Even fear can be used to draw us closer to God

I think we've been getting it wrong.

Growing up, I was always taught the opposite of love is hate. Throughout the past few years, I've realized thinking like this sells ourselves short, sells love and its depth short. Oversimplifies it. Maybe it's true hate is an antonym of love, depending on which qualities we're focusing on.

But I think a much more accurate antonym of love is fear.

Think about it: Love seeks to know and be known, takes us out of ourselves, pulls us out of our comfort zone to courageous things, to connection. Fear keeps us lonely, keeps us in a deathly safety, withdraws, separates us from God, others and ourselves.

Love draws out, calls us out of our hiding places; fear shames us, makes us shrink back within ourselves.

I am convinced that the root of all sin is fear; fear we aren't enough, fear we can't trust Love, fear we will be rejected, fear our ideology will be overthrown, fear our power will be taken away.

Maybe our original sin in the first place was fear that love wasn't telling us the truth, fear we weren't good, fear we weren't enough.

Somehow we believed our fear; somehow love came to save us.

Maybe it wasn't only our first sin, but also the result of it. The result of the sin that separated us from love was becoming afraid of love. Not trusting love. Hiding from love. Thinking love would do something bad to us, would punish us.

It's not true.

The punishment is in the sin itself: separation from the One who is what we're looking for. All we find in God is his wanting us.

I think of 1 John 4:18: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love."

I'm not sure where this fear came from, except that we are vulnerable because we were made for our Maker and we have this need for love. Our vulnerability is the emptiness we feel inside us that makes us seekers, that draws us to him, to our purpose. It is our greatest gift from God. Because of that, it is also our deepest vulnerability.

Yes, it must be: Our condition of being vulnerable or capable of being wounded is our deepest vulnerability.

Love gives others a chance to wound; fear doesn't. God is vulnerable: He became man and was wounded. That Man is also God, is Love. We are people who reflect this part of our Creator, and surely any part of us that reflects him is good. Because we conceive of woundedness as "bad" -- because we ate the fruit and learned about separation, learned about pain -- we fear it.

But our God is amazing: Even fear -- especially fear -- can be used to draw us to Him when we give it to Him and let Him transform it into love. Because it's our greatest vulnerability, with God, it's also our greatest gift.