I’ve been thinking a lot about safety in the wake of the crisis in Japan. Peter and I had several people come up to us just after the earthquake and tsunami, exclaiming, “Thank goodness you’re still in Canada. Thank goodness you’re SAFE!” To be honest, Peter and I had been feeling the exact opposite. We’d been feeling the urgency of getting to Japan, and frustrated that we weren’t there to help in the immediate aftermath.
Last year when our church as a collective read through the book of Acts, I noticed that though the early church went through intense persecution, whenever they gathered to pray there seemed to be something missing from their prayers. They didn’t pray for physical safety. In fact, they arguably prayed for the opposite: boldness in the face of persecution. With the disaster in Japan I was reminded of this observation from Acts. I started to wonder if perhaps there was a deeper lesson that I was missing. What if our North American obsession with safety is unfounded? What if we’ve somehow been tricked into pouring massive amounts of time, energy and money into creating something that doesn’t – and never will – exist? What if safety is just an illusion and, for all of our hype and hyperventilation, we will never achieve our goal?
Helen Keller once said, “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
What does the Bible say? I did a study on safety, and here’s what I found:
1. God promises physical safety to His people, to those who trust and obey Him. These are all promises given in the Old Testament. All prayers for physical safety are also in the Old Testament.
2. God’s promises of spiritual safety are all over the New Testament. Though not exhaustive, I’ve provided some references here: Philippians 4:7, 2 Timothy 1:12, 1 John 5:18, Romans 8:35-39, 2 Timothy 4:18, Revelation 2:11, John 17:12, 2 Thessalonians 3:3.
In Jesus our physical safety is not a given; but His love for us, and our spiritual safety, is promised with full assurance. Where does this leave us? What if we’ve lulled ourselves into a sense of false security and complacency, and have contentedly rendered ourselves ineffective?
Tacitus said that “the desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise”. Have we allowed ourselves, in our safety-obsessed mentality, to actually stand against the great and noble enterprise of declaring God’s kingdom? How have we forgotten that “taking up our cross” and following Jesus is remarkably unsafe? How have we become so obsessed with physical safety – something that neither Jesus nor his disciples mention once?
Lord God, help me shed my preoccupation with safety and embrace Your risk. Give me faith and boldness to declare Your greatness throughout the earth.
In C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe”, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are talking about Aslan the Lion before the children have met him. Lucy asks, “Is he safe?” The response: “Course he’s not safe. But he’s good.”
