You Can’t Afford to Not Have Troubles – How Odd

I want to believe that I can arrange for myself a life without danger. I want to believe that if I just play my cards right I can avoid calamity, pain, even change. I want to believe that I am in control of my circumstances and that I can protect myself from the flailing arms of those around me.

It’s a farce. It’s a lie.

If it’s optimism it’s blind, if it’s faith it’s not mature.

“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

There is this sick feeling that resides inside of me. Every now and then it shows itself. It is that deep dread of knowing I am living in a fallen world and much of it is a great mystery. Who can explain things like aids, sex-trafficking, homelessness, genocide, poverty, slavery, racism, natural disasters, etc. And among all that there is a haunting sense that though things might be good in my life now and though I might assume that I am to thank for the perfect arrangement of peace and calmness, at any moment my life could crash down around me. The deeper question is, will I have the strength to handle it if it does?

So what to do with this vapor of worry that wonders how bad life can get?

Ignore it? Drown it out with positive thinking? Run from it? Embrace it fully and live my life on eggshells?

At different times I have done all of these.

But lately I’ve been pondering about a new option. Well, I guess it’s not really new. I’ve just been thinking about it in a new way. Let me explain.

You may have heard this quote from James before:

“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow…”

In the midst of our troubles this verse seems ludicrous, even mocking. It is only on the other side of our trouble that we can see there is actually truth in it. We certainly don’t sit around wishing for life to get bad so we can grow in joy, and faith, so we can test and improve our endurance. We don’t wish for painful times for ourselves. But I think most of us would agree, it is those painful times that serve as a catapult for great change in our lives. Uncomfortable exercise strengthens our muscles and improves our health. A death of a loved one gives us a determination to make something of our life. Fights between spouses lead to a resolve for a healthy marriage. Financial bondage or bankruptcy propels us into a concerted effort to find financial freedom. Tears have brought hope. Wars have brought peace.

As much as we don’t like pain, we cannot deny that it can be a compelling agent for good.

It can also be an agent for bad. It just depends on how we choose to channel that angry, painful, haunting energy. What will we choose to make of it?

In January I read the novel, The Time Machine. It was not my typical read, as it is sci-fi in nature. However, I think it was precisely because it was not my typical read that I got so much out of it. Suddenly the quote from James that I’ve heard countless times before took on a new understanding.

The thing that is nice about The Time Machine is that the author gets the chance to speculate on the future of culture and society. He gets to presume that if A+B occurs then C will probably be the result. In this case, the equation is humanity + no trials = the end of creativity and intellect.

He travels to the future only to find:

“the little people [what had become of humanity] displayed no vestige of a creative tendency.”

They had no desire to create. Can you imagine? Could it be that in our fallen world our fallen selves would not have the capacity to create were it not for the stirring of our hearts that comes from danger, risk, and troubles?

The author continues to speculate on this topic a little later in the book:

“I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency at its watchword, it had attained its hopes–to come to this at last.”

He suggest that in humanity’s attempt to make everything perfect and safe and secure that the result was suicide of human intellect. With everything in its place there was no need for creativity, or strength, or resolve.

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger and trouble…There is not intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.”

I like the mind-bending that I have to do to follow his train of thinking. I like thinking of change and danger and trouble as something ultimately positive because of what they birth in us. I like the idea that trials make us see that we are both stronger than we realize and just as strong as we deeply hope. I like the idea that God takes the results of a fallen world (hurt, danger, troubles) and redemptively trades them for intellect, creativity, endurance and positive energy. I like supposing that the strength we feel in our gut after we’ve come through some extreme trial is in fact part of what it means to be human, part of what binds us together. That our biggest concern in life is not “what if danger comes my way,” but rather “what if it never does?”

If we were challenge-less in this life would we ever come to know the greatest version of ourselves?

We, as humanity, fell in the first place because we failed to trust our capacity for greatness. We failed to trust that God actually created us with our best in mind. We surely couldn’t trust that God was good and so were we. From the very beginning we went drumming up trouble. If we could only create some conflict, stir things up, then maybe we’d get to the root of our potential. Surely God was holding out on us.

Someday I don’t believe we’ll need trials to stir us on or righteous anger to motivate us. Some day we won’t need tears of sorrow to stir our creative juices or a flagrant wrong to be done to us to help us have the desire to make things right for everyone else. But for now, we can’t comprehend right without wrong, peace without war, healing without hurt. For now our creativity and our strength and our intellect and even our joy is oddly wrapped up in the very troubles of this world.

*edited to add this quote:

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” -Helen Keller