The Fear of the Lord Part I...

Why do I find God so frightening?
I expect I may need to speak to a specially skilled counsellor to begin to unpack this, but one idea I have is that I feel fear when someone in authority tells me something about God that my intuition tells me isn't true (or atleast is not true for me...). I think there's more to it than that, but perhaps that's a start. Towards the time I gave up on God, I was becoming more and more 'theologically picky', until there were maybe two or three churches in Melbourne whose theology resonated with me and didn't cause me to panic. Perhaps I have just arrived at a point in my life when I can no longer tolerate another person telling me who God is or is not. I certainly feel much more comfortable writing about who I think God is (to simplify what I'm doing here) than I ever have hearing someone else tell me. Is this a little like the mystics? - who would not be told by authorities or doctrines who God was, but had to experience Her for themselves, and then share their experiences with others (sometimes bishops or Popes...) Such audacity! On their part, and also on mine, to assert some kind of connection with them. Perhaps it always takes a degree of audacity to approach God.
It's interesting that it's always the audacity of fundamentalists, who say they know God better than I do, and that their God says I am wrong, that makes me furious. Is it actually healthy to balance audacity with fear?
I don't think I would wish this kind of fear on anyone...

PS. I saw Richard Dawkins interviewed on "Elders with Andrew Denton"1 on the ABC last week, and they showed a clip of Dawkins being accused of arrogance by someone I understood to be in a role of leadership in the church, someone who came across as being equally arrogant (or just audacious??). It made me think of Fowler's (1995) writing on the stages of spiritual development, where he talks about 'secular faith'. I've often thought there can be a discernible spirituality to atheism, but of course there can be fundamentalist atheists too.

Notes
1. Transcript available on the ABC website at:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/elders/transcripts/s2757522.htm


Fowler, J. W. (1995). Stages of faith: the psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco: HarperCollins.