Faith
and Life commentary: Is religion mostly about fear?
By Phil Wogaman*
I recently learned that some courts are now applying a new test to
determine whether a behavior is really central to a
person's religious faith. The test is whether a particular form of
behavior is commanded by the church.
As some lawyers have come to speak of this, it is whether you are
afraid you will go to hell if you don't act in that way.
Some church-state lawyers are calling this the "Go to Hell" test.
I'm not sure I like the "Go to Hell" test. I can see the point. It is a
way of testing how serious we are about our religious
faith. It also reminds us that avoiding evil is an important aspect of
most religions.
What bothers me is the idea that the essential thing about religion is
the negative. That is another way of saying that the
main motivation of religious people is fear.
I suppose some degree of fear is present, even when the primary
motivation is positive. For instance, my primary
motivation in feeding the hungry is love, but it is also fear of what
will happen to the hungry if they are not fed. But doesn't
it make a big difference which is the primary motive?
When I am acting primarily out of fear, my motivations are
self-centered. Christians will recognize that this was exactly
what St. Paul had in mind when he wrote (especially in Romans and
Galatians) about the importance of grace. According to
Paul, when obedience to religious law is central to our faith, we will
be consumed by fear, for we know that we cannot
perfectly observe the law. And even if we could, we would not be
experiencing God as God of love.
How often that simple distinction between a religion of fear and a
religion of love comes back to me in the midst of the
religious controversies of our time. We are constantly being invited to
respond to fear: fear of holding incorrect doctrines,
fear of homosexuality or abortion, fear of division within the church.
I occasionally receive letters from people who want to warn me of the
dangers of hell, and the impression the letters convey
is that fear is much more central to their form of religion than love.
I'm sure I need admonitions and criticisms from time to
time, but should my spiritual life be so dominated by fear? And should
the churches act out of fear?
When religious people (and their churches) act mainly out of fear, they
also have a tendency to try to use force to make
people do what we think they ought to do. There is some place for that
also, since this world is not populated by angels. But
when we put the main emphasis upon force, we are mostly relying on our
ability to make other people fear. It is pretty
difficult to inspire fear and love in the same people at the same time.
We sometimes say "love the sinner, but hate the sin." My impression is
that it can be extremely difficult to combine those
attitudes, particularly when we are consumed by hatred of the sin as
practiced by the one we love. We easily drift into
hating the people who do the sin that we hate.
It seems to me that churches are really much better at love than they
are at mandating behavior. The really interesting thing
is that when a church is a center of love, behavior based on love tends
to follow.
That does not mean the church should stop teaching ethics. It means
that churches should be more concerned about
motivating love and drawing people into mutually respectful
consideration of what love means - and not be so preoccupied
with laying down the law.
*Wogaman, pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington and a
seminary professor of Christian ethics, is the
author of 13 books. He is a clergy member of the Baltimore-Washington
United Methodist Annual (regional) Conference.
