How can God be both unconditional Love and also a drastic form of fear that inspires wisdom?
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. – Proverbs 9:10 ESV
I had to resolve this riddle in order to understand the issues that arise in differentiating God’s unconditional love from the various human forms of personal and impersonal love. How a God of Grace and Mercy could also judge and condemn millions to an eternal fire can not be explained by a surface consideration.
When enmeshed with the objects of the senses in the material universe, the soul insists that darkness is as strong as light. We literally know this is untrue. All we have to do is to walk into a dark room and turn on the light to reveal which is stronger. Even the selfish atheistic individual can observe and experience this basic Truth, a literal law of creation, that light overpowers darkness.
Since we live in denial that light is stronger than darkness, imagine all the shadows the individual ego protects in the name of being unique. Christ referred to these souls as matter-bound individuals as “dead”. Those whose obsession with darkness has driven out God’s light are dead. “Leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22/Luke 9:60) unfortunately refers to most of humanity regardless of beliefs or religious affiliation.
Souls are unique expressions created by God and given life through God’s breath. By using free will, nearly all individuals have denied their nature and origin.
For a few moments, consider the entirety of creation as a story already written that is being made into a movie. The “dead” souls are like poor actors who refuse to play their roles as written. These poor actors don’t win awards. Just look around to understand why bad things happen to good people. It’s clear that both relatively “good” and “bad” worldly people receive a balance of desirable and unwanted results from their actions. In other words, extremely few are following the God-given script. The evidence is the uneven results achieved by all.
When the actor finally decides to earnestly turn to God, not just a flash of inspiration prompted by a remarkable coincidence or a miraculous event, but by sincere and consistent effort, the script of life is increasingly revealed.
The living dead, who Christ referred to, are like rooms obscured by dark smoke. When the smoke is thick enough, the room cannot be seen even when the light is turned on. For the children of God, referred to as the descendants of Abraham in the Bible, the Light is always on. Following basic moral and ethical laws of creation, a child of God can use free will to clear their soul-room of the smoke that obscures the supernal Light. While there are children of the Liar who masquerade as humans, Christ instructs his disciples not to worry about these dark entities. He will sort them out from the children of God when necessary. (See Matthew 13:47-49.)
The “fear” of God.
On this material plane of existence the highest expression, active attribute, of God is unconditional love. This is the true meaning of “Grace”. The Catholic Church refers to “Grace” and “Sanctifying Grace” though these are merely different degrees of the same Love. Unconditional love manifests as the Light of God that is always on in the temple of the soul. The Light has been obscured by the smoke of poor behaviors.
The unconditional love of God is literally the highest form of Light that drives the darkness out of the descendants of Abraham. Religious nor not, every person longs for this supernal love. However, Grace is a pragmatic form of unconditional Love of God that works with the soul to reveal one’s divine purpose. The actor learns the script for a movie role, and the soul must learn the script for the human role.
The fallen human-entrapped soul fears losing the familiar darkness of its false ego. When self-effort and the gift of Grace have sufficiently decreased the smoke in the body-temple of the soul, the all powerful Light of God will manifest as unconditional love. The initial presentation of the powerful light of Unconditional Love shocks the remaining elements of the ego. I offer the following testimony that my greatest experience of Love was also the most terrifying.
If you have seen the movie “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991), you likely remember the opening scene detailing the impact of a nuclear holocaust. Human flesh is peeled off the skeleton in vivid imagery. If human flesh represents the ego and the human skeleton represents the soul, then a nuclear-explosion that strips the flesh from the bones represents the Light of God’s unconditional Love.
The fear of God produces wisdom because the ego is removed from obscuring the soul’s perfect expression. The ego doesn’t let go easily. Fallen souls have convinced themselves that the darkness is both stronger and better than the light.
“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire,” promised John the Baptist of Christ’s arrival. (Matthew 3:11 and Luke 3:16). Experience of the supernal light, the fire of a thousand suns, is Christ’s baptism by fire. Anything else is just darkness embraced by the ego. The water baptism of initial repentance is simply the first step to tame the ego. Repent and sin no more is a call to awaken the soul’s conscience.
The soul’s uniqueness is not destroyed by the transmutation of the ego. Rather, the soul fulfills God’s law, finally following the script, and takes its all-fulfilling, all-blissful intended place. The fear of God appears as the ego bows the last vestiges of its darkness to God’s Light. Less ego produces greater wisdom.
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