Anonymous Asks (376)

“Is thrill-seeking wrong?”

An old acquaintance is in hospital right now going on two months with little prospect of an easy recovery, the victim of a motorcycle accident. He’s got a long road ahead of him with many potential pitfalls and pains as he tries to regain his strength and mobility and get back on his feet without inadvertently undoing the beneficial effects of a complex surgery in the process.

His drastic reversal of fortune brings up the question Did this have to happen? Not knowing all his circumstances, I have no good answer for that.

Necessary and Unnecessary

Some risks are necessary. The vast majority of Christians who ended up leaping out of planes, hang-gliding over enemy territory or scanning the radar for U-boats with beads of sweat on their foreheads were not thrill seekers; they were drafted into service in time of war and doing a ugly job about which they had little or no choice. No Christian should worry about the morality of risking his own safety when the lives of others are in peril, or when there is simply no other good option. Our Master set us quite the example in that department. Walking in his footsteps is no cause for a troubled conscience. Likewise, it is necessary to provide for our families, and there are situations when a moderately risky job is the only job available, or when a relatively small risk on the job comes with a social benefit of some value. Somebody has to do these things, and better that than unemployment. Depending on the level of risk, I would generally say pray and carry on; there’s a reward to balance it. (If the risk involves stunt doubling for Tom Cruise atop the Burj Khalifa, you are probably better off thinking twice.)

Now, I don’t have any information that my friend’s injury was a product of competition or crazy behavior. Motorcycles are a method of transportation, and many use them simply to get from Point A to Point B. However, nobody denies riding a motorbike is degrees riskier than driving a car. Exactly how risky is a matter of debate. These 2021 stats rate your chances of being in a motorcycle accident at four times higher than being in a car accident and your chances of fatality at thirty times higher. That’s not trivial.

Unnecessary Risk-Taking

It should be evident not all risks are equally necessary or profitable. How should a Christian look at participating in high risk/low reward situations? That’s what this question boils down to. I’ve seen believers answer it different ways, but I’ve never had a chronic risk taker explain to me how the Lord’s interests were served by his or her obsession with stretching the outer limits of the human body’s ability to safely comply with the laws of nature. Gravity, speed and force of impact are all features of unnecessary risk that we can calculate and predict. Many of those who test their limits regularly find it is not a case of whether something will go wrong, but when, and to what degree.

I would say there are at least three factors any Christian should consider before taking unnecessary risks:

1/ Adrenaline Addiction

Adrenaline can be addictive. Obsession with taking unnecessary risks for the sake of how it makes one feel is a well-documented mental health condition. To the extent that Christians crave risk for the “high” they get from it, there’s nothing more spiritual or noble about their passions than those of a drunk or a drug addict.

If that sounds harsh, consider the words of the apostle Peter. “For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.” As Paul wrote, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (I know the apostle is referring to slavery to the law in that passage. Nevertheless, addiction to anything at all is just as much a form of slavery as is legalism.)

So then, to the extent that risk-taking is a function of an addictive personality, a Christian is wise to avoid it. The New Testament writers counseled against it.

2/ The Stewardship Factor

Moreover, the New Testament portrays the follower of Christ as a servant and a steward. This is not a concept new Christians easily grasp, as the spirit of the age is relentlessly individualistic and unaccountable. For most of us, autonomy is our default. Nevertheless, service and stewardship are very much features of New Testament teaching. We have the privilege of managing the resources of our Savior, who bought and paid for us. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” These resources include our bodies. You can be a good steward or a bad steward, but you can’t get away from the fact that if we died with Christ, his opinion about our choices has a more-than-legitimate claim to consideration. In fact, he ought to have the final word.

Our primary obligation is to Christ, but as we age, we also have increasing obligations to wives and family members who depend on our continued good health for food and resources. When you opt to marry and have children, scripture teaches they too have claims on our choice-making that we cannot reasonably neglect or trivialize.

To risk leaving behind a wife (or husband) and children forever for the sake of nothing more eternally profitable than a physical or emotional thrill makes no sense to me. I cannot see how it should make sense to anyone.

3/ The Consequences Factor

I don’t want to get morbid here, just honest: the law of averages eventually catches up to even the most competent, careful risk-taker. I have a Christian friend who loves mountain climbing. A few years ago, he was climbing with an unsaved friend when she fell to her death. To the best of my knowledge, he has yet to fully recover spiritually, though he wasn’t physically injured at all and was likely not immediately or directly responsible for the accident. He remains riddled with unresolved guilt as he obsesses about whether he could have done anything to change the outcome of that ill-fated day. As a result, he stumbled back into habits the Lord had long ago enabled him to conquer, and that he thought were forever in the past.

Whatever temporary rewards he may have found in exploring his personal outer limits, to me that seems a price too high to pay.