Fearing God

Fear brought me to God—then led me away

“Saturn devouring his son” by Francisco Goya (Wikimedia Commons)

Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, I experienced a peculiar type of dread that only those with a similar upbringing will truly understand. I recall vividly a time I came home to find the whole house dark and eerily silent. A sudden terror gripped my heart. “Oh shit,” I thought to myself. “The Rapture!” Eventually, my fear subsided when, one-by-one, my family members…