Trust Falls with God

Saw this on Facebook, laughed about it for days.

A few weeks ago, I found myself belaying for a youth group as they went through a high ropes program.  Specifically, I was lowering the kids to the ground once they'd finished the course.  However, in order for them to safely clear the tower, they needed to jump off the tower platform - pretty scary stuff.  Nearby sat several adult leaders, watching their kids complete the course.  Whenever a kid had to jump off the platform, they became especially encouraging.  At one point, I heard a woman call out to a kid as he took the leap,

"Trust God!"

Her words hung in the air as I watched the rope slide through my hand.  It was a surreal moment.  Something twisted in my chest.  Because her words felt so patronizing, so band-aid, so very disconnected from the moment.  The kid landed on the mat and took a big gulp of air.  I then removed my hand from the rope.

Admittedly I don't know this woman, nor do I know her relationship with the kids.  So it's very, very, very possible that she didn't intend it the way I understood it.  That being said ...

1.  We all know that trusting God is a whole lot bigger than getting down safely from a ropes course.  So whipping out a complex worldview idea mid-air seemed inappropriate.  And pretty condescending (pun unintended, but approved).  'Hey kid, face your fear of heights and mortality by closing your eyes and throwing yourself at God - don't even worry about it!'  Because apparently God is a physical/emotional/spiritual catch-all (pun definitely intended).  That's a pretty crude way to face your fears and understand God.  I mean, even Jesus declined the opportunity to do trust falls with God (Luke 4:9-13)!

2.  Not to mention it's a bit self-defeating to tell kids to first check their safeties, then rely on God.  I'm not saying that trusting safeties and trusting God are mutually-exclusive.  But shouting 'trust God' during the moment of highest emotional climax - not during the meticulous safety checks previously completed - has the effect of saying trust gear for physical well-being and trust God for emotional well-being.   It compartmentalizes and undermines one's trust in God.

3.  Honestly, the kid's ability to trust God was not going to affect his landing - at least not if I could help it!  That is, I'm assuming the woman didn't intend for me also to 'let go and let God.'  If anything, her comment made me hold on even tighter.  Because if I messed up and the kid crashed to the ground, there'd more than just a broken leg to deal with ... there'd also be a broken faith, not to mention a broken relationship between him and this leader.

Speaking of which, what exactly would be the message if the kid accidentally did break his legs?  'Cause when you tell a scared kid to trust God, the implied message is that God is going to get him down safely.  And if that doesn't happen ... well, it sure looks like God dropped the ball.  But wait!  The Bible says God brings rain to the just and the unjust.  That is, He's not a capricious folk god who rewards 'leaps of faith' with safe landing or punishes 'leaps of no faith' with crash landings.  So in other words, choosing to trust God or not trust God doesn't actually affect your landing.  Or at least, it doesn't ensure you any more safety than anyone else.

Here's the thing, either you're trust God or you don't trust God.  Either He's worth trusting your life to or He's not - but that applies to all of your life, not just when you're facing your fear of heights.  As for me, I do trust God.  I trust Him to personally guide me through sickness and health, to oversee me when I'm jumping off of towers as well as when I'm belaying other people off of towers.  And I trust Him to work everything out for good in the end (let's save the debate of exactly how His will works in tandem with my/others' wills for another blog post).  But mostly I trust Him to love me and to fellowship with my spirit.  And within the context of that relationship, I trust Him to develop and fulfill my desires for truth, goodness, beauty, community, creativity, productivity, and peace.

Furthermore, I believe that God is truly good and sovereign throughout the whole of human existence - but the whole of human existence includes a lot of pain and suffering.  Not to mention, 100% of humans die.  Therefore, I understand that God's goodness and sovereignty won't necessarily keep me from getting hurt - or from hurting others.  Ultimately, my trusting God is not about temporal life as much as it is about eternal life.

All that to say, it felt like this youth leader had commandeered a moment of high-emotional vulnerability to sell a sponsor-approved Sunday School message.  It did not feel like a healthy or honest way to deal with trust issues with God.

However, sometimes we learn deep things about ourselves (and God) during moments of high vulnerability and emotion.  Everyone has a fear of death and everyone has issues trusting God, but maybe it takes a ropes course to bring that fear to a conscious level.  Maybe that's the only time people fully realize where they stand with God.  And maybe that's all this leader was trying to do - trying to access some of those deep-running issues at a moment when they'd finally surfaced.

Additionally we all learn things in stages.  When I show kids how to rappel, I don't try to teach them how the ropes, the hardware, and friction work to keep them safe.  I just teach them to hold the rope "up" to go and to pull the rope "down" to stop.  It's not necessarily wrong, it's just incomplete ... it's all they need to know at that point.  So simplifying a lesson might be appropriate, depending on where the student is at in their ability to understand.  And that's another thing; people walk away from these sorts of experiences having learned totally different life lessons - because everyone has a unique background, interpretation method, and growth curve.

Maybe those kids weren't ready to comprehend the whole of human existence.  Maybe they already understood that trusting God didn't guarantee safety, and they just needed to work on trusting God in spite of danger.  Or maybe they simply needed to experience fear and consider the reality of God's existence.  Maybe their leader facilitated some heart-searching discussions later, which further developed the implications of their trust in God.  I sure hope so.

The truth is, regardless of how careful or careless their leader was being, each kid will have to muddle through their own understanding of what it means to trust God.  Because that's a personal journey ... and even if a kid 'got it right' at the ropes course, life will further reveal and compound the complexities of that trust relationship.

It's not a simple idea; Jesus is not just your backup Belay.  But I believe that He is trustworthy ... whether you're in the air, on the ground, or below the ground.