It’s Insane That Christians Want You To Fear Their God

Why does the Bible insist on this?

Photo by Anderson Rian on Unsplash

This article was originally published on Medium.

One of the most abusive parts of the Christian religion is the way it insists that the greatest thing in the world is being terrified of their god.

I know that some Christians will try to say that they don’t want people to fear their god and that’s fine, but their Bible consistently disagrees with him.

Here are some Bible verse examples…

Ecclesiastes 12:13b

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.

Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools[a] despise wisdom and instruction.

Psalm 34:9

Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for the Lord has no lack of love for those who fear him.

They think fear and respect are synonyms. That fearing god is respecting him and accuse me of being a horrible person because as an atheist, I’m not afraid of their threat of an imaginary being someday coming to torture me for eternity.

They say this means I don’t respect him.

But respect isn’t fear. In fact, fear often leads to a lack of respect. I know this because of the abuse I regularly faced from my Mom all the time growing up.

One of the ways she liked to threaten me when I misbehaved was to growl these words at me with her teeth bared, “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

Her eyes always looked soulless when she said these words and every part of my body would freeze, my throat dropping into my stomach in terror because I knew what would happen next.

“No, Mom,” I’d insist, terror making my voice shake. “I am scared of you. I’m so scared.”

And I meant it.

But she’d continue growling at me. “No, you aren’t afraid of me, but I’m going to make you afraid of me.”

It always sounded like something a serial killer was saying right before they lost it, so I’d beg her not to hurt me and she’d wind up beating the shit out of me.

I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older that my Mom’s body language when she was angry was similar to a wolf with all the guttural yelling and growling she did at me with her teeth flashing.

Whenever I think of my mom’s browning and yellowed teeth from the years she drank coffee and smoked, I feel a deep disgust in the pit of my stomach.

I still feel afraid of her even though she’s old. I never see her. But if I had to, I’d try to keep her away from knives, from my pets, and I’d watch her like a hawk to make sure she didn’t do anything horrible to anything I care about.

I am deeply scared of her even though she’s weak and in her seventies now.

But do you know what I never feel for her? Respect.

It is Mother’s Day as I am writing this and I’ve been laughing for the past week because I saw an advertisement for a video service that will send videos to your Mom with her picture in them that says, “Happy Birthday, Bitch!”

I didn’t purchase it but a part of me was tempted.

I sometimes have conversations with my husband (he’s met her), where we both agree that she has an extremely low intelligence.

I talk to him about how gross she was. How she picked her nose and farted all the time.

How pathetic she is, how heartless, how perverted and weird. How I want to be nothing like her. How she has no morals. How she’s one of the cruelest and most evil people I’ve ever met in my life.

She could stalk me, break into my house, point a gun at my head and scare me so much that I shit my pants. And do you know the one thing I will never feel for her no matter how much she terrifies me? Respect.

Because fear isn’t fucking respect. Love is.

I respect my husband and it’s not because the Bible told me to submit to him. It’s because he respects and loves me. It’s because he’s met my mother and father, they’ve been assholes to him at times, and he still stuck by me even with all my baggage.

He’s been here as I became chronically ill and disabled. He’s comforted me when I was miserable and not the funnest person to be around. He’s been to the hospital with me when I had to be admitted.

He’s actually loved me in ways that have sometimes terrified me because I’m used to people always hurting me instead.

So the thing that makes the least sense to me in pretty much all of Christianity is all the threats of hell and torture that permeate throughout. The way people insist that I be scared of their god and how he’ll make me someday rot in hell for being an atheist. And how Christians think saying these things to me will make me feel even an ounce, a mere ounce of respect for their god.

It makes me feel the opposite.