Jesus, take the wheel

Family Life
1

So I was driving with my daughter and she was reflecting on the trigger of her anxiety over climate change: One specific teacher in about grade 4 who told the class that climate change is irreversible and, to paraphrase my daughter’s interpretation of the lesson: We’re all gonna die.

I’ve told her before that this was possibly the teacher’s way of getting the kids to give a damn. But to little Claire, who already gave a damn, this made her very scared, in a kind of, “Why go on then when we’re all gonna die anyway?”

I’ve not been happy with that teacher since I found out about that lesson a few years ago.

But in this car ride, Claire was musing about the possibility of just believing everything was going to work itself out, and that were were not “all gonna die”. At least, not any time soon. Not at the hands of climate change, anyway.

I suggested she choose a deity who has his (it’s almost always “his”) hand on the tiller and is steering us right. We laughed about simply choosing a religion based on how rosy its outlook is.

But the more sobering thought was, is this what religion is for? Is this the genuine, non-scammy thing that religion is actually good for? Giving people peace of mind that everything is going to be ok?

We talked seriously for a while about what it must be like to have that sort of assuredness. How comforting it could be to a person who would otherwise be consumed with anxiety. Sort of a “Jesus take the wheel” approach.

Which lead to concerns about Jesus never having likely driven more than a chariot and do we want unlicensed and uninsured drivers on the roads, even if they are the son of God?

I like these conversations.

2

In further conversation, we contemplated if assuredness in a happy outcome to a looming danger was a good or bad thing? Does assuredness without tangible reason to believe in it breed complacency? Is complacency a bad thing when the looming threat is out of your control?

I don’t know It seems to be one of those grey areas to me.

3

I’ve been talking this sort of stuff with my own daught6er, who is much older than Claire and has a good friend (in her late 50s) about to die of metastatic cancer via MAID. We both agreed that i) an afterlife is largely wishful thinking; ii) my personal dream testimony had been helpful to the friend and iii) that the idea of a drop of water being absorbed into the ocean was somewhat comforting.