This picture of a figure on the Duomo in Florence depicts the authority of god that is to be feared. This guy will tell you EXACTLY what is right and wrong and you will hear it on your knees. Pretty hard for us Green Meme egalitarians who don’t recognize hierarchy to relate to. Still, it’s an essential face of god to embrace if one is to develop humility and truly defeat the ego.
Just contemplate how uncomfortable this makes us feel in relationship to power hierarchies. All I can think about is te inquisition and the pain visited upon humanity by such dominator hierarchies like the church. Still, there is power in that recognition that god is all and I am nothing. Without embracing this aspect of god there is no awe. Awe seems equale parts respect/fear/ecstasy. The fear is the healthy fear of realizing the absolute nature of the very sort time we have to act here on earth for the sake of that which put us here and the risk that we may waste an incarnation. After death we can’t act and wont be able to lie to ourselves about our motive for how we spent our time.