realmofspirits:

So I was driving to the store today and seen this church billboard literally encouraging people to come and “fear the lord” with them.

Now let me just say, I’m not against any religion, I’m friends with people from all paths. But the idea of this concept really makes me need to give a bloody good rant! And do note, this uses fear the lord only as an example. I’m not targeting Christianity or telling anyone what to believe. I’m simply stressing that fear and spirituality do not belong together.

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“Fear the Lord!” I was taught as a child, and it made me ask a lot of questions that nobody really liked to hear.
“Why fear God if he really is so merciful?”
“If you actually trust him, how could you fear him?”
“Can you really love something you fear?”

The mere thought of there being fear in my spiritual path sounds so disgusting and horrid. It’s an emotion that has nothing to do with spirituality. Spirituality should evoke feelings of unity, love, and serenity. It should wash away your fear and pain, not invoke it!

And it really leaves me feeling uncomfortable. I don’t know if it’s because it’s essentially a control mechanism wearing the mask of the divine, that people are actually okay with fearing the divine, or that people are willing to change not for themselves, but out of fear of what may happen if they don’t.

Let’s get something clear. That’s pointless. That’s like someone who absolutely hates you pretending to be nice out of fear of looking like a bitch and getting shunned by their peers. The bitch is still a bitch. Doing something good for the wrong reasons doesn’t make you good! One has to change because they want to BE a better person. Not because they’re scared of what may happen if they don’t! That just makes you a two-faced coward with selfish intent.

And I guess this is where the separation of religion and spirituality comes in. I’m probably going to get a lot of negative backlash over this and I can’t blame anyone. I’m just going to say it anyway… If you think you are oh so holy and yet your entire life is based off of fear or potential rewards, then you do not know the divine. Your about as spiritual as a fucking shoe box. And if you are religious but not spiritual, you are also a huge hypocrite. Spirituality isn’t about fear of consequences or behaving for treats in the afterlife. It may not sound nice, but can anyone deny it and tell me the opposite is true?

See, religion is knowledge. It’s like studying anatomy and knowing what every part of the body is called and what it looks like. Spirituality on the other hand is experience and immersion and application. It’s like knowing how to connect those body parts together, work with them, and create some benefit from it. What good is knowledge if you don’t know how to use that knowledge? What good is knowing all the stories of God, if you do not actually know God himself?

You can be the most religious person on the planet, but of you aren’t spiritual, if you haven’t really connected to the universe and the divine, what is the point? What is the point of knowing that which you have not touched or felt? What is the point of reading books on religion your entire life if you have never felt the true love and unity that comes from connecting with the divine? What good comes from worshipping something that invokes fear?

There comes a time to become brave and embrace that which the world says we should fear. To stop being the slave of fear and allow ourselves to become one with the divine.

Then again, perhaps Fearing the Lord is just a phrase. If so, I have never heard a more self-contradicting phrase in my life. But I can honestly say, I was raised to fear the lord and it did not bring me to him. And from that fear stemmed fears of many other things; hell, sin, and all the “evil” dark things in the world. The negativity that my birth religion taught me to feel? It pushed me into the arms of Paganism as I searched for something to make me feel right again.

I spent years fearing this new religion of mine since I was raised to believe it was “dark and evil”. Still, it felt so right to me that I couldn’t ignore it. I became fairly knowledgable in this new religion from having studied so much. You could say I was very religious. But, the day I finally smothered that fear, broke down sobbing and begging in confusion, and invited the divine into my life, I began to TRULY explore and experience the dark unknown forest that is the spirit world. This day, the divine offered me their hands and lit the path for me. That day I let go of my fear and embraced the divine. That is the day I became spiritual and truly discovered not only who I am today, but who I have been throughout all of my existence. It was the most liberating and enlightening day of my life. I have not felt fear in my spirituality since that day, and I discovered that once you stop fearing the divine and accept it into your life with love and no doubt, the divine will embrace you back. You will feel it inside every fibre of your being and it will make itself known like never before.

There comes a time to stop being afraid of the dark unknown, and start exploring it, allowing the divine to light the shadows along the way. This is spirituality, and it is the most rewarding thing you will ever know.