In his book The Colors of Hope, Richard Dahlstrom describes what he calls "the safety first mentality." According to this perspective, "the key to living well is living safely." So Dahlstrom writes:
Lock your doors at night. Get an alarm system. Save 10 percent and make sure your investment is insured …. Take your vitamins, minerals, omega-3s, ginko bilboa, and St. John's Wort. Eat lots of soluble fibers. Exercise. Get eight hours of sleep …. Go to church regularly, being certain to drive carefully both on the way there and on the way home (it's best if your car's the biggest, because then you're the safest). Don't go on mission trips to places where you might contract staph infection, malaria, intestinal parasites, or face a terrorist plot. Risky hobbies? Forget it. Read books instead …. Eat organic. Get a colonoscopy.
There, that should do it. Now you're safe, right? Well, not really. Pistol Pete Maravich, extraordinary athlete and specimen of fine health, died at the age of forty, while shooting hoops. He didn't smoke or drink. Meanwhile, the oldest woman on record, Jeanne Calment, who died at the age of 122, stopped smoking at 117 because her eyesight was so bad she could no longer see clearly enough to light her cigarettes ….
[The safety-first posture] is wrong on several levels. First, and most significantly, the good life is never defined by Jesus in terms of either length or comfort. To the contrary, Jesus says that those who seek to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their lives, spilling them out generously in service to others because of love for God and humanity, will find them.