From The Pastor’s Desk

Protests in some of our major cities, politicians fighting across the aisle in Congress, doctors and scientists being told they do not know what they are talking about, foreign nations closing their doors to American citizens, the world is a mess. After 6 years you should know that I am a person of history. It does not matter, ancient, medieval, western or eastern, church or pagan. I enjoy reading and seeking to understand the past. How people lived and died. How civilizations rose and fell. In the last 4 months I have had some extra time to spend in prayer and study due to the COVID 19.
Through this time I have been surprised and saddened to the reaction of many people who do not take the virus serious, even to the point that they believe it is all a “government” hoax, with each party pointing fingers at the other. When people say the flu killed more than the virus this year, they need to look at the statistics. The flu season for 2019-2020 which ended in April, 2020 killed some 62,000 people that is truly sad since many of them were older adults or children. As I sit and write this Monday morning the virus which is thought to be a hoax has killed 142,601 Americans with another 1,000 estimated to die today, tomorrow, etc.
During the two years that the Spanish Flu raged across the world, 50 million people died. Here in the US, in October of 1918, 200,000 people died and life expectancy was reduced by 12 years. In those years 675,000 Americans died. We almost lost WWI due to the Spanish Flue, our economy went into a tail spin. The writer and philosopher George Santayana, a Harvard professor wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
In the 1950s, a social psychologist, Leo Festinger described the discomfort people feel when two cognitions (thoughts), or a cognition and a behavior contradict each other. For example: I smoke is dissonant with the knowledge that smoking can kill me. To reduce that dissonance, the smoker must either quit or justify smoking. “It keeps me thin, and being overweight is a health risk also. His theory is about how people strive to make sense out of contradictory ideas and live their lives that are in their own minds consistent and meaningful.
Today we see Festinger’s theory of “cognitive dissonance” as many people during this pandemic refuse to wear masks or practice social distancing. Human beings are deeply unwilling to change their minds. When facts clash with their preexisting convictions, some people would sooner jeopardize their health and everyone else’s than accept new information or admit to being wrong.
So where does all of this fit into Christianity? We find the answer in St. Paul’s writing to the Romans 12:4-5, “For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.” God of all creation created us to be in relationship, with Him and with others.
I am not a political person, however I do vote in our elections. I am a historical, accepting of science and medical person. If you are not concerned about catching the virus, wear a mask to protect others, because each of us could be carrying the virus and are just not affected by it.