Crybaby

Maybe it’s my reaction to being self-quarantined, but I’ve gone beyond anger to grief. I’ve stopped responding to most Facebook posts (who knows how long that will last?), and often find myself weeping at what I’m reading. I guess I’m a crybaby.

Beyond my relatively narrow sampling on Facebook, the news on all media (and I do watch all media) extends my impression that our American culture is growing more and more angry and hostile—more filled with hatred and rage—by the day.

There has long been a tendency among some Americans to prioritize political ideology over human need and to focus on the miniscule percentage of fraud to justify not working toward meeting the multitude of need. Today on Facebook there was a photo of a couple carrying a banner that read, “I won’t sacrifice my rights for your safety.” What a rotten attitude! And there was that 2017 quote from a voter who said, “I trust Trump more than Jesus.” And it’s well established by now that at least part of one political party has declared publicly that the economy is more important than human life. Pro-life? Indeed.

Last week someone posted, “I’ll take my chances.” That’s fine if your chances are all that’s at stake. When you take your chances you also are gambling with someone else’s chances—including mine and my family’s; so, I tend to take it personally.

How is love demonstrated in any of the above? Or has the message of Jesus also become a hoax in this “Christian” nation? A conspiracy inflicted upon us by “liberal theology?”

And I grieve over the growing anti-empiricist mentality among a significant subset of a whole generation. Expertise of any kind is equated with idiocy and stupidity. Empirical evidence that can be seen and measured and graphed is denied as manufactured. It’s easier and more convenient to believe that the scientific and medical communities are lying—they’re involved in a conspiracy to take away our freedoms. One always can find somebody with a degree or a title to support one’s previous presuppositions; therefore, the information bubble is preferred over empirical evidence.

The upshot is that a large portion of the American public just refuses to believe that the CoVID-19 pandemic is real. It’s a hoax. It’s no more dangerous than the annual round of flu. I hope they’re right. I truly hope I’m wrong—that medical science is wrong. Maybe medical science was wrong about smallpox, too. And polio. And the Spanish flu in 1918. Maybe those killers would simply have run their course and life would have gone on, even without medical intervention. Maybe medical science didn’t shorten the duration of those pandemics. No big deal.

Maybe the bubonic plague would have simply run its course without a massive clean-up of heaps of rat-infested garbage in the streets. No big deal.

The really big deal that makes me weep is the number of deaths that could have been—that still could be—prevented. If the risk can be reduced by temporary inconvenience and discomfort, why would anyone refuse to accept those inconveniences? It’s not as if it’s forever.

What wrenches my gut is the haunting, tragic image of that photo I saw this morning—that banner that said, “I won’t sacrifice my freedom for your safety.” Is that really—REALLY—where we are? I wonder what would have happened if the government (whoever that is) had issued a proclamation demanding that everyone disregard the pandemic and carry on as usual. My suspicion is that those who flaunt their freedom today would have burrowed in while whining, “The government isn’t going to tell me what to do! I’m not going to risk my safety for your freedom!”

Maybe that’s really what it’s all about: “Nobody’s going to tell me what to do.”

When Jesus’ disciples were arguing over which of them would be the greatest, he got up and washed their feet. And then he said, “I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” John 13:15 (NRSV)

But, yeah, don’t sacrifice your freedom for anybody else’s safety.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim