Category: General

“God Friended Me” is a show on CBS that just ended. The basic premise is that this guy starts getting friend suggestions from an account named “God,” all of whom need some special help from him and his friends. It’s a little bit of a weak premise, but a decent show nonetheless. It’s very progressive in its characters—the main character, Miles, is a black atheist who is the son of an Episcopal bishop and whose sister is gay. The female lead character, Cara, is white, and of course becomes Miles’s love interest. In the series finale, a major story thread revolves around whether they should tell each other how they feel. Cara knows second-hand about Miles’s feelings but doesn’t reciprocate, yet doesn’t want to ruin the friendship. I know, kind of a cliche.

I started thinking about relationships more generally. The issue that Miles and Cara were confronting is this: everything that happens in and around a relationship affects it irreversibly. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but always the relationship is different afterwards.

I currently advise seven graduate students and one postdoc. We meet once a week to discuss their work, their progress, their plans, and anything they may need help with. For the most part, I’m pretty easygoing, perhaps too much so. Occasionally I need to get tough with one of them and push them to be more productive, or to focus more on one topic rather than another. Other times, they are struggling with some non-work-related issue and the discussion ventures outside the norm. In either case, the relationship is different afterwards. Usually, showing some humanity—on both sides—means that we come out with a greater understanding of each other and future discussions are better.

Sometimes, though, it goes sideways. I had an advisee a few years ago with whom the relationship soured. I think we were both at fault. Basically, our expectations of each other were not aligned with reality. After each incident, there was no going back. We eventually reached a point where we could not work together. He switched advisors and successfully completed his Ph.D. The problem wasn’t his ability to do work, nor was it my ability to advise students. Our relationship just didn’t work any more. There was no way to take back things we said and did in the past.

A few years ago, when Rhonda was dealing with facial pain and things were pretty bleak, our pastor, Lou Ellen, wrote me a note. She reminded me, among other things, that “the only way out is through.” We cannot change the past, and the past always affects the present and the future. There is no forgetting what happened–it remains in our subconscious. All we can do is trust that there is a way out, and that God will walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death.

And yet sometimes, there is rebirth. Consider the nation of Israel after their captivity in Babylon. They could have chosen to assimilate with their conquerors, but they chose instead to retain their identity. After Nehemiah returns…

¹⁷ Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.” ¹⁸ I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, “Let us start building!” So they committed themselves to the common good. ¹⁹ But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they mocked and ridiculed us, saying, “What is this that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” ²⁰ Then I replied to them, “The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we his servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem.”

Nehemiah 2:17-20

God was with Nehemiah. He knew that they could not turn back time and avoid the destruction of the Temple. But they could rebuild it. In so doing, though they never again achieved the glory of David and Solomon’s kingdom, they became a holy people, dedicated to God, a nation out of which Christianity would emerge to spread God’s name to the farthest corners of the earth.

We cannot reverse the damage done to our relationships, but with God, we can rebuild them.

²⁴ He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; ²⁵ but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. ²⁶ So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. ²⁷ And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ ²⁸ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰ Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

Matthew 13:24-30, emphasis mine

Anyone who has pulled weeds in a flower bed has had this experience: you pull a weed, and along with it comes a clump of dirt, possibly attached to another plant that you want to keep. Once it’s pulled, though, replacing the good plant is difficult, and the flower bed is never really the same.

In this parable, “an enemy” sows the weeds among the wheat. In truth, though, weeds grow naturally with no outside assistance. That’s what makes them weeds. Domesticated plants—wheat, corn, rice, etc.—need carefully controlled conditions to grow. Weeds, on the other hand, can grow naturally wherever their seeds happen to land.

Jesus is speaking by analogy about the good and bad things in the world. The traditional view, supported by Jesus’s explanation later in the chapter, sees the plants as people. This is the “hellfire and brimstone” view: the weeds are the wicked people who will be cast into eternal flames. However, I find it to be more helpful to myself and my own growth to imagine the plants to be different parts of a single person’s psyche, soul, and being.

When I look back on my life, I see that lots of people sowed seeds in my heart. Some were good seeds: seeds of love for God; seeds of kindness and generosity towards others; seeds of justice, mercy, and grace. Seeds of the person I want to be, and that I think God wants me to be. If I nurture them, they will grow into an abounding love. Sometimes I feel that coming out, even if just a little sprout.

Some seeds were not so good. For example, I have screwed-up priorities sometimes. Which is most important: God, my family, my community, or my career? In the abstract, I know the correct order; in my actual choices and actions, they get all jumbled up.

Yet pulling these weeds from my life might have pulled out some wheat, too. I definitely put too much emphasis on my career for a long time, until my family’s needs for me became obvious and overwhelming. My life has more balance now. And yet, that over-emphasis on career enabled my current life, in which I’m able to provide a house that is appropriate for my disabled wife and able to send my kids to the colleges that provide them the best opportunities. My career has also enabled me to meet many wonderful people, colleagues close at hand and far away who helped to make me who I am.

So, is my life full of weeds or wheat? Yes, both. And some of them are indistinguishable now. I can only hope and pray that in the end, looking back, I will see that God has planted good seeds that have produced an abundant harvest. That the weeds of worldly desires have not overwhelmed the wheat of God’s grace.

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Today, I participated in a class called “Spiritual Writing,” part of the LIFE program at Eden Theological Seminary. The class was taught by Bill Tucker, professor emeritus of English from Eastern Michigan. The above reflection was an exercise in lectio divina, in which the oratio step was done in writing instead of speaking. This was a wonderful class.

I should also mention that I’ve lately been receiving daily prompts from Saleika Jaouad called The Isolation Journals. Jaouad is Jon Batiste’s partner; he mentioned her journal project on The Late Show a couple weeks ago. I haven’t actually written anything in response to the prompts I’ve received, but my day is still enriched by them.

Recently, I’ve been listening to an audiobook of On Grand Strategy. The author, John Lewis Gaddis, is a history professor who has taught at the Naval War College and various universities, and now at Yale. In a section where he discusses Queen Elizabeth I of England and King Philip II of Spain, he makes the point that some leaders expend more resources trying to reclaim what was lost or retain what they have than they expend trying to expand.

That seems relevant to our current situation. In the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, people are starting to talk about getting back to “normal.” But what is normal? On the one hand, we could try to simply rebuild the economy and society exactly as it was. In other contexts, though, such an attitude would be seen as reactionary and ridiculous. After World War II, we didn’t try to simply return to pre-war society. We re-built with a different approach to industry. Mobility was different. Civil rights struggles came to the forefront. On the world stage, the United Nations was born so that we would have a different approach to diplomatic relations.

So what will the future look like? A recent column discussed the long-term psychological and sociological impact. Will we change our approach to public gatherings on a permanent basis? I don’t know. I do know that a lot of institutions that were on the edge of viability will fail. A lot of churches are financially struggling. A lot of colleges are financially struggling. I’m not optimistic about the near-term future of the travel and tourism industry.

This is our chance to build a better society. The pandemic has exposed many glaring weaknesses of the existing one. The idea of health insurance being tied to employment, born during WWII as a response to wage controls, is now revealed (to everyone, not just the more insightful) to put people at serious risk when they lose their jobs due to economic contraction. In the education sector, we are seeing what works online and what requires physical presence. We are learning how much we rely on each other—that the US is not a collection of individuals, but rather an interconnected community that depends on symbiotic relationships among us all.

I read a devotion on this week’s lectionary text about the road to Emmaus in The Christian Century (thanks, Robert, for the gift subscription!).

¹³ Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. ¹⁴ They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. ¹⁵ As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; ¹⁶ but they were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷ He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” They stood still, their faces downcast. ¹⁸ One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

¹⁹ “What things?” he asked.

“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. ²⁰ The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; ²¹ but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. ²² In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning ²³ but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. ²⁴ Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”

²⁵ He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶ Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” ²⁷ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. ²⁸ As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. ²⁹ But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. ³² They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

³³ They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together ³⁴ and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” ³⁵ Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

Luke 24:13-35

The gist of the devotion is that Jesus was not just saving the world, but also that he savored life. We see here that Jesus spent time in relationship with two of his close friends. This was not about transferring information to individuals. This was about enjoying their company, growing with them, savoring the little things that make life worth living.

What comes next? I don’t know, but my intention is to focus more on relationships, both professional and personal. The Great Commandment tells us to love God and love our neighbors. This is our chance—my chance—to turn away from what’s convenient or expedient and focus instead on what’s important: showing this love, my love of God, my love of my neighbors, and God’s love of the whole world.

What matters most to you? Or, what should matter most? A friend of mine recently said that their highest values were honesty and loyalty. I think those are perfectly good values, especially honesty. Once I heard a speaker giving career advice say, “Always be beyond reproach.” Build your life, your reputation, and all your actions on the solid ground of Truth. And yet, honesty alone can be hurtful. Pity the man who honestly answers a woman’s question about how she looks.

“Loyalty” begs the question, To what or who should you be loyal? Today’s passages from The Bible In One Year include the story of Zacchaeus:

19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ² A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. ³ He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

⁵ When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

⁷ All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

⁸ But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

⁹ Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Luke 19:1-10

Why were tax collectors so despised? Well, for all the reasons we still don’t like paying taxes, plus the fact that they were responsible for transferring money from their own people to the occupying Romans. They were seen as disloyal. Yes, tax collectors were wealthy, but their material wealth came at the expense of their community connections.

The risk, though, is that blind loyalty can take you places you shouldn’t go. I am on the steering committee for APEC, a conference that was supposed to have been held in New Orleans on March 15. We are still trying to settle out the finances from canceling the in-person conference. When times are bad, the best and worst of people are revealed. What we’re seeing is that each individual is doing what they think is best for their respective organization, whether it be one of the three sponsors (PELS, IAS, PSMA), the umbrella organization IEEE (of which PELS and IAS are part), the conference itself, or the company or university that an exhibitor or attendee represents. As a result, nobody is happy. Everybody thinks someone else should suffer more. Everyone sees the impact of decisions on themselves, without the perspective of the other parties.

Wisdom is revealed in a famous, anonymous quote:

Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?

Anonymous

As well, there is wisdom in Paul’s famous words:

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13

Two different perspectives, one internal and one external, both culminating in this: LOVE. Loving your neighbor means seeing the world through their eyes, and acting accordingly.

As the pandemic rages on, we should each consider how our actions express our love. Which is more loving: to keep our community locked down, to remove all restrictions, or something in-between? How do we balance individual needs against community needs? I don’t have THE answer, but I do have one answer: we need to take care of those who are most vulnerable.

Zacchaeus had an epiphany, that is, he saw and recognized God. Immediately, he changed to a life of integrity, a life of loyalty to his people, and a life of love.

4 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin), ² so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God. ³ You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry. ⁴ They are surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation, and so they blaspheme. ⁵ But they will have to give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead. ⁶ For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.

⁷ The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. ⁸ Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:1-8

This Holy Saturday is celebrated in some traditions as the Harrowing of Hell. I grew up United Methodist. When I joined the Presbyterian Church, I discovered an extra line in the Apostles Creed: “He descended into hell.” I don’t know why it wasn’t in the version that I learned as a kid, nor do I know whether it’s in the UMC liturgy now. Whatever the case may be, ancient Christian teachings include the concept that Jesus went down to the land of the dead, translated as “Hell” in some versions of the Bible and more literally as “Sheol” in others. My understanding is that this was viewed as a sort of holding place, where the dead would wait until the end of the age.

Last fall, I wrote about my views on universal salvation. Since then, I listened to an audiobook of David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved. I highly recommend it. I will greatly oversimplify his argument here, or at least my understanding of it.

First, we need to agree on “eternity.” Hart makes a compelling case that ancient Jews and early Christians did not have a conception of an infinitely long time. Rather, they thought in terms of the “present age” and the “age to come.” As the Gospel of Matthew ends, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Next, we should consider the various teachings of Jesus that seem to imply a sorting process between the righteous and unrighteous. There is also a sense in some parables of a debt that must be repaid. So yes, there seem to be some consequences to our actions in this life.

God is just: There are consequences to what we do, in this life and beyond. I don’t know what they are exactly, but Jesus did affirm Old Testament teachings about caring for the poor, the widow, the prisoner, and the foreigner. The “sorting” verses, such as Matthew 25:46, imply that the ultimate consequence is our separation from God.

But God is also merciful and gracious. God’s grace cannot be earned, merely accepted. Today, Holy Saturday, Jesus descended to the land of the dead to offer them a chance to accept his grace. Did they? I don’t know. Maybe some of them but not others. But Hart argues forcefully that at the end of this age, on the last day, we will also be raised to enjoy God’s presence in the age to come.

Sometimes the world seems like Palm Sunday: joyful, exuberant, proclaiming the goodness of life. Sometimes it seems like Maundy Thursday: somber, but with deep love. Sometimes it seems like Good Friday: the forces of evil on the march, God’s people scattered and hiding, hope gone. In 2020, the world seems like Holy Saturday. We are waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for new life. We see little reason for hope. All the news is bad. But the message of the Gospel is that actually, we live in an Easter world. God is hard at work, resurrecting what is dead in each of us, preparing us for a new day.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I recently listened to an audiobook of The Righteous Mind. Today I’d like to talk about these three ethical languages. To get the author’s take, check out this excerpt I found.

Modern Western philosophy tends to use autonomy as its primary, or even its only, language. This aspect of Haidt’s writing resonates with me in part because of a one-day course I took on Christian ethics as part of Eden Theological Seminary’s LIFE program. The instructor described how essentially, René Descartes invented the concept of the individual. Weary of the wars that periodically ravaged Europe, including the Thirty Years’ War in which he served as a soldier, Descartes sought a better answer to existence than being subsumed in some nation that could send its young people off to war. He asserted that we are individuals first, members of a community second. The root of our existence is our rational minds. “I think, therefore I am,” he wrote, or actually, “Cogito ergo sum.” To which our instructor replied, “Who taught you Latin?”

The language of autonomy places the self, the individual, as the highest value. The language of community sees everyone as part of a larger whole. We are defined by our relationships. So my existence is expressed in part as a son and youngest brother; in part as father and pater familias; in part as a professor at S&T; in part as an elder in First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. When deciding on moral questions, my role within these and other organizations, all modeled on the extended family, drives my judgment.

The language of autonomy sees each person as a vessel carrying the divine spark. From this perspective, I am primarily a child of God, as are you, my dear reader. When evaluating moral questions, I consider myself as a conduit for the Divine, and greet each person as also being a conduit for the Divine.

Which ethical language is right? All of them. They are in some ways contradictory, in others mutually supporting. Let’s look at some scripture through these three lenses. This is today’s daily lectionary reading.

³² They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, ³³ saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; ³⁴ they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”

Mark 10:32-34

Seen through the eyes of autonomy, this scene makes no sense. Autonomy translates to liberty, freedom, and justice. Clearly, Jesus would be free to simply not go up to Jerusalem, and yet he chooses to continue down that road (literally and figuratively). Justice is clearly not going to be served. Jesus knows that the chief priests and scribes will hand him over to the Romans to be killed, even though he has broken no laws.

Community: Jesus exists as the leader of his family, his band of brothers bound by faith rather than blood. He is an observant Jew, a member of the tribe of Judah, who are an oppressed nation. Why are the chief priests and scribes so committed to eliminating him? Because he threatens the social order. Jesus’s message was one of peace and love, sure, but also one about reversing society. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Beyond that, Jesus threatens the fragile relationship between the Jewish leaders and their Roman overlords. The Jews had certain privileges compared to other subject peoples, such as the ability to worship their own God and not the Emperor. Perhaps the chief priests worried that Rome would one day end those special privileges. And they were right—the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD, shortly after the Gospel of Mark was written.

Divinity: A key charge leveled against Jesus was blasphemy. Jesus claimed the title of “Son of Man,” a reference to Daniel 7:13-14. Jesus was not merely claiming that all of us have the divine spark within us; rather, he was claiming to be THE Son of God. As his punishment for claiming a special divinity, his inherent divinity (that which is ascribed to all individuals) will be desecrated when they “mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him.”

I read a bit of scripture every day, using Bible in One Year. Each day’s readings include a psalm (or sometimes a bit of Proverbs instead), a New Testament lesson, and an Old Testament lesson. To be overly simplistic, it seems that the New Testament emphasizes the language of divinity and the Old Testament emphasizes the language of community. The language of autonomy is largely absent. Perhaps that’s why the more “advanced” a nation is, the more secular it becomes. Industrial and, especially, post-industrial societies use mostly the language of autonomy. When an individual is steeped in such a society and then reads the Bible, it seems like reading a foreign language, even if it’s a really good translation. Understanding words and sentences is one thing; understanding the conceptual framework surrounding the stories is something else entirely.

As we are all confined to our homes, I hope and pray that we all realize the limits of autonomy. A day or a week without the outside world is refreshing. The longer it goes, though, the more I realize that I cannot survive without the community that surrounds me. When we hear about all the people who are suffering from COVID-19, and all the people who have lost their jobs because of stay-at-home orders, and all the people who are working so hard to care for the ill, we realize that each person has a spark of divinity within them. Each death matters. Perhaps we will come out of this experience with a new understanding of our place in the world.

³³ Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

³⁴ “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

³⁵ “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

³⁶ Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

³⁷ “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

³⁸ “What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him. ³⁹ But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the king of the Jews’?”

⁴⁰ They shouted back, “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in an uprising.

John 18:33-40

My latest audiobook is The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. The subject is moral psychology. There’s too much for me to cover in just one blog post, so concepts will trickle out over the coming weeks. First up: “can” vs. “must.”

The whimsical story Haidt tells is about his young daughter who had a strong reaction to being told she “must” do something. “You must get dressed now.” “NO!” “Can you get dressed so we can leave?” “OK.” “You must eat ice cream.” “NO!” “Can I get you some ice cream?” “Yes!”

Most moral reasoning is actually post hoc justification of a decision you have already made. You encounter something and decide whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad, and THEN you develop reasons why. Your initial reaction is related to your prior experiences, the impact on yourself, and, perhaps most importantly, the group to which you belong.

Once you’ve made your judgment, the reasons, or perhaps rationalizations, start to come. You start looking for reasons you can make the judgment you’ve already made. If someone comes along and wants to convince you otherwise, they need to provide reasons you must make the opposite judgment.

Let’s look at the “trial” of Jesus by Pontius Pilate, as told by John. Pilate is told in advance what the verdict should be. So he interrogates Jesus seeking a reason why he can find him guilty. He finds one, sort of, but Jesus pokes holes in it: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Now Pilate instead makes his own judgment, and asks the Jewish leaders why he must find Jesus guilty. He ultimately finds a way out of making a judgment at all.

The Bible is a pretty thick book, compiled over many centuries by many authors in varied contexts. So, there are verses that, if taken out of context, support any judgment. This is prooftexting or eisegesis. You make a judgment, then go to the Bible looking for reasons you can believe that it’s biblical. What does the Bible say about COVID-19? Well, if you are looking for reasons you can hold a regular worship service, you might look at Mark 16:15-18, ‘He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”’ Or if you’re looking for reasons to stay quarantined, you might look at the section of Leviticus about leprosy and the requirement that lepers stay separated from those who are well.

But the reality is, the Bible does not say one word about COVID-19. Instead, it reveals God’s intention that we all should have abundant life, and that God will be with us in our grief and pain. We need to look to modern medical and public health experts, not ancient texts, when deciding how to take action against a pandemic.

Just as the Bible says a lot of different things, the world itself and the news we hear or read are highly complex. There are reasons you can believe anything. If you want to believe that immigrants bring crime with them, you can find stories of crimes committed by immigrants. If you want to believe that immigrants strengthen our nation, you can find statistics about their economic impact and relative frequency of criminal behavior. Statistics tend to be pretty dry, though, so anecdotes win more often.

This is all just human nature. How can we make better decisions? Some people might say that we need to be more rational, but that just isn’t going to happen. You cannot convince someone to change their mind with facts, unless there is such an abundance of the facts that they must change. That’s an insurmountable barrier.

The more realistic solution is to train our hearts and souls so that they see the right facts in the first place. Spiritual formation, not information. Do not ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” That’s too hard. Instead, conform yourself to Christ, so that you start to see the world as Jesus would. Soften your heart to see the good in people, so that you will start looking for reasons you can love them.

On my mind this week has been the difference between an isolated disaster and systemic failure. If a person’s house burns down, all their friends and family gather around to help them recover. Insurance comes in to (at least partially) help out financially. The victim can call on a wide range of local resources to help them recover and rebuild.

But maybe there’s a disaster on a wider scale. Almost a decade ago, tornadoes hit Joplin. Local systems were overwhelmed, so people came in from across the region to help out. The governor declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard. The devastation, measured in lives lost and property destroyed, left a scar on the city’s psyche.

Then of course there are bigger disasters, like Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This massive storm overwhelmed the entire region. Destruction stretched for miles across the region centered on New Orleans. “Safe places” were even destroyed. Victims were evacuated to the Louisiana Superdome, which then itself was damaged and became a center of danger. Race and class divisions were exacerbated. The disaster brought out the worst in people as they sought to take care of themselves. Resources came in from around the nation, but even essentials like fuel needed to be trucked in from miles away. The event had a long-term impact on the city, the region, and the way the nation plans for emergencies.

But we’re in uncharted waters now. What happens when the whole world is disrupted? Even during wars, some parts of the world remained (relatively) untouched. Now, every state in the nation, every country in Europe, and most other countries around the world have been impacted by COVID-19. We, as a nation and as a species, are ill-equipped to deal with such widespread disruption.

I’ve been listening to an audiobook of Guns, Germs, and Steel. I’m on the chapter now where he addresses complex human social structures. The most ancient structure is the band, which consists of essentially one extended family. Several bands comprise a tribe, several tribes comprise a chiefdom, and out of chiefdoms grow states. In a band or small tribe, there is limited economic specialization. That is, most people have similar jobs to do. As societies become more complex, jobs become more and more specialized, to the point where we completely rely on our neighbors to provide the things we need. It is no longer feasible for a modern city-dweller, even in such a small city as Rolla, to subsist on the resources available on their own property. We need the goods and services provided by our neighbors, near and far.

This crisis is revealing the fragility of such an interconnected world. It’s as if our whole modern society is a house of cards built on sand, and the tide is coming in. The genius of the Internet is decentralization–any one node can be taken out and the system can recover. But if you take out enough of the most important nodes, the network ceases to be the Internet, instead degenerating into a set of disconnected pieces. Our world has been revealed to operate the same way. Take out enough connections–in our supply chains, in our human interactions, in our freedom to travel–and the system collapses.

My only hope is that we will come out the other side with a new awareness of our limitations, and a new appreciation for the people who understand complex systems. The situation in Missouri, the US, and the world is going to get worse, probably much worse, before it gets better. But some day, we will be past the crisis and ready to put things back together. Let’s start learning how to do that the right way.

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In the class I’m taking right now, Pastoral Care, through the University of Dubuque’s CLP program, my week’s assignment was to write a psalm of lament. Mine isn’t great, but I offer it here for anyone who may find it useful. I will say that I’m not truly alone in an empty house; I have my son, Sam, with me.

Yesterday felt like a week, and this week felt like a year;

Everything has changed. Nothing seems certain. Fear permeates the very air I breathe.

I sit alone in an empty house, far from those I love.

Restore me, O God, to normal ways of life, free to follow my heart,

So that I may dwell with my wife, my children, my friends, and all your people.

I will no more fear, for your steadfast love never changes,

And this crisis will be but a blink of an eye in your eternal kingdom.

⁹ “‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. ¹⁰ Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 19:9-10

As the COVID-19 crisis expands in scope, I’ve been thinking about the role of government and the market. Once upon a time, I was a free-market purist. The core concept of free-market ideology is that unconstrained markets are most able to satisfy the needs of society. If there is a need, it will be reflected as a market demand. Someone (an individual or company) will respond to the demand and supply the need, motivated solely by a desire to profit.

There are lots of problems with this (oversimplified) view of economics. I’d like to focus on the moral issues. Economists (whether free-market or Marxist) tend to focus on money. Why? Perhaps because it’s easy to measure; perhaps because when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

The first moral issue is that some problems have solutions that take a long time to develop. Pharmaceutical companies may invest years, even decades, in developing a new treatment for a disease. Who has that kind of time? People with deep pockets, perhaps, who then expect a return on that investment. Eventually, someone has to pay for the treatment. I see this with Rhonda’s MS treatment. The list price is on the order of $50,000 per year. I can’t afford that; hardly anyone can. Yet someone has to pay it, or else the manufacturer wouldn’t be able to recover their investment. The alternative is that hard problems just never get solved.

The second, larger moral issue with free-market ideology is this: People are not money. A market can’t care; only a person can. Companies don’t actually care about people, even if their mission statements say they do. They may care some about their own employees, and they care that their customers continue to be their customers, but what they really care about is money. Corporations have boards of directors who have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, NOT to society at large. They are obligated to do what will return the best long-term financial return.

This is a problem as old as civilization. A small, isolated tribe needs to share equally. In a larger community, each person can afford to be self-centered. Consider our passage from Leviticus. Clearly, a farmer would benefit from reaping everything he sows, from getting ALL the crops produced on his land. Yet here, in the middle of a list of rules (after “no idols” and before “do not steal”), landowners were told NOT to do so. They were told to intentionally leave some of the produce in the field, so that the poor and the foreigner could glean it. Why?

Because the health of a society depends on valuing ALL people, not just the wealthy. An individual’s obligation is ultimately to themselves and their dependents, but a government—whether an ancient theocracy or a modern democracy—is ultimately obligated to all of the people. We are all connected.

We start Lent with Ash Wednesday, on which we remember Ecclesiastes 3:20: “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.” Death is the great equalizer. These days, death is lurking around the corner in the form of COVID-19. The free-market approach might be to let pharmaceutical companies develop tests and treatments and then charge their market value. Such an approach, though, would allow the disease to spread rapidly. “Get tested if you’re sick” would protect us all. “Get tested if you can afford it” would allow the disease to thrive among populations that can’t afford to be sick, and then to spread the disease to everyone. “Take time off if you’re sick” works fine if you have sick leave; otherwise, you go to work with a mild cough and spread the disease to your co-workers, your customers, and everyone you pass coming and going.

What is the role of government? To protect its citizens, all of them, no matter the threat. Rich or poor, young or old, any color or ethnicity. Everyone.

I’d like to return to the same subject as last week: scaling. In a meeting of Common Call, I talked some about the concept, and Javier pointed out the basic difference. One-way communication scales arbitrarily, but two-way communication does not.

If I have some information to communicate, there are a variety of methods and media available to me. I can blog, write an article that gets published by some third party, vlog (e.g. make a YouTube video), or post a podcast. I can give a public lecture, in a variety of venues: churches, classes, seminars, conferences.

If I want to change people’s minds, such one-way communication is modestly effective. If I’m sufficiently eloquent, and people reading/watching/listening are sufficiently motivated and open to change, perhaps some people actually will change. How would I know? Maybe they would tell me, maybe not. In a live interaction (class, worship, seminar), I can get nonverbal feedback. I can see people following along or nodding off; taking notes or playing on their phones. If I’m paying attention, anyway.

In this scenario, I am essentially entering a marketplace of ideas. My message becomes no different from a Coca-Cola ad. Maybe the subject matter is a little more elevated, but the method of dissemination is not.

My friend Shandi, a campus minister with CCF, often says that you have to earn the right to be heard. How do you do that? In the one-way model, through reputation or authority. The students in my class are somewhat obligated to listen to what I have to say, at least if they want to get a decent grade (and perhaps even learn something). People listen to celebrities and politicians because other people do. Another way to earn an audience is to say something people agree with. Play to their confirmation bias–if you say something that confirms their existing beliefs, they will think you’re brilliant.

The better way to earn that right, though, is by listening to them first. If you are genuinely interested in a person, they will trust you enough to listen to what you have to say. If you are genuinely open to changing your mind, they may become open to changing theirs, too. Instead of being in the marketplace of ideas, you enter a place where two people create something new together.

COVID-19 is never far from my mind. I am on the steering committee for APEC, and was conference general chair back in 2017. We are scheduled to begin on March 15 in New Orleans. Meanwhile, COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in many places around the world. As of this writing, CDC lists China, Iran, South Korea, Italy, Japan, and Hong Kong as having travel notices. Washington state has a rapidly expanding emergency. A few hours ago, the first case in Missouri was confirmed, a woman who recently traveled to Italy.

Of course the CEO of Zoom thinks we should just do everything remotely. Work from home; no business travel; etc. Many conferences are shifting from physical to virtual. Zoom meetings are tolerable, especially when the parties have an existing relationship. There is still two-way communication. I’ve participated in webinars of varying quality and effectiveness.

Technical issues aside, there is something lacking in our communication when we shift to virtual presence. Some studies have shown that 55% of our communication is body language, 38% is vocal but nonverbal, and only 7% is verbal. We can quibble about the numbers, but the basic point is that communication is predominantly nonverbal, of a form that translates poorly to electronic interactions.

I hope that APEC goes forward, but not because I want to read the papers or even attend the lectures. It’s because I want to see old friends and colleagues, make new acquaintances, and feel a part of the community.

I don’t know the right thing to do in this particular situation. However, I do know that we, as a society, have transitioned to more and more one-way, remote interaction. This is fine when knowledge is of the highest value. But I believe the health of our community, nation, and world depends on relationships that are nurtured through one-on-one, two-way interactions.