When our family goes to the beach, we think about sharks. I don’t know how much thought you give to sharks, or if you ever think about them at all. Though sharks are not often present in our beach setting, we have seen them enough to survey the waters. Why? We know sharks are dangerous.
With limited shark knowledge or experience, I was both surprised and amused to read that Australia’s conservationists and marine biologists have called for renaming “shark attacks” on humans “negative encounters.” The reason? To “help dispel inherent assumptions that sharks are ravenous, mindless man-eating monsters.”
We may snicker at the thought of changing language from “shark attacks” to “negative encounters”, but language does matter. How we talk and listen is a real signal of how we value the persons with whom we are engaged. Whether a person uses the “n” or the “f” word affects how we think about them.
I could talk about language in a lot of different ways, but thinking about sharks sent my mind in a way that is important to all. We are so comfortable in the ruts in which most of us live that we are fearful to break out, to try something new. We resist experimenting with other ways of doing things, and other ways of relating. Sharks give us a good image for it. Would you believe one of the most popular aquarium fish is the shark?
I still find it hard to believe, but my information came from a magazine article, written by an expert. A young man who dives for exotic fish for aquariums explained that if you catch a small shark and confine it, it will stay a size proportionate to the aquarium. If you keep them in a small aquarium, sharks can be six inches long yet fully mature. But if you turn them loose in the ocean, they grow to their normal length of eight feet.
As unbelievable as that sounds, it became more believable to me as I reflected on people. I’ve seen people become little because they lived with little ideas and midget moral convictions. I know people who have become little because they associated only with people who had their same hide-bound rigid notions and never entertained an alternative thought. I’ve seen people who were so narrow that they were flat. People, like sharks, adjust themselves to the size of their environment. Why do we do it? One big reason is that we are afraid…afraid to break out.
I talk with a lot of people who want a “no risk” faith. But that’s not what faith is about. Faith is the alternative to fear. Too many of us want to get to the Promised Land without going through the wilderness. We want a no risk guarantee, but there’s no such offer in life. Look at Jesus. There was something unpredictable about him. This inspired some people, it unnerved others. It redeemed some persons, it maddened others.
To see Jesus walk through life so confidently free, without remembering the discipline behind his spontaneity is to fail to see the whole of his life. The 30 years before he emerged on the public scene must have been years of discipline and preparation. We know what took place in the wilderness during the 40 days of his final preparation. There he settled the why of his life. With the why clear, the how could come off with freedom and excitement.
Let’s settle the why of our lives and move out of these small aquariums in which we are living.