Medpage Today https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GCEV_enUS858US858&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=image+throwing+face+masks+away&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi4k_XYprHxAhVjFVkFHUpxCzwQ7Al6BAgPEEE&biw=1019&bih=425#imgrc=xtu87NsmWIX4lM
Everyone
who has ever driven down a secluded country road on a peaceful night has risked
the sudden shock of a bug or bird smacking your windshield, a squirrel tearing
across the road, then pivoting and racing back and forth between your left and
right headlights, the proverbial deer leaping out in front of you, stopping
stock still, staring mesmerized into those same headlights, or the even more
commanding obstacle of an Elk bounding into the road, then charging your car,[1] any one of these instant
obstructions leaving you shocked out of journey somnambulance, screeching to a
halt.
The
analogy could be made to many, if not most, of us as we emerge blinking into
the light of the cessation of the Covid-19 onslaught. We can easily identify
with the same plight of these creatures. Numerous options suddenly seem to
confront us, leaving us wondering: “How do I decide what will pass for normal
life for me in this new post-plague world?” Everywhere there are different
rules in play. For instance, while the post office demands face masks remain on
customers who want service, an increasing number of restaurants, stores and
businesses have made masks optional. An underside of choice faces a number of
potential workers confronted with the reality they can make more money on
unemployment than they can working, leaving many puzzling should they rejoin
the job market or not?[2] And, with reports of new
Coronavirus strains mutating as we speak, we wonder if we’re really safe to get
together with those friends and neighbors who for one reason or another have
received no Covid-19 vaccination (which does protect us from some other strains,
but, perhaps not all), even if we ourselves have had both shots.[3]
At
the same time, that we are negotiating a “new normal,” a shocking number of malcontents
are forging a new abnormal, as Insider.com reports: “225 shootings in the US in 2021 as
of May 28. More than 17,000 people in the US have died so far in 2021 from
gun-related violence. The US is on track to have more shootings in 2021 than
any recent year on record.”[4]
While this bizarre development is taking place, good citizens are seeking
some kind of healthy, regularly recognizable routine, considering what can be
salvaged from life before Covid and what needs to be constructed on new rules. So,
we are left to wonder: What kind of comeback should we be making: cautious as
the post office, or bold as those who want business-as-usual?
Such
“What to do?” and “How to live?” questions are hardly new – especially in times
of stress and disaster, as our earth has just experienced with 179,157, 837
cases of Coronavirus, causing 3, 882, 228 deaths worldwide among its residents
up to today.[5]
Serious situations have always called for serious life-changing decisions.
The
prophet Micah of Israel’s southern kingdom, Judah, confronted a great crisis in
his own day, not due to plague but to the rise of a great, malevolent power, Assyria,
preparing a siege to conquer Samaria and dominate Israel, its northern sister, a
threat that would rebound on Jerusalem and Judah and put both nations into
exile and enslavement.
Groping
for a way to face such cataclysmic events, people were asking how to live in this
crisis situation. Wisely, they were seeking God’s answer and God revealed it to
Micah. Not payoffs or sacrificing one’s children’s wellbeing (see Micah 6:6-8),
but simply building one’s life, literally, on God’s standards for human
behavior: “to accomplish right (or law or rule, mišpât) and to love (or
to desire) mercy (or kindness, benevolence, love, grace (hesed) and be
humble[6] (or attentive, haṣnē‘)
to your God (’elȏhim).”
Enduring
a crisis and picking up the pieces afterward to start anew in a changed
environment demands a three-fold response:
1) First,
to create a just society. To anyone considered normal, slaughtering innocent
passersby unknown to the assailant is obviously insane. That’s clear enough.
But some of the roots that feed into mind-altering violence are not so clear.
Ethnic and class and even religious prejudice (as influenced the Boston
Marathon murderers among others[7]) have precipitated a
number of recent incidences that have ended lives and instigated sometimes
violently-expressed outrage. When an entire nation is being enslaved, as was
the fate of Israel and then Judah, or plunged into civil violence, everyone
needs to pull together and create a united community or lose their joint
identity entirely to its conqueror. Before a nation creates its own civil war
and its resulting heartache and possible demise, God calls it to become a just
place for all its citizens to flourish and thrive.
2) Second,
healthy families look out for one another. A nation is like a family. Paul
informed the Athenian thinkers that God created all humans from a single
progenitor , determined them to divide into nations, and share the land,
understanding we are all God’s “offspring” (or family, or nation, or race, or descendants,
or people, see Acts 17: 24-31, especially verse 29) and, therefore, God
wants us to be merciful to each person as if she or he was a member of our own
nuclear family.
3) Finally,
third, any attitude that ignores the good requirements of God, our creator,
that have been set down for our benefit, reveals that rejector to be like a selfish
child who enjoys shelter under his or her loving parents’ roof, eating the food
they provide, and taking the care they give, but ending with nothing but a
false sense of importance and entitlement. When the parents withdraw all the
benefits because of death or disgust, misery is the result.
What then does God’s wisdom outline for the way we should
build a healthy new
way of life for
rebuilding our futures together? In these times of confusion, fear, and rage,
we need to build a routine based on our Creator’s guidelines, by focusing on
justice, mercy, and humility before God. To put it simply: to give each other a
fair shake (to accomplish a just way of living for all), to treat each other
with the graciousness with which we want ourselves to be treated (to be
merciful with one another), and to acknowledge daily with gratitude God who
sustains us in the beautiful world God provided us for all the days we live in
it (to be humbly attentive to the way God wants us to live).
Bill
[1] Fox 46, Charlotte, “Blue Ridge Parkway warns drivers of
700-pound elk; saying they’re charging at cars,” https://www.fox46.com/news/blue-ridge-parkway-warns-drivers-of-700-pound-elk-saying-theyre-charging-at-cars/, posted Oct 7, 2019, updated: Oct
7, 2019, accessed June 22, 2021.
[2] This dilemma has created
a surprising shortage in staffing. Just this morning (June 22, 2021). a
supervisor told me his business was suffering from that shortage and then
described the effects of such a fallout on a blighted restaurant experience he
and his wife had had this past weekend. Despite a reservation for dinner, they had
to wait 45 minutes to be seated, then were served a cold meal. Complaining to
the manager, all this poor employer was able to do was apologize that he
couldn’t find anybody qualified who wanted to work and, as a result, everything
seemed to be going wrong.
[3]
According to Our World in Data, in its updated “Statistics and Research: Coronavirus
(COVID-19) Vaccinations,” only “22.2% of the world population has received
at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine,” with India having less than 20% of
its population with one dose, Mexico just over 20%, the United States over 50%
but less than 60%, Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom exceeding 60% of
people having received one dose by June 22, 2021, https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations,
accessed June 23, 2021.
[4]Skye Gould , Madison Hall , and Joanna Lin Su, “The US has had 225 mass shootings in 2021 so far. Here's the full list.” Insider, https://www.insider.com/number-of-mass-shootings-in-america-this-year-2021-3, posted May 28, 2021, 10:39 AM, accessed June 23, 2021.
[5] KFF, “COVID-19 Coronavirus Tracker – Updated as of June 23,”
The data is drawn from
“the
Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Coronavirus Resource Center’s COVID-19 Map and
the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Coronavirus Disease (COVID-2019)
situation reports,” Published: June 23, 2021. Accessed June 23, 2021.
[6] Noted as the traditional meaning
in A. Philip Brown II and Bryan W. Smith, A Reader’s Hebrew Bible (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 1051. I consulted Karl Feyerabend, Langenscheidt
Pocket Hebrew Dictionary to the Old Testament (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1969).
[7] See our other recent blogs related
to the pandemic: “The Key to Surviving Physically and Spiritually Today” (Nov.
6, 2020), “Are People Listening Anymore?” (Aug. 31, 2020), “Responding to Floyd”
(June 8, 2020), “Being Loving in Lockdown” (April 29, 2020) and my article “The
Pagan Roots of the Charleston Shooting” in Africanus Journal 7:2 (Nov.
2015): 21-28.
