Risk

I recently had an indirect encounter with a church's insurance company. We (one congregation) were told that we could not, under any circumstances, borrow the van belonging to another congregation. We could rent it (an impossibility on our timeline), but not borrow it.

It occurred to me in this encounter that the insurance company was taking the simplest path to its appointed task: to cushion risk, financially, and to reduce risk in order to reduce financial responsibility. Of course, the easiest way to reduce the risk of another congregation wrecking your client's van (and then you having to pay for it) is to prohibit another from borrowing it in the first place.

Every party involved (myself, our congregation, our insurance company, the leadership of the other congregation) was willing to take the risk of lending the vehicle . . . except this insurance company. Too much risk.

And it occurred to me: what if we all ran our lives like insurance companies, minimizing risk?

I would never drive down the hill in front of our house, to reduce the risk of running into the creek.

We would never let our daughter go down the stairs by herself, to reduce the risk of falling headlong.

Most of us would never eat anything with exotic ingredients, to reduce the risk of anaphylaxis.

None of us would ever have children, to reduce the risk of suffering weeks or months on end of insufficient sleep and abundant misery.

None of us would ever get married, to reduce the risk of domestic conflict.

Humanity would quickly decide it is better not to be born, to reduce the risk of death.

And here we spend twelve days celebrating the decision of a god to be born, running the risk of all of the above, in order to deliver us from all of the above.

I praise Yahweh for being quite unlike our insurance companies.

Merry Christmas.

~emrys