A Lot on Our Plates

The COVID pandemic - government-mandated closure of non-essential businesses and wearing of masks - working from home - isolation from family and friends - loved ones dying alone - inability to celebrate their lives with a proper funeral - school closures with on line, distance learning - push to reopen schools and businesses - medical facilities operating beyond capacity - medical personnel stretched and at risk - no vaccine or established treatment plan - a lack of a unified response in how to deal with the virus - a politicized response to the virus - a divided view of the virus: fear of it for some, blatant disregard of it by others - distrust of the media and scientific experts - loss of the norm and, with it, our comfort zones - a new, crazy norm we don't like - uncertainty about how long this new norm will last - uncertainty about what life after COVID will look like - personal liberties and constitutional rights - police brutality - protests - De-fund the Police/Back the Blue - race issues (again!) - Black Lives Matter/All Lives Matter/Blue Lives Matter - white privilege - resurgence of white supremacy ideology and America-first nationalism - LGBTQ+ rights - a highly polarized nation - a polarizing President - an election year - social media keeping it all in our faces - foreign hackers feeding the fear and fueling the polarization through social media. Then mix in the suffocating Texas summer heat!

Are you feeling overwhelmed yet? And you wonder why! Any one of these issues would have been challenging in and of itself, but we are dealing with all of these issues (not to mention our own personal issues), all at the same time. You might say we have a lot on our plates right now.

It seems to me these challenges have revealed a couple of things about us as individuals, about us as a nation, and about the church.

The challenges of this time have pulled back the curtain to reveal what is in our hearts - to reveal the attitudes and spirit out of which we live. And a lot of it isn't pretty. What is being revealed is open hostility and rancor towards one another. Anger, driven by fear, is vented without censor or filter. People of all stripes are demanding their way and their rights, demanding that everyone else adapt to them, attacking those who differ as though they were the devil-incarnate. I am reminded of the Apostle Paul's warning about biting and devouring and destroying one another (Galatians 5:15).

We should not be surprised by these attitudes and this behavior - grieved, but not surprised. Paul spoke of this kind of behavior as works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21). In my book, The Fruit of the Spirit: the Path That Leads to Loving as Jesus Loved, I defined Paul's term the flesh as the self-focused, self-serving spirit that is inherent to our human condition. It is our default nature that is marked by a what’s-in-it-for-me spirit. It is driven by deep-seated anxiety and fear. In other words, what we are seeing is our most base selves. We are living out of fear masked as anger. So much for being a Christian nation! 

The challenges of this time have also revealed how isolated we are from one another. We drifted along in the silos we created - silos composed of "people like me" - silos that excluded those who were different. Another way to say it, we lived segregated lives - lives segregated from those not like us ethnically, economically, politically, religiously, or in sexual orientation. Again, this isolation-segregation should not surprise us. Segregation is the basic pattern of human relationships. (See again Genesis 11:1-9.) Paul identifies it as an expression of the flesh: enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy (Galatians 5:20). Sound familiar? This isolation-segregation is rooted in fear - fear of that which is different, fear of the other, fear of missing out, fear of losing our identity and exceptional status. It is rooted in a competitive spirit that seeks to define who is right and who is wrong, who is better and who is less than. This fear-driven competitive spirit leads us to view "the other" with suspicion from a position of smug superiority. 

The challenges of this time have also revealed how unprepared we were for what we are facing. Our lifestyles are designed for comfort and pleasure. We spend enormous amounts of time and money on entertainment that allows us to escape the stress of our get-ahead, production-oriented world. In other words, the lifestyles we pursue are not designed for growth or for dealing with challenge or for learning to adapt or for knowing how to embrace change. The challenges of this time have revealed something we don't want to recognize, much less admit: how emotionally-relationally-spiritually immature we really are. 

It seems to me that those of us in the church have been complicit in creating and perpetuating these realities. We have focused on beliefs and behavior - external things that we can control, that we can use to define right and wrong, that we can use to judge and exclude others, that leave the ego intact - and ignored the transformation of the heart (the inner world) that is the essence of true spirituality. Consequently, our basic human nature is very much intact, untouched by all of our religious involvement. In some ways, our religious life actually protects our ego-centric nature. Our focus on beliefs and behavior has allowed us to segregate ourselves from others, isolating ourselves into silos of those who think like us. Our focus on proper belief and behavior has prevented us from learning how to think theologically or how to practice spiritual discernment. As a result, our thinking reflects cultural and political positions rather than the ways of God that Jesus taught. And we appeal to the Bible to support those positions. Our focus on proper belief and behavior has allowed us to avoid the hard issues - the very issues with which we are struggling during this time. We don't know how to talk about them now that they confront us. So we go to our respective corners, prepared to come out fighting at the drop of a hat (or social media post) by attacking the other while defending our position as the only intelligent-rational-biblical position.

But there is good news in all of these challenges. The disruption we are experiencing and the challenges we are facing offer us the opportunity to learn and grow ... if we are open and teachable. They can teach us that we are all connected ... that we do better when we work together and seek the common good ... that no one has a corner on truth ... that experts and scientists might actually know what they are taking about ... that in attempting to destroy the other, we destroy ourselves. The challenges of this time are an invitation to learn, an invitation to grow. They are a call to become more than we are and have been ... a call to become our best selves. 

So maybe the challenges of this time will reveal something more: our capacity to learn, grow, and change ... by the grace of God, through the transforming work of the Spirit.

Merciful God, may it be!