Best of Community: The Waking Dead

This week we are highlighting some favorite posts from our faithful community of writers.

We All Face Zombies

The background story line of The Walking Dead series is on target with the reality we all live in. The world is in a constant state of decay. Nobody is without problems. We all must face the hard truth that life doesn’t always turn out the way we had planned, even for those who appear to have it all.

Anger. Resentment. Depression. Fallout from wayward children. Financial woes. Mistakes from our past. Sooner or later, these zombies will come scratching at our door, reaching their spindly fingers towards us to suck us dry.

Our initial response to these ugly creatures is to deny what's happening, pretend they don’t exist, or wish them away. But what needs to happen is us calling them what they are. We must square up and face them head on.

I don't want to downplay hardship or give you a horror flick survival pep talk. These are very real, painful situations. And many people, maybe even you or a loved one, are fighting against zombies of another kind—a physical, soul-emptying disease literally eating away at living tissue, stealing life from the inside out.

In one form or another, zombies are in our world, and we all must face them.

Zombies Are Infectious

I don’t think it’s coincidence that the stereotypical zombie eats brains. If our mind gets infected, it eventually spreads to our hearts. Kill the heart, you kill the life. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."

There are dead spots in our hearts, shadows where secrets lurk. If we don't cut the shadows loose or drag them into the light, they will spread and reproduce more sorrow in our lives. Then we become numb, taking on the persona of a zombie ourselves. Our attitudes will then infect those around us.

I recognize these problems aren’t television drama. If only they were. They come with strong emotions. Heaviness.

I never said it would be easy. But what I am saying is, more than survival is possible.

We Will Not Defeat Them Alone

Fighting zombies alone is a death wish. Living out your life on this earth, alone—either hiding your battles or hiding yourself—is a life wasted in a private apocalypse. And let’s be honest, we’ve all put up a facade of transparency with others, exerting energy to divert conversations away from our pain.

But we don’t have to do this alone. Find a small band of trustworthy friends to battle beside you. Even two are better than one. Find a church with open arms for anyone, regardless of background. (Believe it or not, they do exist. I go to one.)

Still, we need something more.

Friends cannot reach the deepest corners of our hearts—they can’t resurrect the dead. We need something greater to heal our wounded places and breathe life into our drowning souls. We need the touch of God.

But it always boils down to choice. Will we choose God’s way out, or search endlessly for our own?

In the end, the zombies don’t care about you, or your choice. And they certainly don’t care about God. All they care about is dragging you down and feeding on you, then moving on to the next victim. However, defeating them is possible.

Following God doesn't always make our enemies disappear, but God does help us overcome them.

This is why we celebrate Easter: to remember that death is not our final destiny. I’m not just talking about physical death. There is life yet on this earth, and plenty of it to go around.

And the good news is that one day, all good things will be restored.