Episode 76 - Afraid of God

In response to numerous Reddit inquiries, This is the first of a series of responses to questions and concerns people have about their faith.

Transcript

INTRODUCTION

Hello and welcome to Teleios Talk. My name is Wendell Martens. We're going to be trying something a little different here at Teleios Talk going ahead. I've been getting these notices from Reddit, questions that people have about Christianity and I was thinking I should probably open a few of these and go through them to see what we can get in the way of answers or, if nothing else, see how other people look at, or understand, Christianity.

So we're going to start off with one I think that is going to be something that most Christians, especially new Christians, struggle with. And that is: "I have an understanding of who God is, and I know that the Bible says that I should fear God." But what does fearing God mean?

The Question

So let's take a look at the Reddit here. It starts off by saying, "I'm afraid of God, but not in a good way. Okay, so hi, I'm a Christian." Now that's a good way to start off. "I am a Christian." This person is saying that I believe in God. Okay. I have accepted the gift of Christ, the gift of salvation. I believe that I'm a Christian. I think sometimes we can also look at this saying I'm a Christian as perhaps I come from a Christian country. But I think for today, what we're looking at today, we're going to accept this face value that this person is in fact a Christian.

First Point - What to Believe

The writer says, "I do not follow a specific denomination church or Bible preferred." What they're saying is that they don't go to a specific church.
They're not going to be Catholic, or Orthodox, or Protestant, which makes me think that they haven't found a church that they really fit with. I think sometimes we struggle with that. We say, "I'm a Christian, but what kind of Christian am I?" Well, you know that Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church have been around the longest and that the Protestants have only been around for the last 500 years.

But what does that mean? When you're a Christian, what church do you choose? And I think I would suggest to people, you should choose something in your community. I know when I was first married, I was going to a church that was about an hour away from where I lived. And after I got married, my wife and I talked about it, we decided that, you know, instead of traveling an hour to church, we should probably finds something that was close by. So we found a church that was close by, and we had some struggles with their theology, and how the church interpreted scripture, but we did find a group of Christians there that we could spend time with.

So let's go back to this here, the preffered Bible. I know that a lot of people really get into this whole, is the King James Bible the best, or are there other translations? I think when you're looking at translations, we have to remember that the Bible was not, in fact, written in English. The Bible was actually written in three different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. And so the Bible that we read today has been translated from those original languages, and the people that translate from the original language have to try to make things understandable in English from a language that explains things differently. 

So for example, my parents both speak German, low German, most likely a Plaudietsch, and they have sayings that they will use. One of the sayings that my father used to use, if you translate directly into English, is "throw the horse over the fence some hay." Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense in English, why would you throw the horse over the fence? You would throw the hay over the fence. But this is the idea behind translations. So when you're translating the Bible, you're looking at the original language. What does the original language say? And how does that work in English so that an English reader can understand what's being said?

Second Point - Open-mindedness

It goes on to say, "I've recently tried to be open-minded about these things, and yet it seems it's only made God look horrifying in my eyes." I think I'd like to have some more information about why God looks horrifying in their eyes.
Well, we talked about being open-minded, and open-minded can mean a couple of different things. Being over-minded can sometimes mean that you're just willing to listen to anything, or anybody, who's talking to you. Being over-minded can mean that you are searching. And I think in this case here, this person is searching. 

They are searching to understand, "Okay, I'm a Christian, but there's all these different churches I can go to. What church is the best church for me to attend?" "I'm a Christian, but there's all these Bibles to read. What's the best Bible that I should be reading?" I think if you're a new Christian, you can start off with something that's easier to read. We have the New Living Bible, which is a translation and not a paraphrase. You have the New International Version, again, which is a translation and not a paraphrase. Those are easy to read Bibles. 

From there, you can move into something like the ESV, English Standard Version. It's a little bit more difficult, but it's not too hard to grasp what's being said. And then you can move from that into something like NASB or King James, where the language is a little bit different and sometimes can be a bit more difficult to understand. And yet is still a very good translation. 

Third Point - Fear

I'm scared, he says. I'm assuming it's a he. "I'm scared I'll get the wrong denomination." So what does this mean, the wrong denomination? Is this idea that perhaps there's only one true church? Is the idea here that the other churches are maybe teaching a heresy? And I think if you dig into it, you can find a lot of theologians online who are going to support this idea, that other churches teach heresy. You're going to find a lot of theologians online from Protestant background who are going to knock down the Catholics and knock down the Orthodox Church. 

And there are some things that I myself struggle with when it comes to the Catholic understanding of Christianity, and the infallibility of the Pope, and the dependency on traditions. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Catholic Church is heretical, because, if you look at the Protestant Church, you certainly do find a lot of churches, in the Protestant denominations, which are heretical. I would look at the Trinity Church in Phoenix, with Mark Driscoll ahead of it. I would look at Joel Osteen's church down in Texas, and churches like that as being under the Protestant umbrella and yet working in a heretical frame of reference. They're not really teaching true Christianity at this point. 

So, you know, when he says, "I'm scared I'll get the wrong denomination." I think what we have to realize is that you have to find a community of believers, you have to find a church, that is going to come behind you and support you, but will also allow you to do things like ask questions. You need to find a church that will allow these things. So I heard, especially with Trinity Church in Phoenix, if you choose to move away from that church, or go to another church, they'll cut you off. They won't have anything to do with you anymore. I've heard they even go so far as sending out letters from their lawyers threatening you with legal action. That doesn't sound like a church that is necessarily following Christian doctrine.

Fourth Point - The Struggle 

Now you continue on it says, "Catholics believe grace is through the church, and Orthodox believe differently. Each side has evidence such as early church roots, the Eucharistic mindset, and more." So reading this, it sounds like they have done some digging. They've been looking into the Christian church and what it teaches and how it affects them in their life. It looks like they are focusing more towards Catholic, or Orthodox, than Protestant, which, I think, probably says something about the way they were brought up.

A lot of people look at the Catholic church as being the true church. I know, from spending some time in Guatemala, helping people building houses there and witnessing to people, working in the orphanages, working with addicts and stuff in Guatemala, and just spending time with the people down there. You find that there's this idea that the church, especially the Catholic church governs sort of life and death. Okay? So you're born, you get baptized, and then you live your life the way you want. And then when you die, the church buries you, you get the last rights and it's all good. But that that space in between being born and dying is up to you. You can do whatever you want. You can ask for forgiveness and keep on going. 

When you look at the Protestant church, this is very different. The Protestant church says that you need to keep living your life as a Christian. But the things you do in everyday life, the way that you talk with other people, the way that you carry yourself, or expresses who you are in Christ – you are a new person in Christ. And it's not that you're saved through works. So it's not that in being good, you will attain heaven. It is that you are saved, and because you're saved you want – you desire – to live differently; and then you work every day to live that way, and not because you you're gonna gain salvation through it. Here, each side has evidence, such as early church roots, the Eucharistic mindset, and more.

Well, I think you could look at the three different patterns of church, or even if you want to go out so far as the Coptic or the Oriental Church, each church can look back at the church fathers, each church can look back at how faith was developed, back all the way to win Christ was on the earth, to today. How does that affect things like the Eucharist? Things like baptism, things like marriage, and all those things? The haven't really changed significantly except for how tradition sort of colors our understanding of those things. 

So for example, in Protestant backgrounds, we do not believe in what's called trans-substantiation. So we don't believe that when you eat the bread or drink the wine, that it is, in fact, the blood of Christ or the body of Christ. We believe that it is symbolic. Whereas in more Orthodox and Catholic traditions, they believe that the wine is in fact the blood of Christ when you ingest it, and the bread becomes the actual body of Christ when it's ingested. And we see in the early church, this was actually a problem for them because they were considered cannibals because they were eating a body. And so things like this are, they're good questions. You know, what does your church think about different things? How does it interpret different things? How do I understand those things? 

Fifth Point - Outside Influence

It says, "It's hard to choose because in others eyes, I am truly a sinner, and heretic, and possibly not saved." All right, this is another thing here that I find interesting. I would like to know more information; in whose eyes, in the eyes of their family, in the eyes of their community? I'm wondering where the world is person lives. So, I think if they live in western culture, so let's look at Canada, US, and parts of Europe, like Ireland, England, Scotland, and so on and so forth, you're probably not going to see some of these things. Okay. But if you live in other parts of the world, like Eastern Europe, possibly in parts of Africa, South America, even in Asia, this might be more true for this person. So if they don't follow a certain church, then they are seen as a heretic. 

Or maybe they have been brought up in more of a Protestant mindset, and now they're looking at going to Catholic Church. Then I can see in the western civilization, like I mentioned earlier, Canada, US, Europe, those places like that, where they might say, "Oh, you can't go to Catholic Church because that's heretical." But I think it says something about the people that they are in communication with. Why do they say that these churches are heretical? And why would they say that going to this church means that you're not saved?

So I have a cousin who was brought up in the same church that I was, with a Protestant background. And when he got older, he chose to join the Catholic Church. He wanted to become a monk and he spent some time in monastery. It didn't work out for him, unfortunately, with health issues, he was asked to choose a different path. They didn't kick him out of the church. They just said being a monk is not going to be good for you because of your health. Now, there are members of my family who have decided that since he has left the Protestant mindset, and has moved into the Catholic church, that he has actually committed heresy, which I don't agree with. I don't have a problem with my cousin at all. Yes, we do differ on things like where did Luther come up with his ideas? So the idea behind the Reformation, and the Protestants separation from the church. Those are areas where we definitely disagree on, but we don't disagree on the important things like salvation. We don't disagree on things like the gospel.

And so you need to ask yourself – these people who are calling you a heretic for looking at another church – why do they think that? What has brought them to this idea that going to another church is heresy.

Sixth Point - Prayer

Okay. "So this year I tried," I'm going to scroll up a little bit here. "I tried praying and it seems God never responded." Well, I think we all can say that we've prayed and it doesn't seem that God responds. We can all say that we've found ourselves in difficult situations and it feels like God doesn't care. We can all say that, you know, we have had struggles in our lives, whether that be health or sin struggles, and we ask God, "God, please take this from me," and it doesn't feel like God takes that from you. 

Sometimes, when you pray, you can almost feel or almost hear an audible response. So what happens when you pray sometimes, and I know this is true in my life, you pray to God, you say, "God, I would like help with this thing." And then that thing comes up and you have to make a decision. Now you can make the decision that you've always made or you can make a new decision. And what you find is when you're praying for help in something that that new decision, that change becomes almost like this thing that you can't put away. It's like someone's whispering in your ear, you know, maybe you shouldn't do that. 

So for example, we all have our cell phones, and it's quite easy to look at, and be a part of things, on our cell phones. You would not otherwise want other people to know of, and you certainly know are wrong, or even sinful. And so you say to God, "Please God, keep me from doing this thing," and you're good for a day. You're good for two days, you're good for three days, and on the fourth day, you're by yourself, and you have this voice in your head, "You know what? You haven't looked at this thing, or you haven't taken part of this thing, in a while. Nobody's around. No one's going to catch you. Go ahead, do that thing." And then at the same time, or maybe as you're going to do that thing, you get another voice in your head that says, "I think you need to stop. I think you need to just turn your phone off, or put your phone away, or go outside, or phone somebody, or do something else and get away from that." And in that, I believe you're hearing the voice of God. You're getting an answer to your prayer. God doesn't take that thing from you, but it gives you a way out. 

I had a friend who unfortunately passed away from his addictions. And he would pray constantly. He would say to God, "Take away my addictions." And one of his triggers was actually alcohol. So he worked in the kitchen, and the kitchen at the end of the day, everyone would sit down and have a drink. And then he would leave and then he would desire these drugs. So then he would find himself using the drugs, and then it would get worse and worse and worse. And he'd end up in rehab and he'd rehab. He'd be good for three, four months. And then he would get a job again in a kitchen, and he'd work there for a couple of weeks and then I would get a call from him and he would say, "Oh, Wendell, I've done it again." And so it's not that he wasn't a Christian. It's not that he didn't love God. 

But how do you get over your habits? How do you change your habits? Now sometimes you need to do drastic things. For example, if you're having an issue on your phone, do you get rid of certain apps? Do you get rid of the type of phone you have? You can get flip phones now that don't have internet access, but you can still text your friends. Do you need to do that? Do you need to get rid of your phone? If you're working in a place and the culture of that place leads you to something that you know you shouldn't be doing, do you find another job? Do you confide in your employer? Do you find someone that can work with you when you are struggling to say, "Hey, I'm struggling. I need help." So those are the kinds of things that you could think of when you say, "I'm praying and I don't have a response." The response is there. We just have to learn how to listen to it. 

Seventh Point - Give Up

Okay. It says here, "I'm stuck, and the only way out seems to be Agnosticism." Okay, well, this seems fairly extreme. Agnosticism is the belief that there could be a God or there could be a higher power, but you don't believe that it is the Christian God. Okay, that's agnosticism. As opposed to Atheism, which believes there is no God. So what this person is saying is that because they are getting pressure from their peers, or their family, and they've prayed, and they're not getting answers, that they are looking at, perhaps they still believe in God, but the God they believe in is not the God of the Bible. They're not believing in what we would call the Christian God.

This seems like a very drastic step to take, and I wondered to myself, why would this be an option to this person? Why would this person choose an option to step away from what they believe in? We saw at the beginning, they said, "I am a Christian." They believe in God. What has to happen for them to then go against this profession of faith? 

Eighth Point - Disagreement 

"Protestants seem to be open while Catholics call Martin Luther a Nazi for his hate and views on Jews and how in his books we should burn synagogues."  Okay, well this is good to see him open up, but Martin Luther was just a man.
Martin Luther, when he got older, did have some very hateful ideas, some very hateful thoughts that he did share and he wrote down, and I agree, Martin Luther did say some things that are incredibly unloving. To go back to a very misunderstood verse in the Bible. Jesus tells us to" love our enemies." He also says to "love your neighbors as yourself. "It doesn't seem like Martin Luther remembered those verses. Obviously if he's saying these kinds of things. 

But I think there's something else in this. He says that the Protestants seem open. Okay, so the Protestants seem to be the ones who are going to work with him on understanding his Christianity, as opposed to the Catholics. But I think when you look at this, when he says the Protestants are open, you know the Catholics called Martin Luther a Nazi. What he's dealing with is not in fact a Christian idea. What he's dealing with is, "These sort of things are better than those kinds of things." 

Something that has kind of come down through the last 500 years, this wall, this divide between the two thoughts, between this idea where the Protestants say, "You know, maybe we don't need to follow the traditions as much as just the Bible." Whereas the Catholics say, "The traditions are just as important as what the Bible says." I think when you really look at it, those things are secondary, almost tertiary, to our belief system, okay? Our belief system as Protestants, or Catholics, or Orthodox, or Coptic, or Oriental all come down to a main belief, and that is that Jesus was God. That Jesus came to sacrifice Himself for our sins, to pay the way for us to go to heaven, because we're all sinners. 

That's the basic gospel. And if you look at all these churches, we all believe the same thing. We all teach the same thing. But when you have one church talking down about another church, you have to ask yourself, where does that come from? Why does this church demean the other church? It says, even Protestants have arguments and even if they were not good ones, it does not automatically prove Catholicism. 

Okay, so as we're working through this, I do believe that this person has this sort of Catholic versus Protestant thing going on. And if this person is from the West, so let's say they're from the United States, perhaps they come from a background which is Irish, or possibly Italian, or one of these groups, even Mexican, which is very tied to the Catholic Church. Okay, and so their family is saying Catholicism is the only way. The Protestant is wrong. Or perhaps they're more from a German background, or Dutch background, where they're Protestant and they're saying Catholics are wrong. 

But they make... this person makes a very good point. Everybody has their arguments. Everybody has their way of disparaging or talking down about the other belief systems within Christianity. Looking back here again, it does not automatically prove Catholicism. I think we need to get away from this idea of proving. What you really need to do is get into the Scriptures. You need to read the Scriptures, understand the Scriptures, find people to talk to and ask questions of. It doesn't matter if you choose to do that in a Protestant church or Catholic church. Find a church that allows you to ask questions. Find a church that will push you to dig and to find answers for yourself. 

And you can go, for example, if you attend a Protestant church, you can go to a Catholic church. You can find the priest, you can sit him down and say, I have questions that I want answered. The priest isn't going to kick you out for that. Same thing with a Protestant church. If you were a Catholic background and you have questions about Protestantism, go to a Protestant church, find a Protestant church, and ask them those questions. and get answers. That's the best way to do it. Sometimes talking to family isn't going to get you the best answers. And if you go to a place and you find that there's a lot of animosity towards that, find another church. Talk to those people. Eventually, you're going to find people who are more interested in the gospel message than they are about the us versus them. They're more about the truth than they're about pointing fingers; and who is more wrong than the other person?

Ninth Point - Truth

Says here, "I do not... I do not know what to do. I just want the truth and I want a relationship with that truth without it being driven by fear." Well, this is a very good statement by this person. They just want the truth. The truth. As we all know the Bible says that the truth will set you free. Looking for the truth,  searching for the truth, looking for the answers? Start with Scriptures, read your Bible. You know what? You talked about different translations earlier, get a bunch of different translations. I have on my shelf back here, I have over 40 Bibles, all different translations. I've got special Catholic Bibles that have extra books or have verses missing. I have the Good News Bible, which is just sort of
in the easiest to read English, and not really a great translation. I've got German Bibles, I've got Chinese Bibles, I've got Japanese Bibles. I got all kinds of Bibles back here. I have Greek interlinears. I have Hebrew interlinears, where you can look at the actual word and see how it translates.

You don't have to buy 40 different Bibles, but let's say you had an NIV, an ESV, an NASB, those three Bibles. Read a verse. If you don't understand the verse, read it from the next Bible. If you still don't understand it, read it from the next Bible. If all three Bibles translate exactly the same way, then what is being said is clear. If they translate it slightly different, You have to ask yourself why did they translate it different? Why is this one word the same in two of the Bibles but different in the third Bible? Look for it. Get yourself a Strong's, go online. Precept Austin is great for this. Explaining versus. If you could afford it, Logos software online. I think it's like $15 a month. Fantastic resource, Logos. 

Ask questions. There's nothing wrong with asking questions. There's nothing wrong with searching for the truth. Like sometimes we get bogged down in who's more right than the person instead of where do I find the truth? And I think actually looking at what's been read here, this says everything that we need to know about this person. Look for the truth and don't despair. Ask questions. Find people to ask questions to, but always search for the truth.

Conclusion 

All right. So that's our first try at answering Reddit questions. I enjoyed this. I hope you enjoyed it as well. I think we'll just close in prayer really quick and I look forward to seeing you again maybe next week, or a couple of weeks from now. And all right, let's pray.

Father God, I thank you so much for people who are searching for truth. I pray for the heart of individuals who are struggling, who find themselves sinning and not knowing how to get out. People who pray looking for answers and don't feel that you're listening. Lord God, I pray you'd open their eyes that they would hear what is it you're saying to them. I encourage all people who are searching for truth, actually look for truth, to read scripture, to ask questions. Father God, as we go now, I pray also that you would be with us in this week, that you would bring people into our lives who would challenge us and that we would take that challenge to dig deeper into who you are, to find out more about the truth that you've shared with us in scripture. I pray all this in your name, amen. 

Okay, don't forget we have our own website. It is teleiostalk.ca. We have a lot of great stuff up there. We're on TikTok now, as well as all of our shorts that are on YouTube. Those are great. I spend a lot of time getting those put togethe and getting them up online. So check them out, share them with people, and I look forward to talking to you again. 

So long.