The “What if…?” men­tal game can be fun. It can lead to new pos­si­bil­i­ties or become the key phrase lead­ing into your own cav­ernous neu­roti­cisms. I use it when I am brain­storm­ing. It can be an essen­tial part of cre­ativ­ity (or destruc­tive self-doubt). It is the phrase that intro­duces pos­si­bil­i­ties. I can almost hear Colum­bus in his pon­der­ings: “What if the world is round instead of flat?”

Tak­ing my cue from Jesus, I some­times pon­der life from an oppo­site per­spec­tive. What if we are here to find strength through our weak­nesses? What if we were given a planet with a clear atmos­phere so we could behold the immen­sity of space? What if this is all really the story of a lov­ing God instead of the blind evo­lu­tion of mere matter?

I have fun with the way the phrase opens up new pos­si­bil­i­ties. What if we could cre­ate an econ­omy that uses a min­i­mum of fos­sil fuels? What if we finally solved the rid­dles of cold fusion (and thus had end­less cheap elec­tric­ity with­out pol­lu­tion)? What if the next gen­er­a­tion dis­cov­ers that we are a bunch of idiots?

“What if…” is a double-edged sword. It can open up pos­si­bil­i­ties and judg­ments at the same time. It is dan­ger­ous to start any sen­tence with it. We are also fool­ish if we do not. Surely we can improve on our stand­ing in life!

I do not waste my time in wish­ful think­ing, but I do call into ques­tion all the ways that things cur­rently run. Call me a dreamer, but also give me credit for hav­ing the courage to ques­tion the sta­tus quo. What if we had sev­eral vibrant polit­i­cal par­ties instead of the two bor­ing dom­i­nant ones we have now? Ever notice how offen­sive a “What if…” can be?

Despite the pop­u­lar touted views of life, I ask myself: “What if we live for­ever?” “What if this is just a prac­tice run for some­thing greater?” “What if the deci­sions I make today make an eter­nal difference?”

Never set­tle for the bland “what is” with­out ask­ing the grand: “What if…?” Chal­lenge all that has become estab­lished. Ques­tion the ques­tions. What if in doing so you rise above the sta­tus quo?

Ever so often we have to face worst case sce­nar­ios. They come in many forms. Some econ­o­mists are talk­ing about a world-wide per­fect eco­nomic storm that is about to break (coun­tries already going into default). The med­ical com­mu­nity is fac­ing a form of restruc­tur­ing that has already sent doc­tors into early retire­ment. Unem­ploy­ment, immi­gra­tion, and an aging soci­ety are all part of the mix as well. What will all of this be a year from now or a decade from now? What if we have to face our own worst case sce­nario (and sooner or later we will)?

Jesus warned of the com­ing destruc­tion of Jerusalem as an inevitable worst case sce­nario. He also gave instruc­tions to his fol­low­ers on how to deal with it: flee the city. Those that took his advice lived. He made that a par­al­lel to the end of the world. The only dif­fer­ence is that in the last worst case sce­nario, there is no place to run. That solu­tion has to do with prepar­ing now for the ulti­mate escape — from phys­i­cal life itself.

If you drive a car or have a beat­ing heart, you can face a worst case sce­nario at any given moment. It is just part of life. Depend­ing on its form, you will find ways to tran­scend what­ever it is. Spir­i­tu­al­ity is the key. Los­ing every­thing you own? You are about to dis­cover a bet­ter life out­side of mate­r­ial well being — one that was dis­cov­ered inten­tion­ally by monks and desert her­mits for cen­turies. About to be mur­dered? Do what Jesus did: for­give all and cast your soul into the hands of the lov­ing God.

There is not a worst case sce­nario that you can­not face. It is not a bad idea to think about some of those ahead of time, but do not waste your time antic­i­pat­ing them. No mat­ter how care­fully you live, one of those can sneak up on you in a form you could never imag­ine. The good news is that your spirit and the Spirit of God live to kick into the gap. It might be a good idea to become famil­iar with them ahead of time. God seems to appre­ci­ate a famil­iar voice in prayer.

So, how much chaos do you need? Do you like keep­ing every­thing on an even keel or are you the sort of per­son that upsets the apple cart? There is a need for both. Which one are you?

Per­son­ally, I need a lit­tle bit of chaos. I do not believe in chaos just for its own sake, and I have learned to avoid peo­ple that use it to try to con­trol oth­ers. There are chaos quo­tients (I have dubbed it CQ — a lit­tle like IQ). I am com­fort­able with some but not with oth­ers. The same is most likely true for you too.

We humans seek our pain; we are not con­tent sim­ply to sit and stare out of the win­dow all day. Life needs some stim­u­la­tion. With­out it, life atro­phies and dies. Cul­tures that exist in extreme weather areas seem to be much more cre­ative. The chaos on the out­side stirs a lit­tle on the inside. From the dis­tur­bance comes all sorts of novel things. (Cer­tain lat­i­tudes seem to cre­ate more entre­pre­neur­ial cultures.)

If you grew up in chaos, you may find your­self cre­at­ing a cer­tain level of it all of the time in order to feel secure. The mind seeks bal­ance; if there is a war on the inside there will be a cor­re­spond­ing list of cre­ated con­flicts on the out­side. The lev­els are dif­fer­ent for each indi­vid­ual. As we mature, we lower the lev­els because we no longer have the energy for them. That is good or bad — depend­ing on how you look at it. Some peo­ple drown in their own self-generated chaos. They lack a tran­scen­dent style that can keep them above it.

Peace is not the absence of chaos, it is still­ness within it. For those that have lived through a lot of tri­als, the calmest moment may be when a dozen things are hap­pen­ing at once. Chaos is no longer a threat — just an oppor­tu­nity to take its ener­gies and cre­ate some­thing totally unique. There is a knack for this — a sort of CQ style. Find yours and put it to work. Best of all, have some fun with it.

We live in an era of per­va­sive pseudo-authority. There is an avalanche of petty rules writ­ten daily by face­less bureau­crats, designed to con­trol peo­ple they have never met. Most of these “require­ments” func­tion as but ulti­mately lack valid author­ity. For the most part, they work by intim­i­da­tion — which takes many forms. In the end, it is a smoke and mir­rors game of bul­ly­ing peo­ple into shift­ing forms of worldly conformity.

In sec­u­lar his­tory, Jesus was known as a revolutionary…and he was in more ways than one. More and more I find myself tak­ing that cue as a Chris­t­ian. Pre­tend author­i­ties of his day made all sorts of reli­gious and sec­u­lar rules. He acknowl­edged some of them and ridiculed oth­ers. One phrase he said still echoes in my head: “Their reli­gion is but rules made by men.” Jesus was a unique non-conformist that some­how knew what was of God and what was not. In the end, they exe­cuted him over petty claims and dis­torted spin on some of the things he had said (that later became true anyway…like the fall of Jerusalem).

Insti­tu­tions have their place and lend sta­bil­ity to a cul­ture, but they often serve as obsta­cles. Cre­ated for OUR good, we are bul­lied into serv­ing THEM instead. We do not erect stone gods like prim­i­tive peo­ple once did; we make paper ones and keep them in alpha­bet­i­cal order in file cab­i­nets. We are told to bow to titles — cre­ated by our own designs. In the Old Tes­ta­ment that was referred to as idolatry.

Do not give your real­ity away to actors or min­is­ters that pose as polit­i­cal or reli­gious author­i­ties. Just because some­thing is in print or on TV does not make it true. The “major­ity” is not the ulti­mate author­ity and never has been. As the early apos­tles said, “We must serve God rather than men.” I have a sim­i­lar expres­sion that I have used since high school: “Who died and made THEM God?” Peo­ple cre­ate their own pris­ons, because they are ter­ri­fied by the prospects of their free­dom. They pre­fer rules to spirit.

Says who! Is there a direct cor­re­la­tion between a state­ment and real­ity? Since when did uni­ver­sity chairs (of what­ever field of study) become thrones? No one can intim­i­date you with­out your allow­ing them to do so. Stop rolling over and play­ing dead! They are only people.