Shut up and live

This Morning’s Toronto Star carried an article by Travel editor Jim Byers called, “Shut up and get scanned, already.” Jim writes in response to the indignation some people are expressing over the new body scanners to be employed by airports. The rationale of some of the protesters is that it won’t work anyway and so the government should be spending the money on catching terrorists and not scanning innocent people, as if they, the terrorists, could be easily identified and as if they, the general populace, know more than the experts hired to protect them. I guess they haven’t really considered that if terrorists could be identified there would be no need for scanners…Dah!

The indignation demonstrates an inherent human flaw, arrogance, the desire to be boss and the unwillingness to be subservient. The same arrogance accounts for the attitude of people who are angry with God, and who think that somehow they should be excluded from the normal rigour of life. A person angry with God typically feels that in some way God owes them something, that He should, from among the billions of people, spare them the hardships of life. When God doesn’t answer prayer the way they think He should answer it, then they petulantly threaten to withdraw their faith in God, as if that will manipulate God into being subservient to them. Or someone dies and people, who have often invested little in serving God, blame God for not dropping everything and miraculously sparing them the grief. Life is all about them.

That arrogant attitude has been around since the beginning of recorded history. Our fall from God’s grace is the direct result of trying to be God instead of simply living and appreciating the life God has created for us to enjoy.

In the book of Matthew chapter 11, Jesus encountered the same attitude and described the indignant protesters this way:

16"To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: 17" 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn.' 18For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon.' 19The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." ' But wisdom is proved right by her actions."

For thousands of years God has been attempting to get the attention of people and convince them that His ways are the best ways, that He, the creator, is the expert and not we the created. The things that happen in life happen because that’s the way life is and what may not make sense to us immediately will be proven wise ultimately. God doesn’t make mistakes, so bury the indignation and the arrogant attitude, submit to God and just shut up and live.