Manhood is a Mindset. J. Colin Trisler
course of these next two letters, we will explore the concept of respect. In letter 3, we’ll discuss the hierarchical nature of our relationship as father and son and the respect you owe me and your mother as your parents.
I will spend the remainder of this letter, however, instructing you in the importance of respecting God as your Heavenly Father. My goal here is to help you realize the essential role respect plays in every successful relationship. Mutual respect—that is, respect both given and received—is mandatory if we want to achieve success in meeting our sacred responsibilities, both to God and each other.
And as Solomon will explain, if a young man wants to know how to give respect where it’s due, he must first learn to factor fear into his way of thinking.
Fear is a Healthy Factor in the Life of a Wise Man
Prov 1:7
Fear is not a bad thing.
It is a natural human instinct. An unconscious impulse of the spirit. Thus it is neither good nor evil. Like any other inanimate object or emotion (weapons, the internet, anger, etc.), the morality of fear lies not with the object itself, but within the heart and mind of the human who wields it. Take a gun for example. The crook who uses a gun to rob a store is evil. The hero who uses a gun to thwart the crook is righteous. The gun itself is amoral. It is merely an object, a tool a man uses—like a car, a fire, or a pen—to accomplish a specific goal.
Son, the same rationale applies to fear. The fear you experience at any given point is neither good nor evil. It’s what you choose to do with your fear that gives it a sense of morality. Fear is sinful when you use it as an excuse to compromise your integrity. Fear is healthy when you use it according to its purpose: as a God-given warning system designed to pull you away from harm and push you toward the good.12 Fear becomes righteous when you use it as motivation to think faster than possible, to love more than you knew you were able, and to stand up stronger than ever before as you preserve your integrity and achieve your values.
Fear can be a powerful tool of motivation in the arsenal of a wise man. Solomon understood this to be true.
That’s why he tells his son:
“7The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (1:7)
Son, a healthy and righteous fear of God is the starting point in a man’s quest for wisdom. But again, don’t be thrown off by Solomon’s use of the word fear. To understand fear in its entirety as a concept, you must move beyond the superficial perception of fear as mere feelings of danger, dread, and terror. Indeed, the ancient Hebrew definition of fear does involve a healthy sense of trepidation. But it also includes a sense of awe and respect and worship. Especially in regard to the Lord.13
The fear Solomon speaks of in Prov 1:7 is a righteous fear designed to facilitate a deep respect for God, who, as your Heavenly Father, possesses a rightful authority over you.
His authority stems from these three absolute truths:
1 He is the sovereign Lord of everything he has created.
2 You exist as a part of his creation.Therefore:
3 He possesses a legitimate authority over you.
The Bible tells us that God created humanity in his own image, according to his likeness (Gen 1:26–27; 9:6). This status confers upon us the unique responsibility of living as God’s standard bearers on earth. That means in everything we think, say, and do, we are to reflect the character of our wise and righteous Father.
Son, keep this fact in mind as you make your daily decisions: You exist to reflect God’s image. He does not exist to reflect yours. As a child of God, you have a responsibility to submit to your Heavenly Father’s sovereign authority and do the job he put you on earth to do. We’ll discuss the biblical concept of submission in the next letter. But for now, I’ll use the example of a guitar and a guitar player to help you get a handle on the scope of God’s authority.
A guitar exists to make music. But the guitar cannot play itself. It is an instrument that necessarily requires a musician in order to accomplish its created purpose. It’s the guitarist, not the guitar, who arranges the music. His mind develops the melody. His fingers strum the strings and glide over the frets to produce harmonious tones. The guitarist makes the guitar work. A guitar is productive as an instrument when it follows the guitarist’s lead and stays on key and produces the right sounds in the right moments.
But what if the instrument refuses to cooperate? What if the guitarist plays the right notes but the guitar produces off-key sounds? At this point, the guitarist has a series of options. He can give the guitar a chance to correct its mistakes by tuning and re-tuning the strings until the guitar produces the harmony he desires. If the guitar remains consistently off key, he can go through the difficult process of removing the old strings and re-stringing the guitar with a brand new set. Or, if the guitar’s structural integrity is compromised beyond repair, he can trash that guitar and start strumming a new one. These are his sovereign rights as the guitar’s owner.
In the real world, God is the musician and you are the instrument. Like a guitar in the hands of a skilled guitarist, your life rests in the wise hands of the Almighty God. He is the divine luthier who created you to live in harmony with him. He is the sovereign musician who strums your heart strings and moves his fingers over the frets of your mind to orchestrate an elegant melody of rationality and righteousness.
Just as the guitar exists to accomplish the guitarist’s purposes, so we exist to accomplish God’s purposes. He holds the entirety of our lives in his hands. A wise man will respect the reality of God’s authority. He will submit to his direction and live in melodious concert with him.
The stubborn fool, however, refuses to cooperate with God because he despises wisdom and instruction as Solomon says. The fool’s disobedience produces disharmony. As a result, he lives his life perpetually off key; and like a deformed or unplayable guitar, he runs the risk of being condemned to the trash heap.14
Son, once you realize the scope of God’s authority over you and your life, you will understand the role rational fear plays in your relationship with him. A healthy sense of trepidation is a reasonable response to the ultimate authority that by right belongs to the Lord of all existence.
Fear motivates you to keep your priorities in order
A rational sense of fear helps you develop the right attitude when it comes to knowing your place in God’s world. A proper attitude toward God fosters proper behavior toward God. A healthy fear is a necessary aspect of your quest for wisdom because it motivates you to live in obedience to your Heavenly Father’s established commands.
At this point I will caution you to avoid applying a displaced and legalistic connotation to the concept of obedience. If you misunderstand the purpose of obedience, you will misunderstand the purpose of wisdom.
Obedience in and of itself is not the goal of wisdom. God did not create humanity just so he could have a group of employees to boss around. Nor did he establish his commands on a whim just to watch us jump through a series of arbitrary hoops. Obedience as an end unto itself is cold and robotic and compulsive. As theologian John Calvin once said, God does not desire a slavish, forced fear by which he can extort through the threat of judgment insincere behavior from us as his unwilling captives.15
God’s desire is for us to relate to him as a Heavenly Father. Not as a cosmic tyrant. The difference between the two is this: A tyrant abuses his authority and uses force to oppress his subjects. A tyrant is a worthless man who isn’t skilled enough to build himself up. So he exploits his position of power to tear others down.
Son, this is not the God we serve. God is not a divine despot. He did not create humanity to subjugate or exploit us. He does not need to hold us down in order to feel better about himself. Nor does he desire an emotionally vacant association with us, one akin to a taskmaster’s association with his slaves. Such an insincere existence would be one of drudgery for everyone involved. Including God.
A