As a kid, I used to spend vast amounts of time watching movies that were inappropriate.

I have a fear of clowns to this day from watching the movie “It” when I was eight.

I have a fear of birds to this day from watching the movie “The Birds” when I was ten.

I have a fear of giraffes to this day for no particular reason…I wish I could say it was also due to a movie.

The point is this: many of the fears that I still hold onto are due to my premature exposure to things that I did not really understand, and that I was not prepared to handle. I saw a movie presenting something typically seen as harmless, i.e. birds and clowns, in a way that made them terrifying; and because I was not knowledgeable enough to know the difference, my association with those things from then on was the scary version rather than the harmless one. Because these feelings were so deeply implanted into my little kid mind, they still determine how I react to those things instinctively even now, as an adult. Have a bird fly in front of me too close while I am walking, and I will unknowingly step into traffic to avoid it. Have a clown try and make me a balloon animal, and I will collapse into a fetal position on the floor. If ever I encountered a bird dressed as a clown, or vice versa, I think perhaps my heart would literally jump out of my mouth and run for cover.

These fears, I know, are irrational. In the part of me responsible for self-preservation, I highly doubt there is a category for circus acts or for feathered, toothless bipedals (apart from vultures…blech). But my habituated response is to fear them, and because of this my life works around these fears accordingly. I typically avoid kids’ birthday parties, and steer clear of scattered pieces of bread at parks.

I say all this to pose a question: if our life can be so altered by an irrational fear, why does it seem to be so unaltered at times by the most rational fear of all? By the awe-inspiring fear that should be felt at even the mention of one Name?

Fear of the Lord is a far different iteration of fear. It is not that God is something to cause us to stay awake at night, flipping on our lamp every hour to make sure nothing is in our room. It is that God deserves our ultimate reverence and awe simply for the breadth of his power and might. But whereas fearing something like clowns is a response to how they could harm us, fearing God is a response to His desire to redeem us as His children, and empower us with the strength of which He is the Source.

However in many who claim to be believers, their response to that fear is actually no response at all. There lives are not changed, they do things no differently, than if God had nothing at all to do with them.

In essence, they believe in God but live like they don’t.

How could this happen? How could a true encounter with the God of the cosmos cause not even a ripple of change in our broken lives and how we live them?

I cannot offer to know anyone’s heart or faith. It is tricky enough at times to interpret my own. But I do know this: if we have truly encountered God, in a way that we truly begin to understand His immense and passionate love for us, His creation, change is inescapable. When I was a child, I was clearly not old enough to really understand why I was scared of those movies. As I grew older, my fear of them was determined more and more unnecessary. Oppositely, when I first encountered God, though I was still not mature enough to understand my reverence of Him, that reverence was determined more and more necessary as I grew in Him. And my response? To live a life of constant striving to show the world around me, and my God Himself, the strength of my devotion to Him through the changes I was making, through the way I was living and walking.

James talks in his epistle about disingenuous faith. He is speaking to people that claim to have encountered God, but are living as if they never had.

And he bluntly compares them to demons.

James 2:19 – “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!”

There is a challenge subtly offered here that could quite easily be overlooked. Examining our lives, and the faith that we claim…are we living as if God is as powerful as we say that He is? Because demons, in their knowledge of God, shudder.

Those of us that live a life of declaring God but not devoted to God are told in Romans and Psalms that “there is no fear of God before [our] eyes.” (Psalms 36:1, Romans 3:18)

James implies, quite simply, that the fear demons hold of God, which in no way leads to salvation, still serves to cause them to shudder. How, then, should we approach a faith that claims to know God and His salvation, but causes no fear of God?

We should approach it as we do all things we claim to believe…seeing if it truly affects how we live our life, or if it is just something we have seen but not really sat and considered how truly important it is to us…like a movie seen too young.

“He does not believe who does not live according to his belief.” – Thomas Fuller

P.S. – I am still afraid of giraffes for no apparent reason.