Christian Platitudes – FAKE NEWS!

Ah January. The time of year when everyone has resolutions and words and motivation to live their lives differently and be the people they always wanted to be. Sadly, according to a report by U.S. News, some 80% of the resolutions are gone by mid-February.

You know what else January brings…silly Christian platitudes. We hear them all year long, but I think they get worse in January. We are bombarded by false promises of God that have no basis in Scripture.

Here’s one that really bugs me…The Bible says Do Not Fear 365 times, that’s a daily reminder from God to live every day fearless” or its younger brother “The Bible says Do Not Be Afraid 365 time, yada, yada, yada.”

Let me put this into terms that everyone can understand…

The Bible says Do Not Fear 365 times is FAKE NEWS! Click To Tweet

Recently I commented on a pastor’s wall, who had shared this unbiblical platitude. I wrote, “Sadly, this not true”, and instead of checking his facts…he deleted my post. So I decided to check the facts myself.

I did two word searches. The first was the word fear and the second, obviously, was afraid. What I found was pretty interesting and here are the results.

The word fear appears in 385 verses with 400 times the word is used.

The word afraid appears in 189 verse with 193 times the word is used.

A total usage of 574 verse and 593 times the two words are used, certainly enough to cover the 365 days of the year. But here’s the bad news. In those 574 verse and 593 times, only 161 times does it say that we should not be afraid.

The amazing part is that the Bible says that we are to be afraid of or in fear of God 251 times. That’s right…the Bible says that we are supposed to have a healthy fear of God many more times than it says we shouldn’t fear.

So here’s why this is important.

If you have to make up promises from God to make people feel good…then you are probably more in love with what you think God can do for you than who He is. Click To Tweet

Maybe instead of claiming some Fake News promise from God, it would be wiser to pull out the Bible, blow off the dust and learn who He really is…which I’m pretty sure will lead to some healthy fear.

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