Fear of the Lord

One of my favorite riddles in the Bible is “fear of the lord”.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

It pops up every so often, and it doesn’t even seem like something to analyze. But it strikes right at the heart of most religion, doesn’t it?

On the surface it seems like a shut-case: you will fear these words and you will respects your priests and you will Be Good For God. It’s basic statecraft and control, quite explicit in the king’s hidden demands too. Do this for me or vague badness will happen to you!

But throughout the Bible you also have the “Do Not Be Afraid” quite frequently phrased too. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but you also must not be afraid. Which is it?

Most importantly, through this Fear so you may be granted the path toward Wisdom. It’s not so explicitly persuasive and conniving: the reader is invited to contemplate what this wisdom will be and its fruits.

The passage, Proverbs 9, offers how wisdom grants many days at least, beyond the promise of some reward. You’re still invited to wonder what those rewards are, but you’ll get more of them as your life multiplies. If you want to live a thousand years.

Of course this passage adds extra delight, depending on the translation you choose: to rebuke wisdom so walks the path of the Scorner, the Mocker. The one who will suffer. I wouldn’t necessarily deny it… there’s a difference between the act and the profession.

In previous contemplations so I landed upon translating “fear of the lord” as “the ability to entertain anything can happen” since human nature easily assumes the opposite. How sure we are we will live tomorrow, even if you witness many cases ending otherwise.

How sure we are this is the way the world must be, that we must live this way, and we’re surely conceived through the perfected forms or other angelic beings, or perhaps for our late 2000s march so we veer into some atheistic zealous reverie of the Origin Explosion and our stardust coagulates into perfect machine forms, reviving each mythos for a new SaaS product name. There’s nothing stopping you from wearing a Doctor’s attire and garner respect; maybe with a hundred million funny number slips I will command my personal consumer legion.

Despite the seeming absurdity so certainty persists everywhere. A cloak of monotony rising to fall and attached to the most benign; this reminds me of another phrase of the origin of Quasimodo, from 1 Peter 2:2:

Quasi modo geniti infantes, rationabile, sine dolo lac concupiscite: ut in eo crescatis in salutem: si tamen gustastis quoniam dulcis est Dominus.

“geniti infantes” means newborn infants, “quasi modo” means “as if”. To remove the cloak of monotony you must view the world with new eyes, quasi modo geniti infantes, e.g. a way for an atrophied adult to remember is perhaps through an earnest fear of the lord: deeply contemplating that Anything Can Happen Once More. See the world anew.

Although it’s a valid interpretation upon revisiting I’ve been thinking of another one.

Lately I’ve been thinking that “fear of the lord” means acknowledging you are in an “intelligently designed system” and reality, however seemingly cruel.

There is a morbid and infallible logic to how the world churns, if you acknowledge it. To “fear the lord” is to seek out this morbid and infallible rule that constrains the world around you. In absolutes. Resting with the carcass. Fear that this is, indeed, the Lord’s creation and treacherous design and you are getting prodded as a test subject to grow.

People try to pray to God, but isn’t it more amusing to imagine that everything you need to know is right in front of you? The very world and senses you’re enmeshed in: this is where your god speaks to you. Each step further into a personalized blueprint. This is how you’ll writhe unless you figure out the symbolic meaning behind typing into this computer screen.

This melds quite cleanly with all of the other phrase of “Do Not Be Afraid” since if you take the first step of fearing the lord, you now contemplate these Absolutes of the world and, prepared as you are, as long as you keep discerning these absolute laws of the world around you, you do have nothing to fear. To abide by these systemic rules is “the beginning of wisdom”.

Perhaps then you’ll bend your fate more favorable.