The expression “love of God” is ambiguous: it can refer to God’s love of man or to man’s love of God. The expression “fear of God,” therefore, suffers from the same ambiguity, but not heretofore in any practical sense. That is, since it makes no sense to speak of God’s being fearful, inasmuch as he is all-powerful, the phrase can only refer to man’s fear of God. Interestingly enough, a God-fearing man is generally understood as being a man who fears nothing else, though what that fear accomplishes is hard to say, since it is not unusual to see a western featuring a whiskey-drinking, tobacco-chewing, woman-chasing, two-fisted, God-fearing man. A sniveling coward, on the other hand, who frets and worries over every little thing, would never be called a God-fearing man, not because he does not fear God too, but because he is not man enough to qualify for that characterization.
But now the Pope has introduced the possibility that the phrase “fear of God” might actually refer to God’s fear as well. In his effort to soften the position of the Catholic Church on divorce and homosexuality, Pope Francis said, “God is not afraid of new things.” Ironically, by denying that God is afraid on these matters, he opens up the possibility of God’s being afraid in other areas. Could the Deity be a man-fearing God?
Of course, ever since Feuerbach, or perhaps even Xenophanes, it has been known that talking about God is just an indirect way of talking about man, and that what the Pope is really saying is that Catholics in general, and the bishops in particular, should not be afraid of new things. But while we may understand the Pope in this manner, surely the Pope does not mean to be so construed. Presumably, then, the idea is that God has the courage to declare that divorce and homosexuality are not sins.
There are only three ways to understand this. The first is that God changed his mind. He used to think divorce and homosexuality were sins, but now he realizes he was mistaken. But that would mean that God is fallible and mutable. Who wants a wishy-washy God, one who is always changing his mind about whether this or that is a sin, depending on who talked to him last, and, in any event, when he does change his mind, can we be sure if he has it right this time? The whole point of having God be the foundation of morality is so he can lay down eternal truths about right and wrong. If God is going to vacillate about such things and have to admit that he was mistaken, people will quit taking him seriously.
A second possibility is that we were mistaken about what God thought was a sin. According to this way of thinking, God has never been opposed to divorce or homosexuality. Putting men to death for lying with each other was never his idea, but just the ravings of a bunch of homophobic Jewish priests. And he doesn’t know why Jesus kept saying that divorce was wrong except in the case of fornication, because he told him and he told him that no-fault divorce was the way his Father in Heaven wanted things all along.
A third possibility is that God does not change his mind per se, but that what is a sin at one stage of civilization may not be a sin at a later stage. That is, back when Jesus was alive, divorce was pretty rough on women, and thus they had to be protected from being abandoned by men. But now that we have child support, community property, alimony, and equal rights in the workplace, divorce is no longer the problem it used to be, and thus is no longer a sin. It is not God that changed, but the circumstances. In the case of homosexuality, however, most would prefer the second option, which is that this never was a sin, and we were mistaken about what God thought on the matter all along, not that God once wanted homosexuals to be put to death, but given the different circumstances of the modern world, God is now all right with letting them live.
No matter which option we choose—God changed his mind, we were mistaken about God’s will, or there are different sins for different circumstances—every change is one more nail in God’s coffin, for it is impossible to avoid the impression that it is no longer God who tells us what is or is not a sin, but rather it is we who are deciding whether something is a sin, and adjusting our conception of God accordingly. It is one thing to say man has free will when it comes to choosing whether or not to sin; it is quite another to say man has free will when it comes to choosing what is and is not a sin in the first place. Freedom to believe what one wants about God soon leads to freedom from God altogether.
Part of the appeal of religion comes from the sense that there are eternal truths, that they were revealed to man long ago, and that we know what these truths are. We may smile with amusement when the Catholic Church continues to use the Latin Mass, even though Jesus never spoke Latin, and no one else speaks it anymore either, just as we do when Protestants think that the King James Bible is the only translation that is sacred text. But using the same words that have been used for centuries gives people a sense that they are receiving the unchanging word of God. The footnotes provided by a modern English translation of the Bible may reflect the latest scholarship, but they do not inspire much reverence.
The Ten Commandments are revered as being the word of God, in no small part because they were written down over three thousand years ago. Part of the problem with Mormonism is that it is only two centuries old, and even its founder, Joseph Smith, had to claim that his Book of Mormon was ancient in order to have any chance of being taken seriously. And if someone comes along today and tells people that he has been talking to God, and has written down everything God said to him in an e-book, he will be dismissed as a crank. What is modern, up to date, and new is inimical to religious feeling.
Therefore, the Catholic Church faces a dilemma: either it can refuse to change, thereby alienating people who are divorced and living in sin, or who are homosexuals; or it can change to suit the times, thereby vitiating the feeling that one is conforming to the eternal word of God. If it chooses to modernize, it will keep more of its members, but will there be anything left for them to believe in? Being an atheist, I prefer that the Church change its views on divorce and homosexuality, not only because tolerance in these matters is a good thing, but also because the more a religion changes, the weaker it becomes. The more the Church changes the word of God, the less likely people are to believe that it is the word of God.
So, if God is not afraid of new things, maybe he should be.