Fear of God?

The idea that we should fear God is something that I have never understood. This came up last night as we read in our Ruhi Book 3 about teaching children both love and fear of God, which caused me to ask the others why we ought to fear God. If God is All-Loving, All-Merciful, and All-Gracious, All-Forgiving, what does this fear of God mean? Should we really fear God?

I'd love to hear your thoughts, dear reader, on what this fear of God means in any religious tradition. I never really understood it from the Christian standpoint either.

My own answer is that it's not so much that we ought to fear God directly, but rather that we should fear our fears, which distance ourselves from receiving God's love (see the previous post). We always have choice to receive God's love, so we can choose not to receive it, thus depriving ourselves of that blessings and bounty of God's love in our own lives. It is this consequence that we should fear. To me, fear doesn't feel like the right word to explain this dynamic, but it is convenient because humans understand fear and it conveys the undesirable consequence of undesirable actions. It also seems important to note that this undesirable consequence (a.k.a. distance from God) is not static: it can be righted at any point with different actions, namely choosing to receive God's love ("Love Me, that I may Love thee") and follow His commandments, which we do for the sake of our love of God. In obeying His will, we hone our spiritual qualities and bring ourselves closer to God, which is conducive to our own happiness.