The Covid 19 virus pandemic and the George Floyd murder have one thing in common. There is no immediate solution. With the virus, we are told to hide in our houses with our masks and sanitizers and hope for a modern-day Passover. Yes, there may be a vaccine someday… but maybe not.
With the George Floyd murder and the police brutality and racism it again reveals, our collective instinct is to protest. Seniors write letters to the editor (or blog 😊), while the young take to the streets.
What if we reversed the actions? What if in response to the Covid 19 virus pandemic we were to write letters to the editor and our young were to take to the streets? What if in response to police brutality and systemic relations we were to hide in our houses with our masks and sanitizers? Ridiculous, of course, but achieving the same result – NOTHING. The virus will continue to kill the elderly and weak, while individual police officers in various municipalities and jurisdictions will continue to brutalize suspects – often with a racial component.
Scientists are currently telling us that Covid 19 is weakening – as it mutates subsequent strains may be less infectious, less deadly. Good for us now, but there will be other viruses, other pandemics. It is the nature of people to fall ill and die.
In conversations with our daughter it was suggested that racism is generational, and that with each generation we are getting better. But we are not. Racism may be taught by our elders, but it is also taught in real time by our reactions to life experience. It is the nature of people to hate others.
The reason for both is the same. It is the original sin against God at the time of creation, carried down through the eons and borne by each of us. So what is the solution? A personal relationship with God through His Son, Jesus. That alone will provide us a path of redemption that will heal families and relationships. The comfort we can gain in realizing that God is in control and that all things will be made right in His time. That if we share the love that Jesus has shown us that we will not be the officer who takes a knee on the neck of a suspect, that we will not be intoxicated with drug or drink and fall into the clutches of the police. What does a relationship with God give us? Strong families, a framework for living guided by a loving God, not by situational ethics; and a comfort that as we grow old or ill and die that we are living and dying on God’s promises. God is faithful. As God advances, the stereotypes that fuel racism will recede. It won’t be tomorrow, next year, or even next century. Absent a foundation in faith, no amount of social work or “police reform” will be effective. Marching will result only in sore feet and broken hearts.
In a dry and thirsty land 