There are many who consider the topic of spiritual fear to be part and parcel of the religious experience. “To fear God is to know God,” they say. Original manuscripts of various religions talk about this fear. Adherents defend their faith through commentary on the need to fear God (or their respective Diety). Putting aside the wisdom of others, and looking within, I can not fathom the idea of equating the emotion of fear with the notion of God. It is a confusion of respect, turned into the murkiness of human degredation. For fear, sometimes useful, is more often the slippery slope to control. Fear is often used as a weapon of the wise, to make the masses align with obdedience to dogma and it certainly isn’t an approach of love.

Obedience

My experiece with religions and spiritual groups, is that they typify an idea of rightness of their dogma, and wrongness of those outside it. Like a circle, where the inner space representing one’s faith is pure, the view of what lies beyond the boundary of the circle is forbidden. It’s often forbidden because a group seeks to maintain order and membership. If a respective religion praises the worship of another faith, members might leave to taste the other faith. However, if they demonize the other faith, calling it a “cult” or “hellbound,” then the masses are kept in line – kept within the circle.

While some organizations reach outward, embracing all faiths, the vast majority do not.

Obedience and adherence to the group, to the dogma, establishes power. There is power in numbers and holding adherents to the will of leadership expands into financial and even political power. Financial power is in the giving of the members. Monthly or weekly contributions are a stapple of most faiths. While some contribution is required to pay the bills, this can often become egregious, to the point that the leaders have a fleet of exotic cars, or their own personal 747 airliner. A pastor who snaps photo opportunities with rich, powerful men running for office, then selling the candidate as “the best choice,” is weilding power of their masses. One church may not wield a lot of voting power, but an entire denomination or religion certainly does.

Fear vs. Love

The best discussion of fear, is perhaps the simplest: Fear is separation, love is union. Consider something you fear. Imagine it. Perhaps it’s crime, government, family endangerment, poisonous snakes – when you hold this in the mental realm, do you feel a oneness with this thing, or a separation?

For me, the thing that is feared, is created as a separate entity. It can not be thought of as “part of me” because I fear it, and I don’t fear myself.

The moment we seperate one thing from another, is the moment we create a sliding scale of “good vs. bad.” In other words, there is never a “seperate but equal.” This was made evident in American politics of the 1950’s, when racist organizations segregated white people from others. Local governments created better opportunities for the majority (white) while looking down and marginalizing othe races. Seperation is never equal.

As fear is a form of seperation on the mental and emotional level, it is a different feeling than devotion, and strength through love.

Union is the act of surrender that is built upon the gaze of compassion. At it’s perfection, there is a point where the One becomes the All.

These two different approaches, fear and love, have two different outcomes. Fear based faith is one of control, whereas compassion led faith is one of acceptance.

Relationships built on Fear

Our personal relationships can point to the failure of fear as a methodology. Fear based relationships last only as long as one gets what they need from it. A child who fears a parent more than experiencing love from it, will leave that relationship when they find something better. The same is true of a marriage.

To fear your partner, is a relationship built upon selfish desire to get what you need and leave when you find something better. Diety can be your partner if you approach it as a work of union.