Even before this, people have commented on how they are glad
I survived, glad I am safe now, glad I’m in a safer place. It makes me angry. I
know they mean well, but it isn’t better to have survived. It isn’t always
better to be safe. Men in solitary confinement are safe.
Our modern American society and even especially the church culture
has bought into the evolutionary lie that survival is the highest good. We have
adopted a Hunger Games mentality where survival determines who is fittest and
best. Caution is the new moral standard. Anything remotely perceived as
reckless is no longer brave, but labeled as foolish. We have found a way to
justify our cowardice.
But in the world of Scripture, survival has very little
value in and of itself. St. Paul says that to die is gain. Living is mostly
characterized by suffering. We are told to live a life that daily anticipates and
accepts death, why else would we carry a cross? If safety is your greatest
concern, carrying crosses is not your thing.
Survival can be good, but it isn’t an ultimate value. In
fact, survival without much more becomes meaningless. Why does suicide even
exist?
We are to live urgently, fully, patiently, courageously,
carrying a cross with us wherever God has called us to be whether it looks safe
or not. After all, our idea of safety is only an illusion. If God calls you to
our glorious eternal home he can do so just as easily with a car crash in a
small American town as he can with a bomb or gun in the Middle East.
We have fashioned a God of our own making. Our obsession
with safety first has created an idol that causes many to cease living at all,
to hide away talents and callings in the houses of our lives like agoraphobic
old women afraid to step out into the sunshine. The truest death is not found
in the dangerous places, but rather found in the dusty forgotten corners where
piles of dead bones lay having only wasted away, never having been used or seen
or spent.
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