There aren't Windows in the Panic Room

I love house layouts. When I was a kid, I’d use building blocks to make custom homes for my Polly Pockets and constantly rearrange the furniture in my doll house. If bored, I’ll sketch out my dream estate layout, which includes a house of hidden rooms and secret passageways and supporting structures of a self-sufficient farm. On my “if I win the lottery list” is buying an old house and customizing each room.

There is something so alluring about creating that perfect space. The indoors was created to keep out the weather and predators. But now we can customize our indoors spaces to control the air quality, temperature, humidity, sunlight, noise, lights, etc. We can design for our specific desires. Rooms, houses, whole neighborhoods—custom-made to keep out whatever needs keeping out.

But even while I fantasize about my manor with a hidden bunker behind the wine cellar, I know that no design would ever completely eliminate danger. I can prepare to be safer, but I can’t completely keep the world at bay.

Some have tried. There are plenty of examples of people going off to form their own communities, to reject the world and build their utopia. The Puritans came to America to establish their “city upon a hill,” away from heathen, tainted Europe. The goals of segregating always sound pure: live according to our rules, uninfluenced by competing ideas, safe from those that oppose us. It’s about safety—physical and ideological.

But that quickly devolves. Who is pure enough to stay in the perfect place? Will a child raised in this utopian community be kicked out if she believes something different? Will the poor, black man down the road be allowed in?

How do you love your neighbors when you’re locked inside your panic room? How do you evangelize when the only people you interact with are prescreened and hand-selected? Maybe you survive the bomb or the virus, but what values did you preserve?

A few years ago, The Benedict Option was quite popular in certain crowds. Admittingly, I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read a lot of responses (positive and negative) thinking on this idea of creating community. Christians should be intentional about forming communities; parishes should be family, not just a place to use on Wednesdays and Sundays. We should cultivate our social circles with people that will edify us. Yet when we lay people begin to cloister off, I feel it’s not for the pure goals of a “city upon a hill.” I think it’s a rebuke on the world, writing it off as unsavable, undeserving of our efforts. We have our security and salvation; the rest can perish.

When the pandemic first started hitting New York, there were stories of rich New Yorkers fleeing to their second homes. Villagers in these small, rural places were pleading them not to, for they could bring the virus to an area with very little medical resources to spare. Yet the rich wanted to feel safe, and they had the means to retreat. Now, as the virus continues nation-wide but schools are resuming, upper and middle class families with the means are creating their own pods—small groups that can self-contain and educate their children away from school. Families who have prepped rural retreats can simply step away from the virus and riots and contention the year has brought.

How much is safety and how much is neglecting our neighbors?

The perfect space does not exist, because the world isn't perfect. We must strive for perfection within this imperfect world, We all need to be safe. Walls, roofs, locks, and masks, are all prudent. But there is no security system, wall, moat, maze, or bunker that will eliminate every threat. At some point, they may even eliminate compassion, charity, and empathy. Open the door. There’s a whole world out there.