These Precarious Times

The last few weeks have been pretty unsettling. As I read articles, watched the news, and viewed the videos people that made to express their opinions and their rage, I searched for words to say. Over and over the word precarious came to mind, and to be honest I could use the word in a sentence, but I couldn't really concisely define it. So, I looked it up and google defines it as "not securely held or in position; dangerously likely to fall or collapse and the synonyms given were "uncertain, insecure, unpredictable, risky, hazardous, dangerous, unsafe, unsettled, unstable, unsteady, shaky." Yep, those words pretty much describe what this world feels like right now, especially from the view down here.

Cancer, diabetes, debilitating viruses, infections, and autoimmune diseases are making life tough for precious people and the medical system with delayed appointments, information and misinformation, and insurance battles add to the uncertainty people experience as they struggle with health issues.

PTSD, depression, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders and other mental illnesses rob people of peace, hope, and joy and a recent suicide left many of us wondering at what point her hope completely died and at what point did her ability to make choices that could lead to healing could no longer be made.

Family units, once haven's of stability, are radically changing as marriages break down due to long work hours that exhaust, isolate, and separate.

Marriages that were designed to be safe havens for two people doing life together crumble as porn allures men and women into false relationships with fake images that turn people into even more selfish, self -centered, demanding people instead of people trying to learn to love well as it normalizes the victimization of women and children and feeds the hatred of the rape culture.

And gender? It's now considered something to be assigned rather than Creator-designed. And marriage? Its been redefined to a contract between people rather than a life-long covenant between a man and a woman.  

Terrorists attacks both here and abroad make this world scary; Places once dreamed about now seem less inviting. And, while I've thought  the US to be a safe haven for people from all over, I am now finding myself fearfully contemplating the personal cost of welcoming the masses when the risk may be increased sexual violence of women and children as it was in Germany, increased risk of terrorists entering our country as it was in France and Turkey, and increased risk of the recruiting our own sons and daughters to do hateful deeds and even in just the writing of these things fear rises inside.

Mass shootings here at home make malls, theaters, schools, places of worship, and other places of social gatherings no longer feel safe, lending to the the break down of unity.

And gang violence, racial uprisings, and brutal attacks on our law enforcement have added to the insecurity felt as the ugly rhetoric on these things makes the stomach churn, especially when people evoke the name of Christ either verbally or through the jewelry they wear as they spout evil and hate, both so contrary to the character of the Savior.

I, like many others wonder how we are to live brave in a world that feels precarious and all I can do is come back to what I know to be more real than what I see. From the time Adam and Eve took the bite we have been living in a fallen world with a propensity to sin, a propensity to be driven by pride, a propensity to demand, and a tendency to clamor for some type of stability apart from God. The truth is Jesus warned us of precarious times, but we tend to forget His warnings. believing we deserve more, thinking He has abandoned us, doesn't really love us, is irrelevant, or doesn't even exist. But the truth is He was, He is and He is to come.

One of the stories we can draw wisdom from for days such as these is found in Luke 8:22-24. It is the story of Jesus getting into a boat with His disciples and saying, "Let's cross to the other side of the lake." As they sailed, He slept, and a strong wind arose, the waves grew, and the boat began to sink, causing great fear. The disciples frantically woke Him up and He rebuked the wind and raging waves and turned to His disciples and asked, "Where is your faith?" And they marveled at the One who could calmed the storm.

The storm they were facing wasn't a simple storm, it was hurricane-sized and even the seasoned fisherman were frightened because the boat was about to sink. The disciples fear moved from a healthy fear to frantic panic because they forgot one important thing--Jesus was in the boat with them! His question about their faith wasn't a judgement about their fear because God created them to feel this God-given, life-preserving emotion. It was a question as to why they waited to wake Him. They could have cried out to Him when the storm first started to become violent or when the stirring of fear began to rise. I wonder what kept them from crying out to the Lord sooner?

There are several reasons people wait to cry out to God in the face of storms. Sometimes it is because we are prideful, thinking we can handle storms by ourselves; but the truth is that some storms were never designed to be experienced alone.

Some of us fail to cry out, because we've been taught to ignore fear rising in the gut to warn us that something is growing dangerous--that fear that should be driving us to our knees on behalf of our families, our churches, our communities, our country, our world, and ourselves gets turned off or numbed when it is ignored.

Some of us have been taught that fear is sin, so we swallow it, we hide it, and we bury it deep and we feel so alone and so ashamed, weathering the storms through which Jesus wants to display both His peace that passes understanding and His magnificent power, and His heart loves us through through the storms.

Sometimes we don't cry out, because we're afraid of what others might think. This can be due to pride, but it is often because we've been shamed by believers for fear we experience, and the unbelief with which we struggle in face of huge storms. The fear one feels in the face of cancer, the loss of loved ones, debilitating accidents, acts of violence, growing terrorism, explosive hate groups, and the rising and falling nations is not sin. It is a call for the church to unite and encourage one another and to fall to its collective knees because the storms we are facing are not of this world; they are spiritual in nature and beyond our power to navigate. The unbelief we experience as we weather storms isn't sin; it is normal and it is healthy and it is being surfaced so it can be overcome. But sadly, Jesus image bearers often make it unsafe for unbelief to be expressed as was in Jesus day when the father of one sick child honestly cried out, "I believe, help my unbelief!"

We must not forget that we are people who are in the process of being transformed and we are all people who live with the reality of a faith that can be ambivalent. Ambivalent faith is faith that dwells first in head then moves to the heart where it can calm fear and anxiety and give peace. We must never forget that the movement from head to heart is sometimes a supernatural act that God performs, but at other times it is a process that takes place when the ambivalence is recognized, acknowledged, and confessed. To be like Jesus we are called to be people who allow each other the grace to be transparent with ambivalent faith and encourage one another to cry out to Him in our desperate need during these precarious times.

A Walk on a Stormy Sea

“Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. 
‘You of little faith,’ he said, ‘why did you doubt?’”

Matthew 14:31

When I was a volunteer youth worker, both students and parents asked me questions about doubt. When a parent asked me, they were often in a state of panic because their child who had trusted God was all of a sudden questioning Him. Some parents who called were angry because they believed doubt was sin and their child was rebelling. When teenage girls asked me about doubt they expressed a lot of emotion which indicated they were carrying shame over the doubts they were experiencing. However, I found the students who expressed their doubts to be the ones growing the most. It is those that wouldn’t acknowledge doubt that stayed stuck in the doubt who ended up going through the motions of being a Christian, but in reality were relying mostly on their parent’s faith rather than their own. It's important to understand doubt is not a sin; it's an emotion. It's a barometer telling us we need to wrestle with God’s truth and make it our own so that His truth is driven to the core of our being. Doubt can be a response to circumstances, a limited point of view, or to lies the enemy constantly whispers in our ears.    

The above verse is from the account of Jesus walking on water. His disciples were in a boat in the middle of the night and were enveloped by a huge storm that hindered their travel. The wind blew so hard waves were crashing over the boat, frightening even the disciples who were seasoned fishermen. When the disciples see Christ walking on water, they think He is a ghost and become even more terrified. So, He calls to them, telling them not to be afraid. Peter, who had spent many years fishing, calls out to Him, “Lord, since it is You order me to come to you on the water.” Christ told Peter to come and he immediately responded to the Lord by climbing out of the boat and began to take steps on the stormy sea. His was a response of trust to something the Lord said. I like Peter’s impulsiveness in obeying Christ. Me, I tend to analyze God’s commands to see if they make sense and if they are safe. I can relate to Peter because after the first few steps, he began to look around and the storm loomed big and his doubt grew. Yet, even as he was sinking and doubting, he called to the Lord. I find it hard to cry out to God when I'm doubting because of shame. Yet, that is exactly what He would like me to do.

Did Peter have faith? Yes, Christ acknowledged his faith. When Christ called Peter to come, Peter didn't pause, he climbed right out of the "safety" of the boat and began walking toward Christ. As the wind grew stronger and the waves got bigger, he glanced at his circumstances, realizing walking on water didn't make sense and maybe the enemy stirred the waves and whispered louder in his ear causing his fear to grow and as doubt began to grow began to sink. When Peter stepped out, he knew the power to walk on water would come from Christ. After all we aren't made to be water walkers. We aren't told that Peter was afraid when he stepped out of the boat, but if he did his faith was stronger than his fear. As the waves grew bigger, Peter took his eyes off the Lord, causing his fear to intensify. But, his faith did not completely diminish. For in his moment of sinking doubt, he called to Jesus! I love that! He did not beat himself up for doubting, he didn't give up on his relationship with God, and he didn't claim God had failed him. He simply allowed his doubt and his desperate situation to remind him to call on Christ! 

The Lord did not say, “Whoops, too late, Buddy, you are on your own.” He reached out and He lifted Peter up. Wow! Faith always grows as we keep our eyes on Christ in the midst of storms. Faith grows as we face doubt, crying out to God who is bigger than our circumstance, fear, and doubt. Peter got out of the boat alone. I wonder if at least one disciple had gotten out with him, if they could have encouraged each other to keep their eyes on the Lord. I wonder if they didn’t end up feeling a bit jealous of Peter’s walk on that sea! 

I feel sad for the disciples remaining in the boat. They never had the thrill of walking on stormy water with Jesus. They never had the experience of having Jesus pluck them from the sea like Peter did. When I was a new Christian I thought the disciples who stayed in the boat were safer, and that Peter had a crazy wild streak in him. Now my perspective is so different. For, the safest person in the violent storm was Peter who was moving toward Jesus. The other disciples who thought they were safe had a false sense of security in a boat which could sink. It would be safe to say in the midst of the serious storm the disciples had the same doubts and emotions Peter had as he sank. Yet in the face of the troubling storm Peter was the only one who asked Jesus to invite him out, demonstrating that he truly knew Jesus was his only real refuge. 

I have had several friends who have gone though really rough storms--storms that would rock any of our worlds! I hope in the midst of the storms that have blind sided them, they will be able to see the Savior and that they will be able to cry out to Him, asking to walk on the stormy sea with Him rather than sinking in doubt. For during the storms that shake security to the core, it is in the moving toward the Savior that each of us will find security. It is in walking hand in hand with Him that we will rise above storms, developing a core of faith that will not be shaken. Peter's faith may have seen impetuous faith, but it was always in response to what Jesus said. I want to be a person who has the courage to step out of things that provide false security and to move toward Jesus, my true refuge and my real safety.