Lifestyle or Life?

Watching the horrible tsunami wash life literally away produced within me the usual safe and non-threatening response, a response which is perhaps the curse of the evangelical on the world around us–it’s what I like to call the “Al Franken” effect for those who, like me, curled their hair to the late-night antics of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players on SNL. I am not without deep empathy for the victims of this latest natural disaster. What must it be like, I have thought this to myself…to run a few steps in front of that monstrous and watery filth in a frantic race for life when you cannot win? I have lifted and continue to lift prayers for our neighbors in Japan. I have opened my pocketbook, but in reality, non of this makes me the least bit uncomfortable or stressed in the same way those whose lives will never be the same have and will be impacted. What must it feel like to rock one’s child on a small island with nuclear reactors threatening meltdown? How helpless would a prayer feel?
    I do know this. When life and mere survival becomes “life or death,” it’s amazing how quickly LIFESTYLE  gets tossed out like possibly contaminated bath water. Who cares if your car hasn’t been washed or a little bird poop is on the windshield? Who notices the name on the back pocket of someone’s jeans? Who takes a moment to make mental note of the fact that your Bible is wrapped in Vera Bradley fabric? Or whether or not you are sweating those onions in the most glamorous of oils with a Rachael Ray spatula? Who is watching arms jiggle in the midst of a rescue and saying to themselves, “See, I knew those shake-weights were all gimmick?” Who takes the time to name-drop the latest- and- for- the- next- five- minutes last word on Heaven as declared in the book you just read?
     Identity in survival takes on an authenticity as all the falseness rolls away. Tsunamis and tornadoes and earthquakes and hurricanes are not happening so that we, the “Al Frankens” of  Christ’s church will learn this lesson, nor do they happen at the whim of an angry God who we tend to project our own mood disorders onto because Christians and non-Christians alike will do just about anything to avoid facing our own flaws. We will go to great lengths to avoid natural consequences through a curious summoning of allegory when the time is ripe. With our own hands and many times in the place of God we build the machines of our own undoing.
    The truth is, no one knows, really, why terrible things happen to folks who aren’t any less perfect than I am or you are. When catastrophe happens to us, why it happened usually takes a back seat to making it through the day. There are mysteries we will never understand for reasons we will never know, but there is something I could learn today, watching video footage of the tsunami wave indiscriminately covering all that is inanimate and animate in its path.
   I could quite easily discern in this moment the vast difference between living the Christian lifestyle and living the Christian life. Prayers might come less readily. Pocketbooks might fly open.
-submitted by Kerri Snell