What is the meaning of:
fear (and its word-field, including alarm, dread, qualm, worry, panic, horror, phobia, and terror)
gnosis,
gnosticism,
grace,
gratitude ?
Home > Spiritual Word Meanings > Fear and Grace
fear [ < Old English færan (to terrify, ambush, surprise)] A strong emotion due to foreseeing or becoming aware of danger; the reason or cause of such strong emotion.
At its best, fear helps you protect yourself, and helps to remind you that you don't have control over everything in your life (and never will). At its worst, fear can turn us into murderous bigots or quivering cowards. A person can create fear in someone else, for vengeance or control. Fear can shrink the soul more than anything else except powerlust. There are many kinds of fear:
Psalm 23 says "I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me". Fears that are turned over to God will be muted or harnessed, or will go away. When you stop trying to be in control and let God be in control, there is no cause for fear, for the One in Control loves you and seeks the best for you. Trust in God's love casts out fear. Go against God, and there is no reason not to be in terror.
No need to fear checking the dictionary for a definition of fear.
gnosis [ < Greek gnosis (knowledge)]. The Greek word gnosis is a basic word for any sort of knowledge. In a religious or philosophical context, it usually refers to the 'secret' or 'special' knowledge that is said to set one free from the 'illusory' material world. There is no such knowledge, according to Christian beliefs:
gnosticism: Gnosticism arrived when Christianity was a mere toddler, and it tried its best to suck in the strong, fledgling Christian faith and reshape it into its image. There was a lot of variety of practice and teaching among Gnostics, but there were certain core markers.
In gnosticism, the spiritual world was full of deep secrets. Matter was evil or unreal or at best icky, and spirit was good. Terms like 'vessel', 'container', 'jacket', 'package', 'can', or 'vehicle' are how they would today describe the (dispensible) human body. Some spirits were more 'good' than others, and part of the task (dare I say 'game'?) was to keep these spiritual superiors happy. A few people (that is, themselves) were learning about and evolving toward the spiritual world. A follower was to stay focused on spiritual things and to ignore or not value those who lacked such 'knowledge' or 'consciousness'. The meaning of holy writings (including some of their leaders and pagan writers but not including most of the Old Testament) was uncovered by way of allegory ("this really means *that*"). The gnostic world-view was sharply unlike that of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Gnostic "gospels" include books such as the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Truth, and Dialogue of the Savior. Most of these writings were found at Nag Hammadi, which was a religious library of sorts, not an attempt to collect a new set of Gnostic scriptures (as some popular writers would have it).
For the most part, these 'gnostic gospels' are not stories told about Jesus, or reports about his life. They're not about him giving grace, or being up close and personal with people. The Gnostics' writings deal with Jesus' death hardly at all. The Jesus portrayed by the gnostics gives out spiritual sayings or responds to questions, mostly left alone without a context. There's not much of a setting - it's as if no life was lived behind the sayings. The Gnostic Jesus has little about him that marks him as a Jew. This could not be more unlike the Synoptic Gospels, which show Jesus at synagogue and at the Temple and in prayer, turning to the Hebrew holy books, as one would expect from the Jew he was. God as a human?? For a gnostic, God would never stoop so low as to be contaminated with our filth. Thus, of course, they had to re-translate Jesus: he was a human who had developed the highest level of contacts in the spirit world. His body either became, or always was, an illusion. A Gnostic god could never really be 'God-with-us', nor could it be so focused on loving those wallowing in the earthly mire.
Old-fashioned Gnosticism morphed into new-fangled New Thought (Unity, Christian Science) and then New Age (Celestine Prophecy, and especially Urantia), and left its traces in other places (in some of the Word of Faith preachers, in the Course on Miracles, in the late Heaven's Gate, among some religion scholars, and in much of US pop religious culture). For reasons that are baffling given its lack of logical sense, the idea of 'secret' or 'special' spiritual knowledge has historically had its strongest appeal among the intelligentsia and the social elite. The best explanation is that they badly want to believe they're a step above others. Modern gnostics know how to dress up their ideas with a 'positive' spin about our selves and the earth. But it's still spin, and still winds up draining into the same hole.
See what secret knowledge the dictionary has about gnosticism.
grace [ < Old French, < Latin grâtia, < grâtus (pleasing) ] unmerited favor.
God's grace is given to all, freely. God gives you the faith that sets you straight, and gives you the Spirit that changes you and gives you Christ's goodness. Thus, it is grace that lets loose the riches of God's love. God keeps this grace from no one. However if you don't accept grace, it sits there with no effect, like an unopened and forgotten Christmas present. And we humans don't like the implications of the gift, namely, that we have no way to do this ourselves. So we tend not to take this grace until we have nothing else left and nowhere else to turn, and even then we might spurn it. Grace is free, but it does not come cheap. The One who loves us pays for grace, by way of all the grief and sorrow that only loved ones can give. The same is true for us when we, like God, give unmerited favor to those we love, as God calls on us to do. There's more than enough grace to go around to everybody, more than enough to do the job. More than enough for you.
You can also see if the dictionary offers you any grace.
gratitude [ < Latin grâtitûdô < grâtus (pleasing < favorable)] The state of being grateful. Grateful: appreciative of some sort of benefit you receive from someone; esp. to the point of doing something in return to please your benefactor. Gratitude is a frame of mind rooted in grace. In the same word-field: thankful, appreciative.
Gratitude is a key motive for Christian morality, and thus any Christian way of living. God did everything to show love for me, so I want to do right, I want to live the kind of life that God would be happy about. A growing proportion of people have little idea of what gratitude really means. They want to think of themselves as being in control, as the one who makes their life tick. But tonight your soul may be required of you. And if it isn't, it may well be because God wanted to give you another day to remember all the things God and other people did for you along the way. An attitude of gratitude naturally leads to love, and repayment by acts of love. There are many whom each of us have every reason to be grateful for; the challenge is to treat them accordingly.
"Gratitude is a virtue of the highest excellence, as it implies a feeling and generous heart, and a proper sense of responsibility."
Noah Webster
Go ahead. Show the dictionary some gratitude.
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