Being People in the Time of COVID-19

One of my coworkers has a saying that I’m fond of. She says, “Being people is hard.” She’s right. Being people is hard.

And being good people is even harder. Especially in times of crisis. There’s such a conflict between what we know we ought to do and what we want to do, between what we feel and the way we know we should think, that being good people is incredibly hard. None of us is perfect at it, despite our best efforts. And the sooner we face up to that fact, and admit that we all have ugly little thoughts that we do the best we can to mitigate, the better.

Why am I saying this? Well, with this COVID thing upon us, and people scrambling, panicking, making bad decisions, and acting downright horribly, I thought about the fact that Passover is also coming, and thinking of the ten plagues of Egypt, I posted on Facebook:

Suppose the coronavirus could be guaranteed to pass over your house if you painted your doorposts with the milk of human kindness…

Some of which you had partaken of first.

As of this writing, I had four likes, and not a single dislike.

Of course, the dark, implied back side of this was that if you weren’t able to demonstrate that the milk of human kindness existed in your house, then you were screwed. But still...no one took me to task for that sentiment.

Contrast that to the response I got to my comment on a friend’s post about people who were making this whole thing worse. I said:

I know this is an evil thought, but wouldn’t it be nice if the only people taken out by this were the idiots, assholes, and deniers?

I got immediately slammed for wishing a horrible thing upon people. But really, it was no different from what I said about painting your doorposts. I attempted to clarify the situation by saying that I wasn’t wishing this on anyone, but if we know that, barring a miracle, some people have to get it, I’m pretty sure that there are some people we’d rather see get it than others.

Slammed again.

But let’s be real folks. I may try to be my most logically Spock-like at all times, but I’m still human, and I have emotions. And emotionally, I don’t want good people to suffer from this. And knowing logically that a certain number of people are gonna get this thing, I would much rather have it be the person who’s gonna try to shoot up a school or house of worship than some little old lady who never harmed anyone in her life.

Of course, the Grim Reaper is gonna pass right by Margaret, the lady who gives out full-sized Snickers bars at Halloween.

You may not want to admit this, but we all do this kind of moral calculus. We do it every time we ask “Why do the evil flourish while the good are cut down like the grass?” We all implicitly say that if there’s any suffering to happen, it should be to those people.

Not that we want that anyone should suffer. Ideally, no one should. But if there is suffering to be doled out, let’s be honest, and admit that we’d all prefer it to be visited upon the evil, the selfish, and the mean-spirited.

Because we’re human. We’re people. And being people is hard.

And being good people is especially hard.

Now as for me and my family, we’re gonna start painting our doorposts.

And we’ll help you paint yours too.

Religious vs Political

Two Sundays ago I preached a sermon on Transfiguration Sunday that talked about our need to be transformed. I talked about the kind of people we need to be transformed into and the kind of people we need to be transformed from. I didn’t talk in bland generalities, but rather, gave specific examples of how we needed to be transformed in order to show the love of God through Jesus to the world more clearly.

And when the service was over, at least one person complained to two people I know...but not to me directly...that my sermon was “too political.”

“Too political.” Funny...I knew that someone was going to say that. Even though I mentioned no specific names in my sermon, I knew that someone was going to say it was “too political.” Perhaps it was “too political” because it sounded like something “those damned liberals would say.” But my wife astutely pointed out that had we visited a conservative church...conservative both in the way they interpreted the Bible as well as the political views of the pastor and most of the congregation, and heard a sermon from their particular point of view, where they were specifically political, and where everyone else was enthusiastically shouting “Amen!”, this person probably wouldn’t have complained at all.

And actually, nor would we. We would simply have chalked it up to differences in how we interpret the Bible, and how those differences inform our daily lives. Indeed how those differences inform our political lives.

So the question here is when is something religious and when is it political. Or perhaps more precisely, does our religion inform our political views or do our political views inform our religious beliefs?

I know how I think things work with me, and because I firmly believe that my religious beliefs inform my political views, I can comfortably say that my sermon of two weeks ago was not political...although it definitely made some people with opposing political views very uncomfortable.

But wait...there’s more!

Ash Wednesday was last week, and in the liturgy for the service that evening, I found the following words in the confession of sin:

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people, we confess to you.

Our neglect of human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty, we confess to you.

Our false judgements, our uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us, we confess to you.

Our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us, we confess to you.

Restore us, O God, and let your anger depart from us.

I saw these words in the liturgy for the day, and felt vindicated. This was everything I had said three days earlier, except that instead of trusting people to connect the dots themelves (which we often don’t), I came out with a big black Sharpie and did it for them.

Why? Not because my politics inform my religious beliefs. But because my religious beliefs inform my politics…as well as the rest of my life.

Religious beliefs which I’m always re-examining in the light of new data.

Which is as it should be.

In both cases.