I was at a shiur that addressed yiras shamayim and ahavas hashem. The Rav brought down the Rambam in הלכות יסודי התורה פרק ב הלכה א-ב says that Hashem has commanded us to love Him and to fear Him. And he goes on to explain the way to obtain this love and fear. Here is a paraphrasing of the Rambam:
“When a person thinks and contemplates the awesome and wonderous creation that Hashem has made, and all the miraculous occurrences, immediately he will be filled with a love and he will praise and thank Hashem, and he will have a craving desire to know Hashem. As Dovid hamelech says, צמא נפשי לאלוקים לא-ל חי. My soul thirst as for my God, the loving God. And when this realization hits the person he will recoil backwards and be afraid, and he will realize that he is a small, lowly, dark, creature standing in with small and limited knowledge before the One of Pure Knowledge. As Dovid hamelech says כי אראה שמיך מעשה אצבעותיך … מה אנוש כי תזכרנו. When I behold Your heavens and the works of Your fingers … how frail is man that You should remember him. The glorious world leads to an uncontrollable love of HaShem, which is immediately followed by an overwhelming fear which makes one feel insignificant, dark and small.
I guess some people are comfortable leaving it at this and embracing the feeling of smallness and insignificant ness in the universe, but that’s something that just didn’t sit so well with me. But the Rambam says it, so what can we do.
However, a closer look at the Rambam may give us a different view of what he means. The kapitel of tehillim that the Rambam brings down is quotes in another place in the Gemara.
The Gemara in shabbos tells the story of what happened when Moshe went up to shamayim to get the Torah. The Malachim challenged HaShem as to why the Torah is being given to man on earth? This hidden treasure that’s comes from heaven, how could it possibly survive among men? And the Malachim quote this pasuk that discusses how frail man is. To which Moshe responds and proceeds to list all the עשרת הדברות and shows how in order to really keep the Torah one needs to have a yetzer hara. Idolatry, honoring parents, stealing, killing, none of these are applicable to Malachim, only to humans who have a yetzer hara, and with this closing argument the Malachim agree and Moshe brings the Torah down to earth.
Maybe the Rambam is hinting to the fact that although humans are lowly creatures in comparison to the cosmos, at the same time we have a yetzer hara which challenges us to rise up and fight which enables us to be above the level of the Malachim. Maybe is the frailness of man itself that is our most powerful weapon if we know how to harness our challenges.
Obviously, we still will feel a fear of HaShem for He is infinitely greater than anything we can conceive of. But in my opinion, this is a slightly more encouraging interpretation.