Psalm 119:114 Armor

The Walking Dead, AMC

The Walking Dead, another guilty pleasure of mine, is a show that can't seem to decide what it wants to be.

Sometimes it's an extended horror show, with gruesome monsters wreaking havoc on the people who remain alive. The fans of horror movies love the episodes that major in monster mayhem.

Other times, the series is an extended sociological study of the many ways people are changed by extreme circumstances. And what could be more extreme that a zombie apocalypse? The horror movie fans get restless when the show dwells on what they call the melodrama.

Personally, my favorite episodes are the character studies. I've always been drawn to stories of people forced to live daily life in the midst of an impossible situation. Books about people forced to live in prison. Movies about soldiers and citizens in the midst of war. TV shows about ordinary people during apocalyptic times.

In season 5, episode 10, the lead character, Rick Grimes, sums up that experience of living through the worst of times, telling a story about his grandfather's way of making it through each day of World War II:

"Every day he woke up and told himself, 'Rest in peace; now get up and go to war,'" says Rick. "After a few years of pretending he was dead, he made it out alive. That's the trick of it, I think. We do what we need to do, and then we get to live. No matter what we find in D.C., I know we'll be okay. This is how we survive: We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead."

Walking Dead fans have their favorite seasons and their least favorite. The horror fans love the seasons filled with bloody battles. The sociology fans love the seasons where the main characters are pushed to their limits by the new world of the walking dead.

The character-developing seasons tend to take place behind walls of some sort. Most of the second season was spent on a farm, with what they thought was the safety of being in a remote location surrounded by forests. It didn't last.

The following season was spent in a prison, where they felt safe behind fences and walls, only to discover they weren't safe there either. Then they moved to a wall town, only to discover they weren't safe from predators among the living. In the most recent season they encounter a group of people who have taken a completely opposite approach to fallen society, living hidden in the middle of the walking dead.

After several seasons, the question still remains unanswered completely: How can people not only survive the worst life has to throw at us, but thrive under the pressure?

You are my refuge and my shield;
I have put my hope in your word.

Psalm 119:114

I've often tried to figure out why I like the stories of people dealing with impossible situations. My two brothers both admitted, as adults, that they also liked those stories.

It's possible we gravitated toward such tales because we were raised being told both at home and at church that as Christians we were unlike everyone else in The World (always in capital letters). We are the believers, they are the unbelievers. We are alive in Christ, they are dead in their sins. We are God's chosen people, they are children of darkness.

The thing is, all of those descriptions and contrasts come straight from the Bible. Throughout the scriptures there is a thread of tension between Us and Them. As it was summarized frequently in the churches where I grew up, we can't avoid being IN the world, but we aren't to be OF the World.

So how do we respond to that tension? The pressure of being part of a community of life amid a world of death will change each of us.

Some Christians do everything they can to not mix with the world at all. They build metaphorical walls around themselves to protect their way of life from the sinful world.

Others choose the opposite approach, blending in among the people who are slaves to sin. They learn to blend in, walking among the dead as though they were part of the world themselves.

I don't think either of those approaches is what God tells us to do.

He promises that He will be our refuge. Rather than building up false walls and completely separating ourselves from the world, he invites us to build a life centered in him. Put down roots in him. Life in him. Roots in him. Be the branches on the vine that is Christ.

If we do that, he will be our shield, our refuge. He will protect us.

If we were intended to hide from the world, he wouldn't have given us the full armor of God (Ephesians 6:13-17). Soldiers don't wear their full armor when they're sitting at their headquarters enjoying the company of their friends. Armor is worn when they go out into a potentially hostile world.

By living in Him among the world, wearing the full armor of God, we become walking and talking examples of his life.

We are not the walking dead. We are walking among the dead, filled with abundant life.