Skip to main content

Fear of the Lord

             The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. (Proverbs 9:10)

We must begin, again, with the understanding that this is true of any “ultimate.” If you are a natural materialist, fear of – or respect for – natural law and physical science is the beginning of wisdom. It’s wise not to jump off buildings thinking you can walk on air. No matter what you consider to be the foundation of reality, fear/respect of it is essential to wisdom. And sadly, when that foundation of reality is impersonal, not sentient, and/or distant, we tend to not fear/respect it, at least until it’s too late. I’m not saying this to disrespect God in any way. It’s just that some people put anything that is religious or spiritual into a “ ” special category that has nothing to do with reality or logic.

            We should be careful in our choices about the foundation of our reality because we will fail until our reality is as close as we can get to reality. And if we make the God described in Scripture the foundation of our reality, we have a foundation that has stood the test of time. Atheists like to suggest that instead, we might choose to worship Odin or Thor, but the problem with the various pantheons of gods is that they don’t provide a coherent, cohesive foundation for reality. Neither does the physical universe at the level of understanding they have now or had at various points in the past. We continue to grow in our understanding of the universe, but it’s far from complete. The same is true with the God of Scripture. If you pick and choose verses here and there and fail to examine the whole, you miss the keys. In fact, Romans 1 suggests that both the physical universe and Scripture point to God. It’s only as we gain knowledge that we can gain understanding.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Higher Thoughts

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the  Lord . “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)           The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,   for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord      so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:15-16) If you read about the ancient gods of the various peoples, you’ll find that they think just like people. In fact, they think just like the sort of people we really wouldn’t want to be around. They think like the most corrupt Hollywood producer or, like hormone overloaded teens with no upbringing.   It’s embarrassing to read. I have a friend who argues that because God is not just like us, He is so vastly dif...
2 comments
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more