Crises and the change

The current pandemic has created a lasting crisis for many people. Everyone experiences it a little differently. Many feel it financially, others are shaken emotionally, and for very many both happen at once. But why it works: Our everyday life is threatened – and with it our well-being. This has consequences.

Radical changes in life circumstances are perceived as a threat. The current pandemic is no exception. It is an event of the century, certainly, but of course there are other changes that can shake up our lives. Change is part of life – and that’s no platitude.

Examples: The loss of a loved one can throw you off track. The loss of a job can trigger existential fears. A fire, a natural disaster, a war, a divorce or an accident cause radical changes in life.

I am personally very familiar with such radical cuts: I have just lost my livelihood for the third time in 20 years due to the pandemic, twice I have started a family and lost it, twice I have lost someone from my immediate family much too early to a terminal illness. That’s 7 serious events already, each enough to throw me off track. I am speaking from repeated experience here. I am “shaken, not stirred.” It’s exhausting every now and then, but I embrace this demanding life because it’s the only life I have.

A characteristic of such crises is that an undesirable new situation has arrived from which there is no return. Something has definitely changed. The past is over. When such happens, one is initially unsettled, disoriented, and finds oneself in a process whose conclusion is still unknown. This can cause consternation and fear.

Times full of change are emotional. We react insecure, angry, grieving, powerless, denying reality or projecting insecurity onto others.

Paul Tournier, the Swiss physician and psychologist, once described this uncertainty in times of great change as “the feeling of being in the middle”. He referred to trapeze artists in the circus who have to let go in their act and fly through the air for a short time until they find their footing and security again on the next trapeze. This example aptly describes the emotion in the transition from “before” to “after”.

Can change be affirmed?

Yes and no. Many will deny change at first. This can be seen well in the current pandemic. You want to get back to the daily grind. Everything should be as it was before – as if nothing had happened, as if everything was just a dream from which one wants to wake up immediately (and recovered). Understandable. Only gradually are other insights and ideas gaining acceptance.

The process of change evokes powerlessness and thus anger (about “the others,” “the measures,” “the politics,” “the scaremongers”). Social media is full of them. I’m frankly tired of these arguments. It must be possible to deal with each other differently. But how does that work?

When it comes to arguments, you part company, but when it comes to needs, you meet.

As long as you’re stuck in this trench warfare, you’re not going anywhere. You have to let go of this one. What is needed are concrete steps, small and large, to improve the current situation for oneself and one’s neighbor. To do this, the first (and perhaps most difficult) thing is to accept the changed situation. Then one should also become aware of one’s own vulnerability (it is not the others who are the problem, but I am vulnerable). Let’s ask each other what we really need. The needs are more important than the arguments. When it comes to arguments, you part company, but when it comes to needs, you meet.

Recollection is the keyword that helps. A return to needs as a starting point for healthy further development. It’s certainly not easy, but it’s valuable because then things move on. This process of change knows certain key points, but everyone comes through it in their own way. There are moments of denial of reality, also moments of anger. With me here, with you there. In the same way, however, there will also be moments of new beginnings, until this time of change leads to a new security. How do we notice that? We probably evaluate this differently and therefore do not arrive there at the same time.

What you need for your safety or I need for mine is different. I personally have a very low need for security in many areas. My experience tells me that it will continue. Those two things give me confidence. Furthermore: I firmly count on being and remaining in God’s hands, completely independent of my current situation – but more on that in a moment.

Today I want to affirm change. Practicing. I consider being able to adapt to be a strength. I am in the process of reinventing myself. This is not the first time. However, I usually don’t succeed at first go. I, too, am consumed by these processes, by times of insecurity, of rebellion, of rejection. Nevertheless, I know that a new era is dawning through the processes.

Change in the Bible

Famous are positive changes in the Bible. These are situations in which everything gets better. This could be seen as a sense of achievement (in keeping with the current zeitgeist). Consider the following statements:

“Behold, days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: not like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.”
Jer 31:31-32

“Therefore, if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation: the former things passed away; behold, they are become new!”
2Cor 5,17

“But when this perishable puts on imperishability, and this mortal puts on immortality, then shall be fulfilled the word that is written, Death was swallowed up in victory! Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?”
1Cor 15:54-55

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor anguish – they will be no more; for the former things have passed away. Then the One seated on the throne said: Behold, I make all things new!”
Rev 21:4-5

These are comforting words that give content and confidence to the outlook of faith. But is that all? Is it exclusively about success stories or also about the failure stories? There are enough negative developments that are given space. The Bible is about the encounter of the reality of this world with the reality of God. The Bible speaks of the reality of this world, of the need in the world, and of God’s response to it. The Bible is solution-oriented and therefore, in consequence, redemption-oriented. It is comforting, but not just a cheap comfort for the soul.

I am interested in this reality of the world. Does the Bible speak about it? Can I find my reality back in the Bible stories? If I look at the world from the perspective of personal life crisis or social crisis, is there anything comparable to read in the Bible?

In fact, many examples can be found. The Book of Job, for example, speaks of suffering in this world. Unbelievable losses and sufferings fell upon Job. But this is not the only example. Another example is the exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt. In this story we find all the characteristics of a radical change. Similar to the current pandemic, this was not about individual fates, but about massive societal changes. How did people deal with the radical changes back then?

The Exodus from Egypt

Jacob, one of the archfathers of Israel, once moved with his family from Israel to Egypt because of a famine. A few hundred years later, this small clan had grown into a larger nation. One reads about it in the 2nd book of Moses. The Egyptian ruler perceived the strong people as a threat and began to suppress them. Soon the Israelites were involved in slave labor.

When the need was high, God sent a savior: Moses. This leads the people out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. It’s a mind-blowing story. It is also the story of a radical change. This was the plan: leave Egypt – set out across the desert – take possession of the new Promised Land. What sounds simple turned out to be surprisingly challenging.

Not everyone has embraced this upheaval. Not everyone could handle this change well. This can be seen in the fact that the people often rebelled against Moses and against their God.

“And the sons of Israel said unto them: Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate bread until we were full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to cause this whole assembly to die of hunger.”
Ex 16:3

This is not a feel-good story. It is rather like today’s pandemic: “Please let everything quickly return to the way it was”. There are other such episodes in the history of Israel’s exodus.

It is amazing that Egypt was not far from the promised land of Canaan. One was also at the border in no time. There Moses sends 12 scouts into the land to scout it out. We read this account in Genesis 13. When they returned, 10 of these 12 thought it was impossible to take the land. Only Joshua and Caleb trusted that it was possible.

“And Caleb appeased the people, ⟨who⟩murmured⟩to Moses ., saying, “Let us only go up and take possession of it, for we shall surely conquer it! But the men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.”
Num 13:30-31

Faith speaks of trust. Joshua and Caleb trusted that it was possible to take the land. The remaining 10 did not trust. This led to something we recognize today as well: Fake News was put into circulation:

“And they [die 10] brought an evil rumor among the sons of Israel upon the land which they had scouted, saying, “The land which we have passed through to explore is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people whom we have seen in it are people of tall stature; also we have seen the giants there, the sons of Enak by the giants; and we were as grasshoppers in our eyes, and so were we in their eyes.”
Num 13:32-33

So the story of giants in the land was outright lies. This approach reminds me of many a conspiracy theory today. The 10 tried to manipulate the opinion of the people with the help of false news, only because they themselves did not have the confidence. I can only try to imagine what that would have looked like had they had YouTube back then. The people, or at least a majority, believed this fake news. Probably their needs led them, instead of looking at the promise and what they had achieved (visible in everyday life!), to prefer to remain stuck halfway through the journey in the desert, because one only longed for the old, the rest, the security. While the need is understandable, the consequences have been disastrous.

I can only try to imagine what that would have looked like had they had YouTube back then.

Lack of trust led to Fake News. Fake News strengthened the insecurity among people. Insecurity led the people to reject salvation, read Genesis 14. And then this rebellion fell on the people:

“And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, How long ⟨shallit⟩continuewith this wicked congregation ⟨?that she grumbles against me? The murmuring of the sons of Israel, with which they murmur against me, I have heard. Say unto them, As I live, saith the LORD, if I will not do unto you as ye have spoken in mine ears! In this wilderness shall fall your dead bodies, yea, all your patterned ones according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which ye have murmured against me. Never shall you come into the land where I have set my hand to make you dwell. ⟨I have raised toan oath⟩ except Caleb the son of Jefunne and Joshua the son of Nun!”
Num 14:26-30

So the whole people who rebelled, the whole generation, was to die in the wilderness. Only their descendants were to enter the land. The exceptions were Joshua and Caleb, with their families.

We see how people then dealt with their assumptions, fears and reservations not much differently than we do today. No, I don’t think God is sending us into the wilderness now, should we rebel against something. That’s not what I’m trying to say here. However, from the story of the Exodus from the land of Egypt, we can see how it has always been difficult to embrace change. When it comes down to it, we may not be such great heroes of the faith.

What I wish for you and me? I wish that we can get through difficult times together. I was always glad for good friends, conversations, silence together, a cup of coffee shared, a hike to find myself. It’s the little things that count in challenging situations. I wish we would admit to ourselves how completely annoying the current situation is, how much it weighs on us. And I wish us all sober trust, as Joshua and Caleb showed.