God Does Not Delight in Fear Tactics

Here's another bit from this book I'm reading called The God's Honest Truth by Darin Hufford:

"Understand that in no way does the end justify the means! When we use fear to either get people saved or to get them to toe the line, we are partnering with evil. ALL FEAR IS EVIL. God does not delight in the use of evil to manipulate His children into salvation or repentance. When we do this, we are not acting according to His heart, because we are openly declaring that God delights in evil.

Hell was never supposed to be the force that drew people towards God. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit draws us to God. Threats of Hell bring fear and condemnation. Only a loveless generation would even think of doing such a thing. If someone told our children that we might pour gasoline on them and light them on fire if they didn't mind us, we would be enraged. This is unthinkable because we love our children, yet it's a common practice among many Christians. It's not the Heart of God!

God finds no delight when we tell people that He might take one of their children from them or destroy their business if they don't give their lives to Him. The darkest point in Christian history is still very much alive today. There is an underlying 'crusades era' mentality in thousands of Sunday sermons nationwide. This is Evil! While it may cause people to physically run to the altar, it causes them to spiritually shrink back from God's heart. God did not create man to save their souls from Hell. He created us to have relationship. Fear tactics make that impossible. The end does NOT justify the means.

What if I were to send someone to my wife before I married her and have them tell her that if she didn't marry me she would lose her job, gain a hundred pounds, have her house repossessed and come down with a severe case of shingles. She may agree to marry me out of total fear but she will NEVER give me her heart. What kind of a marriage is that? God wants people to love Him for Him, not for the purpose of saving their souls from burning in Hell. He will never threaten our families or our health in an effort to coerce us into a relationship. God is love.

When we win people with the power of Hell, we make them 'sons of Hell,' and not sons of God. Jesus tried to explain this to the preachers of His day when He said, 'You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much as son of Hell as you are.' (Matthew 23:15 NIV)

The goodness of God outweighs the badness of Hell a trillion times over. Using fear only proves that we haven't personally experienced His goodness to a degree that exceeds our faith in Hell's badness. It is impossible to experience something that we don't believe in. We only see what we put our faith in".