Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted. Fezzik, The Princess Bride
Stay at home. Save a life.
We zoomed under the words posted above the highway, intent on making our Taco John Sunday brunch (terrible, to be honest) last us till our next stop, the disc golf course. The kids and the dog whined, no longer used to long jaunts in the car. We passed out fruit and encouraged them to see what they could see out the window.
Joe knew I needed to get out, so we drove an hour and a half to a new course.
Disc golfers seem to be notoriously unconcerned, even with signs warning parties over ten people. Men hold bottles of beer in koozies while putting shots. Dogs run around, thrilled to be in the open. Folks smile. It’s a mask-less oasis. None of us are shaking hands, but we are all breathing the same air.
At the tenth hole, we took off our shoes and waded in the creek. Gretty loaded a sun hat with river-washed rocks. We finished the course and ate Cheez-its out of the back of the car, enjoying a view different than our front and back yard.
I was at the point where I couldn’t look out my front window without stomach acid burning my throat. This week I reported a domestic violence incident in my neighborhood. I held the girl in my arms as she sobbed and recounted all the ways he has hurt and threatened her. I held her baby as the cop took photos of her bruises. For hours I begged her to let me take her to a safe house. She wouldn’t leave.
I am so sick of hearing the jingle: stay at home, save a life.
I’m weary of celebrities in celebrity homes acting like we are all doing our part, baking bread and mindlessly scrolling social media, looking for the next big meme or “challenge”. I am tired of the news assuring us we cannot trust our instinct, our own rationale. In my city, it is becoming, just this week, absolutely required to wear a mask in public or face a $1000 fine. Reporters sit in front of cameras, faces masked, urging us to trust them, to do what they say. They know more than us, they think. Wearing a face mask in public shows we care, they say. Do it because it’s the right thing to do.
Is it the right thing to do? Who says what is right? Dear God, throw us some bread. Open our eyes and show us where we are being deceived.
The Lord nullifies the counsel of the nations;
He frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
The plans of His heart from generation to generation.
Psalm 33:10-11
When we lived in southwestern Colorado, our county had the highest liquor stores per capita as well as one of the highest suicide rates in the country. Distraction from hopelessness crowned purple mountains’ majesty. In the past decade, recreational marijuana and same sex marriages have been legalized, redefining sobriety and disparaging the family unit. Who needs a mother and a father? How old-fashioned!
One in four babies in this country dies by abortion; in Colorado, a fetus may be aborted up to birth. As long as she doesn’t breath air before they silence her, it is fine and dandy. My body, my rights.
We are so morally awful that we fail to recognize our choices are leading to our deaths! We are far, far beyond wearing masks. We are sick on the inside, sicker than we care to admit. We cannot rely on the government to fix the problem.
Take, for example, China. One night when I stayed up late, I watched a documentary on Amazon Prime called One Child Nation. Filmed and produced by a Chinese-American who interviewed her own family on the one-child policy and its implementation, the documentary is a heartbreaking insight into the overreach of Communist China.
The government imposed a law to limit the number of children a family might have, promoting its ideology in numerous billboards, songs, dance, and cultural stories. Even today in China are slogans–fading painted reminders on city blocks: One more baby means one more tomb. Induce labor. Abortion! Anything but an excess baby.
For a price, some families might be allowed to expand their family to two children, but only if spaced five years apart. The stories are horrific. Forced abortions and sterilizations, women screaming and pleading for mercy. During the interviews, tears trickle from deadened eyes. They shrug– “We had no choice.”
As Hitler rose to control in Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer could not reconcile any Christian peacemaking attempt with the Nazi regime. He had seen the African-American struggle for equality while he was in school in the States, and he felt it eerily similar to the injustice taking place in Germany.
“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear…Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more than they are doing now.”
D. Bonhoeffer
We are not far off this path of history repeating itself. I fear our pacifistic, don’t-rock-the-boat nature is bordering neglect. Someone is going to have to explain our inaction to future generations–why millions of kids weren’t allowed to learn at school or even play at playgrounds. Where they were held captive, at the mercy of domestic abuse. When mental health issues became the next crisis. When churches and fellowship were forbidden. Why the economy was stifled; why the new Depression began.
You may point a finger and say, how irresponsible, how naive! People are dying–doesn’t she care?! Here are my credentials: I am a sober, recycling, thrift-store wearing, tax paying, public school supporting, law abiding, cautious, debt-free, domestic abuse-reporting citizen, yet I am not given the choice to decide on wearing a mask in public. When is it ever my body, my choice?
This is the opposite of civil liberty. This is fear-mongering. This is bullying. This is overreach. This has little to do with sickness or concern for the elderly and health-compromised. If we had cared about the least of these, we would have looked into the nursing home for-profit industry long ago, because it has a history littered with neglect. If we cared, we would respect human life enough to not give handouts to people unwilling to work for bread. If we cared, we wouldn’t collect debt like it was Halloween candy. If we cared, we would not have legalized a drug (marijuana) that damages the brain and exacerbates mental illness. If we cared, we would not fiddle with and downplay the role of a mother and a father or the family unit. If we truly cared, we would support caregivers. We would be people who honored our parents. We would love our neighbors as ourselves. This is the moral code written on our hearts, yet our minds that have been seared to allow the unconscionable.
Here is where we find ourselves.
You and I–we do not need to be told to keep our germs to ourselves; it is quite the natural way for a responsible, healthy person to behave. But we are no longer healthy-minded, and this is why it is so easy to be tricked into mindless submission.
We live in a country where the death of a celebrity is worth more than the death of a dear one in the nursing home. Kobe Bryant sparked a wave of mourning prior to Covid; twenty thousand nursing home deaths have not. We love pointing fingers and shifting the blame. Politicians fling hate like confetti–they’re ready to throw a party for the death of a president, a candidate, a representative, a speaker.
General Douglas Macarthur said, “In this day of gathering storms, as moral deterioration of political power spreads its growing infection, it is essential that every spiritual force be mobilized to defend and preserve the religious base upon which this nation is founded; for it has been that base which has been the motivating impulse to our moral and national growth. History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual reawakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”
Friends, people have always been hurting. People have forever been dying. As with my neighbor, I might not convince you to leave the craziness in the hands of the crazy. I might beg and plead, yet you still find the world an entertaining place and nothing more. Your life will testify for you, your silence, your words, your actions. If you are on the fence, ask Jesus to throw bread in your direction to knock you off of it. Ask him for perfect wisdom in this world, ask what is the will of God in my life? Ask for the Spirit to move in your heart, even as it raised Jesus from the dead. These are days where your seeking and knocking are imperative. It isn’t just about masks.
If you know the good you ought to do and do not do it, for you it is sin.
James 4:17
We must finally stop appealing to theology to justify our reserved silence about what the state is doing — for that is nothing but fear. ‘Open your mouth for the one who is voiceless’ — for who in the church today still remembers that that is the least of the Bible’s demands in times such as these?
D. Bonhoeffer
