{"id":100,"date":"2011-02-04T17:03:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T22:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/example.org\/the-pursuit-of-safety"},"modified":"2011-02-04T17:03:50","modified_gmt":"2011-02-04T22:03:50","slug":"the-pursuit-of-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/2011\/02\/the-pursuit-of-safety.html","title":{"rendered":"The empty pursuit of safety"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83524c19a69e20148c856eea5970c alignright\" style=\"width: 250px; margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px;\" title=\"Childproof\" alt=\"Childproof\" src=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/6a00d83524c19a69e20148c856eea5970c-250wi.jpg\" \/> \u201cRisk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of. Play it safe and end up holding the bag&#8221;<\/em> (Matthew 19:26, Message).<\/p>\n<p>I think Americans are becoming too safety conscious.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve become the most risk-adverse generation in history. We\u2019ve made everything so safe, that the only danger we\u2019re in is of taking all the fun out of life! I mean, I can&#8217;t even take a Tylenol without getting a worse headache trying to get the bottle open!<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not sure that we would even have an America if today\u2019s generation had to pioneer it. Can you imagine Columbus asking for trip insurance? Or Lewis and Clark not willing to travel without their GPS. What if Davy Crockett had refused to fight at the Alamo without insisting they have commercial fire insurance? Do you think Daniel Boone would have killed a bear if his parents had insisted he not play with knives?<\/p>\n<p>Christians have carried this desire to play it safe into the church. We\u2019ve diminished Christ\u2019s call of sacrifice to a syrupy sentimentality and safety. We\u2019re in danger of boring ourselves and our children to death with this watered-down version of the gospel.<\/p>\n<p>But Jesus didn&#8217;t call us to a safe life. He called us to follow Him. He didn&#8217;t say, &#8220;Look, these Romans and Jewish leaders are probably going to kill me, but maybe they won&#8217;t give you much trouble.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No, Jesus told them that He was headed to the cross and that they needed to be ready to take up theirs too.<\/p>\n<p>The call of Christ isn&#8217;t to safety. It&#8217;s to significance.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; Now, would you mind helping me open this cap?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cRisk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of. Play it safe and end up holding the bag&#8221; (Matthew 19:26, Message). I think Americans are becoming too safety conscious. We\u2019ve become the most risk-adverse generation in history. We\u2019ve made everything so safe, that the only danger we\u2019re in is of taking all the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2061,1,2062],"tags":[],"location":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion","category-uncategorized","category-weblogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}