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.