Remember kids, you shouldn’t fear God…You should fear His followers.
[irrelevancy]
Every time I see this subject line I hear the fruity voice of Blazing Saddles’ Ethel Johnson shouting: “We, the white, god-fearing citizens…”
[/irrelevancy]
Agreeing with a few of the earlier posters, in both Hebrew and Greek, the word for “awe-inspiring” and “fear-inspiring” were the same. Over the centuries, in English, I guess “God-fearing” sounded better than “God-awing.”
Gee, didn’t you kids ever go to a ridiculous church? At my confirmation for a Lutheran Church, I remember one random thing we were supposed to memorize was “explanations” someone had written for the commmandments, and every single one started out with “We should fear and love god so that we do not kill each other” or something equally lame.
If it is an archaism, I can tell you it is fervently believed by many people currently, probably the fundies being railed on in that other thread. When they say “God-Fearing,” they really do mean fear, and it is a quality that is worked on and polished, since the smoting and turning-to-pillar-of-salting has slowed down in recent years.
It all comes out of the “Old Testament God” who as mentioned smote and turned to salt people seemingly at random. The “New Testament God” goes all nice and forgives everyone, yadda yadda yadda… Depending on which book your particular church favors, you may have “fearing God” as part of your dogma.
Papamurf,
In a universe where there is a god and it is a villain, man provides all the heroism necessary for balance and adventure. It is a weak god that needs a devil. It is just such a weak god that, in petty viciousness, would smite an individual for his behavior in life. Such villainy is creepy and disturbing.
Tymp
“Man provides all the heroism necessary for balance and adventure.” I like the sound of that, but a couple points.
First “weak God”. God doesn’t need the Devil, he made him, then kicked his horny little butt out of heaven (assuming that it’s true). And I don’t know about anybody else, but I don’t don’t pray to a weak God. To be honest I don’t pray a whole lot at all, but when I do I aim for the top dog. There could be demigods, or Titans, or that sort of thing, but I think the general concensus of most major religions is they’re trying to pray to the biggest of the big.
Second, “petty viciousness.” I haven’t looked at a Bible in a while, but if I’m not mistaken most of the time when someone got smote it was because they were doing something God told them not to do. So why should we be surprised if they get busted for it. I wouldn’t call that vicious so much as firm.
In any event, God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do, and we really can’t do much about it. Though, I still don’t know about calling God “villian.”
Sorry for the hijack Sweet_Lotus, but that’s the last from me on this one.
-Murphy
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate… leads to green, wrinkly, 900-year-old puppets and Miss Piggy…
“God” is a fucking absentee landlord (from whence comes this line?). Since he has consistently ignored all requests to repair that faults here in this house of ours, he’s lost all judging and smiting privileges as far as I’m concerned. If I ever run into such a being, I’ll happily jump his ass and beat the crap out of him. God’s gonna do whatever the fuck he wants. If he ends up with my foot up his almighty ass, it’s his own damn fault. Lucky for him, fictional characters don’t have asses to kick.
“the faults . . .”
Al Pacino in the Devil’s Advocate.
And Tymp, darling, you are entirely too smart to be using barbarisms like from whence. Whence means from where, so saying from whence is both pretentious and redundant.
Regards,
MR
Thanks, Maeglin. ‘Preciate your help on both counts.
The fear is all about the fear of retribution. The Christian god is obviously an extension of the father, so that if you conform to his rule, then you will be alright, but if not, then you will be punished. Generally, most children don’t obey their father out of love, but out of fear of consequence. By analogy, in god’s absence, the church assumes the role of the disciplinarian. A role played near perfection at times.
But the original message is clearly insinuating that Christians lack the strength of character to think/act for themselves because they are bound by fear. Well newsflash, this is not particular to Christianity, nor do I find it particularly “weird” in general. It seems to me, a natural result of our concept of family. It’s also inherently probable that after you have tired of rebelling against authority (ie. the father), that you will become what you find so superficially contemptible. These things have a way of repeating.
lastgasp, behaving as your father has more to do with simple modeling than conforming to that which you cannot overcome. Of course, this isn’t too important as it has nothing to do with the thread.
While I agree with your family analogy to an extent, I also think that when people in families “grow up”, it is expected that they will do right by their fathers–not out of fear, but out of respect for themselves and others. For instance, the reason I don’t rob banks or kill people isn’t because I fear retribution, it’s because my father raised me to respect others. So then why are Christians made to think that they (we) are like eternal children that need fear instilled in them to do right by their Father?
It’s like the sign on the whorehouse wall in the movie “Easyrider” said: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
The powers that be have realized from the beginning that in order to control the people it is necessary to promote the belief that they are ordained by an omnipotent, vengeful God to pass down the law.
That’s why Monica dropped to her knees for Clinton, IMHO.
I can’t provide an exact cite, but that quote is normally attributed to Voltaire. See, for example, this site.
Amok
Thanks, good site. I just remembered it from the movie, glad I didn’t claim it as my own, peace.
Well, for petty viciousness, see 2 Kings 2:23-24, where God sends bears to maul 42 children after they sass the Prophet Elisha for being bald.
Moving beyond petty viciousness, I’d cite (among many other examples), 1 Samuel chapter 15, where God orders the complete annihilation of the Amalekites–men, women, children, and livestock–for something which their ancestors had done during the Exodus, which was maybe a century or two earlier. The God of the Bible is rather in the habit of ordering the extermination of entire peoples–see the Book of Joshua. The extermination of the various Canaanite peoples in Joshua is justified in large part by their practice of ritual infanticide; infant sacrifice is certainly an evil deed, but to respond to it by killing all the Canaanite babies seems rather to compound the wickedness.
In the New Testament, we have the additional of eternal torture in the fires of hell; at this point I think we have left “petty” viciousness far, far behind.
Demigod#5 - On the first count, I think you’re even more correct then you realize (though I wasn’t asserting what you thought I was). But you’re wrong on the second count, it has everything to do with this thread.
Dewaholic - Ask yourself why you love your father. If you’re like me, I think you will conclude that love is not so pure as we might think it to be. I happen to believe that love is much more pragmatic than mystical. As in, love for one’s father is not explained by some mystical bond, but by identifiable causes, many of which one would not classify as ‘love’ (ie providing food…). If you catch my drift, then you can see how blurry the distinction between love and fear can become. Now if you accept that somewhat, then the natural consequence is that it is possible (at times) for the difference between ‘loving’ and ‘fearing’ to become a mere semantical one. In so far as god is an extension of the father, this is what I believe is happening.