When I was a kid, I was always afraid to go to sleep on Christmas Eve. Year after year I had the same nightmare. I don’t remember the dream itself, but even today, I remember how terrified I was. I guess I was too wound up, or afraid Santa would pass our house by if I weren’t asleep.

We rarely focus on this—it doesn’t come out in children’s Christmas pageants—but the first Christmas began in terror for unsuspecting shepherds. Luke 2:9 says, “An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”

The old King James translation says they were “sore afraid.”

The Greek word for fear, phobia, is used twice in this sentence, first as a verb and then as a noun, along with the adjective mega, meaning “great.” 

Literally, the shepherds were “greatly afraid, fearful, mega.”

Isn’t Christmas supposed to be about warm feelings?

And what were they afraid of? It could not have been because they forgot to buy batteries, or because their crazy uncle showed up unannounced.

Luke said it was God’s glory. The Divine Essence on display in the night sky. The manifestation of the excellence and power of God. They saw God for who God really was, and they realized who they were in comparison.

That’s the primal fear, the fear beneath all other fears. 

To overcome that fear, God had to do something that no other religion can comprehend: God was born for you.

God became vulnerable. God came in need of you. 

When you take the Christ child into your arms, God shines the light of his glory on you. God sees you for who you really are and finds you beautiful.

“Fear not,” says the God of Love. “I was born for you.”

This week, dozens of wealthy parents were charged with fraud after paying millions of dollars to a man named William Singer, who ran a bogus college prep company. Singer bribed admissions officials, test proctors, and coaches to guarantee kids’ acceptance into elite universities. One couple paid $500,000 to get their daughters into the University of Southern California on the rowing team, though neither girl had ever taken part in the sport.

Why would parents, who were able to give their kids every advantage, do something so dishonest?

Didn’t they fear getting caught?

My guess is that the parents were afraid of how they might look if their teenager didn’t get into the “right school.”

We’re studying Nehemiah, the Old Testament exile who God called long ago to rebuild Jerusalem. With God’s guidance, Jerusalem was rebuilt. Then, incredibly, the former exiles turned on each other. They cheated one another out of property. They charged one another interest on loans, something God had forbidden.

Nehemiah’s rebuke to the cheaters: “Shouldn’t you walk in fear of our God?”.

“Fear of the Lord,” doesn’t so much mean a fear of getting caught, or even a fear of going to hell. It means healthy reverence. And it’s the kind of fear that usually comes with love and hope.

We shake our heads at wealthy parents who cheat, but what of the exiles in Nehemiah’s day? They’d come back to Jerusalem with nothing except the grace of God. You’d think they’d have each other’s back; instead they cheated each other.   

I wonder what our lives would be like if, instead of trying to take advantage of each other, we worked to cultivate a healthy fear of our God?

Who knows, we might not be afraid of, say, our kids’ score on college entrance exams.