In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety. (Psalm 4:8)
There’s a lot of talk about safety going around. We are compelled to “Stay
home! Sit down! Shut up!” because someone else is afraid they might get sick
and die if exposed to our breath, even if we don’t have any symptoms. Now,
COVID-19 is proving to have a morbidity rate in the U.S. of under one percent.
It didn’t start with COVID-19. According to Jonathan Haidt and Gregg Lukianoff wrote The Coddling of the American Mind, tracing a growing sense of fear from the 1981 when Adam Walsh was abducted from a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida to college campuses over the past decade, where students need safe rooms where they can go color and seek counselling because someone who disagrees with their philosophical stand has come to campus to speak. Or, the coloring and counselling are needed if the students cannot force college administration to capitulate to their demands that the speaker be disinvited or forbidden access to campus. We are living in a time in which a lot of people are afraid – of anything that does not please them.
When Mr. Trump was elected, I know some people who started wearing safety pins on their clothing as a means of telling anyone who was afraid that they were safe to approach and to talk to. They, after all, didn’t vote for Mr. Trump. One of them told me that if a person felt fear, their fear must be treated as real and valid, even if it were actually unjustified. Now, as someone who is afraid of spiders, I can understand the reality of being afraid of something that actually poses no threat. I don’t appreciate it when others try to fix that fear, but neither would I appreciate it if they tried to agree with me about my fear.
David knew what it was like to be afraid, and he knew the solution to his fears. He took them to God. That’s what we need to do, not just as a ritual from which we walk away harboring the same fears, but continuing to take them to Him until He meets us in our fears or delivers us from them.
It didn’t start with COVID-19. According to Jonathan Haidt and Gregg Lukianoff wrote The Coddling of the American Mind, tracing a growing sense of fear from the 1981 when Adam Walsh was abducted from a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida to college campuses over the past decade, where students need safe rooms where they can go color and seek counselling because someone who disagrees with their philosophical stand has come to campus to speak. Or, the coloring and counselling are needed if the students cannot force college administration to capitulate to their demands that the speaker be disinvited or forbidden access to campus. We are living in a time in which a lot of people are afraid – of anything that does not please them.
When Mr. Trump was elected, I know some people who started wearing safety pins on their clothing as a means of telling anyone who was afraid that they were safe to approach and to talk to. They, after all, didn’t vote for Mr. Trump. One of them told me that if a person felt fear, their fear must be treated as real and valid, even if it were actually unjustified. Now, as someone who is afraid of spiders, I can understand the reality of being afraid of something that actually poses no threat. I don’t appreciate it when others try to fix that fear, but neither would I appreciate it if they tried to agree with me about my fear.
David knew what it was like to be afraid, and he knew the solution to his fears. He took them to God. That’s what we need to do, not just as a ritual from which we walk away harboring the same fears, but continuing to take them to Him until He meets us in our fears or delivers us from them.
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