This component of human, as well as all animal emotion in general, is one of the most dominant factors driving the actions and reactions of our everyday lives. As with most emotions, fear can be driven and generated by both rational and irrational circumstances — what one person considers as a fearful situation, another person may consider to be ordinary and non-fearful. For instance, some people find driving an automobile in heavy traffic to be an everyday, ordinary experience while others cannot help being terrified by the same circumstance.
Rationality demands us to be respectful of the possibility of accident and injury but simultaneously, allows us to function without fear and dread. Contrarily, irrationality presents itself in people who cannot help being terrified by such circumstances — they are constantly acting and reacting in a frightful manner which is demonstrated by sudden stiffening of their bodies as though braking, grabbing for something to hold on to, making sudden dodging movements, and making various sudden, seemingly unprovoked, exclamations of fear.
So, why is one person able to negotiate such circumstances with no visible actions or reactions of fear while another person cannot? — very simply, it has to do with the basics of personality development. And you may inquire about what personality development has to do with it and I would say ‘everything’. Simply stated, every living creature acts and reacts to every stimulus applied to it and, generally speaking, that action and reaction is based on a storehouse of actions and reactions to similar stimuli previously encountered. For instance, just to use a common example, every rational person knows to not touch a red-hot object with a bare hand. Contrarily, an irrational person such as a baby or an insane adult would not know to avoid such a hot object and would get burned, Likely, none of us remembers the first time we touched a hot object but regardless, that first time was stored in our subconscious so that from that first time on, we know to avoid such objects — we have a ‘rational fear’ — an irrational person might do so repeatedly.
That simple example is about the shortest lesson I can give for ‘personality development’. One person has no fear, just ‘healthy respect’, for driving in heavy traffic because of a list of previous healthy driving experiences (parents, school bus drivers, etc.) and therefore, has mostly healthy experiences stored in subconscious, while another may have been emotionally traumatized at an early age by reckless drivers, accidents, etc. and therefore, cannot help but act and react ‘defensively’ to those identical circumstances.
So then, how does ‘fear of God’ enter the picture? As one peruses the Old Testament, it seems clear that every age or period features someone having a special, superior relationship with God. Simultaneously, God seemed always to have a subtle way of punishing wrongdoers. And who wrote those first five books of the bible where an imaginary mythical god created everything in six days? Biblical authorities have attributed those writings to Moses. Remember, he was a murderer who managed to gain control of the enslaved Israelites. He is the one who supposedly wrote the Adam and Eve story, the Sodom and Gomorrah tale, Noah’s Arc and the great flood, the enslavement of the Israelites by the Egyptians, and finally, the escape into the Promised Land tales. Now consider this, since Moses wrote them all and he lived only through the last hundred years or so of their four-hundred-year enslavement, where did he get his information? Remarkably also, there is no picture of ‘fear of god’ painted by Moses in any of those stories, just last-minute terror, until the Israelites became stranded in the desert and began worshiping idols. That particular episode marked the beginning of the end of straight forward rational thinking which was based on everyday experiences and ‘common sense’ and was supplanted by a fear-driven rationality which has persisted until today —fear of God.
Prior to that time, each of Moses’ stories features one or a few of god’s chosen benevolent who found favor with him and who were spared the ‘total wipeout’ of the remaining civilization involved. Those few ‘torchbearers’ carried on the good-god’s plans until the next chapter of god’s wipe-out occurs. Then we come to the desert — Moses loses control.
Moses obviously was a smart, cunning guy. He painted a picture of being raised secretly by the Pharaoh’s wife, escaping punishment for murder, gaining control of the Israelites, bargaining with the Pharaoh, performing miracles in god’s name, escaping by the parting of waters of Red Sea, striking a rock in the desert for the miraculous flow of water, and the miraculous appearance of manna and quail for food. Then he ran into unmanageable trouble — a clientele of followers who would not obey him.
Of course, Moses had already demonstrated many times how he could influence god to do miracles for them at his behest — he was the only one who could talk to god and bargain with him. So, his followers knew and respected that — not so much Moses himself, just the circumstance. In fact, they complained to him and basically rebelled against his authority — they thought Moses had led them into a death trap.
The Bible says Moses went up on a mountain and god gave him the Ten Commandments. The Israelites laughed at Moses and his commandments and continued their debauching activities. That angered Moses. So, he threw those stone tablets down, breaking them, and proceeded back to the mountain where supposedly, god gave him a new set. This time, Moses presents them as god’s rules with the admonition that any violators will be punished by god, himself— official sin was created and fear of god was instituted.
As a side-note, anyone who has read that portion of the Bible will note that the listed commandments and their extrapolations when chiseled out of stone would stretch at least a mile, would require at least a one-hundred-foot square stone block for writing, and would require an ordinary skilled chiseler at least a year or two to accomplish. Furthermore, it is likely that the ‘Twenty-Mule-Team Borax’ wagon could not carry one of them. However, Moses is depicted as doing it all in one day or so and bringing them down the mountain and presenting them to his brethren by himself— one monstrous giant of a man, or rather one giant myth — obviously, Moses had one monstrous imagination and one notorious scorn for the intelligence of his fellow man. It seems very likely that he never dreamed of 2024 — or maybe he did — he’s still being quoted authoritatively.
It seems obvious then that Moses is responsible for producing ‘fear of god’ in people. As time progressed, the Israelites reasoned that their angry god must be appeased so he would love them again and would make them prosperous — sacrificial religion began. It persists today in the Catholic Churches and their near mimickers worldwide. The Catholic mass is correctly titled ‘the sacrifice of the mass’. In that ritual, the presiding official is believed to convert bread and wine into the real body and blood of Jesus which is then offered to God the Father as an unbloody sacrificial offering of appeasement.
The Israelite High Priest made burnt offerings of prefect animal specimens to god as an appeasement. Those bishops who formed the first Holy Roman Catholic Church at the behest of Emperor Constantine in the year 325 AD totally ignored Jesus’ teaching of an All-loving God and reverted directly back to the Jewish concept of a vengeful god who needs constant appeasement. It seems ironic to me that a fairytale religion could persist and develop into such a worldwide movement — but it shouldn’t — it instills fear — no rational person wants to be hurt, especially by god.
But there’s a catch. Religion has increasingly become less and less relevant in people’s lives — churchgoers are diminishing by the millions annually. That fact seems to have prompted an abrupt about-face by Pope Francis. He stated that there is no such place as ‘hell’ — it is a contrivance created to instill ’fear’ in people for purposes of control over them. Additionally, he has done an about-face regarding marriage, premarital sex, birth control, and abortion. Whereas, before Francis and Vatican 2, those were among the gravest sins, now Pope Francis is personally blessing and giving Holy Communion to two of the staunchest supporters of abortion and birth control, President Biden and former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Additionally, it seems that very few couples get married any more without first living together for a few years as Francis recommended.
It seems this ‘sudden change’ in attitude by the Church is aimed at stemming the exodus of churchgoers — to hell with morality.
I am nearly ninety-one years old and have lived through a hellhole of austere, controlling, and fear-instilling sacrificial religion begun by Moses and his progeny. What we have today is a mockery. Better said, it is an expose of the self-serving, power mongering, moneygrubbing, controlling, and more importantly, fear instilling religion which has existed in one form or another since Moses and his Ten Commandments were written.
The Ten Commandments are, in fact, a great set of civil rules — respecting God and our fellow man. We sin against each other, not against God. We hurt each other with our sin. My irrefutable definition of the essence of God as a Perfect Rational Being precludes any possibility of God being hurt, pleased, displeased or changed in any way. Any change in God would involve a time factor — God exists in eternity, a state of being where there is no time. Additionally, God’s Perfect Nature precluded any possibility of alteration — any alteration would destroy God’s Perfection.
So, what’s the bottom line? Simply stated, for twenty-four hundred years or so humans have been shackled with the concept of a vengeful god who would condemn them to the burning fire of hell forever for any major breach of his commandments — what rational person would not be afraid?
Consider this; all animal life is instilled with two major drives, nutrition and reproduction. If we accept the concept of a God, then we must acknowledge that God, in his wisdom, made it to be that way so all animals would have opportunity to live and reproduce. I am firmly convinced that God cares naught about what we eat or drink — he just gave us the drive and rationality to procure food and water. Likewise, I am convinced God has no concern about how or with whom we reproduce — he just gave us the drive and the tools with which to do so.
It seems clear to me that, beginning with Moses, humanity has been impaled with fear by restrictions on sexual activity with warnings that any deviation from the commandments and their extrapolations justifies eternity in hell. Telling people to avoid sex is tantamount to putting a big juicy steak in front of a starving dog and then whacking him across the nose with a big stick each time he makes a move to eat it.
Ever since Moses’ time, but more especially since the first Council at Nicaea, sex has been used as a controlling tool by organized religion. Of course, normal humans are driven to violate the ‘sex’ commandments and therefore, have been perpetually threatened by fear of a vengeful god and hell. That state of affairs became so bad as to prompt Taylor, in his thorough book, Sex In History, to describe Medieval Europe as “a giant cesspool of psychosis” which was caused by a constant guilt-generated anxiety and fear of hell.
Now consider this; the Catholic Church lists seven Capital Sins, meaning they are the worst that can be commit and a violation of any of them libels one to an eternity in the ‘deepest fires of hell — a real fear generator for sure. Those sins are Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth. Ironically, I am ninety years old and during my entire lifetime I have never heard a homily delivered by any priest or bishop about any one of them except Lust. Sex is the only tool the church has ever needed to control people, However, ‘that old dog won’t hunt any more’.
People are finding such sexual restrictions to be irrational and consequently, are ignoring them and dropping out of religion.
The ‘about face’ by Pope Francis concerning sexual matters is an enigma for some, a frustration for others, and an anger generator for still others. We will likely never know what his true motives are, but it seems certain that they are intended to slow the departure of young and old from the Church. Personally, I think he is one hundred percent correct and his suggestions should have been in effect since day one. Marriage and divorce are civil matters of the state for the purposes of establishing property rights, taxes, etc., not morality.
I believe without doubt that Jesus understood that God is all-loving and all-accepting. He also understood that all things are in God and God is in all things. He had been attempting to educate his apostle of that fact for three years. At his last supper with them, he was attempting one last time to tell them that God was in all things; the bread they were eating and his body were the same thing — all are God, including them.
. We will never know exactly what Jesus said or what was written by whom, but it seems clear to me that the Jews wanted Jesus dead because he was a traitor to their religion. For centuries the Jewish hierarchy had made a fortune through their sacrificial religion and Jesus despised it. His purpose was to supplant the Jewish sacrificial religion with an understanding that God is all love. He knew his fate would be crucifixion, but he had hoped his apostles would promulgate that understanding among the Jewish people and, thereby replace the Jewish sacrificial religion — it is obvious that Jesus was a total failure.
We really do not and cannot know what his apostles attempted to do but whatever they did resulted in a final ‘slap in the face of Jesus’ with their descendants reverting to a sacrificial religion by forming The Holy Roman Catholic Church in 325 A D — they used his name but ignored his teaching. The only writing I can find that shows the ‘real Jesus’ and his teachings about God is the Gospel of Thomas. That Gospel was rejected by the Council of Bishops at Nicaea for obvious reasons — it would nullify their presentation of a vengeful god demanding sacrificial appeasement.
For those of you who have not read my books Wilderness Cry, Peace in Spirituality, and Provocative Catholic, I believe you would do yourselves well by their reading. My philosophy is explained in detail in both sound scientific and philosophic terms. Those of you who have read them would do well to re-read them for better understanding and contentment. The bottom line is this; God loves you all the time. There is nothing you can do to hurt or please God — you cannot change God’s Perfect Mind under any circumstance. Our only justifiable prayer is a great big ‘Thank you God for my life, my sustenance and your Eternal Love’.
As president Roosevelt once said during the Second World War, “We have nothing to fear except fear itself”. He, of course, was referring to our conviction, determination, and ability to defeat our self-imposed enemies.
I am always available for discussion of any part of my philosophy. In addition, if you would like to know more about my upbringing, I believe you would enjoy Growing Up In Fancy Farm Kentucky.
All my books are available Amazon-Kindle and, autographed, from me – handg@comcast.net
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WILDERNESS CRY by Hilary L Hunt MD 