The Fear of the Lord Brings Peace

“Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.” Acts 9:31

Note how peace, strength, encouragement in the Holy Spirit and growth in community all coincided with the people also living in the fear of the Lord.

One might protest that peace and fear cannot, in the popular current phrase, “co-exist.”

And yet, clearly they can—and have—to great benefit!

I read news reports on how technology has increased, not decreased, our sense of alienation and isolation from others. 

Any community we do happen to belong to is framed now in the confines of a 3 by 5 inch window of Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram. 

Just sit and watch as people go by on a busy sidewalk and notice how many mothers are pushing strollers with iPhone in hand, or individuals are walking along with their heads down, engrossed in checking their text messages.

And yet, depression and suicide are on the rise. The opioid crisis doesn’t seem to be going away. And millennials are seeming to surprise everyone by being no different than those who came before them, smoking and drinking all the way.

A very well-known but apparently ignored nugget of wisdom is “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The church in chapter nine of the Book of Acts broke the chain of insanity when they feared the Lord. 

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” Proverbs 9:10

Why? 

Because fear of the Lord, properly understood, is respect (and we come to this conclusion by reading the Bible cover to cover). 

Unfortunately, many people have a multitude of images and emotions that play across their inner movie screens when they hear the word fear: memories of haunted houses, scary movies, being home alone, and of overly strict, perhaps even abusive parents, schoolmasters, teachers, and other authority figures. 

But to understand the fear of the Lord, one must look at the entirety of Scripture.

We see a differentiation between the fear of God and other human fears in Matthew 10:

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household!

Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:24-31

This passage contains some of the most compassionate messages in Scripture: while indeed there is much to fear in the world, specifically, people who could hurt or even kill us, we are not to fear them because our fear of God is stronger.

How’s that?

Yes, we are to fear (awe, respect) the One who will reveal and make known all evil.

In the meantime, we are not to fear things and people in the world, but focus instead on listening to the Holy Spirit, and engaging with God’s Word, growing in grace and knowledge of Him, who is the caretaker and protector of not only our bodies, but our souls as well. 

Many people end the reading or hearing of this passage at verse 28, the part about hell. That is merely a tactic to avoid a right understanding of Scripture in its full context so that they can self-righteously let themselves off the hook for having anything to do with the God of Christianity.

But the very next lines are, as I already mentioned, dripping with the compassion of God:

"Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”

This is our “get out of the jail of fear free” card! 

While many people grumble and “pooh-pooh” the idea of fearing God, preferring to instead create a God they can merely like, the God we are to fear frees us from all worldly fear!  

Think of what you fear most.

Now think of all the little fears that pebble your walkway.

Now, why do humans go on in life having no problem, apparently, carrying all these worldly fears inside of them, and even participating in activities that make them fearful (we still drive in cars, go to work, read newspapers and watch the news, in spite of the fear these things elicit), when they won’t do the same for God?

It is because the fear we have of worldly things is a different kind of fear, and deep down we know it. 

The fear of God is not the same fear as that of getting in a car accident. It is not the same fear as that of being shot on the sidewalk. It is not the same fear we have of our boss firing us at work. It is not the same fear of North Korea dropping a bomb on our neighborhood.

This illogical reaction to “the fear of God” is similar to the fact that every religious thought leader in history is intellectually accepted by almost everyone, and allowed to be discussed in almost any type of conversation, except for Christianity’s Jesus. 

Try it once: bring up Buddha, Allah, the Dalai Lama, maharishis, Hindu Swami, etc. and everyone will intently draw close and murmur “Mmm, yes, quite interesting indeed.” 

But bring up Jesus in a conversation and everyone suddenly has a need to clear their throats and find the restroom.

I digress. 

But the fear of the Lord has a following like that. 

Nobody wants to go there, so they don’t. And it results in them missing out on the compassionate freedom God is imploring us to receive as His gift to us: freedom from the daily fears that exhaust and overwhelm us and keep us awake at night.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”

God is saying here, “Fear me” and all your fears will recede. “Fear me,” the one who loves you more than anyone, and who can protect you and keep you even if the worst happens and your body ceases to walk the earth. 

God knows when and why each sparrow falls. We are more valuable than sparrows: God knows when and why we fall, even at death. And He is there to catch us in His loving arms, here and now and there and then.

Why would a passage on fearing God also contain an overwhelming statement of His mercy and concern for us if our fearing Him meant being afraid of Him? It means we can fear Him in the sense of His power—in creation, in ongoing events, in each individual’s life—in the sense of His authority and economy—for our good and well being (not to be at all confused with prosperity). 

“Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgement; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

Does that sound like a tyrant God—a God whose love for us gives us confidence—not fear— in the day of judgement through Christ?

David captures the compatibility of the fear and love of God in Psalm 23:

The LORD is my shepherd,

I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside quiet waters.

He retires my soul;

He guides me in the paths of righteousness 

For His name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I fear no evil, for You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

You have anointed my head with oil;

My cup overflows.

Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,

And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” Psalm 23

This is the love for God which entails the proper fear of God. It is the love of God that in the fear of God resulted in this contritely spirited prayer of David after he sinned:

“Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness;

According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity

And cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions.

And my sin is ever before me.

Against You, You only, I have sinned

And done what is evil in Your sight,

So that You are justified when You speak

And blameless when You judge.” Psalm 51:1-4

Look, we already know, deep down, our transgressions. 

And if we don’t discern them specifically, we know them, especially before we are saved, generally in a downtrodden, never ceasing attempt at self-actualization to make up for our vaguely or acutely perceived shortcomings. 

As Christians, the Holy Spirit and God’s Word will delineate the ares in our life requiring attention. As Christians, we can go to God in contrition, knowing that He knows what we know and only He can make it right. 

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, 

And renew a steadfast spirit within me." Psalm 51:10 

That is the proper fear, out of a deep and abiding love for God, that brings transformation to our hearts and minds. And it is what brought the transformation of an entire community in Acts 9 so that it “enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.”

copyright Barb Harwood

The Search for Goodness is the Search for God

Early on in my Christian faith, a skeptic to my newfound belief pointedly asked me, "But what about those who don't have God?"

Being a novice yet in my Biblical learning, and having only just begun to "grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ," I did not have an answer. 

But in the ensuing years of growing in the knowledge of the Lord, I now have an answer to that skeptic: 

Everybody has God, and in fact, I firmly believe that everybody also desires Him when they also desire goodness.

How do I know this? At the most basic level it is because God created, and continues to create, all persons (Genesis; Psalm 139:13-14). God "has" us. We are His creation. 

But through the fall, every individual is separated from God, although we never stop being His. 

The insinuation in the skeptic's question was to imply that God is, in some way, out of reach to certain folks: that he is unattainable; that He has somehow set up an unfair system whereby some people are devoid of any recourse to "have Him" and must instead sit on the sidelines and forlornly watch all the lucky folks who do have God.

But that skeptic's implication is simply a form of stonewalling.

God is near to, and all are dear to, God--equally, impartially and without favoritism on his part (Mark 12:14; Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; 2 Peter 3:9). 

He causes the sun and the rain to fall on all (Matthew 5:45).

But not all harken to God. 

While God has us, many people willingly, if not ignorantly and self-righteously, do not have God because they don't want God. These are not victims of some sordid divine economy. They are their own worst enemy in that no matter how God calls them, they close their ears and eyes to Him and carry on with hardened hearts. 

And yet, these same people will bend over backward, travel to far away lands, and read volumes on self-actualization, happiness, significance and simplicity in the perpetual search for a goodness that evades them. 

It's nothing new. Philosophers have been doing the same thing for centuries, and people still peruse their writings today.

Stanley J. Grenz, in his book The Moral Quest, which I have quoted from the last few days, writes that what people don't always realize is that their seeking after goodness is actually seeking after God. 

He writes:

"On what basis can we assert that the philosophical discovery of the good is in fact related to the divine will?
The answer to our query draws from a distinction between what is (ontology) and how we come to know what is (epistemology). From the perspective of ontology what Christian ethicists denote as 'the will of God' precedes, or is foundational to, what the philosophers speak of as 'the good.' Goodness is entirely dependent upon and derived from the divine will. Nevertheless the actual way in which a person comes to know the good and the divine will may occur in the opposite order. Knowledge of goodness may in fact come before awareness of God's will. A person may obtain knowledge about what is the good before acknowledging that the good is in fact the content of God's will. 
This epistemological reversal does not alter the truth that God's will is the foundation for all goodness and forms the goal of the human quest for the good. Even when a person's first grasp of the divine will comes indirectly--through the quest to determine the true nature of goodness or the good life (i.e. philosophical ethics)--the fact remains that what he or she is actually seeking and even coming to know is nothing else but the will of God (which is the explicit topic of Christian ethics). 
Just as Paul drew from the pagan poets of Athens to address the quest for the unknown god, so also Christians can confidently conclude that lying at the foundation of the quest for goodness displayed in philosophical ethics is the will of the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. Consequently we can affirm the sincere human search for the good, for we know that the quest for goodness is nothing less than the search for the divine will."

However, there's a problem with general ethics (founded on general philosophy). 

Grenz goes on to explain:

"...we must also express a grave reservation about the philosophical ethical enterprise. General ethics is flawed by an all-pervasive defect, namely, its 'anthropocentricity' or fundamental human-centeredness...
Endemic to the philosophical tradition is the tendency to operate from an anthropocentric, rather than a theological, anthropology. Because it seeks to elaborate whatever ethical system can be discovered through the use of human reason, general ethics assumes that the distinguishing characteristic of the human person lies in some dimension of human existence (e.g. the experience of being moral agents) or in some power that humans supposedly possess (such as rationality)...
In contrast to the philosophical approach, Christian ethics does not start from the assumption that the distinguishing characteristic of the human person consists in our rationality. Nor does our essential humanness lie ultimately in our experience of being moral agents. Instead the definitive human characteristic lies in a relationship for which we were created, namely, community or fellowship with God. To use the language of the Hebrew Scriptures, we are to be God's covenant partners...This divine desire to enter into covenant with us even stands at the foundation of our status as morally conditioned beings.
From the Christian perspective, therefore, the ethical life does not arise out of any innate human characteristic or any integral aspect of our existence. Instead its genesis lies in our divinely given purpose as those called to live in the presence of, and responsible to, God. The Christian message is that God created us with a destiny, with a goal for our existence, namely, that we enjoy a special covenantal relationship with the covenanting God, that we live in fellowship with our Maker. Our creation by God with a special destiny is what marks us as ethically responsible."

Stanley Grenz has more to say on anthropocentricity, and I hope to post his comments soon.

copyright Barb Harwood



     "So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, 'Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKOWN GOD.' Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 
     The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.' Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.
     Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to all men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." Acts 17:22-31

The Moral Quest

Stanley J. Grenz, writing in his book, The Moral Quest:

"...despite the human-centeredness of all general ethics, the human moral quest is essentially the search for the will of God, and therefore the Christian ethic marks the transformation of general ethics. More specifically, naturalism, with its appeal to creation, reemerges at this point as an appropriate bridge to the Christian moral vision, rooted as it is in the new creation."

"Viewed from the biblical perspective, therefore, existence and ethics are not two separate concerns. Instead they are integrally connected. The ethical life involves living according to the divine will that provides the foundation of our very being as God's creatures populating God's universe.
On this basis we can conclude that the sense of moral obligation lying behind all human ethical systems is nothing less than the impact of the divine will upon human life. The sense of moral conditionedness arises because we exist by the will of God. And this divine will--the divine preference--forms the foundation for morality."

"This connection forges the link between Christian ethics and general ethics. Their common genesis in the divine will means that the revealed ethic of the Christian faith and the general ethic of the philosophers occupy the same ground and traverse the same territory. The Christian ethicist and the philosopher are ultimately concerned about the same thing, namely, the proper human response to God's claim on our lives or the determination of what constitutes living according to the divine will. Whether or not they are consciously aware of it, whenever people engage in ethical reflection they are in fact seeking to determine God's intention for human life and conduct. They are ultimately searching for the answer to the fundamental questions of theological ethics: What does God will that we be and do? And how should we live as those who exist by God's own will?" 
Stanley J. Grenz, The Moral Quest

The Ethic of Devotion to Jesus Christ

The following excerpt is from the book The Moral Quest: Foundations of Christian Ethics by Stanley J. Grenz:

"The goal of devotion supplied the ultimate rationale for Jesus' emphasis on inwardness. Conduct flows from character, he taught, but true character arises from devotion. Indeed, devotion to the Master became the wellspring for the development of Christlike character in his disciples. In short, Jesus' followers were not motivated to follow their Lord by admiration for a historical person who had done some great deeds. Instead their discipleship was the outflow of personal gratitude and love to the one whose love they had experienced. Such discipleship opened the way for the New Testament focus on incorporation into Christ and conformity to Christ.
The ethic of devotion provides the link between Jesus and his disciples in every era. The dynamic of devotion means that we no longer stand outside the biblical story. Unlike the manner in which we may observe the plot of a good novel or even follow the biography of a great hero, we are not mere uninvolved observers of the gospel narrative. Instead, we are participants in the gospel drama as those who, like the early disciples, are the recipients of Christ's love. We have been touched firsthand not only by the moral ideal Jesus embodied but by the Risen Lord himself.
Consequently we do not merely admire Jesus as we might admire other historical figures such as Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa. We do not simply draw inspiration or a pattern for living from his life as we might do from theirs. The Christian ethic does not look to Jesus solely as a historical example whom we seek to emulate. We do not look to him only as the main character in a story from a bygone era on whose life we can reflect and thereby draw instruction. Rather he has loved us and has sacrificed his life for us. To this personal experience of Jesus' great love, we find ourselves compelled to respond with gratitude and love. Hence, rather than merely patterning our lives after his, we enter into relationship with him. In this relationship we desire to live as Christ would have us live, that is, to have Christ formed in us.
This ethic of devotion has characterized Christians throughout the ages. Christ's followers have consistently differentiated between other model persons (such as the patriarchs, the apostles and the martyrs), whose memory they bore in their hearts, and Jesus Christ, who through his Spirit had made his abode in their hearts. Thereby the Christian ethos has intensified and personalized the biblical concept of the presence of God among God's people. The divine presence is none other than the indwelling reality of the living Lord Jesus Christ mediated through his Holy Spirit...
And by pouring out the Spirit on his followers, the Risen Lord mediated to them the divine dynamic that made possible the imitation of the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth."
Stanley J. Grenz, The Moral Quest

The Other Perspective on GMO's

I am currently reading a book recommended by Jordan B. Peterson titled, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. It is written by Johan Norberg and first published in 2016. 

I highly recommend reading this book for a perspective that is entirely missing today.

Here is an excerpt:

"It has been estimated that in the first decade of the twentieth century, 3.1 million children died annually because of conditions related to malnutrition. This increased to about four million children in the 1950s and 1960s because of population growth, but then it started to decline rapidly, even in absolute numbers. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, 1.7 million children died because of malnutrition--still a shockingly high number, but a sixty per cent reduction since the 1950s, even though world population more than doubled.
There have been negative side effects of this more intensive farming, including over-extraction of groundwater for irrigation and nitrate pollution of water bodies. But the Green Revolution also made it possible to save pristine land from being turned into farmland. Between 1700 and 1960, farmland quadrupled, as people made use of forests and grassland to feed themselves. But after fixing nitrogen and developing new seeds, it was possible to produce more from the same amount of land. For the first time, for the world as a whole, food production has been decoupled from land use.
From 1961 to 2009, farmland increased by only twelve per cent, while farm production increased by about 300%. It has been estimated that, had agricultural yields stayed the same, farmers would have needed to turn another three billion hectares into farmland--immense continental areas, about the size of the USA, Canada and China put together. Artificial fertilizer has caused oxygen depletion in many marine systems, but it also saved us from depleting wildlife and turning our planet into 'Skinhead Earth.'
In 1970, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in increasing the global food supply. As US Senator Rudy Boschwitz put it:

'Dr. Norman Borlaug is the first person in history to save a billion human lives. But he must also get credit for saving the wild creatures and diverse plant species on 12 million square miles of global forest that would long since have been ploughed down without the high-yield farming he pioneered. The two accomplishments combined make him dramatically unique.'

Nonetheless arguments against modern agricultural technology have had a huge impact on the debate, and some environmentalists object to nitrogen fertilizer on principle, despite the human cost. Today we see the same objections to genetically modified crops, which would increase our yields even further. Environmental campaigners have had an impact on one continent, Africa, where they pressured big foundations and the World Bank to back away from introducing the Green Revolution, which Borlaug had considered the next priority. This is now the only region where the number of undernourished people has continued to increase, and where wild habitats are being depleted by slash-and-burn subsistence agriculture.
Borlaug has reacted angrily to this campaign:

'Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.'" From the book, Progress

What is Truth?

"Truth...is not a set of facts or specific answers, but a starting point for reasoning that empowers us to find the answers as particular problems arise...this is what Jesus meant...the starting point is himself."
Phillip E. Johnson, a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago; law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren; taught law for thirty years at the University of California at Berkeley and author of, among other books, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds


"'I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. 
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.'" John 17:13-21


"'You are a king, then!' said Pilate.
Jesus answered, 'You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.'" John 18:37

"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority." Colossians 2:9-10

When the World Makes You Crazy

When the world makes you crazy, and you wonder how drag queen story hours for children are now a normal part of programming at the local public library, 

and when there is more outcry for an animal that must be killed than for the child that it attacked, 

and when canvassers on the street corner call out for women’s rights when that does not include the right of an unborn female to be born, 

and when people’s uptightness causes them to honk their horns at the car in front of them that is waiting patiently for a pedestrian to cross the street, 

and when shootings happen daily and suicide is on the rise and all sense of decorum goes out the window when it comes to politics, 

and when one is actually scared to voice their advocacy for traditional values—such as a mother choosing the high calling of forgoing work outside the home to raise her children, 

and when the “F” bomb and other cursing has become an accepted part of the vernacular—forced on those within earshot and no different than second-hand smoke in its pollution…

then do as Jesus did:

“As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.’” Luke 19:41-42

Weep and pray, for they do not know what they are doing.

Copyright Barb Harwood