Risky Business

The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee

Rembrandt, 1633

The haunt of risk is ever present. It is the specter that shadows our living days. Yet if we will but accept this ghost, then our life shall be rich with life indeed.

Risk is indeed what rules our life. Everything we do involves it, everything we think dwells on it. We consider the cost at every turn. When we love, when we hate, when we play sports as out of shape old men, when we sign up to fly half way across the world to watch international soccer in South Africa, when we drive to the store, when we love, when we lose a job and search for a new one, when we dare to enter into a relationship with the Father of the Universe. Oh, did I mention, when we love? All is fraught with danger. And yet that danger, that risk, is what makes life worth the living. Isn’t it?

The payoff of risk is prosperity and life or poverty and death. And oddly, each of these options can be both good and bad in turn. Start with an obvious example of risk. If you risk your money on the stock market (called “investing” by those wanting your money) and end up with millions over many years, you have a cushy life and a secure future. All is well and some of the worries of life are alleviated with cash. But what if those riches make you a monster, a godless man with no direction, no love, no joy. To quote P. Diddy or Puff or Sean Jean or whatever the crap that no-talent hip-hopper calls himself now, “Mo money, mo problems.” Greed and avarice are old vices that have never left the human condition and never will. Money and riches can be wonderful though, especially in the hands of one who is humble and generous. And, still it can destroy even the best of people if they serve it and lust after it and put all of their life’s blood into it. That’s risk – an easy example we all know.

Ever had a pet? A dog or a hamster or a bunny (no, cats don’t count – you are their pet). You love on that animal as a kid like you love on a silly stuffed bear. Tugging on it, riding it, petting it too hard. But amazing miracle of life, the little critter loves you back. They lick your face or nibble food out of your very hand. And at the end of a long day, they lay by you on the couch watching baseball, letting you stroke them and pick off their loose hair. They bark to tell you danger is near and they run the yard with you, playing games and just being goofy together. Then they get old and crotchety. The dog gets hunched and surly, and the hair gets white and stiff around their little eyes and lips. And one day they slip away with age, either induced by drugs or by God’s course of time. And yet, maybe they don’t make it that far. What if they die early, not long after you get them? You might have left the bunny in the freezing cold too long. Or, the gate was open and you didn’t know it – pup gone roaming forever, and not even potty trained. But was that short or lengthy time with that surprising gift of Father worth it? Yeah, I think so.

How about this one? You plan a trip to Brazil and have the time of your life visiting an amazing world of color and culture and life. You go to France and finally explore the European landscape you had always desired. Both, either/or, are great options. Simply vacations of your lives. But then you get on a plane and it goes down over the Atlantic for no apparent reason. Your life is now over. Ended. And, all of your family and friends are left holding the bag of grief and sorrow. You took a risk by simply traveling, getting out and seeing God’s green earth. And that risk has now come home to roost. The worst has happened and you are gone. Or, the most normal and typical alternative: you arrive home, safe and sound with hundreds of pictures on your camera and stories to last a lifetime. You risked travel and received an enriched view of the world in which we live (and some good old fashioned fun, too).

Or what about this scenario? You meet a kid in grade school, become best friends slowly over school, go to college as roommates, have him as your best man in your wedding, and consider him a life-long traveler on your road to the dead end. Then freakish tragedy strikes: he’s in a motorcycle accident or a car accident or a terminal disease strikes him or his breathing stops in the night because his weight has become a little out of control. He’s gone and it’s over. And now all of that time and love you spent on your relationship is a fatality. It is forever ended, stopped by the ceasing of a beating heart. And what are you left with? Longing, sorrow, grief, feelings of fear, emotions of being alone. Yes, you do. And that’s the risk. But there is another side to it. You have the memories, too. You have the shared-life that no one knows but you and no one can take away. You have a picture of existence that is deepened and widened because he was a friend. You have memories of soccer matches won & loss, new music discovered, good books reviewed, love discussed, and the problem of the universe debated. You have all of that, and you will never give it up…because you risked. It was worth it. No question - it was worth it, despite any temporary pain.

Good Lord in Heaven, what about children? Wow, what a risk and a trial and a blessing and a ridiculously amazing love affair. They come out of nowhere to possess your whole world and to take a stranglehold on your heart. They make you stay up terrible hours, wake you up earlier than you want to be or have to be, and take away your wife over and over again. The family dynamic is suddenly turned on its head and you get the leftovers. But oh what joyous leftovers: a little person that loves you for no other reason than you are there; a little girl that wants to spend time with you no matter what; a little angel that tugs your heart into realms you never knew existed. And when the first words “I love you” or “I’m glad you are my daddy” come your way unbidden, hold on because you just received a glimpse of the joy of heaven only Father can conceive. But all is not rosy, let no one tell you otherwise. Your kids will drive you nuts as well, to cliffs of anger and frustration that you never knew existed either. And, you never know what is going to happen with kids. They may show up with an incurable ailment. They may only live ten, twenty, thirty years on this earth. Maybe not even that long. They may lead lives of craziness, of lust, of pain, of teenage pregnancy, of stupid ideology, of total disregard for you. And they may be perfectly normal, adjusted and by your bedside. But you will never know how it will happen and how it will end. And you will also never know one of the greatest joys and graces of life if you don’t risk letting a little one come along and join your journey. I’ll take those odds – with fear and trembling.

Oh, and the ultimate risk: marriage. Falling in love, giving yourself over fully to another flesh-and-blood, messed-up and flawed woman who you can’t live without or stand to let out of your head. Her beauty is astounding and she is the best friend you could ever have. A perfect match, a perfect gift of grace. But that loving is tough, too. Tough because it is risk. Rejection looms, distrust threatens, betrayal is possible, and constant discovery of new peccadilloes and character traits are challenging. Your spirit yearns for her and your heart is completely and utterly caught-up, and yet with fear and trepidation every new situation or disease or circumstance brings a possibility of strain, of even outright pain. Life is long, but with another who is your one-and-only girl, it is wonderfully comfortable and true. It is pain-filled yes, and it is even scary often – but it is great and awesome and grace-on-a-stick. But it is all risk. Cancer comes and destroys, mental disease invades and takes away memories, hearts give out, and eventually all will be taken down in one way or another by this fallen world’s curse of death. And it doesn’t always come when you are old and resting in a home; it often strikes people before they have kids, right after, or when their youngest is graduating college. The communion of marriage is the ultimate experience of life, and it is not bereft of risk. Yet, it is my favorite risk to have taken, much because my wonderful “other” loves me for no good reason and took the chance “to back a horse that’s good for glue and nothing else” nearly ten years ago. (Thanks honey.) It is one of the few endeavors that I am ultimately confident in. Bad possibilities are possible, but the good is simply too strong to fail.

And so, with all of this said, would you take any of it back or never even try it to begin with? Would you stop any of the trips, stop planning for your future, stop loving on dogs, finding friends, raising babies, and making love? I hope you say no. I do. Or more truly, I am learning to. The fear of risk, anomalous scenarios, and simply death in general terrify me. In so many scenarios they rule me. But I am learning to overcome. Funny thing is I am learning to take the risk because of another risky proposition: entering and accepting our Father’s Love & Grace. I can hear a few saying here we go again, but it is simply the truest thing I can say. Not a simple salvation message or a typical God-talk – no, something much deeper. As I further my totally open & true honesty with the Father of the universe, I find myself. I find that there is no risk in some parts of this relationship, mainly because He is so good and so not human, not me. He has no faults, no errors, no betrayals, no fears. And He is Love. Amazing, terrifying, untamable, ever-pursuant, never shocked and never surprised Love. He knows me better than me, and He still loves this beaten-down, tired old boy. He even loves who I truly am, who I want to be, who He knows I can and will be. He is the irrepressible Hound of Heaven. And I am secure in Him.

Yet other aspects of relationship with Father are indeed risky to our broken perception. This is almost entirely because we are called to die. We are called to death. I don’t like that – not one little bit. Scares me and invades my ever-present need for control. He wants me to do what – die? But what does that mean, you say and I say? Well, yes it includes things such as holiness and right living and all of that good ol’ religion stuff, but I am finding that it means a whole crap-load more. He wants me to die to the personality that enslaves me: the things that are in me as a result of living in this fallen world, having on this flesh and blood. It’s more than just sins of the flesh, it is the core of who we are that he wants us to find. For me, some of this Holy Death means giving up my fear, giving up my need to perform, ending my need to succeed, trusting (oh, trusting - the hardest part) Him with my life and my family’s life, relinquishing the pressure I put on myself to be perfect, and realizing who He truly is and what I am truly am and am not. Death in God means realizing finally that the grim reaper catches us all in the end, so why not truly live, and live fully in Him, while we have a breath left in our skin? As my friend WK asks, "Are you living with a disastrous death in mind or will you die having lived a glorious life?" We obsess about the risk of death (literally and figuratively), when in truth it will all end one day no matter. But that’s okay, because I know Who is in control. And if I will just give up now, and let Him have me, then the risk won’t be so burdensome, so entirely consuming.

That’s just it, in an odd way. It all comes back to risk. Father’s graceful call to death is a call to life. We know this, Christ said it. But, we don’t know what all it means. A lot of it means what I said above. Then again, a lot of it will be totally different for you. And even more so, a bunch of it is yet to be discovered on the Road. And the Road He calls us to? To live a life full of risk and understand that it is that very risk that gives life and a life abundantly full of Grace. You must risk to die, and you must risk to truly live. This is the paradox of life in Him. And it is in the paradox that Truth resides. Life is risk and risk is indeed life.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it"...This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice...A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

Orthodoxy

Chapter VI: The Paradoxes of Christianity

G.K Chesterton, 1909