Fear God. And love.

I arrived in the night. As the city slept, I came in via Ethiopia after connecting at Addis, and into Cairo. It was dead of night, so I couldnt see anything and was in trust and in faith that the cabin crew have done this so many times before.

We flew over the Red Sea.

And its the beginning of a new chapter, you see. On the plane, I recollected the last time I had encountered a place with deep history, Greece in '07. I met Athens when I was too young, and I think I wasnt ready then. I have collected myself now I think.

And so the similarities of both these places are quite striking to my soul, and to my deep passion for history and of places and of people.

And so I had these rapid thoughts, and I got to write them down today, just as I was having a conversation with a dear old friend, in the south of this continent.

I’m not a religious person, however, I am a spiritual person. I have just the right amount of fear to believe that there is a God and so, I behave accordingly.

You have to fear God in so far as you have to fear eternal damnation, I think. Its believing in an existential realm that precedes this lifetime and proceeds into the next. If you consider life as energy, then in the simplest of the fundamentals of physics that I remember, energy never dies. It gets transferred.

So you may reappear some time later after you have left this present reality and only God knows what you become, lol.

Within the context, fearing God and having the right amount of fear to at least believe that there is a God after all, and behaving accordingly, are those the same?

I think fear drives one to an acknowledgment of flaws and working to overcome them to be able to stand up for good judgement in inspection, and in the outcome.

Your conscience then encourages you to live to be better in your thoughts and your deeds to your fellow humanity and in your place within nature.

And even more so, a further point to ponder is to love God, more than you fear God. Because you would hate to disappoint those you love, even when there is no divinity involved. So maybe fear and love God in equal parts I think, but with a tilt towards love.

I believe humans should have the capability and or capacity to accept flaws even in the absence of fear. Infact, in my opinion, behaving accordingly and consistently so, without the influence of an ounce of fear shows authenticity and great will power.

And that is also correct. However the fear of God is a scriptural dictation/directive, in whichever religion. So I think, at the core, the Creator understood that free will would lead to ego and omnipotence to the point that man would believe he himself is his own master, in this realm, once he had learnt to create other things for himself.

Another opinion that may occupy space, is that humility can also be achieved outside the religious and spiritual realm. Diversity in spiritual and religious preferences introduces contradictory positions, some that may very well encourage the "own master" notion?

But my opinion is not dogma. I suppose its a place of comfort that I have found myself in. And it may not sensibly apply to anyone else, universally. But its the thing that centres me, and causes me to behave in a particular way, with an aspiration towards good judgement, if that should come.

So I think you get into your own position, and you get yourself into a formation on how you deal with the world, in this present reality that you find yourself in. But I think it requires some guidance, it can be from literature or conversations or music even and for some, its church. But there has to be some guidance from somewhere. And you are then in form to be at peace, wherever you are.

alhamd lilah.

الحمد لله

Thanks Mdu Ndlovu for the conversation.