Fear or Love God?

Each person at least once in life faces the possibility to choose between fear and love. However, most of the time it appears quite problematic to decide; therefore, people try to find the answer with the help of their friends, religion, family, social clubs, forgetting that the main source, which is always ready to give a sincere and right answer to their question is inside of them. Especially there are a large number of people involving themselves in different forms of religion, Christianity in particular. They are willing to resolve their problems and answer questions with the help of Bible or blindly believing to the person preaching, which are usually considered the closest sources representing the will of God. Nevertheless, it appears that frequently chapters in the Bible seem more controversial and give less help than they are expected to. For instance, in the epistles of First Peter and First John the one faces two different representations of God, Jesus and absolutely different representation of how the Christians should live and behave.

Apparently, both authors aim to picture Jesus as a role model for Christians to follow. Peter emphasizes the time and the fact of Jesus suffering and dying for people, fulfilling the will of God. First Peter 4:1 gives a good example of how Peter perceives Jesus' suffering and how he thinks people should understand that. He says, "Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin." All in all, it is clear that according to Peter suffering is good for people and they should be searching for it and be satisfied with the feeling of pain. In contrast to First Peter, the emphasis of First John falls on Jesus love and his loving behavior.

Consequently, through the example of Jesus, each epistle shapes its own characterization of Christian life. In fact, Peter described Christian life as constant suffering, fearing, and sacrificing in that way satisfying God and becoming a pure Christian (First peter 3:14-17). Peter believes that Jesus came to the Earth with purpose of suffering and dying for people and shows that they should live in constant awareness of his pain and therefore feel pain themselves and get rid of the sin. Put another way, Peter makes people protect their happiness and joyful life into the future and therefore leaves them unhappy and suffering in the present (First Peter 1:3-7). In summary, Peter believes that that Gods will for people is to suffer and the only way to reach the perfection is to feel pain. On the other hand, in First John the one can see that life of every single human being is associated with light and joy, and all people are viewed as children of God, just as Jesus was. According to First John living means loving everybody and everything around including yourself (First John 3:14). There we find out that Jesus was sent to show that God did not want his children to suffer or feel pain and that it is possible to achieve perfection simply loving each other and loving God and Jesus Christ. In addition, from the epistle of First John in is clear that life is impossible without light that is present in every person. As Jesus is described as person that shines, it is extremely important for humans to start feeling Gods light in themselves and in each other as well. Therefore, the only will of God is to reach complete joy, become a loving person and project that love and happiness on everybody around, as the only way to get joy is to give it.

From the critical point of view, Peters' writings are full of the ideas of the past; many of his inferences are based on the Old Testament rules and thoughts. That is in First Peter what is feared the most is God himself as described in First Peter 1:17, which undoubtedly makes people panic and intuitively try to save themselves from powerful, omnipotent, strict, angry and punishing God. Yet, in First John God is described as all loving power that as a result appears to be an eternal source of help, support, knowledge, love, joy and light ( First John 1:5) that people are to use and be conscious about.

In addition, in both epistles there