if God is so benevolent why do people "fear" him?

Question

I saw the term "god-fearing people" and it made me think.

before anyone instantly comes with the argument that they don't believe in god or that they worship the devil etc, think beyond the religous side and more to the concept of god.
If he is a merciful creator etc, why would people need to fear god?

respect and fear are 2 very different things.

the chosen one - I do not fear my father, if you actually feared your father then I am sorry for you.

faith through fear is wrong! faith through understanding and respect! if there is an entity that could be considered the creator of all etc, then surely it should be respect and to an extent admiration that it would want, not fear and misunderstanding.

Manc Lush - why would it be a he?

Answer 1

People tend to fear the unknown..its sorta almost second nature

Answer 2

They are not ready to giveup sins.
They worship their own desires!!

Religion is the need of every society Beyond religion are only theories.

Scientists do not reject the creator of universe but they only reject the definitions/ names given by Religions

God fearing - means following the rules and accepting the Will of God!

Answer 3

We fear God because of what He is. He is all powerful, almighty and completely beyond our understanding, we should fear and respect Him..but this 'fear' shouldnt stop us from havng a relationship with Him, He WANTS us to. And i think that's pretty amazing..
Love in Christ

Answer 4

Fear of God is a reverentual awe fear for the creator for he is in charge of your life(respect for the most holy things God and his word,the holy spirit)

Answer 5

We need to fear him to a certain degree. However, when the Bible speaks of fear, it also means to Love Him. This where a good concordance comes in handy. Some words have a different meaning now as they did then. A concordance will greatly help where there is a question.

Answer 6

If you have a good relationship with your parents you love them and respect them right? As a child you loved them, respected them but sometimes lost your temper with them and said hateful things like "I hate you........" even when you really didn't but you knew they still loved you......... It's the same deal with God. He is our Heavenly father. We love and respect Him. We can get angry with Him but we know he still loves us. We need only 'fear' God like we would our parents - less actually because He can see into our heart and minds and knows when we're truely reptentatnet our earthly parents have to take us at our word!!
Substitute the word fear with the word respect.

EDIT
We fear dictators because they give us no choice. My sister feared her ex-husband (he was a dicktator) because when she learned/figured out his "rules" for what made him happy and not vengeful he would change his 'rules' and not tell her! God is NOT a dictator or a dicktator because we know what he asks us AND he gives us freewill to do what we chose to do. Dictators don't do that and that's one of the reasons we fear them.

Answer 7

I belive the fear of God stems from the Old Testment, inwhich God was not so forgiving and understanding. Think of it this way. If you knew a man who was hot tempered in the past, but who had "changed" would you still "walk on egg shells" around him?

Answer 8

If he or she or it were truly merciful there would be no need for fear. If you read the old testament you will see a real need for fear!

Answer 9

Because to not fear God is to not fear any consequences of breaking God's Commandments. That's why so many do such wicked and horrible things to other people in this world, like shooting other people, stealing,rape, and too many other things to even list that go on every single day.

They have no fear that anything will ever happen to them when they do hurt other people & themselves, and they chose to live as though there are no consequences, and don't even care who they hurt in the process, just go around doing whatever they feel like doing.

Living as though there were no consequences, no laws. As if no one will ever know what they are doing, and nothing will ever happen.

Because it's alot easier for a person to sin when you believe no one else is watching you, without the fear of God in you, and just convince yourself that nothing will happen, know one will know, than when you believe God is watching you and you fear the consequences of getting caught in your sins.

To a true God-fearing person, just the mere thought of what might happen and the fear of getting caught stops you, not because of what it would do to you as much as what it would do to the ones you love.

In the same way, as Christians, we desire to do what it right and pleasing to God, the mere thought of what it would do to Him, stops us.

Those who love God and seek to please Him, fear Him not so much as what He would do, but rather fear disappointing Him, simply because we love Him so much, and because we know how Loving and kind and merciful He has been to us, that we are thankful for all He's done for us.

It because of His Goodness and Loving-kindness, that it makes us not want to ever do anything to hurt Him or displease Him.

In other words, just as any child loves his/her parents and wants them to be proud of them, so they try to do the good things, we love our heavenly Father and want Him to be proud of us. So we fear God out of our love and reverence for Him, because we love Him, we want to do good things.

Answer 10

Those who don't have the strength to govern their own life will seek to find someone or something to control it for them.
They don't fear God but the consequences of their own thoughts and actions and need to find a way to control them.

Answer 11

There is different definitions for the word 'fear', as shown in dictionarys.

Extreme reverence or awe, as toward a supreme power, is one of the defintions.