Better question: What risks do you take each and every day? Do you drive 70 in a 65 mph zone? Do you use your cell phone while driving? Do you eat without washing your hands? Do you eat foods beyond their expiration date? Do you drive after your gas gauge is below E? Do you spend money on the basis of a hoped for, but not yet received, bonus? Do you try to ride your bike across a slippery wet board, placing your assurance on your ability to keep your wheel straight and not go over the handle bars when you wipe out? Yeah, I did that last one…
It seems we take risks when the risk seems rather minimal or not all that likely. We do drive over the speed limit. We do get in cars or airplanes knowing that we could crash. We do eat without washing our hands. Why? Because we’ve done it so many times before and didn’t have a problem.
Here’s where it gets ugly. Cell phones. There are enough studies to tell us that talking on the phone is akin to driving drunk. We’d never drink and drive but most of us are quite willing to talk and drive–because we don’t feel we are risking our quality of driving.
In your Christian life, do you take spiritual risks? Engaging in private relationships with someone you fantasize about? Neglecting your devotional life? Neglecting your church life? Neglecting any other sin pattern you know you should fight to kill but rather cherish…
Musings on Faith and Psychology 
Why is it that people are much more likely to rely on their own experience than on actual research? Like when you try to tell your older women that babies need to be put to bed on their backs now, or they need to be in car seats and they reply with “oh we never did any of that and we were just fine.” Is it that we just don’t want to hear that we may have done something risky without realizing? It just doesn’t compute with what we’ve already decided to believe? I’m not being critical, since I’m sure there are a lot of things I do that make no sense to anyone but me in my own head. I just wonder if we’re so used to discounting bad news in an effort not to live in constant paranoia and fear that we end up living in a little fantasy world of our own making where nothing is risky if we decide not to perceive it that way.
Interesting and important twist at the end there. I don’t know that I would have made the connection to assessing spiritual risks if you hadn’t made it for me. Very good line of questioning for all of us… Thanks!
A risk that scares the bejeebers out of me at times is when I try to take a gentle prod at longstanding “church traditions” I encounter in ministry. I’m not talking about practices that have some root in doctrine or historical church tradition, but things that are done in a particular body because “that’s the way we’ve always done them.” I’m a newer member at the church we’re attending, and “paying dues” before giving input is highly valued here (as it is mostly elsewhere). Timing and tact are valuable diplomatic tools to have in addressing potentially detrimental, or at least potentially “not constructive”, practices in a local body. My timing and tact don’t always present as maturely or skillfully as I’d like to think they actually are, and I’ve discovered this through some recent humbling events…maybe that’s why those situations scare me, and rightfully should.
That’s a great question. I know I’m guilty of the I-can-handle-it mentality when it comes to certain sins. I think that I can get away with only reading the Bible every few days, or not getting involved in small group / bible study. Yet every single time I do that, my relationship with God suffers. You’d think I’d learn by now. 🙂