COVID Considered

"Its been a year of being stuck."

"So glad 2020 is over."

"Trump is terrible."

I feel, like all things considered, those sentences really sum up a whole lot of last year right? Looking back, the watchword being "the Vid" - it seems almost impossible to say anything about it. 

People have experienced everything from:

loss of a job to the enjoyment of working from home,

frustration to being stuck at home to the joy of being stuck at home,

the difficulty of learning to live with others to the surprise of enjoying living with others, 

the strain of having nothing to do and the happiness of resting from ceaseless doing.

However, as I was thinking on this year, I do think that those three statements at the beginning can be illuminating to some broader issues.

"A year of being stuck" - Time

This sort of sentence shows how much we live in the present moment, how we feel the time pass us by - it went by distressingly slow in the last year (for some). However, the question of time is always interjected with a more moral flavour when you hear God firmly say, "Today, if only you would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (Ps 95:7-8a) - of course, said to the Israelites in their time in the wilderness, but a word that speaks to wherever we find ourselves in time, as Hebrews shows by repeating it, relentlessly: "Today...Today...Today..." (Heb 3:7-8, 15; 4:7). The question of time is plugged into the moral realm by God's insistence that we do something with the time we have, for he appoints times in history, and places for people to live in (cf. Acts 17:26). What, then, did we do with our time - is it even "ours"? - what did we do in this time, the time God gave you and I? We were stuck, true - some more than others! - in a physical sense, but spiritually, one hopes we did not turn to pillars of salt, become stuck, looking back at the world that was - hands on ploughs and eyes fixed backward. 

Many of us were stuck; however, the spiritual being, the Christian, is characterized as a tree so often in Scripture - so then, as a tree can stay in the same place and still have grown, to be stuck does not mean to be stalled. How did you and I grow during this time? What did we do with the time we were given?

"So glad 2020 is over" - Progress

Along with the idea of elapsed time is the idea of progress - "progress, progress, unstoppable progress!" someone cries. Of course, as we all knew would happen even as we drew the curtains on 2020, 2020 ripped those curtains back open and barged into 2021 - COVID is, alas, still with us! 

The need, though, to see progress, to "move on" from COVID, that's interesting; might it be permissible to ask, "move on to what?" There is an insistence, pervasive to our environment, to chase continually the "next big thing" and to finally get away from being held by anything. People want to travel, people want to meet up and "enjoy life" - everyone wants to get back to the pursuit of the "good life" - it might be useful to have someone define that good life.

It isn't sufficient, by the way, to say, "Good life is not having COVID" - that is simply telling me what the good life is not - it does not say what it is. Is it travelling? Is it company? Is it activism? The idea of progress seems much more often negatively defined: "it's not getting married until you have to" or "not having kids - what a drag" or "not talking politics or religion" - but what is the good life? Why I ask this is because progress assumes destination, but it often seems as if, for the moment, the destination is assumed. I'm quite lost as to what it is - so I just ask myself, and you: what are you running to? What did you want to be free to do? Scripture says, "where your treasure is, there also your heart will be" (Matt 6:21) so maybe the questions turn darker: if our destinations drive us, controlling us, if we hope for them (whatever they are) then might not the question be "what are our idols"?

"Trump is Terrible" - Examples

Lastly, but not least, it is him. The craze, the (di)vision, the (dis)unity, the fracturing - all could be done by He Who Must Not Be Named - that is, Trump. Neither defending nor detracting from the man, it reveals the need for people to fasten themselves to idols, to saints, to heroes. In this sense, as in the previous two, we aren't much different from people of the past. It is important to humans to have those who can play Saviour. With the dissolution of Christianity as a conversation point (or its slow abandonment by the public) politics becomes primary and the state becomes Saviour. It shows that we do want Saviours, or at least people to look up to, to fight for and speak on our behalf. 

Perhaps Trump is a good example of what all of us will be: someone to look up to. As you and I carve our ways into the future, through Time, we are liable to pick up or gather into groups, of whom we will influence. Admiration is not, I think, evil - perhaps it is even an effect of love, for it is to notice and regard another, to pay mind to someone else. The question, though, is whether you and I will be admirable, worthy of emulation. How does Paul say, "imitate me as I imitate Christ?" (1 Cor 11:1), except that he knows that mimicry, the reflection of a self by others, is inevitable - the question, again, is whether or not we will be admirable or reprehensible examples? "May God raise up instruments for his people" is a good prayer - but if you become that instrument, may you be one who might say, with Paul, "Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice" (Phil 4:9a). Inevitably, you always effect others - perhaps the trick is doing it intentionally. 

PS: Intent

In all things, intend what you do. 

As a creature of eternal worth, intend what you do. 

As a Christian compelled to reveal Christ to others, intend all you do.