Approaching Faith with a heart of Fear blinds Us
I normally take a walk in the evenings. The practice of solitude on the street... the idea of being quiet on a road full of noisy commuters seems heavenly to me. It makes me feel different and that's exactly the kind of environment I can unwind.
This evening, it was church-time for some folks. Because I wasn't walking alone, I had to be chatty with my colleague. We spoke from petty politics to travelling abroad and just as we got in front of this church, I asked him why people went to church. He retorted: "Fear!"
Immediately, I checked the faces of those who were praying at the end of a screaming minister's voice and it was shocking to find their faces full of the very thing my friend said--fear.
I couldn't chastize my friend for being so blunt or so easily dismissive of people's piety. He was simply right!
There's a lot of fear going around, masking as the front for people's devotion. The fear of missing heaven. The fear of losing one's salvation. The fear of committing a sin. The fear of not getting a job if they don't pray or getting a spouse if they are not committed in church. There's also the fear of not prospering if one doesn't give.
Within every sister who wears a scarf to pray is the fear that God may be angry with an otherwise action. A rookie school-leaver who rolls up his sleeves in church to clean and sweep subtly harbors the anxiety he won't get the good job God has provided him except he "seeks first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (by sanitizing the church)". His pastor says this is when " all other things (including a job) shall be added unto him"
Eventually, we approach Christianity-- a religion of faith with a heart drowned by fear and we cannot see God correctly because our fear blinds us gravely.
Fear makes you fashion God using the fabrics of your inadequacy. That's why you pray he should heal you, bless you or take you to heaven and yet deeply doubt that He will... because you are not capable of doing these yourself. Faith leaps out of that speculative prism and believes God already fixed that inadequacy. "He has blessed us, healed us, saved us. We are surely going to heaven!" Those are declarations of faith.
I have no idea why you go to church very constantly but if it is to keep "earning" God's favor, your sanctimonious devotion is feeding your fear fat. It's no longer faith and God will often remain a mystery the more you seek Him with fear.
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