The illusion of Security and Control ...

Ever wonder why your life is not where you want it to be?  Ever wish that you could ‘make’ something happen the way you want?  We tend to search out routines that give us a feeling of comfort in our lives.  We steer away from any radical changes, and develop a sense of security from the repetition of what we do.  This feeling of security if held long enough gives way to a feeling of control, perhaps limited, but a ‘reasonable’ amount of it seems to be within our hands.  Then the alarm clock rings, and we are asked to take the blue pill and wake up or the red pill and keep on dreaming [apologies to the Matrix].

The film the Matrix presents us with a challenge to our reality.  It offers a completely different version of what might be true with no real ability to argue with it.  This analogy is very apropos when discussing feelings of security and control.  After all these two words are more about feeling than about our perceived reality.  What kind of control can you possibly have in your life if you remain subject to random events?  Disease, weather, geo-political influences, corporate malfeasance, the actions of others are all out there in the ether of your life like winds.  They blow upon you sometimes with incredible force that you cannot stand against.  They move you, whether you are willing or not, to places outside of your comfort zone.  Man has always struggled against this kind of movement.  Like the ant that immediately starts rebuilding its home when destroyed by water, man starts immediately trying to rebuild his rut once it has been disturbed.  We work hard to get back to the feelings we once embraced of reasonable control and security in our existence.

Of course evolution offers no comfort when it comes to the ‘winds of fate.’  We are blown about by forces beyond our control and this is simply part of the natural selection process – only the strong survive.  But if that were really true, why do some of our best and brightest seem to suffer the same fates as those with no particular intelligence or strength.  Lance Armstrong gets cancer, just like my neighbor next door.  They both fight the terrible disease.  They both engage in a program to treat the illness.  Seems to me that if our species were evolving towards the strong and brightest, Lance would be a million times less likely to ever come down with the illness in the first place.  The guy is as strong as a horse by the looks of it.  With his excellent regimen of exercise, water hydration, deep oxygenation and generally healthy diet he would the last person on earth to expect to see any form of cancer affect.  But he gets it just like my neighbor.  Unlike my neighbor whose fight only lasted about 2 years before he died, Lance seems to have beaten his first contact.  I hope he lives a 100 years more, but now that he has had this disease – doesn’t that mean that his offspring would be MORE likely to contract it than not.  Despite his health prior to getting it, it now ‘runs in his family’.  This does not argue that we are evolving towards stronger and better and brighter.

Take also the example of Jim Fixx the famous runner who authored a book on the subject.  A 31 year old specimen of seemingly perfect health drops dead of a heart attack in otherwise the prime of his life.  A strong fit person who obeys all the known precepts of healthy living dies in spite of it.  Now too, his offspring (if he had any) would have a ‘history of heart disease’ in their immediate family.  A factor making them far more likely to come down with the disease despite the overall superior healthful living of their father.  This argues that our world more closely resembles entropy than evolution.  Therein is where evil begins to play on our fears, and our ambition, and develops a keen marketing plan to offer us the ability to ‘control our own destinies’.

One of the primary arguments I hear from those who refuse to accept the concept of God, is that they do not believe anyone or anything controls what happens to them.  They believe themselves to be fully in control of their own lives.  This occurs (not surprisingly) more in the youth than in the elderly, but also more among those with means than those in poverty.  But as we just outlined above absolute control is an illusion.  If it were not, Jim Fixx would still be with us, and Lance would never have had to fight his battle with cancer.  The plain truth is we are not in control of our destiny.  The closest thing we exert that resembles control is the decision of who to serve.  We can choose to follow God, or not.  The alternative to serving God is presented as choosing ourselves to run our own lives.  Again the illusions of self-control / self-destination.  Evil completely masks the idea that the only real other choice to serving God is serving evil.  No-one would intentionally serve the devil if they knew it was him they were following (except your average witch, warlock, demon, or other mentally impaired individual).  So evil markets the idea to us that this choice itself is bogus.  There is no real Satan.  There is only good, and not a lot else.  You don’t have to worry that some supernatural power (i.e. yet something else stronger than you, which you cannot exert control over) is out to get you.  That is crazy talk.  That is for deluded religious folks who merely believe in superstition and mumbo-jumbo.  But is it?

If the alternative to choosing to serve God is not evil, but just another form of good (absent an all powerful God), a form of morality with no objective standard – then why do we continue to witness so much pain and misery and evil in our world today?  If there really is no Satan, and no God, what is the explanation of the existence of evil in our daily lives?  Man does horrific things to each other.  Arguably we continue to develop more effective ways of doing horrific things to each other on a grander-and-grander scale.  If we were evolving towards a better world, or a better way of thinking, why does it seem our perversions are growing more and more violent, gruesome, and apathetic?  The truth is, the lack of a choice to follow God, is a default decision to follow evil.  Without submission to God, there is slavery to evil.  Without the freedom which God offers, are the bonds that would keep us from ever considering we might own another fate.  This is the active mission and intent of evil.  Keep our focus off of God and on ourselves.

But does God offer us control and security?  No.  Many Christians are very dismayed at that answer.  Seems to them that we should be rewarded in some way for our wisdom of choosing this fundamental premise the right way.  The choice and the journey are the reward.  But we are not offered control, and what’s more we should not ever want it.  Humans as sited above, make quite a mess out of everything they touch.  The carnal nature of man corrupts the good we come in contact with (it is our native thinking to destroy first, before we consider creating).  For example consider how fast you can come up with an insult for a person you encounter or know, than a true meaningful compliment.  Consider how fast we have cut down forests, before ever thinking about replanting any of them.  Old-growth is now almost unheard of.  When control is granted to us, we misuse it.  What is the old saying ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely.’  Or ‘nothing destroys like success.’  The truth is we cannot handle having control.  So we MUST learn to give up on trying to achieve it and trust that putting it in God’s hands is where is should be, and really, where it is (even when we don’t like it there).

What about security, does God grant that?  Not physically, only mentally.  You can be assured of God’s promises.  You can know He loves you.  You can know that if you should pass away from the earth right now, that because of Christ’s gift of salvation to us, you will live again in a perfect world, without the presence of evil ever again.  These truths can bring you a great degree of mental security.  They can comfort you.  But they do not eliminate the threats we all must face while living in this world of evil.  Sometimes God interferes with the plans and intents of evil on our behalf.  We experience miracles of healing, or protection, or resources delivered just in time to save us from ourselves and our mistakes.  But not always.  And we were not ever promised a cushy, pain-free existence, just because we follow God.  In fact we were told just the opposite by Christ Himself.  He told us there would always be poor in the world.  He told us that because we serve Him, the world would HATE us, it would persecute us, it would try hard to kill us for nothing more than a belief in Him.  Following God does not decrease our level of danger in the world we face, arguably it increases it.  But following God is a reward unto itself.  And following God leads us to learn how to live without self-inflicted pain.  We learn to avoid so many mistakes.  We shed ourselves of the things that would destroy us, and learn to embrace the things that would make us happy and fulfilled.  Our existence is transformed from meaningless to one of unique purpose and design.

I greatly admire those Biblical characters who understood the value of serving God so well, they were willing to forfeit their earthly lives to maintain their stand for God.  Not all were saved from the horrific intents of the evil one, but all WILL experience the rewards of their faith in the world to come.  Security then is not something we will need in this world.  Faith is.  Security is something else we can look to God to provide, trusting in His ability to protect us, and in His wisdom if harm comes our way in spite of our prayers.