The times call for some honest talk lest the number of unnecessary deaths related to Covid-19 climbs out of control.
This is especially the case for people who believe in God.
If you do, it would be understandable if you are struggling to hold on to your faith. I certainly am.
When bad things happen, doubts about God are natural, if not unavoidable, and while bad things continue to happen to us personally, we cannot escape what is happening to us collectively, and therein lies the rub for me.
The degree of selfishness we are seeing in America among the unvaccinated is enough to make anyone wonder where God is.
I find myself going a step further in wondering why God didn’t do a better job at creating human beings in the first place.
“The stupid” is a phrase that has caught on that seems to be an appropriate description of the reasons unvaccinated Americans are giving to explain why they are doing what they are doing.
It’s a perfect way, for example, to describe the claim that the government is inserting tracking devices in people when they are vaccinated.
So, too, with the notion that Covid-19 is a ruse the government is using to take away our freedoms.
I cannot think of a better way to describe the argument that even if Covid-19 is real, its dangers are overblown than “the stupid” in light of the fact that more than 36 million Americans have been infected, nearly 630,000 have died, and worldwide over 4 million have lost their lives.
I would say the same thing about the unvaccinated continuing to support Republican Governors like DeSantis of Florida and Ducey of Arizona who have been vaccinated themselves, but not only refuse to reinstate mask mandates, but to forbid city and school leaders across their states from doing so on their own.
Most of us know someone who is unvaccinated so you know what I’m talking about. I had a friend tell me he wasn’t going to get vaccinated because, in his words, “I don’t want that sh*t in me.”
He couldn’t tell me specifically what the “sh*t” was, but he was sure it was bad.
I would say that his reasoning, if you can call it that, fits comfortably into the category of “the stupid.”
But refusing to get vaccinated is not the only reason the term “the stupid” has earned currency in the conflict over public safety as the virus continues to kill people.
Resurrection School in Lansing, Michigan says that even mask mandates should be rejected because they hide the fact that people are made in the image of God.
For real. The school filed a lawsuit last week before the U. S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that the state’s mask mandate that has now been rescinded violated the Catholic doctrine that human beings are made in the image of God. “A mask shields our humanity,” the school’s attorney wrote, “and because God created us in His image, we are masking that image.”
As we often say, you can’t make this stuff up.
Like the Church of Glad Tidings in Yuba City, California that presented disgraced Trump national security advisor General Michael Flynn with a Woodland Camo AR-15 rifle during Sunday morning worship service a couple of weeks ago. Flynn responded by saying, “Maybe I’ll find somebody in Washington, D.C.,” to which the congregation burst into laughter and applause.
A word of caution here. Avoid looking the church up on the internet and especially the husband and wife senior pastors because they take the term “jackleg” and the category “the stupid” to a whole new unimaginable level.
All you need to know is that it is a safe bet to assume the leaders and members of Glad Tidings Church won’t be wearing masks anytime soon, practicing social distancing, or promoting vaccinations.
But in the midst of all these examples that cause sane people to shake their heads, there is another side of the ledger.
There are thousands of healthcare professionals who put their lives at risk early in the pandemic and are doing so again even though this time around they know they are being forced to do so because of “the stupid” that seems to be controlling people’s actions.
There are millions of us who are putting on masks again and avoiding close contact with crowds because of “the stupid.”
There a thousands of business owners now scrambling once again to find a balance between keeping people safe and staying in business for the same reason, and school officials trying to figure out what to do to keep students, teachers, and staff safe.
I suggest the fundamental truth today is that the unvaccinated are being treated better than they deserve to be because most vaccinated people are good and decent and care about the health and well-being of others and not just themselves, and they are the reason I don’t give up on believing in God.
Their goodness and decency come from somewhere. Maybe it’s pure chance, but I choose to call the source of both “God.”
And that belief plays a primary role in keeping me from losing all hope in and for humanity.
If I believed human beings are all we got, that we created God rather than God creating us, I am sure I would be overcome by the persistence of “the stupid” and give in to despair.
Every day there are stories of things people have said and done that make you wonder if “the stupid” is as much a pandemic as the virus is.
But every day there are also stories of things people have said and done that leave no doubt that goodness and mercy and decency and tolerance and kindness and compassion exist in abundance.
It finally comes down to making a personal choice about which group to focus on. Believing in a good God is what leads me to choose to see the good being stronger than the bad.
Of course, there is sufficient reason to go with “the stupid” and give up on God altogether, but at this point I’m sticking with God.
It’s my way of saying I don’t believe “the stupid” will have the last word, and that helps me to want to get up every morning and make the most of the day I have been given.
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