In Belgium, the residents of nursing and rest homes were, according to a new report, “abandoned” by government authorities as the coronavirus epidemic raged. Out of fear of overwhelming Belgian hospitals, only about half of COVID patients in nursing homes that needed to be hospitalized, were. What happened in Belgium is outrageous.
Scripture calls us to “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). We are to “give” thanks, not “feel” thanks. The holiday is Thanksgiving, not Thanksfeeling.
Throughout history, Christians have faced demands to be silent. Throughout history, they refused. In Live Not By Lies: a Manual for Christian Dissidents, blogger and author Rod Dreher thinks Christians in the West are entering a season where we will not only have to decide whether we will be silent; we will have to decide whether we will allow ourselves to be forced into going along with what is not true, with lies.
Philosopher R. J. Snell notes that such tolerance has become highly intolerant in recent years. In fact, our culture has devolved to the point that it condemns any perspective which represses an individual’s instinctual desires.
Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. Disconnecting sex from childbearing gave us abortion and abandonment. Disconnecting childbearing from marriage gave us a generation of fatherless children.
Happiness is far less the result of our circumstances than our response to them. Psychologists refer to the “hedonic treadmill” as “the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.” However, we were made for more than happiness.
A free market works not because wealth is valued, but because labor is. Jesus said we can’t serve both God and money and that it’s more difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus never said accumulating wealth itself is sinful. Exploitation of the poor is sinful. Looking to wealth for salvation and meaning is sinful. Failing to steward what we’ve been given and failing to care for those in need are sinful. When these potential downfalls are mitigated or avoided, a free market inspires people to give more.
In what could be the motto for our day, Hamlet claimed, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” We have been taught that “truth” is the result of our subjective interpretation of our subjective experiences. Your mind processes your senses differently than my mind processes mine. As a result, there can be no such thing as objective truth, only “your” truth and “my” truth. The fallacy of this reasoning becomes apparent the moment we recognize that those who reject absolute truth do so absolutely.
One of the most helpful frameworks I know of in wrestling with moral issues comes from T.S. Eliot. Before we can know what to do with something, we must know what that something is for.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito recently stated during a keynote address to the Federalist Society that “For many today, religious liberty is not a cherished freedom. It’s often just an excuse for bigotry, and it can’t be tolerated, even when there is no evidence that anybody has been harmed.”
