtedly return to. Resurrection is the victory of life over death, True Self over False Self, Love over fear, love-based spirituality over fear-based religion. That is the gospel of the resurrection.