Article 1 - "SEEING BEYOND THE MIRROR" by Jessica Kuzmier May 2008 edition of First Church of The Streets

     Fear has gotten a bad rap in modern society. It's the motivation of the wimp or the victim. In a society that touts a winner take all mentality, fear is at best useless, or more often, a severe impediment that should be rooted out immediately. Don't be scared by anything. Put your fear aside and go for it. Fear is the expression of the weak, and the strong prey on the weak. Don't put yourself in the position of being prey: get rid of fear.

     And yet, the Bible says that one should "fear God". This is the same scripture that says God is an agent of mercy, compassion and love. The letters of John even say that God is love (1 John 4:16). If God loves us, and in fact, is love itself, why should one fear God at all, as even the Preacher admonishes us to do (Eccl. 12:13)? God is love, and there is no fear in love. What does it mean to fear a God that is love?

     The meaning that most people associate with fear conveys apprehension, worry, or something where a person is concerned of some kind of loss. Whether one is concerned with physical security, emotional security, or some ego drive desire, this fear basically means one is preoccupied with either losing something he has, or won't obtain something he feels he either needs or wants. Incidentally, many so-called emotions of power are just as fear based as the stereotype of a shaking person cowering in the corner. Anger, rage, and jealousy are aggressive expressions of fear, to be sure, but are fear nonetheless. Note that many people who rant and rave are afraid they won't be taken seriously if they don't make the listener realize that the speaker means business. This goes for any kind of criminal behavior: fear lies behind it all.

     There is another definition to fear, and this is the kind that the Preacher refers to. Though there are plenty of people who witness what appears to be God's indifference to suffering and wouldn't be surprised if he were a sadist perpetuating fear on his subjects, the kind of fear that the Preacher refers is more dealing with seeing reality for what it is. Not the kind of reality where man seems to be ruling supreme with his own creation and busy schedules and plans that never seem to end, but acknowledging the total reality of life. Namely, that the creation is bigger than us, and someone made it. Whether it was the force of nature, or Allah or Zeus, or whatever one wants to refer the Highest One as being, everyone is more or less in agreement that the world came before us, is operating without us, and doesn't really need us to keep going. This is the kind of reality that the Preacher is talking about when he says that one fears God. It is just an acknowledgment of who God really is, and realizing that in trying to come up with what that means in the long run, this concept is just too vast to contemplate.

     That being so, when a person realizes that nature, God or the Highest One is just way to huge to grasp, one comes to realize that there may be higher ways that go beyond what one thinks is right or real. Seeing how big the world is or how beyond the grasp God is, one is better able to realize that the universe does not center upon the actions and thoughts of any one person. This is what sometimes happens when people go see a mountain like Denali or Kilimanjaro or meet the sequoia tree General Sherman. When they see how large this seemingly inert object is, they feel small. Suddenly, many things that they thought were important seem puny, just the chattering of an ant. They have had a quantified realization that life is greater than the sum of the parts that make up any one individual.

     Nature is one of the big ways that many people find solace in this concept. For many people who find peace in nature, this idea of confronting grandeur is not a state where one feels small. Rather, in an inverse way, the world feels large and beyond the grasp of one particular individual. Why would one feel comfort in the confusion of vastness, when one can't even navigate himself through some maze? If the world is more than the sum of our own technology, created by something that uses mathematics and chemistry beyond our comprehension, where is there any comfort in all of this mystery?

     But people such as these do find solace in the fact that life is bigger than the individual, no matter how bewildering it may seem or how bewildered they are in the mystery of it all. Perhaps in realizing that the world is bigger than any one person, or is in fact bigger than all the six and a half billion people put together, one doesn't have to figure it all out. Man's insistence that everything needs to be figured and be mastered puts intense pressure on an individual, rendering him a failure if he himself doesn't have all the answers. Man has done so much he should be able to figure anything else, says the modern can-do mentality.

     Seeing the largeness of things puts things in better perspective. Realizing the reality behind the madness, that God's ways are way beyond our ways, is then a comfort. One doesn't have to figure everything out. Larger forces are in play, forces too great to contemplate. The world is larger than any one individual's concerns. What a relief that is, and a relief to get off the throne and see reality for what it is. The fear of God is just realizing that he is this largeness beyond the individual ego. However one sees this, even if it is the secular concepts of Nature or Science, realizing one's place in the world is a comforting thing. Having awe for the larger forces is one way to remember one's real place.