Note: This is a vulnerable post. It won’t be everyone’s cup o’ tea.
Bouncing down the rough dirt road in our conspicuous white SUV, we approached the township exit after an afternoon of volunteer work. John, the leader of the NGO, was at the wheel. I sat in the back row between two women, fellow exchange students at the University of Cape Town.
I was the first to notice the unsettling scene unfolding before us. Three men with guns were walking straight toward us. Their F-bomb laced shouts in a foreign tongue needed no translation. They were coming for us. This was a hijacking.
Immediately, I felt a surge of panic, primarily on behalf of the two women beside me. Please God, protect these women.
They pulled us out of the vehicle and forced us to the ground, our faces in the dirt. They emptied our pockets quickly and fled. But in their haste they didn’t even take the wedding band off of John’s hand. The four of us stumbled back into the vehicle and drove away in a daze of silence. Onlookers stood on their front stoops and in the street, gawking at us as we left the crime scene.
I later learned on the drive home that those three men who hastily robbed us out in the open, seeking recompense for decades—no, centuries—of racial and economic oppression, held their own fear of safety, well aware of the common practice of vigilante, retributive justice in township society.
How would you describe safety? What does it feel like in your imagination?
Is it the embrace of a friend? Sitting in a foxhole with your mate, protected from enemy fire? Laying under the weight of a soft, heavy blanket? Submerging your body under water? Holding hands with your lover? Listening to immersive sound through noise canceling headphones? Smelling the soothing scent of a nostalgic fragrance? Feasting with close friends or family? Walking through a protected forest or an open meadow? Dining around the table with friends and comfort food? Snuggling up by the hearth with a good book? Sitting in your favorite chair at home behind a locked door? Nestled in your favorite perch under a tree’s canopy? Partying and laughing with your people, away from the threats, antagonisms, or suspicions of those different from you?
Is it found in your body? Centered, mindful, tranquil, grounded, breathing, separated from the outer world. Out of your body? With the help of intoxicants, chemicals, stimuli, arousal. Away from people? Isolation, solitude, silence. Away from that person or those people? Or, perhaps with people? With my people? Communion, touch, laughter.
If you’re a Silicon Valley-bred oligarch, apparently safety feels like taking over a significant chunk of Hawaiian land and building a $260M bunker.
For too many, felt safety in their own bodies or even in their own homes is threatened. In a society where a police officer shoots a mother in the head in her own kitchen, we wonder, is there any safety in this world?
For some of us in our vulnerable adolescent years, home was not safe, school was not safe, religion was not safe, leaders were not safe, social media was not safe, or our own bodies even felt unsafe. For some of us, it is not the past tense “was” but the present “is.” For some of us, climate crisis, political crisis, ideological polarization, war, school shootings, racial discrimination–a cocktail of unsafety keeps you knocked out uneasy and feeling a lack of safety in the world.
Our brains are created to flee danger and find safety.
Psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, and neuroscientists suggest that seeking safety, or protection, is the instinctual, primal pursuit of the human brain. Yes, also connection, but at a foundational human level, I imagine most of us recognize and accept the premise: human beings seek safety.
This primal response is why you run when you see a bear approaching you. If your limbic system is doing its job, your amygdala sends you into flight mode, protecting you from death by bear mauling. In modern society, your limbic system might drive you to lock doors, install security systems, place fences around borders, build surveillance systems, or more unobtrusively, seek out the cozy corner in the coffee shop where you can focus.
In my investigation of biophilic design (designing spaces according to our innate love for the sensory benefits given to us from biological life, such as natural light, plants, running water, fractal patterns, etc.) within the broader field of architecture psychology, I’ve learned to pay attention to prospect refuge: a theory and design principle that incorporates protected, unthreatening space from which to observe and work. Imagine your ancestors treading the wine press or milling the grain and a lion sneaks up from behind. Yeah, you don’t want that. You need a prospect refuge–a place of safety, a sanctuary out of harm’s way.
If safety is the primal, human desire and focus, and if the experience of felt safety is seemingly so elusive and hard won–whether in ancestral days or modern times– then what is going on? Why is the world not safe? Why is it rife with dangers and snares? Why do many of us not experience felt safety in our bodies? Where can I find safety? Is God safe?
This is not mere armchair philosophical musing. This is some of the wild in-between of my own life. This is my search for the Real, for the Life that is truly life, for an enduring safety that sustains me through and through. Is this the search of a snowflake? Toxic masculinity and proud boys might say, “Yes,” but I don’t buy it. It’s deep in our bones. The evidence is in our Wal-Mart and Amazon shopping carts, our social media scrolling, and our late night anxious wonderings.
In the dark of night, as a young boy, I would wake up, my eyes, ears and mind alert. Nothing but darkness and the sound of crickets nearby and coyotes afar. I couldn’t move my limbs. I couldn’t move my head. It felt like something or someone was sitting on my chest. I was paralyzed and frightfully aware. This happened many times over the course of my childhood. I never told anyone. Fear and shame had me in their grip. I felt thoroughly unsafe. It wasn’t until adulthood that I remembered these episodes and with a quick Googling, discovered that I had experienced sleep paralysis.
This was also the time as a child I remember wrestling with the notion of hell that I heard about at church. Was it real? Was I going to end up there? How bad is it? How do I avoid it? These were frightful imaginings and questions to face as a vulnerable young child.
As a young boy I also remember the feeling of fear and shame that would arise in my body when I saw that look or heard that tone from one of my parents. Sadly, today as a father myself, I can say I have afflicted my own children with that look or that tone too many times to count. In those moments, I felt thoroughly unsafe. I didn’t know where to turn for safety.
Years later, during the aforementioned six month undergraduate study abroad stint in South Africa, on three different occasions I was held at gunpoint (the opening vignette), knifepoint, and had my house robbed. Needless to say, each of those wounding encounters disturbed a feeling of safety, and opened up a vista of wondering about security, stability, eternity, and more.
Given this non-exhaustive record of my youth, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that as a young man, husband, and father of our first child a decade ago that I began to experience deep anxiety and nighttime panic attacks—the stored memory of fear, shame, and unsafety in my body was calling for attention. Too much caffeine, lack of sleep, and a dramatic disturbance to my environment and routines were contributing triggers. The enemy within and the enemy without conspired to erase any notion of safety in the world.
I know I’m not alone. You have your own story. For many, the wounds cut deep, the trauma profound and complex. Perhaps the memories or even the present day experiences are too painful to even acknowledge. If that’s you, please don’t face it alone. Please seek out a friend and a trusted clinical professional to meet you and walk with you to a better place. It is possible.
What is safety if not salvation from something?
Is not safety predicated on one thing–an enemy? No bear or lion chasing you? Safe. No armed villain? Safe. No lurking dangers in the shadows? Safe. No fear of death? Safe. No fear of futility or captivity? Safe.
Perhaps the ultimate safety we seek then is an existential safety as vulnerable humans living in a cosmos filled with real and perceived dangers and troubles. Safety from tyranny, oppression, and injustice. Safety from guilt, fear, and shame. Safety from our own confounding capacity to desire and pursue things that are often not good for us or for others. Safety from our own demise. Safety from futility, loneliness, and joylessness. Safety from death. Safety from being cut off from our created intent: Divine union and collaboration to restore shalom on earth as it is in heaven.
Author C.S. Lewis’ beloved Chronicles of Narnia tales are a classic of 20th century literature. So, it is with trepidation that I raise a potential quibble with Lewis, who penned a famous scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that is often quoted and rehearsed in certain circles.
Upon seeing Aslan for the first time, Lucy is understandably afraid. He is, after all, a lion.
Lucy leans in and whispers in hushed tones to Mrs. Beaver, “Is he safe?”
“Safe?” Mrs. Beaver replied, “Of course he isn’t safe. But he is good; he’s the King, I tell you!”
If Aslan is a literary imitation of the real world Messiah, is Lewis saying Jesus is not safe? That God is not safe? In what sense? Perhaps he’s calling to mind the words of the prophet Amos: “The lion has roared. Who will not fear?”
I believe Lewis has in mind the wild, great, sweeping otherness—the fiery holiness of the God revealed in Jesus Christ—not an unsafe, malevolent, untrustworthy, dangerous, prickly, petty, shifty, or harsh god. Those are the type of gods that YHWH triumphed over in the confrontation in Egypt and at the Roman cross. Many of us may have experienced a mother, father, or guardian figure as a pattern of these lesser gods, which then fostered insecure attachment, shame, and trauma that haunts our body’s memory and our soul’s questions.
Mrs. Beaver’s language about Aslan, and Lewis’ imagination inquiry into the safety of the King, is a reasonable springboard into the deeper, important question: Is God safe?
The prolific poet-king David certainly seemed to think so.
Psalm 16 begins this way: “Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge…”
And in Psalm 31, David’s poetry is laden with the confident language of God’s safety, even as he feels and experiences the discomfort and troubles amidst his enemies: “In you, LORD, I have taken refuge…my rock…my fortress to save me…You have not given me into the hands of the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place….How abundant are the good things that you have stored up for those who fear you, that you bestow in the sight of all, on those who take refuge in you. In the shelter of your presence you hide them from all human intrigues; you keep them safe in your dwelling from accusing tongues.”
And then subsequently in Psalm 32, “You are my hiding place, you will protect me…”
Or, perhaps a proverb? “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.” (Proverbs 18:10)
Building upon this poetic-prayer tradition, Jesus of Nazareth comes along with words that invite us into a way of safety that unsettled some and comforted others.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37)
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)
But, perhaps this feels like proof-texting, no? Classic make-the-bible-say-what-you-want? “Jonathan, you’re just pulling out some sentences to make God sound safe. Zoom out on the whole story and you’ll see that God can’t be trusted. God isn’t safe. Jesus isn’t safe. God’s people are not safe.”
I recently asked my nine year old daughter, “When you imagine God, what are five images or words that come to mind?” She said, “Love, Beauty, Good, Nature, Animals.”
There comes a time for many of us when the God of our childhood dies.
Suffering and hardship and hardship come knocking. We experience God’s otherness as distance and a mockery of our humanity. We hear deafening silence when we cry out for help. We ask questions for which we don’t have answers. We walk through seasons of doubt. We experience disappointment with God, people, the church. God doesn’t show up how we think he ought to when in a vulnerable place. The people who claim to know God and represent God mislead us, abuse us, manipulate us, malign us, or at least misrepresent the Jesus they claim to follow. We wake up to the toxic narratives infecting leadership in the institutions and communities we have called home. Friends betray us. Our bodies turn against us due to the scourge of mental illness, autoimmune disorder, or disease. A child dies. We begin to see the rubble of shame under which we can barely breathe. Attempts to repair ruptures in relationships are met with a cold, stiff wind of rejection. We see bloodshed, famine, disasters, prejudice, oppression, violence, and death near and far.
These experiences leave wounds in our bodies, disrupting a sense of felt safety. Not every experience of suffering is trauma, because each of our bodies uniquely interpret the inputs, but every human has likely experienced some form of trauma. It may not be headline news trauma, but it is trauma to us. It’s an unhealed wound. It’s a virus infecting our encoded safety system. Certain people, places, experiences, smells, sounds, or memories trigger trauma’s siren, and we find ourselves cast upon the turbulent waters of unsafety in our own bodies, or with others.
And then, we wonder, is God safe? What happened to the God of my childhood, or the God who I first met in Jesus who guided me into love, beauty, goodness, salvation.
Maybe then we begin to look at the story of God revealed in the Bible and a shadow is cast. Suddenly the old covenant stories of conquest, judgment, laws, persecution, war, blood, and death begin to sound to us like God is not safe, God is not good, God cannot be trusted, Jesus is not safe, Jesus is not good, the “church” is not safe, the church is not good, there is no freedom there, no refuge there. Wrestling with the questions of existential, eternal, or spiritual safety, forgiveness, healing, and freedom–the questions themselves–might stir up fear and anxiety. Being in certain environments might provoke feelings of unsafety.
I return to an earlier consideration.
If salvation and refuge and liberation are things, then tyranny, oppression, and danger are things. If safety is a thing, then enemies are a thing. Naming, unmasking, confronting, engaging, and overcoming those enemies? That’s a whole other thing. I believe I do not, within my own human limitations, have the capacity to overcome these enemies of my soul and inhabit ultimate safety in and of myself. I don’t believe the answer is to escape or to pretend that suffering, trouble, enemies, and pain are gonna come.
I believe many of us didn’t hear the good news that the safety of Christ isn’t just about another world and isn’t about ratcheting down the regulations to control people for a human-forced safety, but rather is about a God who wants to meet us in the mix of divinity and dust here and now. God is not a dualist who calls the material bad and the spiritual good. God did incarnate in human flesh, after all—the ultimate affirmation of our created humanity.
So, some of us are rightly turning to the “dust” of our humanity. Finding a felt safety for the first time within our own bodies. I believe many of us are learning there is good to be found in mindfulness, meditation, breathing, exercise, nutrition, ice baths, nervous system regulation, and bringing our stories and felt unsafety to an empathetic listener whose face and words attune to us and reflect back the “seen, safe, soothed, secure” needs of our created, dusty, interdependent humanity.
The world we live in doesn’t make much sense apart from the reality of an existential enemy and existential safety. Returning to a word from Lewis and his series of WWII-era radio broadcasts later published in the pages of his book Mere Christianity:
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.”
Our desire for safety then must mean there is real safety.
This is where the story of God in Jesus Christ and the story of humanity revealed in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures tells a story, the story, that makes meaning of the very real threats to our safety as humans.
“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority…And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (See the letter to the Colossians)
The First Nations Version of the New Testament translates Jesus’ name as “Creator Sets Free.” Jesus, the English translation of the Hebrew Yeshua, meaning “Yahweh saves.” Saved from slavery, oppression, death; set free for freedom, life, purpose, joy.
Safety and freedom are two wings of the same plane, then; two rails of the railroad tracks finding their origin and destination in “Creator Sets Free” - the one who is the true Refuge and the true Liberator.
“In this world you will have trouble; take heart, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” (Galatians 5:1)
When we find enduring safety in the Refuge of Creator Sets Free, we discover a freedom by which we are set free from the haunts of the worst that plagues us as well as set free for union and collaboration with God in the realm of God’s goodness renewing the earth, as it is in the heavens.
In what may be the most quoted passage from the Bible, King David’s twenty-third psalm is a class in the search for safety and freedom. In ancient Bedouin culture, dangers lurked in the badlands where shepherds also cared for their flocks. David’s enemies haunted him. A good shepherd, though, abided by the hospitality code, taking in a foreign traveler, providing food and shelter. We see that hospitality tradition bear out in the story of Abraham, who takes in three travelers, who end up being angels in disguise. David takes this custom into his imagination and relationship with YHWH.
“The LORD is my shepherd…You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” (Psalm 23)
The Good Shepherd welcomes the wandering one seeking safety.
In the presence of enemies, the Good Shepherd sees and saves.
As always, thank you for reading and engaging here in the writer’s workshop.
May you find the true safety and freedom your soul desires,
Jonathan