Psalm 11: Fight or Flight
“If the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
– Psalm 11:3 (NIV)
Most likely you’ve heard the term “fight or flight,” an expression coined by American physiologist Walter Cannon in the 1920s to describe the body’s natural responses to stressful, frightening, or dangerous situations. Whether stimuli is real or perceived, our bodies want to automatically spring into action, subduing an anxious circumstance (or thought) by fighting it off or running as far from it as possible. More recently, psychologists and physiologists have studied a third stress response called freeze. Sort of like “playing dead,” it’s the tendency to naturally become numb, immobile, or uncommunicable in the face of danger.
Few events in our recent history remind me of this fight-flight-or-freeze phenomenon more than the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was mid-March 2020, and I remember thinking we might be headed into a different time while I was out running my usual morning loop through the busy Morrison Plantation area of Mooresville. I didn’t notice a single car on the road or another human being – over a 2-hour period! A creature of habit (and always the rule breaker!) my daily running routine continued through those initial days and weeks of uncertainty, but it didn’t take long for the media and “experts” to speak up, warning us to shut down our lives and withdraw from society:
“Don’t go to work, school, or church!”
“It’s OK to stay in your pajamas all day.”
“Binge on Netflix”
“Gorge on Grubhub orders.”
“Veg out on social media.”
To my shock, it worked! Fear, stress, and anxiety led many people to freeze in the face of this compulsory life upheaval. Countless Americans retreated into their homes, escaping to a world of modern-day distractions, waiting for others to guide them and or just have an excuse to tune the world out for a while.
Ironically, another behavior to arise out of the COVID-19 “lockdowns,” was to literally “escape.” 2020 and 2021 saw feverish activity in the secondary home and vacation real estate markets. RV sales skyrocketed. People fled to luxury locales like the beach, mountains, and National Parks to avoid the pressures of uncertainty in their lives.
At the beginning of Psalm 11, we encounter David facing a similar, dire situation. David, perhaps under persecution from Saul, is encouraged by his fearful friends to get out of Dodge:
“Fly away like a bird to the mountains,
because the wicked have drawn their bows and aimed their arrows,
to shoot from the shadows at good people.
There is nothing else a good person can do,
when everything else falls apart.”
(v.11:1b -3, Good News Translation).
In this stressful moment, we could understand David’s temptation to flee – to succumb to his fears and peer pressure and run for his life to the mountains.
The righteous are defeated, David. It’s over. There’s nothing else you can do.
Instead, David doesn’t panic. He stands firm under the threat of persecution, intimidation from advisors, and that little voice of fear that may be creeping into his consciousness. “In the Lord, I take refuge!” he declares triumphantly. (v.1)
Does David take flight or freeze? Not a chance! He fights! His earthly foundations may be falling (v.3a, ESV), but he stands his ground by finding strength in God.
Ephesians 6:13 instructs us to fight Earthly battles by “putting on the full armor of God.” When the wicked draw their bows and aim their arrows, like David, we too can stand firm “with the belt of truth buckled around our waist, the breastplate of righteousness in place, and our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace,” (Eph. 6:14-15), trusting that God is in control of all circumstances.
It’s interesting to note the earthly escapes like luxury vacation homes, cross-country road trips, and indulging on 24/7 video streaming and takeout services were often temporary distractions that lost their appeal once the world began to return to “normal.” The record-breaking vacation home markets and RV sales have since dropped back to levels seen before the pandemic in 2019. And what did all that intentional isolation and consumption of video streaming, gaming, and food delivery do? Mental and physical health deteriorated as evidenced in higher levels of disease, depression, social, and emotional difficulties.
So what are you going to do when your worldly foundations crumble? Are you going to flee like a bird? Freeze in place? Or will you “take up the shield of faith which can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (Eph 6:16)? The Lord is never moved or shaken from his holy temple (Psalm 11:4) and the promise of His refuge (v.1) is your surest source of strength.
~ Originally from PA, Jennifer Korinchak became smitten with the Lake Norman area back in the early 2000s. She has lived here since 2014 and has been attending Life Fellowship with her husband Nate, and son Caleb since 2020.