Looming Threats

I'm taking a one-day break from blogging about the Duke Youth Academy. In the mean time, check out my new column in the Reporter, which is on the power of looming threats.

Remember the swarm of killer bees that was down in Texas back in the '80s, ready to wipe out the entire continental United States?

(Okay, so I may be dating myself for some younger readers.)

Remember the Y2K bug that was going to bring all our computers crashing down?

That stuff was scary because it was "out there" somewhere, and we had no control over it. We could only wring our hands nervously and hope the threat didn't affect our town.

Now there's swine flu. That's the looming threat these days. The mass panic that swine flu has caused is touching my own life through the daily regimen we have to follow at DYA and at all of Duke University's other summer camps. Every camper and staffer must be asked everyday whether he or she is experiencing symptoms of a cough, runny nose, or fever. Hand sanitizer dispensers have seemingly sprouted on every door frame on campus, with earnest instructions to use them as much as possible. If a camper is suspected of having contracted H1N1 he is immediately quarantined until his parents can come and get him.

The difference between killer bees and swine flu is that swine flu is a real killer whereas those bees never did much but make honey. Then again, by all accounts, swine flu isn't near as dangerous as the plain ol' seasonal flu that we contend with every winter. It's scary because it's new, it's named after an animal, and we have no control over it. But you know what? It's still a heck of a lot more dangerous to get in your car and drive down the street than it is to skip the hand sanitizer after turning a doorknob.

I suggest in my column that our baptism should help us put all those looming threats out there in perspective. Our fears are just little expressions of the One Great Fear we all have: Death.

But Jesus has been raised from the dead, and that means that, for those baptized into his death, our own inevitable, earthly deaths do not have the final say over our lives. God has that say, and God's word is a word of life.