Are you Taking A Risk?
Back just before I entered high school (in the 60’s)
there was a group of women in the United States that banded together and tried
to have all competitive team sports, especially football, removed from public
schools. Their big complaint was that team sports were too traumatic. The
children, they argued, should not be led to believe their team could win, and
then suffer the trauma of losing. They claimed the children should only play
games where everyone wins. If they had won their argument and got their way,
these women would have set a precedent for all schools in North America.
But, in my estimation, they did
not stop to think that there could be no victory where there was no possibility
of defeat! Who among us, no matter how we voted in our National Election, did
not hurt for the losing side as their leader stood beside family and friends
and in the most gracious way they could possibly muster, conceded defeat. Yet
the man who tries, even though he fails, is never a loser!
Those ladies in the early sixties
were right about one thing: defeat is definitely traumatic. But so is
childbirth, and graduation and marriage. Yet all are a part of life. To
eliminate them simply because they are risky would mean the cessation of life.
The risk free life is a victory free
life. It means a lifelong surrender to the mediocre, and that is the worst of
all defeats.
In politics the risk free life
leads to Marxism, where all risks are removed. In religion it leads to dead
institutionalism. The man who is guaranteed against failure will never know the
sweet smell of success.
Take today’s youth for example.
They are deathly afraid of risk. Yet, in what must be one of history’s great
ironies, desiring safety, they escape into drugs, which is guaranteed failure
and death.
Freedom demands risk. Eliminate
the risks of freedom and you establish a slave state. Even then, if the risks
of freedom are banned, tyranny takes over. Ask the Poles, the Czechoslovaks,
the Yugoslavians, the Serbs, The Cubans and so many more too numerous to mention
here.
Today’s Liberal is constantly
crying for justice. But the question is not justice; it is freedom. Most
definitions of justice call for the elimination of risk. Capitalists love
monopolies which eliminate risk. But in the process monopolies kill the
wonderful creativity birthed [as with team sports], through competition.
Those who have the most to lose
however, are those least prone to risks and to bold actions. Take the banks for
instance. Banks do not like risk takers. In fact, they are constantly asking
what the ‘risk factor’ is in a loan. Therefore bankers invest in established
success, which means banks invest in the past, not the future. Visionaries and
entrepreneurs do not have a chance.
A case in point happened some
years ago with a Christian producer for TV. Mr. Bob Johnson, chairman of
Dominion Network from the USA had great difficulty getting ‘Christians’ to back
him and his innovative idea of television and radio broadcasting through direct
broadcast satellites. Mr. Johnson was then the only licensee approved to launch
a Christian owned and controlled direct broadcast system. What he did then has
revolutionalized Christian Television, but not one single Christian TV or radio
network was even willing to even talk to him about the marvelous concept on the
air.
Religious broadcasters were
afraid they would have to share both their control and their financial base
with someone else, so no one took the risk, except Mr. Johnson. Because he did,
today we have a plethora of Christian programming!
There are many movements afoot
today. The major political and social impact of recent years came from student
movements and minority uprisings, from those who had little to lose and hence,
were ready to lose it. Their causes were far more important to them than any
penalties that the risks would have involved.
Jesus was such a man. So was
Martin Luther and John Wycliffe, and Martin Luther King and many others. They
were all risk takers, courting defeat while taking extraordinary risks.
To dream of a risk free world is
to imagine a creation without hell. But a creation without hell is also a
creation without heaven.
God made us to be creatures who
are forced to choose between good and evil and it is time we took the risk of
choosing good so we can see the difference it makes in our lives.
Then we will see it was no risk at all!
I trust you have made a decision to trust the Lord and
invite Christ into your heart. The only risk involved in that act is not doing
it and risking an eternity in hell. Invite Him in today, you will be making the
best investment ever. God Bless You. Pastor Dr. Robert Coutts