Being safe can kill you

David at Light and Salt reminds us that, while pursuing physical safety is usually a good idea, the opposite is true in one's spirit:

Being safe in the spiritual world can kill you, and endanger the spiritual lives of those around you. "Kill you" meaning to make you ineffective and irrelevant. Have you ever seen someone you considered to be dead spiritually? Ever seen a congregation you considered dead spiritually? My bet is that in both instances you find being "safe" a priority. Are there examples in scripture of people and groups of people who put a priority on being "safe"? Ask Joshua and Caleb about the other 10 wanting to be safe, and the consequences. How long did choosing to be safe cause the Israelites to be ineffective and irrelevant to the world around them?

Just as safety was death in the Old Testament, David notes, Jesus did not call his disciples to be safe:

In our walk with him, He NEVER, EVER calls us to be "safe". Why? Because instead of leading to life, it leads to death.

Can anyone honestly say that Jesus' own walk--all the way to death on a cross--was safe? Christians need to stop worrying about being safe and work on being faithful. Can we really handle that?