"Be Not Afraid"

(Isaiah 41:10)

Back at my old Catholic church, we were taught to fear our Maker. Fear of God was healthy, we were told. We were not told what was meant by "fear", and I used to imagine all of humanity cowering and shaking beneath the glory of God when the world ended. This image was incongruent with my understanding of a personal, loving God through Jesus. I didn't question it, I just accepted it as something I was not perhaps meant to understand. Now I'm at a point in my life where I find it healthy to question and dissect, so when my pastor began a sermon about "fear of the Lord", I listened in eagerly.

He explained it like this- do not think that the Bible was originally written in English. Scholars believe that Jesus would have spoken in Aramaic. The written language would have been Hebrew, and from there the Bible was translated into other languages, and then re-translated again and again. If we go back to Hebrew and translate the word we printed as "fear", a better translation could have been "awe", "reverence" or "respect".

How would this affect our understanding of the Word of God? Let's take Psalm 112:1 and find out.
"Praise the LORD. Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who finds great delight in his commands."

Sounds very odd, to find delight in doing things for someone you fear. Now let's change the word "fear", and see how different the affect is:
"Praise the LORD. Blessed is the man who respects the LORD, who finds great delight in his commands."

 A very different picture entered my mind's eye as the pastor spoke of this: end of the world again, with people bowed down and weeping with joy, overwhelmed at the sight of God.

A little side-story: There was a woman who oversaw my Catechism classes, who was not too friendly with us kids. She used to go one by one and make sure none of us were slouching in our pews, and heaven forbid any of us talked during mass. She would also tell us that if we received the host and chewed it, we were chewing Jesus. Yikes! She told us to let it disintegrate a bit and then to swallow it whole. This led to me being very confused when, in a Protestant church, I was presented with an actual piece of bread for communion.

"Do I... do I chew it? Is it food here?"