COVID-19, the Coronavirus
is an apocalyptic event. I do not mean the world is coming to an end. The word
“apocalypse” comes from a Greek word that means “to reveal, or uncover.”
COVID-19 is revealing a great deal about our politics, our economics, our
culture (including our religion), and the state of our souls.
The emptiness of the American soul is being revealed in
the presidency. The worship of power, money, and violence is incapable of a
truthful, compassionate, and just response to sickness and
suffering. This is the character of the current president, and this
character will only be revealed more and more as we go forward. And to be
clear, this emptiness is not unique to the American presidency. Across the globe
governments have lied about COVID-19. As one headline put it, “Truth Has Become
a Coronavirus Casualty.” (https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/09/truth-coronavirus-china-trump-pence/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20219&utm_term=Flashpoints%20OC)
The Father of Lies, Satan, claimed that he could give the
kingdoms of this world to Jesus. In one of his rare truthful moments Satan
revealed that states are fallen creatures, reflecting our own fallen humanity
as those who create and sustain states. The state will not save us even as we
can urge the state to do the limited good it can do and to do that well.
The emptiness of our economic life is also being
revealed. The virus came to be within the context of a market in which wild
animals were being sold for human consumption. Death comes from deadly markets,
organized around human wants to the neglect of the well-being of God's
creation. Just as death comes from deadly forms of political and cultural
organization, so too death comes from a deadly form of markets. The virus is
revealing the fragility and deadly character of a global economy premised upon
cheap goods produced by cheapening human lives. Our destruction of the local,
of rural communities, of small towns, of urban neighborhoods as factories have
closed, is now coming back to haunt us.
We reap what we sow is being revealed. We reap cancer
from farming with Monsanto. We reap wars from an imperial politics. We reap
exploitation of children from a hyper-sexualized culture. We reap climate
change from an economy overly dependent upon carbon fuels. Wrongdoing spreads virally
unless we find ways to resist that do not replicate the wrongdoing (Romans 12:21,
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good).
These revelations also reveal the challenge to our own
souls in this time. We will not be able to respond well (compassionately, justly) to
this virus or to these other forms of death if we cannot tell the truth about
ourselves, our economy, our politics, our culture. Will we be revealed as
truth-tellers, or people who prefer to lie and be lied to?
Trump has to lie about this virus and about everything
because truth would bring an end to his presidency. Biden or whoever is
nominated among the Democrats will have to lie if he hopes to be elected. Our
culture, our politics, our market is premised upon lying. The primal lies of
Manifest Destiny, of 3/5 human beings in the Constitution, of slavery, of Jim
Crow, of the atomic bombiings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of destroying a
village in order to save it, of "Operation Enduring Freedom" (among
others), of bailing out the banks, of building walls and caging children... Do
we want the truth about our lives? Are we willing to be open to the truth?
Jesus said knowing the truth will set us free. Freedom
here is the freedom to live well, to flourish, to have abundant life (John
10:10).
Now that we are in the grips of this death (with other
deaths circling nearby) the challenge is to live in resistance in ways that do
not replicate the lies that got us here. The
lie that life is just a matter of individual survival. The lie that we need to
hoard, to "take care of ourselves." The lie that closing our borders
even more will stop the virus. The lie that we should fear each other as
bearers of the virus. The lie that there is nothing we can do but submit to the
inevitable. The lie that is coming that we need martial law to effectively
respond to this virus.
The truth is as ordinary as handwashing. The truth is as
ordinary as taking legitimate precautions not to spread this virus. The truth
is as ordinary as checking in with elderly neighbors, with friends who have
compromised immune systems. The truth is as ordinary as refusing to hoard and
to live in fear and anxiety. The truth is as ordinary as facing the truth about
our own lives.
The truth is we are all vulnerable human beings who die,
so we need to treat each other with love, compassion, justice. The truth is
that death does come for us all, and that we are less in control than we might
have thought. The truth is that life is a gift, a gracious moment. God calls us
to embrace life as a gift and share it. But Satan calls us to regard life as
possession. Life as a possession is something that we desperately seek to hold
onto by denying we are intertwined, interdependent, and integral to each other
as members of the human family.
God is on the side of truth, life, and freedom/liberation.
This is the truth we need: God calls us, and loves us into seeking to be well
with each other and the whole creation. God is on the side of those suffering
under lies, death, and enslavement masquerading as freedom. This is the truth
we learn in the life of Jesus: God is on the cross because God is in resistance
to the lies. God is resurrection because lies and death do not have the last
word. In this apocalyptic moment God asks us, “Will you accept each other as
brothers and sisters? Will you accept that you are God’s beloved children? Will
you hear and live by the truth that is being revealed?”
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