Be afraid, be very afraid!

Solid Ground Christian Books have republished as a booklet the chapter on the fear of God from John Murray's Principles of Conduct.  I confess that I've never been a fan of the book, mainly on the grounds that it is a tedious read (yes, John Henry Newman beats John Murray for prose style every time; as to theology, well, that's a different matter....).  The booklet, however, is surely the lynchpin of the work and this chapter works well on its own.
 I was struck by the following passage which I think skewers much that is wrong with contemporary Christian life and which has greatly diminished our view of the seriousness of sin:

It is symptomatic of the extent to which the concept of the fear of God and the attitude of heart and mind which it represents has suffered eclipse that we have become reluctant to distinguish the earnest and consistent believer as 'God-fearing.' (p. 19)

At a time when taste is truth, how do we recapture this? Fear is distasteful to the modern mind; we are more comfortable with God as 'dad' rather than with God as 'Father;' sin is seen as less heinous than the sometimes tough steps that must be taken to correct the same; and yet fear of God -- and fear of his word -- is central to biblical notions of wisdom and the good life: Job 28:28; Is. 66:2.