Take A Deep Breath….
And so comes news that here in California, hair salons can (FINALLY!) reopen. Hmmmm.
Now, I am not nearly as good looking as Mark Harmon, but I do share one thing in common with Gibbs – rule 39 – “There is no such thing as a coincidence.” And so this news, coming so closely on the heals of Hairgate, put me in a most uncharitable mood. Pelosi (I refuse to use her title) gets busted in a hair salon and suddenly the rules change? It makes utterly transparent the arbitrary, if not insidious, nature of so many of the rules we are operating under here in the covid-coping formerly golden state.
My impulse was to start yelling a few expletives and stomp around anywhere I could without a mask and breathing on people. If the rules are to change that whimsically why on earth should I care about them? Further if the rules are that whimsical then they are clearly about control and not the virus which just causes me to react with complete rebellion. It is simply maddening.
History has a funny way of repeating itself. The advent of Christianity changed a lot of the rules. Having its roots in Judaism, there was in the early days of the church, a huge tug of war between Christians who came from within the Jewish community and those who came from gentile communities. A lot of those skirmishes were over the dietary rules. Paul had to have long discussions about it with both the Church in Rome and the Church in Corinth. With Corinth Paul concludes, “Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.”
The key here is not “the rules,” it’s charity. There are a lot of reasons for some rules, some of them very real, some of them “just because.” The key is not the reason for the rule, the key is what reaction will breaking the rule cause in someone else. Will it offend them? Will it cause them emotional harm? In these passages, Paul admits that eating anything from any source is fine for the Christian – but he notes that if eating anything from any source presents someone with a problem he will abstain simply because as a Christian their problems are more important than his food.
And so in my rebellious tantrum concerning covid rules I reminded myself of these passages from scripture. I thought of the many friends I have that are suffering in deep fear of covid. I do not want my behavior to induce any more fear in them, even if I disagree with their rules – even if their rules are very, very arbitrary. Thus “uncharitable” was the perfect word to describe my mood in the second paragraph above. I was thinking only of myself and not thinking charitably about my friends and loved ones.
Here endth the Confession…
But I find myself continuing to ask why I was so irritable to begin with. Why did what at this juncture is very unsurprising news, make me so angry? Into these thoughts came my a devotional:
On this Labor Day weekend, the global pandemic makes us especially aware of ways in which our world, including our work, is broken…
The world is indeed broken, but not really by the pandemic. The pandemic serves to reveal our brokenness, but is not the cause of it. This past Monday (Hughniverse subscription required), Salena Zito placed the roots of much of the civil unrest we are experiencing in the fact that due to the pandemic people have little or nothing to do. In this observation she echoes the Bible. When we are not occupied with the business of the day our inside tendencies show themselves.
The idleness created by the pandemic is revealing, sadly, a hatred within us as a nation.
There is a pervasive sadness about the days right now, at least I feel it. That sadness is rooted in the hatred I see around me. I look at the news and see racial hatred. Trump Derangement Syndrome is far more than that – it seems like people hate him with a personal revulsion, as if he personally injured them. I see people in this nation that do not think it merely needs improvement, they actively hate it and wish to destroy it.
We are not meant to live in an atmosphere of hatred like this. That is why I find myself so irritable – the world is just wrong. Not because of the pandemic and the related politics. No the world is just wrong because the pandemic has revealed the hatred within and its ugly and nasty and it threatens to tear the world apart in ways a mere illness never could.
So along with my Sunday morning confession, I pray for the nation. I pray for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to penetrate the nation sufficiently to move this seething hatred to the background. I pray for the love of Christ to shine its light on us all.
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