Fear of the Lord - The Concept of Fearing the Lord

Fear of the Lord Defined

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

This verse is one of the most famous of the entire bible, but what does it mean to “fear the Lord?” At first it seems counter intuitive and confusing. Why would you need to fear a God who is apparently all loving and merciful? Why would fear be a required component of a relationship with God? And finally, what is it that you’re “fearing” exactly?

To begin, the concept of “fearing the Lord” is important because it is inextricably linked with the first commandment [Thou shall have no other gods before me]. However, before unpacking how it ties in with “not having other gods before you” the concept of “fear” in the bible must first be extrapolated. Fear when mentioned in reference to God does not hold the same connotation as the standard definition of it. Fear is typically defined as an emotion that is unpleasant or disturbing, it’s a reaction to the presence of danger (real or perceived). It’s what you feel when you walk down a dark alley looking over your shoulder or after a jump scare during a horror movie. It’s an innate feeling generated as a reaction to a threat. This type of fear is sourced in and driven by anxiety, resulting in a sense of panic. However, when fear is mentioned in correlation to God it is instead referring to a feeling of reverence. Reverence in contrast to fear is defined as an overwhelming sense of awe or respect and often love. This type of “fear” is not the same as the reactive emotion but instead is an instilled one. In contrast to the unpleasant feeling of panic generated by conventional fear, reverence instead produces positive emotion and is not driven by nor sourced in anxiety but instead awe. Thus “fear the Lord” can be redefined as “revere the Lord.”

Saying that, “fearing the Lord” isn’t a magic switch and it doesn’t mean that by placing your “fear” in God the other type (the anxiety driven reactive one) simply disappears. What “fear of the Lord” does instead is give you a tool to supersede the influence of anxiety driven fear. To our hinderance or sometimes benefit anxiety driven fear is innate, being woven into our humanity. As already mentioned, it surfaces as a reaction to a real or perceived threat. Its reactive nature speaks to the level in which it is ingrained in us acting like an instinct. Author and anthropologist Ernest Becker believed this universal sense of fear is rooted in our fear of death. His book “the Denial of Death” is essentially an almost four-hundred-page thesis on this belief.

“Of all things that move man one of the principal ones is his terror of death.”- Ernest Becker

The implantation of our anxiety driven fear can be traced back to the story of Adam and Eve. In the story of our fall, they are sternly warned by God that if they should eat of the fruit [from the tree of knowledge] that they “shall surely die.” Despite God’s warning they end up eating of it anyway. Nonetheless neither perish upon consuming the fruit but instead what ends up happening is they both become aware of their own mortality. This knowledge along with the knowledge of good and evil psychologically changes Adam and Eve and consequently the entire human race forever. From a Christian perspective this is when we as humans began to be burdened with anxiety driven fear. However, even outside of Christian theology within a purely secular model such as evolution the reactive type of fear exists. The belief here being that it was engrained in us for use as a survival mechanism. Regardless of whether its source is the result of millions of years of evolution, or it was thrust upon us when we ate of the fruit; this anxiety driven type of fear has become a part of us and because of that it simply can’t be cast aside, but instead must be somehow dealt with.