What Gen Z Really Wants to Know About GodNäide

Am I Safe?

In many ways in our current cultural setting, safety is defined as guaranteed happiness, comfort, and even success for each person. But our cultural definition of safe does not always line up with our experience with God. How do we resolve that God is good, but God is not necessarily our version of safe? Is it possible we should trade our definitions of safe for what God defines as safe and good? Intimacy with the triune God is not only the safest place to be, but it also reveals a new definition of what true safety is through God.

The disciples had watched the Messiah be arrested and die a criminal’s death. They were likely next, so they hid. Jesus later appeared to them, alive. He does not tell them to keep hiding, but gives them the Holy Spirit and empowers them to do his work. Thomas was not there, though, and had not seen the risen Christ. He did not believe the other disciples’ testimony, and it was safer for him to doubt. Doubt was safety.

Jesus appears next to Thomas and invites Thomas to explore his hands and side without rebuke. Jesus’ scars are not absent from his resurrected body, but are proof of what had taken place, and proof to Thomas that this is truly Jesus. True safety is assurance that death will not have the final word. True safety is knowing and trusting that God is not reckless or wasteful, but that he uses all things for good. True safety is not hiding but living with the Holy Spirit and doing the Lord’s work. True safety is bringing our doubts and questions to a God who receives them.

Was this Plan helpful? We adapted this Plan from What Gen Z Really Wants to Know About God: Seven Questions About Life and Faith by Tanita Tualla Maddox. For more information, visit: https://www.ivpress.com/what-gen-z-really-wants-to-know-about-god