When Fear Becomes the Language of God

Serge Da Rosa

Oct 14

19 min read

I've been thinking about how much of what we've called ministry has been built around fear. Fear of God, fear of hell, fear of demons, fear of losing our blessings, fear of making the wrong decisions, and fear of just about everything happening in the world around us. Somewhere along the way, fear became one of the primary ways we introduced people to God, encouraged them to obey, convinced them to give, and taught them how to live.

And I've reached a place where I believe the days of trying to connect people to God through fear are over. We've spent generations presenting fear as though it were a necessary part of knowing God, and I think it's time we took a serious look at what that has done to our understanding of Him, ourselves, and the way we experience life.

The God We Were Taught to Fear

I don't say any of this as someone who has always stood on the outside looking in. I was once the guy going around convincing people they were headed for hell unless they accepted Jesus into their hearts. I genuinely believed I was helping them. I thought I was rescuing people from something terrible, and because I believed the danger was real, I saw frightening them as a necessary part of getting their attention. After all, if someone was facing eternal torment, wouldn't it be loving to warn them?

But I look at those years very differently today. I can recognize that my intentions were sincere while also recognizing how distorted my understanding of God had become. I was introducing people to a Father they were supposed to love by first convincing them that He was someone they needed to be terrified of. Then I was presenting Jesus as the solution to the very fear I had helped create.

When I think about that now, I have to wonder how we ever became comfortable with it. We tell people that God is love, that He's good, and that Jesus reveals exactly what the Father is like. Yet so much of our message begins by convincing people that they're in danger from God. We tell them they're separated from Him, that something is terribly wrong with them, and that unless they make the right religious decision, something unimaginable awaits them.

Then, after establishing all that fear, we invite them into a relationship with Him. And somehow, we've convinced ourselves that this is the good news gospel.

But what kind of relationship are we introducing people to when fear is the foundation upon which it begins? In almost every other area of life, we recognize that a relationship established through threats, manipulation, and coercion is unhealthy.

Imagine someone telling their spouse that they love them unconditionally, but if they don't do what they're told, there will be consequences. Imagine someone demanding constant loyalty, threatening punishment whenever their expectations aren't met, and convincing the other person that they can't trust their own thoughts or decisions. We wouldn't look at that relationship and call it healthy. We would recognize the controlling and manipulative behavior for what it is.

Yet somehow, when we've attributed those same characteristics to God, we've called them holiness, reverence, obedience, and faithfulness.

We've become so accustomed to certain religious descriptions of God that we rarely stop to consider what we're actually saying about His character. We defend behaviors in God that we would recognize as abusive in another person, and then we wonder why so many people struggle to experience Him as a loving Father.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize how deeply this image of God has influenced nearly every aspect of religious life. It doesn't stop with the fear of hell, because the same fear is often used to influence our finances, our decisions, our behavior, and even the way we think about ourselves.

When Giving Becomes a Payment for Protection

I remember giving ten percent of my income to the church because I was convinced that God required it. I had been taught that tithing was connected to my financial well-being, that failing to give would interfere with God's blessings, and that withholding what supposedly belonged to Him could open my life to the devourer.

I took those teachings seriously. There were times when I struggled to pay my bills, and I can remember opening my kitchen cabinets and finding little more than a can of vegetables. Yet I continued giving because I believed that was what God expected of me. At another point in my life, I was giving more than forty percent of my income while still experiencing serious financial struggles.

And the crazy thing is that I had been conditioned to interpret those struggles through the very teaching that was contributing to them. If I wasn't experiencing the promised blessing, perhaps I needed to give more, believe harder, or somehow get my life into better spiritual alignment.

Looking back, I have to ask what kind of image of God makes that arrangement seem reasonable. Are we really saying that the Father revealed in Jesus requires people to give a percentage of their income to a religious organization before He will allow them to experience His goodness? Are we suggesting that someone struggling to feed their family should prioritize an institution's financial expectations because otherwise God might allow something terrible to happen to them?

I understand that the language of tithing, blessing, and the devourer comes from an actual covenantal setting in Scripture. Malachi was addressing Israel within the obligations of the covenant under which they lived. But taking those words out of their historical context and placing them over people today as a threat is something altogether different.

We've taken instructions given to a particular people under a particular covenant and turned them into a way of regulating the finances of people who are continually told that the old covenant has been fulfilled. And in many cases, the person receiving the money is also the person explaining why God requires it.

I'm not suggesting that generosity is wrong or that communities don't need resources to function. I love generosity. I love seeing people support one another, contribute to something meaningful, and respond to needs around them. But there's an enormous difference between giving because you genuinely want to participate in something beautiful and giving because you're afraid of what God might do if you don't.

When fear enters the equation, generosity becomes something entirely different. What should be a free expression of love becomes an obligation maintained by anxiety, and giving begins to resemble a payment for protection.

And I think we have to recognize what that kind of teaching communicates about God. It presents Him as someone whose goodness can be influenced by financial transactions, whose protection can be lost through insufficient giving, and whose relationship with humanity somehow operates on the same principles as an organization collecting its dues.

That's a strange image of the Father Jesus revealed, and I don't believe we should be afraid to question it.

The Exhaustion of Trying to Be Holy

The same fear that has influenced our giving has also shaped much of what we've called holiness. People are taught to monitor their thoughts, emotions, entertainment, relationships, and nearly every decision they make because they might somehow open a door to demons.

They're warned that certain activities could give the enemy access to their lives, that a wrong decision might remove God's protection, or that an ordinary human struggle could become evidence of spiritual danger. And eventually, even the most normal parts of being human begin to feel suspicious.

Imagine spending your entire life trying to manage all of that. Every thought must be inspected, every feeling becomes questionable, and every unexpected difficulty raises the possibility that you've done something to invite it. You begin looking at yourself as though there's something wrong with who you are.

And somehow, we've called that spiritual maturity. We've convinced people that constantly questioning themselves, distrusting their humanity, and anticipating spiritual danger is evidence that they're taking God seriously.

I wonder how many people have spent years exhausted by the constant effort of protecting themselves from dangers that their religious environment taught them to expect. They've been told they possess the life of Christ, that they are one with Him, and that they are complete in Him. Yet they're simultaneously being taught to live as though their relationship with God is fragile and their spiritual safety is constantly at risk.

We say that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, and then proceed to remove freedom from nearly every aspect of people's lives.

Galatians 5:1 is one of those passages we've quoted for years, but I wonder how seriously we've considered what Paul was actually addressing. He was writing to people who were being pressured to place themselves back under a religious system of obligation. He wasn't encouraging them to become better at managing their bondage. He was telling them to stand in the freedom that was already theirs.

And yet we've developed countless ways to recreate the very experience of religious bondage while continuing to proclaim the language of freedom.

Paul addressed something similar in Colossians 2. After speaking about the fullness people possess in Christ, he questioned why they were still submitting to regulations such as "Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!" He identified these restrictions as human commands and teachings that carried an appearance of wisdom.

I can't help thinking about how much of modern religious life resembles those very warnings. Don't watch this. Don't listen to that. Don't go there. Don't associate with those people. Don't question that teaching. Don't explore that subject. Don't participate in that activity. Don't touch this technology. Don't become too comfortable with the world around you.

Eventually, nearly everything becomes a potential threat, and people become exhausted trying to avoid all the things they've been taught to fear. What's even more concerning is that after living this way for so long, many people begin to believe that this constant anxiety is simply what it means to have a relationship with God.

When You No Longer Know What Freedom Looks Like

There's something about all of this that I think we need to talk about, because it goes much deeper than simply recognizing that certain teachings are wrong.

We've lived under the influence of fear for so long that many of us don't even know what freedom is supposed to look like within a relationship. And I don't think we fully recognize how much that has shaped the way we relate to God, to one another, and even to ourselves.

Think about that for a moment. If you've spent most of your life believing that love is conditional, that acceptance must be maintained through obedience, and that making the wrong decision could jeopardize your standing with someone, those expectations eventually become your understanding of how relationships work.

You learn how to keep someone happy, how to avoid disappointing them, and how to recognize the signs that you might be doing something wrong. But you may never actually learn what it feels like to be loved without the constant pressure of having to secure that love. And I think that's exactly what's happened in our relationship with God.

We've become so accustomed to being told what we can and cannot do, what we should and shouldn't think, what we must believe, and what we need to avoid that we can hardly imagine relating to God without that entire system of regulation.

We may intellectually agree that we're free, but the moment someone removes the rules, we become uncomfortable. We want to know where the boundaries are, what we're allowed to do, and how far we can go before we get ourselves into trouble.

But consider what those questions reveal about how we've understood the relationship all along. We're still approaching God as though He's someone whose acceptance must be carefully managed. We're still trying to determine how much freedom we can exercise before we risk disappointing Him.

And perhaps most revealing of all, we're still looking outside ourselves for someone to tell us how to live, even while declaring that we are one with the very Life we've been taught to seek.

What does freedom actually look like when you're no longer relating to someone through the fear of losing their love? I think that's a question many of us have never seriously considered because we've been conditioned to associate freedom with danger.

We're afraid that without enough rules, people will become irresponsible, selfish, or destructive. We've become so convinced that fear is necessary to regulate human behavior that we struggle to imagine people living responsibly simply because they recognize who they are and genuinely care about life.

And I think that says something about what we've been taught to believe concerning humanity.

If we genuinely believe that we possess the mind of Christ, that we are one with Him, and that His life is the reality of our existence, why are we so afraid of allowing people to think, explore, question, create, and make decisions? Why do we continually assume that freedom will lead people away from what is good?

Have we spent so long distrusting humanity that we've forgotten what it means to be fully human? Have we become so familiar with controlling behavior through fear that we've forgotten people can grow in wisdom, understanding, and responsibility without being threatened?

I'm not suggesting that freedom means living without consideration for others or that every desire automatically leads to something beneficial. Healthy relationships involve honesty, mutual consideration, wisdom, and responsibility. But those things don't have to be produced through intimidation. They can emerge from love, understanding, and the security of knowing that our belonging isn't perpetually at risk.

And perhaps learning to live freely involves more than leaving behind the rules we once followed. It also involves recognizing the fear that taught us to depend on those rules in the first place.

A person can leave a fear-based religious environment and still carry that environment around inside their thinking. The rules may be gone, but the anxiety remains. The threats may no longer be spoken, but the expectation of punishment is still there.

They may even find themselves searching for another authority to tell them what to do because making their own decisions feels unsafe. And when someone finally tells them that they're free to think, explore, and make choices, that freedom can feel more frightening than the rules they were accustomed to following.

I wonder how much of what we call awakening involves discovering that we no longer need to approach God, ourselves, or one another through the expectation of punishment. That we can actually experience a relationship without constantly measuring our performance, questioning our acceptance, or fearing that one wrong decision will cost us everything.

Perhaps one of the most unfamiliar things about freedom is discovering that we can be genuinely responsible for our lives without being afraid. We can make decisions, learn from our experiences, grow in understanding, and participate in life without constantly wondering whether God is disappointed in us.

When Fear Becomes the Way We See the World

What's especially interesting to me is how this fear-based way of thinking extends far beyond religious institutions. Once people have been conditioned to interpret life through the expectation of danger, that same way of thinking begins influencing how they understand the world around them.

Look at how quickly fear becomes the dominant narrative whenever something new emerges. A new technology appears, and immediately there are voices warning that it may be connected to the beast or some approaching end-time catastrophe. Artificial intelligence becomes more accessible, and rather than thoughtfully exploring its possibilities, limitations, and genuine risks, some people immediately begin framing it as another sign of impending darkness.

An election approaches, and people are told that if the opposite party in which they are a part of enters office, the country is in danger, the purposes of God are threatened, or some prophetic disaster is about to unfold.

I'm not suggesting that political decisions don't matter or that emerging technologies don't deserve careful examination. Of course they do. There are legitimate concerns worth discussing, and thoughtful discernment has its place. But discernment and fear are not the same thing.

What I'm questioning is why so many people seem conditioned to interpret almost every significant development through the expectation that something terrible is coming. It's as though we've been trained to approach life by continually searching for the next thing we need to be afraid of.

I think our inherited understanding of the future has contributed tremendously to this. When people have been taught that history is moving toward an enormous catastrophe, that the kingdom is still awaiting its arrival, and that evil is preparing for one final global confrontation, they can begin viewing virtually everything through that expectation.

Every political development becomes potentially prophetic. Every technological advancement becomes suspicious. Every cultural change becomes another reason to believe that darkness is taking over.

And what happens to people who spend their lives anticipating disaster? What happens to their ability to enjoy the present, participate in the world around them, pursue creative possibilities, or recognize the goodness already present in human life?

I've become convinced that much of what we've called spiritual alertness has actually been learned fear. We've spent so much time looking for signs of approaching darkness that we've often overlooked the reality of the kingdom we say has already come.

There's something else happening beneath the surface of these narratives that deserves our attention. Fear creates dependency, and when someone convinces you that you're surrounded by dangers you cannot recognize or adequately understand, you become dependent on whoever claims to know what those dangers are.

They tell you what to fear, what to avoid, what to believe, and what you must do to remain safe. The more frightening the world appears, the more necessary that authority can begin to feel.

Sometimes this is deliberate manipulation. Other times, people are simply repeating the same fears that were handed to them. They genuinely believe they're protecting others because they themselves have never learned another way to understand God or the world.

I know what that's like because I participated in it. But whether the fear is being used consciously or subconsciously, we still need to be willing to examine what it is producing.

Are people becoming more free, confident, capable of loving others, secure in their identity, and willing to engage with life? Or are they becoming increasingly anxious, suspicious, judgmental, dependent, and afraid?

Those questions matter because the things we believe about God eventually influence the kind of people we become. And if our understanding of Him continually produces fear, perhaps we need to examine the image of God we've been presenting.

Have We Forgotten the Goodness of God?

This brings me to another contradiction that has been sitting with me. We love to quote Romans 2:4 and talk about the goodness of God leading people to repentance. We affirm that His kindness is what brings people to a change of mind. Yet so much of our actual messaging seems to operate on the assumption that His goodness isn't enough.

We apparently need to frighten people first. We need to convince them that they're in danger, that God is angry, that terrible punishment awaits them, or that their lives will fall apart unless they respond appropriately.

Then we wonder why so many people struggle to experience the goodness of the very God we've introduced to them through terror.

If we actually believe the goodness of God leads people to repentance, why have we relied so heavily on fear to produce the response we're looking for? Have we become so accustomed to measuring success by the number of people who respond that we've stopped considering what's actually motivating their response?

Because fear can produce immediate, visible results. Fear can fill an altar. Fear can persuade someone to repeat a prayer. Fear can motivate financial giving. Fear can produce obedience to religious rules. Fear can keep people attending meetings and following instructions.

But none of those outward responses necessarily means someone has awakened to the goodness of God or experienced genuine freedom. A frightened person can become extraordinarily compliant while remaining completely unaware of who they are.

And that's something I think we need to seriously consider. How much of what we've celebrated as spiritual maturity has actually been the behavior of frightened people trying to remain safe?

Repentance, understood as a change of mind, opens a much larger conversation than we've often allowed. What happens when someone begins to see God differently? What happens when they recognize that the Father revealed in Jesus is not the threatening figure they've been conditioned to imagine? What happens when they discover that reconciliation has already been accomplished and that their existence has never been independent of the Life in whom all things exist?

That kind of realization can change how someone sees themselves, how they relate to others, and how they experience the world around them. It can change the entire direction of a person's life without requiring us to terrify them into a decision.

And I believe this is where the conversation becomes especially important, because we're dealing with more than a few questionable religious practices. We're dealing with an entire understanding of our relationship with God that has been shaped by the assumption that separation is real and must continually be overcome.

When Love Replaces the Fear of Separation

For generations, we've been taught to think of our relationship with God as something that must be obtained, maintained, and protected. We've been told that we need to get closer to God, keep ourselves acceptable to Him, and avoid anything that might interfere with His presence in our lives.

But the separation we've spent our lives trying to overcome has been the very illusion that much of our religious teaching has reinforced.

We confess that we are in Christ. We say Christ lives in us. We declare that we are one spirit with Him and that we have been reconciled. Yet our imagination continues to operate as though God is somewhere outside of us, evaluating our performance and determining whether we qualify for His favor.

Our mouths proclaim union while our expectations are still shaped by separation. And as long as that imagined distance remains, fear will continue to influence the way we relate to God.

If I can convince someone that God might withdraw His presence, I can make them afraid of losing it. If I can convince them that His provision depends on their religious performance, I can make them afraid of financial consequences. If I can convince them that their humanity is fundamentally untrustworthy, I can make them afraid of their own thoughts and desires.

But what happens to those threats when someone begins to recognize the reality of union? What happens when they no longer see God as someone standing at a distance, waiting for them to fulfill the conditions necessary to come near?

What happens when they realize that the Life they've been searching for has been the truth of their existence all along?

Suddenly, the entire foundation upon which those fears were built begins to lose its credibility. And I think this is one of the reasons the revelation of God's love is so disruptive to religious systems built around control.

First John 4:18 tells us that there is no fear in love, that perfect love drives out fear, and that fear is connected to punishment. Those are remarkable words when you consider how much religious activity has been motivated by the expectation of punishment.

John doesn't describe fear as the foundation of a healthy relationship with God. He identifies love as the very reality that removes it.

And I wonder how much of our theology would have to change if we took that seriously. Because any relationship established through threats, intimidation, manipulation, and coercion deserves to be questioned.

We know that in our human relationships. We recognize that genuine love cannot be manufactured through the threat of punishment.

If someone remains in a relationship only because they're terrified of what will happen if they leave, we don't call that freedom. If someone gives money because they fear retaliation, we don't call that generosity. If someone obeys because they're afraid to think for themselves, we don't call that maturity.

So why have we been comfortable attributing those dynamics to the Father? Why have we accepted descriptions of God that would trouble us if we were describing anyone else?

I'm not suggesting that freedom means every decision is wise, that harmful actions have no consequences, or that we should live without responsibility. That's not what I'm talking about. Love and freedom don't eliminate responsibility; they allow responsibility to emerge from an entirely different place.

I can make thoughtful decisions because I value life, not because I'm terrified of punishment. I can be generous because I care about people, not because I'm trying to secure a blessing. I can examine new technologies, political developments, and cultural changes with wisdom without allowing fear to govern my imagination.

I can recognize that my choices matter without believing that one wrong decision will somehow disconnect me from the Life that sustains my very existence. And perhaps most importantly, I can relate to God without being afraid of Him.

When I look at Jesus, I don't see someone desperately trying to convince humanity that the Father is dangerous. I see the revelation of a Father whose goodness continually confronts the distorted images people have carried about Him.

I see Jesus engaging with people whom religious culture had pushed aside. I see Him challenging the burdens religious authorities placed on others. I see Him revealing love and reconciliation in ways that disrupted the expectations of those who believed they already understood God.

And if Jesus is the full revelation of the Father, then His life must become the lens through which we reconsider every inherited description of God that contradicts what He reveals. We cannot continue calling God love while presenting Him through relational dynamics we would recognize as controlling or abusive in anyone else.

There's a great deal more to explore here, especially when we consider how deeply these ideas have shaped generations of people. Some have spent their entire lives trying to earn approval they were told could be lost. Others have struggled with constant anxiety about the future, their finances, their spiritual condition, or the possibility that they might unknowingly do something to anger God. And many have learned to call that anxiety faithfulness.

I wonder how different our communities would become if we stopped treating frightened people as evidence of successful ministry. What if we became more interested in whether people were discovering freedom than whether they were complying with our expectations? What if our conversations about God actually left people more aware of His goodness rather than more suspicious of themselves and the world around them?

I think about the years I spent warning people about hell. I think about the money I gave because I was afraid of failing God. I think about the countless messages I've heard that presented ordinary life as a spiritual minefield. And I think about how many people are still living inside those same fears today, sincerely believing that this is what a relationship with God is supposed to feel like.

There's something terribly sad about people being told that Jesus has set them free while spending their lives afraid to actually live.

And maybe that's what has become so clear to me through all of this. We don't need another religious system that becomes more skillful at managing people's fears. We need to examine the image of God that has made those fears seem reasonable in the first place.

If our understanding of God requires us to continually frighten people into loving Him, obeying Him, giving to Him, or remaining faithful to Him, then perhaps it's our understanding of God that needs to change.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life convincing people that they're in danger from the very One in whom their existence is found. I don't want to introduce people to Jesus by first teaching them to be terrified of His Father. And I don't want to participate in perpetuating narratives that leave humanity anxious, suspicious, and exhausted when the message we proclaim is supposed to be one of reconciliation, fullness, and freedom.

There is still a conversation to be had about what living freely actually looks like. There are questions about responsibility, discernment, relationships, and how we learn to trust ourselves after years of being taught that we shouldn't. There is also the difficult process of recognizing fears that have become so familiar that we no longer realize they're influencing our decisions.

But I find myself increasingly interested in what happens when people are no longer governed by those fears.

What kind of families would we cultivate? What kind of communities would emerge? How would we approach generosity, creativity, politics, technology, and the future? How differently would we treat one another if we were no longer interpreting life through the constant expectation of danger?

And what might humanity begin to experience when the goodness of God is no longer merely something we quote, but the reality through which we understand ourselves and the world?

Those are conversations worth having, especially for people who have spent much of their lives believing that fear was somehow necessary to maintain their relationship with God. There may be an entirely different way of experiencing life that we've barely begun to explore.

Because if it really is for freedom that Christ has set us free, then perhaps it's time we stopped being afraid of freedom.

Get The New Book!

I AM - The Life You've Always Been Looking For: Identity, Union, and the Realization That You Have Everything

Available On Amazon:

Get Your Copy Here

Continue The Journey

If this essay resonated with you, don't let the conversation end here. Urban Eden is more than a collection of articles—it's an ongoing journey of exploring identity, seeing God more clearly, and engaging life more fully.

Meet Serge

Serge is an author, minister, podcast host, and the founder of Urban Eden Community. his passion is helping people see God more clearly, awaken to who they are, and engage life more fully. Through essays, conversations, books, and community, his hope is to create spaces where people can ask honest questions and discover the life that's already present within them.

Learn More About Serge