Thrill Seekers and Risk Takers

Have you seen this bumper sticker: “Live to ride. Ride to live”? It is the bikers’ motto.  This is, of course, an attitude that expresses a greater human ideal—living for what you love to do.

We all have to do a job to make a living, but it may not be what we love to do. So we live for the moments we get to spend on what we love to do–gardening, carpentry, hang gliding, rock climbing, skydiving, etc. To call them hobbies or leisure pursuits falls short—these are passions.

Some of these activities are risky, and,  however unfortunate, people sometimes die for the love of doing them: the private pilot’s small plane crashes; the rock climber’s ascent up a mountain peak proves to be fatal; the thrill-seeker’s parachute doesn’t open (last year we held our breath and prayed a lot when our daughter jumped out of an airplane for her 25th birthday!). What is it about human nature that makes people willing to risk death for what they love to do?

Is there a challenge here for us who claim to be willing to die for our faith? Jim Elliot, martyred missionary to the Auca Indians of Ecuador, took a risk for something he loved—sharing Christ with those who had never heard the Gospel. Shortly before his death, he said: "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." But I think the question is not so much are we willing to die for Christ. It is, rather, are we dying to live for Christ?