Worriers, Warriors

A relative of ours likes to say Ben and I worry about everything.

I hope they're wrong about the "worry". I think we see things differently. A lot of things seem dangerous to us that seem friendly to others. I think we're cautious, not anxious.

Splitting hairs? Not really. "Worry" is something old ladies do when they won't let you pick up a grocery bag because it might be too heavy for you and hurt your back. "Caution" is something a soldier uses in enemy territory when he enters a space carefully with his gun ready instead of assuming he's safe.

We're commanded not to worry ("worry doesn't add a day to your life," Jesus told his followers once). We're also commanded to put on the armor of God and be careful to maintain it. You don't wear armor unless there's an imminent threat. When someone wears armor, they're prepared for a fight. When you're prepared for a fight, it's because you have enemies who want to kill you.

The older I get, the more I realize how thoroughly our enemies have invaded almost every part of normal life. Because we do have enemies. We have enemies who want to separate us from God. We have enemies who want to take our kids from us - at least in mind if they can't manage it in body - and separate them from God if they can't get us.

When I was young, my parents decided to get rid of their TV. It was a good decision. A friend once described a television as a giant sewer pipe pumping into the living room - as many people said, there were good things on TV...but you had to dig them out of the muck and a lot of it got on you in the process.

Today, it seems like TV is the least of our concerns. We have phones that can bring more of the Enemy and his philosophies into our home than all the TV stations available when I was a kid. Phones! In our pockets! 

There is no way to guard against all of it, no way to shut our kids off from the sources like there was by just taking the TV away.

I'm stunned at the level of threat existing around us. I must be naive, because I never saw the tool to bring down whatever was left of our society's morality being the undermining of our very genders, the insistence that now we are required to make a decision whether or not God made a mistake when he made us men, women, or even Human. If this isn't the height of chaos, I don't know what is. You can't watch cooking shows without this agenda being pushed, made normal, brought to the forefront of our attention. Bring up a search bar on your phone and it handily fills in what it assumes you might like to search - "impeach Trump". Even my search bar has a chaos agenda!

It's easy to assume there are safe places and dangerous places in the world but that dangerous places are easy to spot. They're not. Increasingly, the places we've been conditioned to trust - churches, for instance - are just as dangerous as the places we were taught danger lived, like bars or clubs.

Thing is...the way to protect our children has never been to simply remove them from all danger. It's to teach them how to wear armor and use a sword. And to go through every doorway with weapons drawn, because it's foolish to assume any space is safe.

Yep, we look like worriers. Paranoid. Purveyors of tinfoil hats..

But in the end, I'm hoping we're actually warriors and we have a chance of raising our kids to be the same.