Spiritual Health Learning Community Center Exploring Life's Horizons   »   Streams Menu "Someone who is afraid of something runs away from it, but someone who is afraid of God Almighty and Glorious runs to Him." - Abd al-Qasim al-Hakim Fear Sometimes God has to make people an offer they can't refuse, or, at least, they shouldn't refuse it. When people don't respond to kindness, friendship, generosity, gentleness, and love, then other avenues are taken. Human arrogance, pride and ignorance can be the source of tremendous spiritual resistance and rebelliousness. We can be incredibly dense and out of touch with everything except our own fantasies and desires. Sometimes, fear is God's way of reaching out and touching someone. It is a Divine wake-up call reminding the individual that she or he is due for a reality check. Someone once said war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means. Somewhat analogously, the introduction of fear into our lives by God is a continuation of Divine love by other means. In a sense, Divinely generated fear can be considered to be a form of tough love. Fear in the above sense is a form of compassionate severity. Alternatively, the induction of Divine fear can be construed as a species of compassionate severity. Which way one characterizes a given instance of Divinely induced fear may depend on where the emphasis falls: with compassion or with severity. Fear has a dimension of severity because of the nature of the consequences which may ensue. These consequences may involve: pain, unpleasantness, discomfort, death, loss, destruction, rigorous chastisement, humiliation, sorrow, constraint, illness and various other kinds of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual trauma. Unless we have masochistic inclinations, most of us tend to try to avoid such things if we can. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on one's point of view, God has the wherewithal to ensure we cannot avoid such consequences. If a friendly warning should not succeed in drawing us out of our spiritual somnolence, then plan B comes into effect for immediate execution, so to speak. The eliciting of fear by God has a compassionate aspect as well as a dimension of severity. If God were indifferent to our spiritual well-being, there would be no need for God to try various ways of enlisting our co-operation. According to the Sufi masters, God is not a tyrant who is so weak, lonely and insecure that the worship of human beings is necessary to put meaning and a sense of self-worth into Divine existence. God is independent of humanity. There is nothing we can add to Divinity if we submit to God. There is nothing we can detract from Divinity if we rebel against God. We will be the sole beneficiaries if we seek to fulfil the purpose of our existence. We will be the sole losers if we fail to realize our true identity and essential capacity. God invokes fear in our lives because of, let us say, God's fear we will persist in our folly and stupidity and miss the opportunity which our life times offer. This Divine fear for (not of) us is out of mercy toward, and compassion for, human beings. God grasps very well the infinite extent of power which is available to Divinity. God fully appreciates that whatever Divine commands are issued cannot be stopped or defended against by human beings. God knows the lives, health and welfare of every human being are subject to Divine prerogative. God is acquainted, in precise detail, with the unfathomable infinitude which separate Divine transcendence from the lives of human beings. God understands the utter dependence of human beings on God and the complete independence of God from humanity. Humanity and all of creation could be wiped from existence by God without so much as a quark left behind. This could be done in less time than no time at all. In short, God has insight into what Divinity is capable of. God has a very solid data base out of which to develop a fear on behalf of human beings. God is afraid for us because we don't have enough sense to be afraid for ourselves. God lets us taste some of the flavor of this Divine fear, and the knowledge in which it is rooted, by inducing fear in us. If we learn from this fear, if we take it to heart, if we begin to try to slough off our spiritual lethargy as a result of this fear, then we will benefit from the inducement of fear in the way God intended. The practitioners of the Sufi path confirm that God's preferred modalities of dealing with human beings are through love, intimacy, friendship, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, generosity, kindness, ease and so on. God shows us, and alludes to, the severe side of possibilities to inform us about the alternatives to God's preferred style of relating to human beings. The choice of which route we want to go is, for the most part, up to us. In a very fundamental way, the fear we direct toward God is really a fear of ourselves projected elsewhere. Just as God is well aware of what Divinity can do, we too are well aware of what we can do. We have an insiders perspective on our selfishness, cruelty, recklessness, rebelliousness, intransigence, density, darkness and ignorance. We know the sorrow, misery and hurt we can bring into the lives of others as well as our own life. We bear witness to how uncaring, unloving, insensitive and mean we can be. God tells us something about some of the rigorous and severe dimensions inherent in Divine possibility. From time to time, God shows something of Divine Attributes involving rigor and severity. We know something of own nature and possibilities. From the latter is born a fear of the former. We fear ourselves because we are out of control. We cannot predict if, and when, our underside will assert itself. We are terrified of our desires, inclinations and impulses. We are terrified of our condition of being out of control. This is so because beyond the horror of the knowledge of what we are capable, is the rude awakening that we ourselves will be responsible for whatever Divine consequences ensue from our giving into our inner darkness and ignorance. We fear God because God has shared with us something of what Divinity is capable with the right inducement from us. Furthermore, we fear God because we know of what we are all too capable. We fear God because we understand, however dimly, that giving expression to the dark aspect of our capacity will permit us to know, with even more intimacy, that of which God is capable. Be afraid. Be very afraid - but be most afraid of our capacity to give permission to God to leave us to our own devices ... devices of the ego which are capable of placing us (by "virtue" of our misuse of the God-given capacity to choose) beyond the horizons of Divine compassion, generosity, forgiveness, and protection. | Return to Streams Menu | Copyright © 2004 Interrogative Imperative Institute. All Rights Reserved.