Soulfood

I’ll post some sort of review, but here are some quotes from Rejoice and Tremble: The Surprising Good News of the Fear of the Lord by Michael Reeves.

P. 19 “…why is the culture of fear [in the post-Christian west] so strong today? Professor Frank Furedi writes: ‘Why Americans fear more when they have far less to fear than in other moments in the past is a question that puzzles numerous scholars. One argument used to explain this “paradox of a safe society” is that prosperity encourages people to become more risk and loss averse.’

“There may be something to this. We certainly are free to want more, have the chance to own more, and often feel the right to enjoy more. And the more you want something, the more you fear its loss. When your culture is hedonistic, your religion therapeutic, and your goal a feeling of personal well-being, fear will be the ever-present headache. For all that, though, Furedi argues that the ‘paradox of a safe society’ actually has deeper roots. It is, he maintains, moral confusion in society that has led to an inability to deal with fear, a rise in anxiety, and so an increase in the number of protective fences erected around us.”

Furedi is a secular humanist. Reeves later quotes a passage from Bertrand Russell’s 1927 speech “Why I Am Not a Christian” in which Russell asserts that freedom from religious superstition will eliminate fearfulness in the enlightened individual. As Reeves notes, we are far enough into the Enlightenment experiment a century after Russell’s assertion to call out his assertion as the naive nonsense it always has been.

P. 27 “…[W]e fear because we love: we love ourselves and so fear bad things happening to us; we love our families, our friends, our things and so fear losing them.”

P. 53 “Right fear does not stand in tension with love for God. Right fears falls on its face before the Lord, but falls leaning ‘toward the Lord.’ [emphasis in the original, which is quoting C.H. Spurgeon] It is not as if love draws near and fear distances. Nor is this fear one side of our reaction to God. It is not simply that we love God for his graciousness and fear him for his majesty. That would be a lopsided fear of God. We also love him for his holiness and tremble at the marvelousness of his mercy. True fear of God is true love for God defined: it is the right response to God’s full-orbed revelation of himself in all his grace and glory.”

Following Bunyan and Calvin, P. 65-66 “[S]aving faith cannot be separated from the right fear of God, for we will trust in God only to the extent that we have this fear that leans toward him. Fear not only defines our love for God and our joy in God. It also prompts us to trust in God. Thus, John Calvin could write, ‘The knowledge of God set forth for us in Scripture…invites us first to fear God, then to trust in him.’ The order is inescapable, for only a God-fearing heart will ever be a God-trusting heart.”

On the fear of the Father: “…[T]he filial fear the Son shares with us is quite different from the sinner’s dread of God and dread of punishment. It is an adoration of God that dreads sin itself, not just its punishment, for it has come to treasure God and so loathe all that is ungodly. As Calvin put it, the ‘pious mind’ restrains itself from sinning, not out of dread of punishment alone; but because is loves and reveres God as Father, it worships and adores him as Lord. Even if there were no hell, it would still shudder at offending him alone.” (p. 102)

P. 104 “Only when we are resolutely Christ-centered – “signifying” God from the Son and so calling him Father – only then can we tell richer, truer gospel. Only then does the story make sense that our sin is a deeper matter than external obedience, that it is a relational matter of our hearts going astray and loving what is wrong. Only then will we speak of God the Father sending forth his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brothers, sharing his sonship and bring us as children into his family. Only that Christ-centered gospel can draw people to share Jesus’s own fear.”

On growing in the fear of God (P. 111): “The fear of God as a strong biblical theme thus stands as a superb theological guard dog. It stops us from thinking we were made for either passionless performance or a detached knowledge of abstract truths. It backs us into the acknowledgement that we are made to know God in such a way that our hearts tremble at his beauty and splendor, that we are remade at the deepest level. It shows us that entering the life of Christ involves a transformation of our very affections, so that we begin actually to despise – and not merely renounce – the sins we once cherished, and treasure the God we once abhorred.”

P. 131 “Which do you fear more: being sinful or being uncomfortable? God or man? Being a sinner or being exposed before others as a sinner?”

Quoting Bunyan (p. 132): “Child of God, thou that fearest God, here is mercy nigh thee, mercy enough, everlasting mercy upon thee. This is long-lived mercy. It will live longer than thy sin, it will live longer than thy sorrows, it will live longer than thy persecutors. It is mercy from everlasting to contrive thy salvation, and mercy to everlasting to weather it out with all thy adversaries. Now what can hell and death do to him that hath this mercy of God upon him? And this hath the man that feareth the Lord.”

P. 133 “Believers who have a right fear of the Lord, who know God and know these promises, will bemoan their prayerlessness but will know something of a heartfelt, affectionate prayer life. They will want to know God better and enjoy sweeter communion with him.”

P. 135 “The living God is so wonderful that he is not truly known where he is not worshiped and heartily adored. There is a particular challenge here for those of us who love theology. All too easily our theological studies can become exercises in puffing ourselves up and lording it over others. Thus Helmut Thielicke warned his theological students of the vain stage of “theological puberty” many go through after a year or two of study. In that stage, infatuated with new theological concepts, the young theologian is filled with a gnostic pride. His love dies in the devilish thrill of acquiring a knowledge that means power. Then this skewed knowledge proves its own perversity in his character as he becomes a graceless theological thug, ever itching for the chance to show off his prowess. And it is hardly as if older theologians are immune to this disease. We who love theology need to remember that there is no true knowledge of God where there is no right fear of him. The fear of God is the only possible foundation upon which true knowledge is built; all knowledge acquired elsewhere is counterfeit and will eventually prove itself as such.”

Continuing on P. 136: “But the fear of the Lord is not only the beginning of the knowledge of God. It is also the beginning of true knowledge of ourselves. Early in his Institutes, Calvin wrote that ‘’man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty.’ Only in the light of God’s holiness and majesty do I truly understand how puny, how vicious, and how pathetic I naturally am. In other words, I do not have a true knowledge of myself if I do not fear God. Without that fear, my self-perception will be wildly distorted by my pride and by the messages of the sinful culture around me. It is when we are most thrilled with God and his redemption that our masks slip and we see ourselves for what we really are: creatures, sinners, forgiven, adopted.”

P. 140 “…[T]rembling in wonder at God…is the key to true humility, which is not about trying to think less of yourself or trying to think of yourself less but about marveling more at him. A true and happy fear of God simply eclipses self.”

P. 141: “We don’t tend to talk much about ‘fear of man’ today: we call it people-pleasing, peer pressure, or codependency. Some classic signs of it are the overcommitment that comes from an inability to say no, self-esteem issues, and an excessive sensitivity to the comments, views, and behavior of others.”

P. 149 “Left to our sinful fears of God, we will shrink from God and not enjoy all goodness. Left to our fear of man, we will wilt before every criticism, unable to enjoy real fellowship.”

Such a wonderful book! You should read it.