The danger of safety

Word of warning: This post is about comfort. You may feel un-comfortable while reading.

Two weeks ago I wrote about living in between, about the unhappy space where I live, a place in which I have a dream, goal or destination floating somewhere in front of me, and yet I do nothing to move towards it.

This “ah-ha” led me to the conclusion my motivating values do not match my stated values, in that I am motivated by something other than what I claim to be.

For me, the values most true and evident in my life were fear, comfort and laziness. It was disheartening, to say the least, to realize these weak and powerless motives and desires were CEOs of my everyday existence. But ironically I’ve been too comfortable to change.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been acutely aware of my love for comfort, and believe me, I am uncomfortable now. I think God is pressing the issue.

Last week I talked with a Soldier who grew up in an urban area in the South where violence was the norm, where gunfire and other life-ending measures settled disputes on a regular basis. He lost his first friend at age seven.

He told me it is unfair so many people in the world controlled their access to global unrest and poverty with the click of a remote. If they wanted to, they can simply shut off the TV and ignore the problems, he mused. “But some of us live there, and we can’t ignore it.”

I immediately saw in the mirror the many nights I’ve read news of atrocities committed on our soil and abroad. I signed a petition, retweeted an article, shouted a call to action. And then I turned off the light and went to bed. Outside my house no gunfire echoed through the streets, no screaming for help, no sirens.

But perhaps what is worse than my love of comfort is the safety I pack around me makes me safe. Creates in me a preference for the moderate, for 70 degree temperatures and sunshine, for the indoors, for well-manicured everything. My desires for comfort and safety weaken my ability to innovate and increase my whininess. They strip me of change agent status. 

They make me “un-dangerous”.

Most of us want to know we are not in danger as we walk around, that we are not about to get robbed or shot. I think this should be a right for all humans, although it certainly isn’t a reality for a majority of the world.

But what about all the other convenience features of our lives: dishwashers and warm showers, functional cars, indoor plumbing, a closet just for shoes, a cup of coffee every morning?

We claim we cannot live without these amenities, and we loudly bellyache if it is ever required. The inability to live without the extras, the things beyond food, water, shelter and air, seems to be more a sign of a maladaptive state of being than a badge of success.

photo credit: www.wyndsongwrites.com

In our middle and upper-class American bubble today, we are snugly unaware, insulated, bubble wrapped from a hurting world that knows the feeling of a dirt floor in their bedroom, and wonders if they will have enough food to eat tomorrow.

The sound of war and pestilence are foreign to us. We simply shut off the television. We can close our laptops, safe from the dangers of the world. 

But the safety comes with a price. Now that we are safe from the world, the world is now safe from us. We are no longer dangerous.

Think about it. What life-changing invention ever came from a man on a couch who said, "Ah, this is great. I have everything I need. I am perfectly comfortable"? 

Looking back at great innovation, we don't see a trail of people without problems at the helm. We clearly see lack, a sense of something missing, as a creation motivation. Pain and hardship are excellent inventors themselves.   

So I’m here writing this, painfully aware of my comfort, and suddenly, very uncomfortable. 

I want to be dangerous again, but I'll admit I'm still terrified of what it will cost. Because I know that on a good day, it will cost my comfort. I will have to hand over my complacency. But it could cost me more.

Is being dangerous, being effective, being an envelope-pusher, a creator, an idea-generator, a problem-solver worth it? These people stand out on the edge near the issues. And the issues are inherently uncomfortable. They feel like world hunger and look like war orphans and widows. 

There's no room for complacency here. There is only work to be done, and room for people who will do it. 

Something to think about: 

What are you compromising so you can be comfortable? 

What ideas and innovation have you missed because you have to start our day with coffee and the news? 

What parts of God do we overlook because it takes discomfort to see it?

{The topics of discomfort, waiting and the ability to change the world are eating me up this week. At least one more post is coming on this topic. Perhaps more. I am uncomfortable now. Thanks, God.}

What God Hates More Than Bad Government

When God donned human flesh and arrived on earth around 2000 years ago, he knew there was a big problem. But God's idea of the problem, and therefore his solution, were a little different than the expectations to which he arrived. 

Scriptures foretold a powerful warrior king who would rescue all people and set up an infinite and eternal kingdom of his own. In fact, God-experts and prophets had been talking up a great salvation for hundreds if not thousands of years by the time he got there. 

The legalistic few had plenty of time to define the problem: the truest, wildest oppressors were the men and women who ruled over them with a heavy hand, who did not have their best interests in mind. 

This problem in clear view, they knew exactly who were looking for: A king who would use military strength to overthrow oppressive governments who were in opposition to their God, culture and way of life. 

So it's no wonder when Jesus showed up as a carpenter from the wrong side of Israel, all scraggly and earthy, it was clear he was not the long-awaited Savior. 

photo cred: throughthescriptures.wordpress.com

Jesus, a guy who doesn't bother to start his ministry until he is 30. Not at all in a rush to solve world hunger by age 25. Not making a run for public office. Hanging out with children and sick people and various vagabonds and ruffians. He just didn't seem to have much of a political agenda. 

Sure, he spoke like a man who knew what he was talking about. He had the nation talking, a figure of controversy. He started a movement. 

But he was no king. 

Don't stop what you're doing and get all bothered with this guy," the teachers of the law urged the people. "He's obviously not the one we're waiting for."

That much was clear. He was NOT who they were waiting for. Jesus was not the answer to their problem. 

But God, being God and all, had a wider scope of the problem. He saw human history as impacted by a far greater evil, a much more wicked tyrant: sin. Sin and its deception that we too can be God plunged humanity into its deepest darkness without a plan for self-rescue. 

This problem did not touch only one small people group. Everyone alive was under the spell. 

So along came Jesus, into the muck. Knowing he would arrive to a people who should be eager to meet him, and yet he would become the nation's greatest disappointment. 

Today we still pick the wrong enemy. We magnify the darkness of tyrannical governments and the political agendas of others with whom we disagree, only to miss the world's most horrific evil: the sin and pride in every human heart. 

It's in me. It's in you. We all want to be God. This motive is behind every war, every mass genocide, every murder, every hateful thought. 

And if it weren't for Jesus, we and the whole earth, would be stuck this way. 

But thank God for Jesus, who understood the true oppressor and dealt with it violently. Putting death to death, ripping away its sting forever. 

But to live in the freedom we've been afforded, we must identify the problem the same as God does. What evil do we hate most? Is it those who disagree with us or those who vote differently than us? Or do we hate above all things the sin found in our own heart? This is where God can swing in with generous helpings of the grace and freedom Jesus purchased with his death.

www.thedailybanter.com 

As we see our President swear in for four more years, whether we agree with his beliefs and intentions or not, please be conscious of the thoughts and intent of your own heart. Because those are what Jesus died for.  

One final note:

We do not hate ourselves - not ever. That is not agreement with God as we are made in his image. To hate self is to hate God. But he despise anything that comes out of us that disagrees with who God is and ask for grace to rebel against it.