A Reason to Fear

An atheist stopped by my blog the other day. He seemed to think it was important that I be told that “God is not love.” He had a long list of adjectives to describe what he saw God as being in the Old Testament, one of which was jealous. I couldn’t agree with all of the adjectives he used, but I could agree with that one because God describes himself as jealous. He wants our worship and doesn’t like it when we worship something else. My atheist friend appeared to think that was a bad thing.

To me, that is at the very heart of sinfulness. Compared to God, man is nothing, but so many people have this idea that they are so special that it would be wrong for God to tell them what to do. God made man from the dust of the ground. You can’t get any lower than that. We are dirt. Break us down into minerals and we’re worth less than $5. If we could see all of the Universe, we’re just tiny specks on a tiny planet near a tiny star in a tiny galaxy. What arrogance for us to think that God has any reason to listen to us. That would be like a roach telling us that we should let him stay in our house. The simple truth is that God has the power to create us and he has the power to destroy us. No wonder he tells us to fear him.

Part of the problem is that people don’t stop to think about just how big God is. The problem isn’t limited to atheists. Prosperity preachers have the same problem. While they talk about him being big enough to give people great wealth, they don’t stop to think that he might be big enough to have bigger plans than just giving us whatever we want. But God is God and he does what he pleases. If it pleased God to wipe us off the face of the earth, he could and would do it. Fortunately, it doesn’t please God to wipe us off the face of the earth. What pleased God was to provide a solution for our sin problem.

Maybe Christians are partly at fault. We spend so much time talking about how much God loves us and wants to have fellowship with us. Maybe we should spend more time talking about how God is disgusted with the sight of sin. Isn’t that what the Old Testament shows us? God laid down the law, as he had a right to do, but the Jews disobeyed and as a result he killed many. He sent many into captivity. These were his chosen people. If his chosen people couldn’t escape his wrath, how much more the gentiles.

It isn’t our place to decide that God is wrong to be jealous and all the other things we may say of him. It is our place to accept him for who and what he is. We want to turn God into a pussycat that we have no reason to fear. But God is a God of wrath, who sends fire from heaven. Though Jesus has opened the door so that we can boldly appear before God, God is a God to be feared.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: WestBow Press

Image
T oday, I’m writing a book review unlike any I have written before. Actually, I’m going to I’m reviewing two books and I haven’t read either one. As you may recall, some time ago, Thomas Nelson announced that they were entering the vanity press market, using the imprint WestBow Press. The first books out of that arrangement are making their way down the pipeline, two of which you can see here. The first thing I noticed when they arrived was the size of the box. I arrived home and saw the box sitting on my front step. My first thought was that they had only shipped on of them. The box is the same sized box Amazon.com uses to ship individual copies of my novels. I opened it up and found both novels stacked neatly, one on top of the other. Both books have the dimensions 6” x 9”, a fairly standard size for non-traditionally published books. Publishing a book with that dimension simplifies the process when a book will be published both as a paperback and a hardback. One of the books is p
Read more

Is Tate Publishing a Scam?

Image
T oday, I want to take one more look at Tate Publishing and Enterprises LLC. In case you missed Tuesday’s post, Tate Publishing is a subsidy press that focuses on unpublished authors. They charge a $3,990 publicist setup fee, but they do appear to have sufficient staff to justify their claim that they have allocated $27,000 for each book. Today, I want to look less at promises and more at results. In the interest of showing rather than telling, take a look at the video below: One of the services that Tate Publishing provides is that they create fifteen second spots like the one above and run them on cable networks. They promise 80,000 impressions. Or to state it another way, they promise that 80,000 people will see that commercial. Someone from Tate Publishing is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they charge an additional fee for these commercials. The way I would expect this to play out is that each commercial will air one time with about 80,000 people watching. T
Read more

Review: Raider Publishing

Image
A few weeks ago, I received a request from someone who had come across the popular Review: Westbow Press post. This reader requested that I look at Raider Publishing . After asking this reader a few questions via e-mail, I learned that she had used them to publish a book and was disgruntled with them. One of her complaints was that Adam Salviani was not responding to her e-mail and he was “unavailable” when she called his office in New York. This was brought on by her concern because she had not received an advance copy of her book and found that it had been published without her being informed. In her e-mail, she stated that she had been in contact with other customers and they had received the same treatment. I did what I normally do when I receive a request like this concerning a company I don’t recognize. I looked for as much third-party information as I could find on the web. Interestingly, I did that search before I realized she was disgruntled and I found relatively little to
Read more