![\"MOA](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2020\/03\/1818584.jpg\")
<\/a>I just came across the claim online, from an obviously very angry former Latter-day Saint, that people like me obey the leaders of the Church blindly, out of fear, and that we strive to obey God, likewise, out of fear.<\/p>\n
Now, I know nothing about this guy\u2019s psychology or his personal history. \u00a0But I can speak with considerable authority about my own mental state and my own autobiography, and I can say quite confidently that I don\u2019t follow my leaders \u201cblindly.\u201d \u00a0I know what I\u2019m doing. \u00a0I\u2019ve made conscious and deliberate choices. \u00a0Nor do I \u201cfear\u201d the Brethren. \u00a0I respect them. \u00a0I honor them. \u00a0Frankly, I hold them in great affection. \u00a0(I know and have known several of them fairly well.) \u00a0And I try to put their teachings into practice.<\/p>\n
Nor do I \u201cfear\u201d God<\/em>. \u00a0Yes, yes, I know that the King James Bible and subsequent Christian writers use expressions such as \u201cGod-fearing\u201d and \u201cthe fear of God.\u201d \u00a0And I have no problem with such expressions. \u00a0I believe that they refer to holding God in awe, venerating God, worshiping God, feeling deep humility before God, submitting to God and to his will, loving him. \u00a0I do not believe that such phrases indicate an obligation to quake in perpetual debilitating terror before the Lord. \u00a0The God whom I worship is a loving Father. \u00a0He is \u201cGod our Saviour, w<\/span>ho will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth\u201d (1 Timothy 2:3-4)<\/span>. He is dramatically and wonderfully different from the God described in Jonathan Edwards\u2019s famous 1741 sermon \u201cSinners in the Hands of an Angry God\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet \u2019tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment: \u2018Tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffer\u2019d to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep: and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God\u2019s hand has held you up: There is no other reason to be given why you han\u2019t gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship: Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you don\u2019t this very moment drop down into hell.<\/p>\n O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: \u2018Tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell: You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n We aren\u2019t \u201cloathsome insects\u201d in the sight of our Father. \u00a0We aren\u2019t mere \u201cspiders.\u201d \u00a0All of us are his \u201coffspring\u201d (Acts 17:28) \u2014 or, as several translations render the relevant Greek word of Acts 17:28, \u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2, we are his \u201cchildren.\u201d \u00a0And \u201cGod so loved the world,\u201d \u00a0he wants so passionately for us to be saved, \u00a0that \u201che gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life\u201d (John 3:16). \u00a0He weeps when we fail. \u00a0(See Moses 7.) \u00a0He wants to give us everything he has, and to make us everything that he is.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not terrified of the God disclosed to us in the teachings of the Restoration. \u00a0Why on earth would<\/em> I be?<\/p>\n This is interesting: \u00a0\u201cAlcohol consumption in U.S. hits new low amid health concerns:\u00a0Old advice that alcohol might have some health benefits has been largely debunked.\u201d<\/a> \u00a0In fact, it\u2019s tempting to think of it as a discovery from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122.<\/p>\n Speaking of which: \u00a0Finally, just so nobody out there gets to feeling too complacently comfortable, I offer a septet of chilling examples that I\u2019ve actually drawn<\/em> from the Hitchens File<\/em>\u2122:<\/p>\n Sadly, as distressing as such reports incontestably are, there\u2019s really nothing that we can do<\/em> about these horrors. \u00a0As Edward FitzGerald memorably put it in his justly celebrated English re-creation of the early-twelfth-century Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t of Omar Khayy\u00e1m<\/i>,<\/p>\n The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, <\/a> And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, <\/a> \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 I just came across the claim online, from an obviously very angry former Latter-day Saint, that people like me obey the leaders of the Church blindly, out of fear, and that we strive to obey God, likewise, out of fear. Now, I know nothing about this guy\u2019s psychology or his personal history. \u00a0But I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":40306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2145,11353,4543,2905,788,4780],"class_list":["post-112370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alcohol","tag-drinking","tag-fear","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mormon","tag-obedience"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/a>\n
\nMoves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit <\/a>
\nShall lure it back to cancel half a Line, <\/a>
\nNor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.<\/p>\n
\nWhereunder crawling coop\u2019d we live and die, <\/a>
\nLift not your hands to It for help\u2013for It <\/a>
\nAs impotently moves as you or I.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n