I know what y’all been thinking: “Why, God, whyeeeee!?!” We’ve lived with this pandemic for close to a year now with really no quick fix in sight, though surely a viable solution in the future. But by the look of things, we won’t hear the end of COVID-19 till Christmas 2022; if we’re good, maybe 2021. Attempts at trying to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus have made us: virtually lose our jobs or figure out a way to work at home, file for unemployment along with tens of millions of other people, stay away from crowds including friends and family, wear stuffy masks, constantly wash our hands, and for parents with school-age children oversee their coursework and studies at home because schools are closed, too. And it looks like the end of the last school year will continue into the new school year. No! God, no!!!
If you’re like me, you may very well have questioned God about all this. Religions may warn us to never question God about our deepest fears and concerns, just accept whatever happens in life and roll with the punches—like folks did in Europe during the Black Plague. I say God, of all living beings, wants to know exactly what’s on our minds, especially our fears and most sincere goals and aspirations. And maybe we’ll get answers, as the old-time gospel song assures us, ‘by and by.’
But we like answers now. Americans like answers right NOW. There has got to be some reason for burdening our planet with a pandemic. Everything seemed to be going so well, well mostly for the Wall Street crowd. Our president boasted ad nauseum we had the greatest economy in the world ever. Americans young and old, frugal and gambler, were blowing and going: movies, bars, concerts, sports, restaurants, schools, travel, conventions, fairs, commerce, investments, home buying & selling, booming construction, highway expansions, road improvements, even higher education and climbing the ladder to success. Happy days were here again! And then … suddenly … the fall. Separating us from God’s good graces.
How are the mighty fallen!
Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Many folks naturally turn to the spiritual when the economic bottom falls through. Oil below $0 a barrel and then into negative numbers? Some economists have flat out projected the ‘d’ word. With 30 to 45 million Americans unemployed, impacting four times that number when families are factored in, singing “We’re in the Money” is no longer cute. We haven’t begun to see the desperation captured in 1930s’ black and white photos of destitute American families living in their wagons or jalopies, camping in tents, squatting on land, aimlessly roaming town to town for day labor.
We have seen the food lines on TV, relatively nice cars and SUVs forming long lines for miles and miles with families inside waiting hours and even up to half a day for a box of weekly foodstuffs. On TV we’ve seen similar miles of cars with people getting the corona test. What will our nation, and the streets, look like when landlords, banks and mortgage companies demand payment? What will become of us when the bills are past due for months or a year? None of us good people ever want to be deadbeats. But without work, 99 percent of us have no money. Money is security in this country, bub. We all know the score. Gotta pay to play. That has been the American way.
Angels in America
But wait. What if God is trying to turn our nation around? What if the only way to do that is an economic collapse caused by a lingering pandemic? Hard times often bring people to call on God, as another gospel song laments: Where could I go but to the Lord? God is, like, all any of us have at this point.
So, let us ponder our nation’s true spiritual self. Hasn’t been too good, has it? Money has been the reason for anything and everything in the U.S. And the current occupant of the White House, our national leader, is the epitome of “Money, money, money, money. Money!” Americans celebrate the self-made millionaire, the lucky few with the magic formula and timing to build a better mouse trap, offer people what they really want—entertainment, business, products, whatever. And many would say this national thinking, instilled breeding really, is what makes America great.
That is not what makes America great. That is not what makes any nation great past, present or future. Being the richest nation on earth and perhaps in the history of the world is not what makes America great. Our love of money, our worship of and work toward financial gain and economic freedom, is not what makes Americans great. How can it possibly be? It is not even a spiritual teaching. In fact, we know darn well it’s the opposite of Christian teachings: The love of money is the root of all evil.
That’s the America I know and experience every day, perhaps till my dying breath. You gotta pay to play. You gotta have money, and a lot of it, to live in this country.
The United States is supposed to be not only First World but the land of abundance and cutting-edge technological advancements. Yet the pandemic caught us sorely lacking. Compared internationally, we’re stupid and foolish. Our federal unpreparedness including the cut and slashed federal pandemic response division and budget—that’s what caused and will continue to cause all the deaths. Somehow this land of plenty had no ventilators, not enough ventilators, along with poorly stocked and limited healthcare personal protection gear—masks and body suits which need to be trashed after each and every patient is checked out. And still not near the ample supply of tests needed to get a grip on the pandemic.
But the real reason this nation of ours has failed its sick people, who should not have had to die, is the lack of hospitals which have been closing nationwide as failed businesses for decades. Hospitals should never be in the business of business. They exist to ensure a community’s health and well-being. What were we thinking just sitting back and saying nothing as rural hospitals and then all hospitals kept closing everywhere in America?
If the pandemic, which we haven’t had as severe as 1918 when none of us were alive save one or two readers, is a natural occurrence, part of life on the planet, well our federal government should have been on top of the situation, the possible eventuality, prepared with state-of-the-art equipment and most of all knowledge. Instead, we’ve come across as worse than all those socialist and communist countries we love to decry and compare (with $$ in our eyes and on our lips). Money is not evil, just loving it more than humanity is.
The pandemic and all our economic upheaval and emotional pouting is pretty much what God expects of us, now doesn’t He or She? Here in the 21st century, we were pretty smug, certain to cure a bug like we have before with all the other pandemics like swine flu and H1N1. We even joked about how every year, the media and medical authorities warn us of a new exotic pandemic, usually variations of flu. Now it’s different because we didn’t want to deal with it. It spread until it engulfed and overwhelmed the nation as we argue over masks and reopening the schools, usually the largest employer in most communities.
In coming months, as no cure or vaccine will wipe the pandemic off the planet yet, we’ll remember our lives and ourselves for what we were, what we have been, and what now we have to be and ought to be in the future. Let’s face it, as a nation we’ve been forced to change the way we do ‘business’ … because money does not grow on trees, bills can’t be paid if we have no jobs, and tens of millions of inadvertently unemployed Americans and their families will either be kicked out onto the streets or … through the kindness of strangers that are landlords and mortgage bankers, America can start practicing that religion we always bring up, the one that says: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Money is not the bottom line. The bottom line is: Live and let live.