Fear or Love: A Reflection on Faith, Church, and What Truly Guides Us
The other morning on my walk, I noticed something different.
More cars leaving the neighborhood than usual.
It was Sunday, so my first thought was simple:
They’re probably heading to church.
And then a question arrived that I wasn’t expecting—
Do we go to church out of fear… or out of love?
Fear that if we don’t go, we’ll disappoint God.
Fear of judgment.
Fear of what others might think.
Or do we go because we want to feel closer to Him?
Because we want to sit in a room with other people and remember love.
Because someone there might need encouragement today.
Because we want to offer kindness to someone who feels alone.
I’m not a preacher or a Bible scholar.
But I do try to live by the two commandments Jesus said mattered most:
Love God.
Love one another.
Some mornings, my church is a quiet field I walk through.
Two elder trees stand at the edge of the path. I often begin my conversations with God there. Not because the trees are God, but because they give me a place to begin.
From there, the conversation grows.
From the trees…
to the sky…
to the quiet presence of God that holds everything together.
What Are You Growing
This morning, as I walked, another thought came quietly.
A whisper, really.
Sometimes what we experience as unity can actually be something else.
When many people feel the same anger at the same time, it can begin to feel righteous… even holy.
And if we’re not careful, that shared feeling can make anger and hatred seem justified.
But Christ was always clear about the fruit we should recognize:
Love.
Compassion.
Care for the hungry, the sick, the poor, the forgotten.
Anything rooted in Christ should lead us back to love.
Faith was never meant to make our hearts smaller.
It was meant to open them.
Truth can challenge us.
It can call us to change.
But truth spoken in the spirit of Christ should never harden our hearts against one another.
So if you ever find yourself sitting in a place of worship and feeling more anger than compassion… more division than love…
it might be worth pausing and asking a quiet question in your own heart:
Is this drawing me closer to the love Christ taught?
Because faith was never meant to make our hearts smaller.
It was meant to open them.
I Am A Woman Who
There’s something else I’ve been sitting with.
I am a woman who honors the teachings of Jesus.
Not through fear.
Not through rules.
Not through proving I’m right.
But through love.
Pure and simple… love.
The kind of love that doesn’t wish harm.
Doesn’t disguise hate as righteousness.
Doesn’t pray for someone’s downfall and call it faith.
Because that’s not the Jesus I know.
The Jesus I know fed people.
Sat with people.
Defended people.
Loved people.
All people.
And I’ve seen what happens when that gets twisted.
When anger starts to sound holy.
When division starts to feel justified.
When hate borrows the language of faith.
We know the difference.
We feel it.
If the same words were spoken about someone we love…
we would recognize immediately—
That’s not love.
That’s something else.
And I want no part in anything that calls itself faith but leads away from love.
Church
Church can be a beautiful place.
Community can be a beautiful place.
I have sat in pews and felt something so real it brought me to tears.
This isn’t about dismissing church.
It’s about remembering what it’s meant to hold.
Because connection with God is always personal.
You can find it in a sanctuary.
You can find it in a coffee shop with a friend, talking honestly about life and faith.
You can find it walking across a quiet field at sunrise.
Wherever love is welcomed, God is already there.
And wherever love is absent… it’s worth asking why.
And remember,
you are so loved.
