Why am I so afraid of God?

Come, sit with this fear a moment before we try to move it. You are not the first to carry it; it runs like a thread through the whole of the older scriptures, where God is pictured thundering on the mountain and the people beg not to hear that voice again (Exodus 20:19, KJV). Much of what we inherit teaches us to be afraid—that God watches to catch us, tallies our failures, and stands ready to punish. If that is the God you were handed, then your fear is not strange at all; it is honest. But I want to tell you plainly what I believe the texts, read through Jesus, reveal: that image is a shadow cast by limited human perception, not the face of God. The God Jesus knew is Love, and "there is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment" (1 John 4:18, KJV). Fear, this letter says, comes not from God but from the expectation of punishment—and that expectation itself is the error. Notice how tenderly Jesus names God: not Judge, not Executioner, but Father—one who clothes the lilies and numbers the very hairs of your head (Luke 12:7, KJV). He tells us the Kingdom is already within and among us (Luke 17:21, KJV), not a distant courtroom we are dragged toward. And in the recovered sayings he says, "the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it" (Gospel of Thomas 113.1-4). So perhaps your fear is not fear of God at all, but fear of a false picture of God that was placed over the true one. You are not a condemned sinner awaiting sentence; you are the image and likeness of Good, inseparable from the Love that made you. The awakening is not to earn God's mercy but to see that there was never anything to fear in Perfect Love. Fear loosens its grip not by force but by recognition—by turning quietly inward, beneath the noise, and letting the true Father be known. If it would help, I am glad to sit longer with where this fear first took root in you.