Weather warnings and alerts.....

We have had some odd weather this winter. with storms midweek and temperatures in the double digits by the weekend!

I grew up in the 1940s & 50s, back before the days of television, computers and smart phones, before the days of wind chills and humidex readings. We got our weather from the thermometer hanging outside the kitchen window. -0 degrees or less meant meant you put on an extra layer of clothing, made sure you had a scarf and two pair of mittens on. Over 80 degrees in the summer meant you closed the widows in the early morning and pulled down the blinds. You knew you were having a cold supper that night, any preparation that involved cooking was done in the early morning. Any radio broadcasts that did mention the weather were usually just the temperature.

Today we live in a world where weather alerts, weather warnings, wind chill, humidex readings, freezing fog and a host of other words have become part of the daily life on our smart phones, our TV and our computers and tablets. I can get the weather forecast hourly, daily or even 14 days in advance. My smart phone sends me alerts whenever there is the slightest change.

However the access to all this information doesn’t actually make our lives any easier. Instead it leads to unease, discomfort and fear as we ponder the worst possible scenarios for each day. Should we go on that long anticipated outing? There is a freezing rain alert. If the freezing rain happens, there might be a power outage from down wires. How will we cope? …and on and on our thoughts go! I believe we are hard-wired to avoid things that we are fearful of or that make us uneasy. And that shows in our inability to ignore these possible threat of disaster, disaster that years ago we were totally unaware of, relying on our common sense to keep us safe.

We find more information upsetting. Hence our initial response is to panic, to freeze, to become inert.

Would I like to return to that world of 70 years ago? Not really. The new technology has the potential to make out lives better. However we have to take charge of that information and apply it thoughtfully and carefully, weighing its merits. Instead, because that takes work, too often we resort to panic, to our first and ingrained response.

It seems to me that we are seeing something of the same response in the response of the institutional church to the current level of biblical knowledge. While this is taught in the seminaries and has been since the mid-eighties, there is a definite lack of sharing it with those people in the pews. Yes, it might be scary. Yes, it would meet with some resistance. But just as we manage to cope with all the information about the weather, I think we could also cope with being exposed to the latest in biblical knowledge too. perhaps instead of starting the feared mass exodus from the church, it might actually slow that exodus and maybe even entice back some of those who have already left because they found the church was out-of-touch with the world of today. Maybe …just maybe!

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