Our Striving for Safety and Security

It was the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. The government issued a two-week stay at home order to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus. People flocked to stores to pick up essentials before the order took effect, and many started buying extra rolls of toilet paper, just in case the lock-down was extended. The TV news media started showing video of people exiting stores, each with their large package of toilet paper sitting atop their groceries, then cutting over to their field investigators, standing in front of the toilet paper aisles and their lightly stocked shelves, warning us in serious tones about potential shortages as people stocked up on supplies. Within just a few days, those shelves would be completely empty and there was no toilet paper to be found.

Of course, there was no toilet paper shortage. There was no shut down in toilet paper manufacturing plants or supply chains. There were no reported viral symptoms that required increased use of toilet paper. It was all just sitting in large stacks in people’s garages instead of sitting on the shelves of our local stores.

While I don’t think I’ll ever grasp the psychology behind the cause of the great toilet paper "shortage", it does provide us with a clear case study of how fear can be used to manipulate behavior. Authorities announce a perceived threat, the media stokes the fear of the threat, and the people respond in sometimes predictable but irrational ways as they strive for some measure of safety and security.

At times, we willingly give up some of our freedoms in our quest for safety and security. The government knows this. They introduce or recognize a threat to our safety and security, they stoke the fear through the media, they dictate a solution that allows them to control or mitigate the threat, and the people comply.

After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, the government established the Transportation Security Administration to ensure that we could safely board a commercial airline without fear of a terrorist attack. We willingly allow them to search our bags, x-ray our belongings, scan our bodies, and should they detect an extra crease in our underwear, pat down our crotch.

Had you told me 18 months ago that we would all be wearing cloth masks over our noses and mouths, I would have laughed in your uncovered face. Both common sense and science dictate that creating and maintaining an unsanitary, warm, humid environment directly in front of the main entrances to our respiratory and digestive systems for long periods of time is a really bad idea. And yet, the threat was announced, the fear was stoked, and the people submitted. In fact, our society has now complied to the extent that wearing a mask is kind, courteous, virtuous, and even patriotic.

Most of these encroachments have been pretty mundane. Well-meaning bureaucratic committees coming up with dictates to salve their constituents desire for more safety and security. It’s what I call “Safety Theater”. But as our society welcomes increasing totalitarianism and our culture embraces its new religion of secular hedonism, these dictates will increasingly conflict with our foundational civil rights and our mission as the Body of Christ.

In March 2020, the authorities decreed that churches must close, and in-person worship must cease. Our churches willingly complied, assuring us that we could hold virtual services in the interim, and would return to in-person fellowship “as soon as it is safe.” I have searched in vain through the Gospels and epistles but have yet to find the passage that directs us to be the Church only when it is safe.

In Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, he envisions a world in which safety and security have been fully realized. It is exactly the kind of society that would result from the utopian vision of our current cultural elites. Humans are genetically engineered to fulfill their roles perfectly, marriage and family have been replaced with communal structures based on class, sadness and despair are treated with freely available pharmaceuticals, and citizens are conditioned from their childhood to readily satisfy their sexual desires with whomever is convenient. And yet, this utopian dream quickly evolves into a dystopian nightmare. The novel leaves you with a sense of emptiness because it presents a sterile society in which all the messy things that make us human have been removed from humanity.

Our striving for safety and security has led to empty toilet paper aisles, empty churches, and will ultimately lead to empty lives.

Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” I used to think the abundant life must be a life that is fully safe and secure. I have come to realize I was exactly wrong. The abundant life is full of risk and discomfort; it’s weeping with those who weep, mourning with those who mourn, caring for orphans and widows, making disciples, loving our enemies, engaging with one another, and fully abiding in Him who gave us eternal life. When we focus our lives on temporal comfort, safety, and security, we lose the opportunity to participate in the eternal.

To those who offer us safety and security in return for a little bit more of our liberty, when it diminishes the mission to which we are called, we must say no. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” [Romans 12:2]