Do you believe this? Perhaps the notion of "fearing God" pisses you off a little bit because you were raised in a church that put fear in to you to try and control you? I know people like this.
I believe that this Proverb is much richer than a "Fear Big Brother" translation that a simple reading may suggest.
First off, should we fear God? I suggest that given the entire theme of the Bible centering around God wanting a relationship with us, the answer is yes and no. Fear in the sense of a deep respect and reverence for God's greatness? Yes. Fear in the sense of I am afraid of God and my fear is based on a dysfunctional idea that God is angry at me? No.
I believe in this information era that we are living in right now, "the fear of God the beginning of knowledge" is a very worthy proverb to consider. Why? Because we all feel like we know so much. With Google, Siri, and a million other websites and apps brimming with information, we are a few clicks away from thinking that we can know anything. Does having a lot of information equal wisdom? I think we all can agree that no. We all probably know someone who knows a lot, but constantly makes poor decisions in their life.
Why is the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom? It's because when we fear/respect God we stay humble enough to know that we don't know A LOT, and therefore we are open to learning. We are open to having a perspective that grows.
We can all think of a very ignorant, narrow-minded, stupid person who thinks they know everything. When you think you know everything your focusing is no longer on learning. The more humble you are, the more open you are to keep learning and growing and gaining knowledge.
Even someone who seeks God with all their heart may not fear God - and not even know it. How? Because they have an idol of certainty that they have the perfect understanding of scripture. This isn't the fear of God, this is the fear of being wrong. This is "the Bible told me so" notion that they have all of the answers right here, thankyouverymuch. The fear of God should compel you to realize that you're not God, so you don't know God fully.
So once we can all admit that we won't even scrape the surface of wisdom, what can we know? What do we need to know? What knowledge is most important?
Self-sacrificial love. Jesus dying for us. Jesus summing it all up to "Love God, and love others. Make sense? Of all of the information in the universe, if you know what real love is, everything else pales in impotence.
Someone can spend their whole life seeking all sorts of knowledge, trying to master a career or craft, seeking a goal, and miss life in the process because they didn't know love.
The minute you understand love, you are on a path that is full of meaning the whole entire way, not simply a goal.
This is the beginning of wisdom.
