Are You Also Afraid of God?

Ultimately, we are afraid only of God.

Psychoanalysis teaches: we fear the unknown, and we tend to go back to the known, no matter how bad it is.
We know the dark world we live in and it no longer frightens us, because we are already used to the environment.
We know that there is something more, beyond what we see. We also know that it affects us daily; it is something we do not know and therefore we are afraid.
And social and religious traditions show us a known path that numbs us in the midst of suffering, and they prevent our liberation.

How narrow is the gate, and tight the road that leads to life!
Few are those who find it. Matthew 7:14.

Fear

I have been thinking a lot about fear.
Not the fear of the dark, of death or of the future.
But a subtler fear, a more hidden one…
a fear that almost no one admits, but that defines almost everything in us:
the fear of good.
The fear of God.

It seems contradictory, but it is real.
We live in a dark world and we are not afraid of it.
We accept injustice, lies, corruption, unfair competition, selfishness, emotional addictions, and we call it normal.
But when someone speaks of light, of truth, of surrender to the Spirit…
the atmosphere closes up.
Resistance grows.
Fear appears.

And it was reflecting on this that I realized something that is at the root of this whole story:
we are afraid of good… because we were taught to be afraid of God.

Like Adam in the garden

This story begins in Eden.
When Adam eats of the fruit, the Bible says something curious:

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked. (Genesis 3:7)

They did not go blind.
On the contrary, their eyes were opened.
But they began to see with shame, with fear.
They noticed their own nakedness, covered themselves with leaves, and, most importantly,
hid from God.

I heard your steps in the garden and I was afraid… (Genesis 3:10)

Fear was born… not from evil.
But from the light of God.

And ever since, this has been the natural tendency of humanity:
to flee from the light, to distrust good, to hide from the truth.
As if the problem were God, and not the distance we created from Him.

“Men loved darkness more…”

Jesus confirms this clearly in John 3:

The light came into the world, but men loved darkness more than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)

It is not just ignorance.
It is a choice.
It is a flight instinct.
It is fear of the light… because the light reveals.

And the more unresolved things we carry inside us, the more we fear exposure.
We do not want to be seen.
We do not want to be transformed.
That is why we prefer the disguise of religiosity to true surrender.

The greatest deception

And it was at this point that another penny dropped for me.
The devil has been deceiving men with the Word of God.

It was so in Eden:
Did God really say…?
It was so with Jesus in the desert:
It is written…

And it is still so today.
Religious tradition often uses the Bible to generate fear.
It quotes isolated passages.
It reinforces the image of a rigid, vengeful, controlling God.
And with that, without realizing it, it teaches the people to be afraid of God as Adam was, not with reverence, but with dread.
To flee from the light.
To distrust good.
To be afraid of God.

And people have settled in and grown accustomed to it until today, exactly as they did with Moses, in the desert:

When the people saw the thunder and lightning, and heard the sound of the trumpet and saw the mountain smoking, they all trembled with fear. They stood at a distance and said to Moses: Speak to us yourself, and we will listen. But do not let God speak to us, or we will die. (Exodus 20:18,19)

Jesus, however, in the desert, chose to listen and to give ear to the Holy Spirit:

It is said… (Luke 4:12) 

And the devil left him.

We, however, continue, fed by traditions, to choose someone to speak about God for us, in spite of the teaching:

For there is one God and one mediator between God and men: the man Christ Jesus, (1 Timothy 2:5)

He showed us the way: that of the ordinary human being, as he made himself, guided by the Holy Spirit.

Lucifer, the light, and the fear that remained

And there is still a symbolic and profound detail:
Lucifer, a Latin name that means “light bearer,” was associated with the devil by religious tradition.
But the Bible never calls the devil Lucifer.
This connection was born in the Vulgate (the Latin translation) and was later fed by writers like Dante and Milton.
In the Hebrew of Isaiah 14, the text speaks of a “bright star,” in a poetic tone, about the king of Babylon.

Even so, tradition stuck the idea on:
“beware of the light, it can be deceptive.”

And this was perhaps the greatest spiritual blow:
making man distrust the light.
Be afraid of good.
Be afraid of God.

The fear of light: today

The truth is that this fear did not stay in Eden.
It is still alive today, in me, in you, in all of us.
We live in a world where people say they want truth…
But, in practice, they prefer not to be confronted.

We prefer to control appearances rather than deal with what is inside.
We prefer to keep the routine rather than make room for something new.
We prefer memorized prayers to a sincere conversation with God.

Because, deep down, the light frightens.
Not because it is bad.
But because it shows what is hidden.

And then, instead of running to God… we hide.
With work. With religion. With distractions.
With very well built justifications.

But God remains the same

The light has not changed since Eden.
What changed was our gaze.
From a simple and trusting gaze… to a suspicious, guilty, defensive gaze.

But God did not come to accuse us.
He came to transform us.
The light is not meant to shame us, it is meant to heal us.

And one day, everything will change

The Bible says there will be a moment, and no one knows when, in which we will be transformed.

In the twinkling of an eye… (1 Corinthians 15:52)

This “opening of eyes” will be different from the first.
It will not reveal shame, but life.
It will not be the beginning of fear, but the end of it.

Because on that day, we will finally see God as He is, and no longer as we learned to fear Him.
And we will see ourselves as we are, without needing to flee, hide or disguise anything.

Until then…

Until then, we are being transformed little by little.
Every time we choose the light, even trembling inside.
Every time we let go of control, even without understanding everything.
Every time we stop fleeing… and look at God without fear.

This is the deepest liberation:
to stop being afraid of God.
And to trust, truly, that He is good.

Learn more:

When the light frightens more than the darkness

The great deception