Learnings

President Biden declared in a CBS 60 Minutes interview, that the pandemic was over. His comment was met with surprise, skepticism, and scorn. 

During the past three years of Covid and now coming out of the pandemic, there are at least three lessons we can observe.  

The first lesson is that suffering is inescapable. Suffering is a precondition to living. Working in the medical field and being a minister conducting more funerals than I cared to, I can testify that suffering is real and everyone endures some level of suffering. Each one is familiar with suffering in some form be it physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, financial, or relational. The world has suffered due to Covid.  

Suffering can change one into an angry, hateful, and bitter person or it can change one into a forgiving, accepting, kinder, and compassionate person. How has suffering changed you? 

The second lesson is that there is nothing certain. Prior to the pandemic we were certain that our freedoms could not be impinged by the government or culture. But during the pandemic we witnessed our government limit travel, close schools, churches, businesses, and severely limit other freedoms. Did they fear the virus or did they jump at the chance to grab power and money?  

Our freedom of speech was taken away by Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google, newspapers, and other media outlets. Without correctly understanding the science of the virus and the terrible pain the closures would exact, our rights were restricted and a vicious and ongoing attack was made upon our freedoms.  

The pandemic has forever changed our culture and way of life. We now know that freedom is not certain. Honest and principled leadership was crushed by a hunger for power, control, and money. No longer are we able to speak freely, no longer is our freedom to peacefully assemble guaranteed, no longer do we enjoy the freedom of worship without the government curtailing religious freedoms.

The third lesson involves science. Pure science is brutally honest and predictive. Culturally relative science is dishonest and dangerous. We were told by our government (Centers for Disease) and others to “follow the science.” At the beginning of Covid, Dr. Anthony Fauci, (director of the National Institutes of Health, NIH) told us masks were not needed. Then “science” and Dr. Fauci told us to wear one mask, then two, then an N95 mask. Now, “science” tells that masks do not stop the virus. Without the ability to test and question “the science”, we cannot and should not rely on the science.

Science also told us to get the shot. Science now tells us that the shots effectiveness is less than sixty days and causes severe issues such as myocarditis and pericarditis for a number of people. True, the science keeps evolving but whose science are we to follow? The Chinese, Americans, United Nations? Science is not dependent on asking multiple questions, it is dependent on asking the right questions. During the pandemic our leaders proved true what we read in the Bible, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22). 

What is really important? Jesus, said it this way, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and for the gospel will save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:35-36).  What have you learned from the Covid pandemic?