-A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken
Not long ago, my brother and I and some of our friends were walking on a bike trail. The trail runs along a creek, and some of the trees grow so that their branches hang over the water below. This particular time, the water level was not too high. We came upon a tree with a good sized branch arching over, and the temptation was too great. I climbed up on it and inched further and further out on the limb. My brother anxiously cautioned me all the way, and the further I went, the more worried he became that I would fall. Naturally, being older, I did not intend to listen to him, but his doubts shook my own confidence. Looking at the tree branch, if I went further I would have the victorious satisfaction of having climbed nearly over the entire creek. Of course, there was also the possibility that my brother's fears would be realized, and I would fall to an embarrassing and painful injury. There was risk, and I had to weigh the possible gain with the possible consequences.
Risk. My mother, famous for her proverbs, always told us, "If you doubt, don't." That seems simple enough. What she failed to explain to us, however, is that so much of life is uncertain. Doubt does not only occur when I encounter a crossroads. Sometimes it is not a one-or-the-other decision, but a vague sense of doubt which I cannot exactly define.
Living life trying to do the right thing sometimes ends up feeling like a track runner going around and around in a circle without any breaks. After awhile, the runner realizes that he has broken his own record countless times. What purpose is there to keep going? The track doesn't seem to lead anywhere per se. This is a life without risk.
And it is like writing a book. I don't know if you have ever tried to sit down and put together a masterpiece, but the more into a plot you go (or at least it is this way for me), the more complicated it becomes. There are infinite possibilities, but you feel there is only one way for you to make this perfect. One way in which it all goes together. This is a life with too much risk to choose from.
These two things, a sense of monotony and of finding the one right way to behave, drive me to fear risk. Risk is the variable you never calculate. Risk is the possibility that you could fail or you could win the lottery. Most of the time, I avoid risk. It seems an unnecessary gamble to trifle with. But surprisingly, I have found that avoiding risk does not reduce doubt. In fact, many instances show the opposite to be true, that doubt increases as risk decreases.
Black and white may exist in pictures or in old movies or on checkerboards, but rarely is it evident in making decisions. Or maybe it is, but we are too distracted by the colors of our world to realize it. I am always so concerned with making the right decision, that when a decision is made, I often have a lingering sense of doubt. Did I make the right decision? Should I have chosen black this time, or was white the better choice? I fail to realize that a lot of the time, good comes with bad. I will not always make the right decision, but that does not mean that I should be wary of every choice I do make. The world will keep on turning if I blow it, and walking on eggshells and avoiding risks will not guarantee a "safe" life. What it will guarantee is a lot of emotional taxation and monotonous living. Yes, a decision can have disastrous results because a risk, prudent or imprudent, was taken, but the ultimate outcome, however, is out of our control.
Genesis tells the well-known story of Joseph's brothers selling him to merchants (an obvious lapse in judgement on their part) and of his eventual and amazing rise to power in a strange land that he had entered as a piece of property. Years after Joseph reveals his true identity to his brothers, they are still haunted by the decision they had made against him. After their father's death, the brothers feared Joseph's wrath which they felt they justly deserved. I am always staggered Joseph's humble and blunt response to them: "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." How incredible for Joseph to be drawn to a place where he could offer up such a horrible decision and look upon it with thankfulness and gladness.
Joseph did not fear making a wrong decision because he was confident that the Lord would use it all for His purpose. In Dante's Inferno, he rightly says, "A man must stand in fear of just those things that truly have the power to do us harm, of nothing else, for nothing else is fearsome." Nothing else is fearsome but the things that have the power to do us harm. How true and yet how often we forget? I forget that there is only a force of darkness unable to be overcome that must be feared, and that darkness does not exist because it has already been defeated. Isaiah 43:1 says "But now, this is what the Lord says - he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel; 'Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.'"
If there is risk, if it is thought through carefully and not taken by whimsical or carnal desires, then I believe it is right to be taken. For nothing in life is certain but the love of God, and nothing need be feared when that law is at work for all eternity.
