The very incarnation of Chris steers us away from flight and steers us toward life in all its messiness.
We can also see flight as a response as a trauma response in Christian church history . Some Christians, in a type of flight response, retreated from society into the desert, into monasteries and isolated communities. For many, this retreat became a lifestyle. Although we see an example of retreating to the desert in both Jesus and John the Baptist, we also see a return to public life and ministry from both. The exodus of Christians into solitude began primarily after the end of persecution and the professed motivation was to keep oneself from being polluted by society’s temptations. But sadly, the flight to deserts and monasteries made by Christians who were worn down from persecution provided scant respite since the monastic life often circled back to a fight response against the self as it went hand in hand with extreme forms of asceticism and self-torture as monastics fought against their sexuality, their appetites, their desires, and their humanity. We still see this flight response in Christianity today, not just in cloistered clergy, but also in more subtle forms such as Christian schools and communities that seek to remove believers from daily life with non-believers in the hopes they will not be polluted by the world. The very incarnation of Chris steers us away from flight and steers us toward life in all its messiness. Jesus not only entered into a human body, but while in that body, ate with sinners and tax collectors, and did not concern himself with being touched by those that religious society considered unclean. He prayed that we remain in the world (Luke 17:15-17, NRSVUE), and in doing so, imitate his kenotic act of descending into the world . (Philippians 2:7, NRSVUE)