Orange Alerts, Duct Tape, The Sound of Music and C.S. Lewis...

So, I had jury duty last week, which consisted of me sitting in a Los Angeles Courthouse waiting room for the better part of a day and never getting placed on a panel--much to both my irritation and relief because I am relentlessly hard to please. Fortunately, I brought a book and the book I brought was "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's written as a collection of letters from a demon named Screwtape to his nephew and apprentice Wormwood. Screwtape is advising Wormwood on how to tempt his "patient" away from Christianity during World War II. I'd read it many years before as a teenager but naturally, reading it as an adult, I got a lot more out of it. Chapter 29 includes some advice that struck me as being so relevant to our current climate (talk of gas masks and duct taping one's windows, the ever fluctuating terror alerts) I thought I would share:

This chapter is about whether Wormwood should try to induce cowardice in his patient, who lives in London during the Blitz.

"...The main point is that precautions have a tendency to increase fear. The precautions publicly enjoined on your patient, however, soon become a matter of routine and this effect disappears. What you must do is to keep running in his mind (side by side with the conscious intention of doing his duty) the vague idea of all sorts of things he can do or not do INSIDE the frame work of the duty, which seems to make him a little safer. Get his mind off the simple rule ("I've got to stay here and do so-and-so") into a series of imaginary life lines ("If A happened--though I very much hope it won't--I could do B--and if worst came to the worst, I could always do C"). Superstitions, if not recognized as such, can be awakened. The point is to keep him feeling that he has SOMETHING, other than the Enemy [God] and courage the Enemy supplies, TO FALL BACK ON, so that what was intended to be a total commitment to duty becomes honeycombed all through with little reservations." The Screwtape Letters, pp. 149-150

I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with news that the terror level has again been raised--I think I would be just as aware of my surroundings and the suspicious activity of those around me yesterday at Yellow than I would be today at Orange, but then, I'm generally a pretty paranoid person. I'm certainly not saying we should live in a way that's oblivious to any real danger to ourselves or those around us but this passage did bring to my mind the idea that I mustn't put my faith in myself or the local news (!) or the American Government or Home Depot in regards to my sense of peace:) We must continue to ACTIVELY seek our peace from God in a time when there is SO MUCH to be legitimately and reasonably afraid of, and so many different people telling us different ways in which to be or feel "safer." But we need only depend on God:

Psalm 121

"I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From whence shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever."

That's a favorite verse of comfort for me, and it came into my life in a very cool, pop culture way. One of my all time favorite films is "The Sound of Music" and when Julie Andrews' Maria is about to flee Nazi-conquered Austria with her family, she goes to an Abbey, where she was once an apprentice nun, for help. The Nazis follow them there and as the Von Trapp's are about to leave, about to climb over the mountains into freedom (one must put aside one's knowledge of geography for this to not seem stupid ;) Mother Superior stops Maria and says, "Remember: "I shall lift up mine eyes to the mountains; from whence cometh my help..." And Maria smiles, the implication being that she knows the rest of the verse and it is indeed just what she needs to hear. So, my sisters and I (who'd seen the film dozens of times without really thinking much about this scene) were watching with my Aunt Norma and she said, "I wonder what the rest of that verse is..." and using several concordances, we finally tracked it down and were very impressed with how well the verse fit the situation of those in the film.

It also fits our present situation of anxiety, one that I would venture to suggest comes from an unconscious misplaced faith in our country instead of our God. Now that war and terror has come to the shores of the United States, we must turn to God for our sense of security and faith in a more deliberate way, the way Christians did in Europe during World War II, the way they do every day in places like Africa and Central America and the Middle East where regimes change frequently and are often times in direct opposition to Christianity. The fact that our government (despite all our rah-rah democrat v. republican sparring) is so consistent and stable and tolerant of our faith has made it easy for us to, without realizing it, put our trust in it as an agent of God rather than the flawed creation of man it has always been (no matter how well-meaning and God-fearing some of those men and women whom it is comprised of, are).

God is not issuing Orange alerts--he tells us to trust in His mercy and his wisdom and his plan for our lives no matter what our external circumstances are. Whether we are being shot at or whether we're lazing in a backyard hammock sipping lemonade, we're to believe and trust that we are in His Hand, and under his protection. And again, I'm not advocating withdrawing from the world and ignoring the realities of the times in which we live--I recently called the LAPD about lights I saw on in the top floor of what is supposed to be an abandoned skyscraper (naturally, they totally blew me off but It still made me feel like I'd done my civic duty). I pray for God's protection when I travel but I still buckle my seatbelt. I just feel we need to guard ourselves against both false fear and false security when we are currently under such a bombardment of messages from the news media, which wants us scared and therefore dependent on them for all their "helpful information" (in between the McDonald's and Sears commercials) and the government, which is trying to calm us (so we keep eating at McDonald's and shopping at Sears) by promising they are doing everything that can possibly be done to protect us against things which they know and we know NO ONE can really be fully protected against--not in a fallen world where there will always be those who WANT to hurt us because THEY CAN.

Our only viable option, the only thing that can provide us with any lasting peace and comfort, is to turn to God and His Word and also to reach out to those around us who don't worry about vague, distant concerns like "Terror Alerts" because of the immediate and tangible fear of hunger, poverty or abuse that pervades their daily lives. Those of us who have the time or inclination to wonder whether we should, say, on the way to picking up a pizza, swing by ACE Hardware and get a roll of duct tape( just in case "The worst should come to the worst") should promptly fall on our knees and thank God that we're not worried about not eating tonight, or where we're going to sleep tonight or whether or not anyone's going to hit us tonight. Tonight, I for one am going to enjoy a delicious bowl of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and revel in the cultural cheese that IS "American Idol," and thank God for designing me in such a way that something THAT silly gives me so much joy. Even when the "Terror Level" has been moved to "Orange."

Peace, and God Bless

Christine :D