Are we safe?

Stanley Hauerwas tells us that “Jesus was put to death because he embodied a politics that threatened all world regimes based on the fear of death”. While we do not have to contend with an occupying Roman army we do have to contend with media caught in an escalating competition to scare us and global capitalism that would have us believe that life is an endless and deserved fulfilment.

From swine flu to global warming the media grab our attention through fear. For example, it is common for us to read that such and such a treatment or practice will lower our chances of dying from x by a certain per cent. What we are not told is our chances of dying of x. If our chances are quite low, and they are for most diseases, then a percentage reduction in that low level is insignificant in the scheme of things. But the way it is reported it can sound very serious.

We are increasingly involved with powers that coerce us with the fear of death, be they the medical profession, big Pharma, government agencies or the local council. It is clear that any highly technical and wealthy society will gradually be seduced by the idea of the immanent perfectibility of all things, that is, if they do not have the warnings of the gospel.

What is the theological mistake at the base of this situation? Certainly there is something of the tower of Babel here, the tower that was built “to make a name for ourselves”, a name that would compete with the name of God. But even more pointed is the warning: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew (RSV) 16) This is not Buddhist detachment practiced in order to avoid pain but a positive warning that if we seek our own lives those lives will slip out of our grip. Never was there a more cogent warning to the self indulgent West!

Christians have recognised that Christ is God, the Lord, the one with whom we have to deal. He is the one who will transform us into his likeness so that we will become divine, like him. This is a divinity that has nothing to do with the supernatural or the unearthly as in the Greek understanding of divinity but in living lives that are fully human and fully free.

If Jesus’ motto had been “safety first” we would never have heard of him. Indeed, most things he did and said were the opposite of safe. Was it safe to confront the chief priests and the scribes, eat with tax collectors and prostitutes, disown his family, heal on the Sabbath, predict the destruction of the temple? Jesus said unsafe things and did unsafe things, the pinnacle of which was to walk to Jerusalem knowing what would become of him. Jesus was crucified not because he said that we should love each other - what a safe thing to say! He was crucified because he confronted the powers that would keep us safe from the two-edged sword of the gospel that has the power to overturn all of our fortifications against the future.

This is not to say that we should be reckless in our daily lives, but it is true that an obsession with safety reveals an underlying fear that will stop us taking the risks that we need to take if our lives are not to be stillborn. Another warning from the gospel makes the point: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John (RSV) 12) The Christian life is a call to death. Death, that is, to the fearful and grasping ego that is the source of our living death. Christ is the one who turns our dead “living” bodies to living “dying” bodies in the event of discipleship.

It is often said by the detractors of Christianity that the church is the place the weak go to comfort themselves against the awfulness of life. This reading makes Christians into those who seek safety from the vicissitudes of life. On the contrary, while there is comfort in the gospel, that comfort comes at a cost, the loss of all of our projects to make life safe. The church that faithfully celebrates the gospel will be anything but safe, it will be a place where the certitudes of life will be torn down. If you trust in the nation, or in personal wealth, or in education, or in status, or even in the family, it would be wise to stay away from church because it is precisely there that your precious things will be taken away from you.

But what is left in its place? A radical freedom in which your life is given back to you, not the old life of the living “dead”, but the new life of the living “dying”. Faith is not the soft option, it is the hard but necessary option.