Sunday Series: The Gospel of Fear

I became born again out of fear.

I was maybe seven or eight when they took me to watch Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames. With abject horror, I watched actors, who were seemingly good people, describe in vivid detail what awaited anyone who didn’t “give their life to Christ.” Add to that my overactive imagination that actually saw the flames, the laughter of the devil and the demons dancing in delight in my little mind’s eye.

So I said the prayer. I “accepted Jesus.” But I did it because I was terrified.

But as I’ve learned, fear is no way to inspire love or loyalty. No authoritarian ruler in history has ever won the hearts of their people through fear. And yet this was the image of God I was given, a vengeful God who would cast you aside simply because you didn’t say the right words. My loyalty to God was born from a desire not to go to hell. And what does that say about the God we claim to serve, if that’s what He wants?

I was so fearful that I convinced myself anyone who wasn’t “born again” was going to hell, because that’s what I’d been taught. I remember talking with a friend who happens to be Catholic, and in my indoctrination, I called him Catholic and us Christians, as if the two were different categories.

That kind of division is far too common. But why? If we all profess to believe in Jesus, wouldn’t we all fall under the same banner of Christian? We are so quick to condemn, to say who is going to heaven or hell, who is loved and who isn’t. But is that how God loves? I don’t think so.

Listen, I don’t know much. The Bible calls God a jealous God, but not a petty one. We’re the petty ones. We’re the ones holding grudges, refusing to forgive, burning ourselves just to see the hurt on ‘others’. And don’t we just love to gleefully tell people that they’re going to hell without even knowing the criteria for heaven.

My relationship with God is ever evolving. It’s new every day. My faith has changed. I’ve deconstructed and reconstructed it again and again. I have doubted God. I have left the church because of a hurt so deep that I keep telling anyone who will listen how that particular church is toxic. And what I’ve come to know beyond a doubt is this: God cannot be put in a box.

The God who created the universe cannot be contained in a book. Scripture is a sacred snapshot of who He is, but even our greatest wisdom can’t fathom His fullness. The universe is vast, beyond imagination. We are still trying to understand how it works and why it’s expanding, and we don’t even know where the sun is taking us.

Earth is just one of an estimated 3.2 trillion planets orbiting the 200 billion stars of our Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system takes about 250 million years to make a single orbit around the galaxy’s centre a cosmic journey so vast, it makes a human lifetime feel like a blink. NASA estimates that the observable universe contains about 2 trillion galaxies, each filled with its own stars, planets, and untold possibilities. This Sun is just one star among billions, and it sits about 26,000 light-years from the centre of the Milky Way, itself 100,000 light-years across. When you look at an image of our cosmic neighbourhood, you realise that we are impossibly small. And yet we act as if we’ve mapped out the mind of the Universe’s Maker. We are a small, smug species, convinced we know exactly who God is and how He’ll judge His creation.

Because we don’t like someone, we decide they’re going to hell.
Because someone loves differently, we label them condemned.

And that’s where the “gospel of fear” falls apart. Fear might get people in the door, but it doesn’t keep them. Fear wears out. Fear wounds. People who come to God out of fear often leave with scars that never heal.

That’s how I came to church, through fear. And even now, I catch myself leading with it, because indoctrination runs deep. But I’m learning. I’m deconstructing that old fear and rebuilding a faith rooted in love.

I’m learning to see God as a Father, which matters to me because I am fatherless. I’m learning to believe that He loves me, and if the Creator of the universe can love a tiny speck like me, then maybe I can learn to love myself, too. And when I love myself, I can love others just as fiercely as He loves me, not because I’m scared they’ll leave me, but because love is who He is. For me, the proof of God’s love has always been in the love we give and the love we receive.

The gospel of fear should have no place in the church.
We are called to love. To be light.
And how can we be the light if we spend our time scaring people away from the God who is love?

Someone I admire once said, “Preach the gospel and if necessary, use words.”
Condemning others isn’t preaching. How you live your life, how you love those around you, that is the gospel in action.

If anything, let love be your religion. Correct with love. Don’t point and say, “You’re going to hell.”
Love so fiercely that people can’t help but ask what — or who — makes you love like that.

My father used to say, “Love is the measure to which you’re willing to be inconvenienced.”
So be inconvenienced daily.

Because perfect love casts out fear.
And if we are to be the church of God, then let’s stop spreading fear and start spreading love.