CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM COVID-19?

CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM COVID-19?

A visionary leader gets betrayed and kicked out of his spiritual community. He is deeply hurt and confused. He cannot see a way forward. Can anything good come out of that?

A decorated war veteran gets court-martialed, ruined by the Army and the country he seeks to serve, simply for telling the truth. Can anything good come out of that?

The world succumbs to a global pandemic, the likes of which hasn’t happened in a hundred years. Can anything good come out of that?

Several conversations, books, and documentaries posed the same question: A disaster happens. Maybe it is personal. Perhaps it is public. It could be global, but it happens, and all that people in the middle of it can see is the downside.

I’m learning that if we watch and wait, if we trust God and keep a positive attitude, there can be an upside. I’m looking for that with Covid-19, and here’s what I’ve found.

Remarkable advances have happened in medical technology and vaccine development. Scientists and pharmaceutical companies produced vaccines in record time with new methodologies. Global trade almost guarantees that more viruses, perhaps much worse, are coming. We now have the medical science to combat them.

Many people heard the phrase “supply chain” for the first time in 2020. Everyone in the logistics business is figuring out how to do it better. We also have a deeper appreciation for truck drivers, grocery store clerks, and toilet paper!

Forced isolation created powerful opportunities for personal reflection on what matters. Too many of us go thoughtlessly through life. Covid-19 forced us to slow down and consider how we spend our time.

Fear of death caused all to pause momentarily to think about our eternity. That is never a bad thing.

We appreciate and support the performing arts. Great music performed by gifted artists is a uniquely uplifting human experience. I plan to attend more concerts.  

Public worship. Nothing can duplicate the experience of the gathered church in worship. I can’t wait till we can all be together again, singing our hearts out to God and experiencing his presence in our praises.

The visionary leader was Joseph, whose brothers sold him into slavery. God used him to save his family and Israel, from whom came the Savior of the world. Joseph is a model for several people I know today, whose stories are still being written.

The military leader was General William “Billy” Mitchel. He foresaw the role of airpower in the 1920s. He publicly accused the War and Navy departments of “incompetency, criminal negligence, and almost treasonable administration of the national defense” for refusing to recognize it. He predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and his followers successfully led the Army Air Force through WWII. In 1946 the U.S. Congress authorized a special medal in his honor; it was presented to his son in 1948 by one of his disciples, Gen. Carl Spaatz, chief of staff of the newly created U.S. Air Force.[1]

The greatest disaster happened to the man from Nazareth on what we now call Good Friday. Or was it a disaster after all?

What good can you find from Covid-19?


[1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Mitchell

RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: 3 Steps to Conflict Resolution

RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: 3 Steps to Conflict Resolution

I am a pragmatic guy who likes internal combustion engines. My wife is an artist who wouldn’t know a piston from a wrist pin. But she is great with flowers and has an eye for color and style. We had a dogwood tree at our house in Georgia, a beautiful tree that had a branch growing right out into the driveway. It swiped the car every time I parked.

Someone gave me a used chain saw. I got it running and was cutting up some old trees in the backyard. Gas remained in the tank when I finished. You can guess what happened next.

My wife came running out of the house, “Why are you killing the dogwood tree!”

“I’m not killing it! I’m just taking off this branch!”

“But why?”

“There was still some gas in the chainsaw!”

You can imagine where the conversation went next. Krista and I were still learning conflict resolution skills back then. We’ve learned what works, not only in marriage but in all walks of life. Here are three steps everyone can use.

1st Slowdown

Fast is slow, and slow is fast. Misunderstanding creates most conflict, and speed aggravates it. I didn’t know how important that one branch with flowers on it was to Krista. She didn’t know how much it bothered me when it scratched the car. For all she knew, I was going to cut the whole tree down. So she was urgent to stop me. And I was impressed! It takes a brave woman to yell at a man with a chainsaw buzzing in his hands. But I was also insulted. Why is she yelling at me? Can’t she see that the branch is in the driveway?

Too many assumptions happen too fast when we rush into a conflict. Slow the communication process down; proceed with extra respect, especially if others are present. Bonus thought: never attempt conflict resolution via text or email. Assumptions multiply when we can’t hear the tone of voice or read body-language.

2nd Calm down

Get control of yourself before working through conflict. Keep your voice down. Be the NAP, the Non-Anxious Presence. When a crisis is looming, or you are already in a dispute, be the one who has self-control. If you can’t, don’t engage in discussion until you can figure out why. Take a break and, without blaming others for how you feel, take responsibility for your emotions.

For Christians, self-control is a gift of the Spirit. If you feel your temper rising, excuse yourself for a while, agree to take a breather, and tell the Spirit of God, “Lord, you say that in Christ I am not a slave. I feel enslaved to anger right now. I confess that as sin and ask you to be within me the peaceful presence that I do not have the power to be right now.” He will help.

3rd Reason instead of ranting

Ranting is popular entertainment in America, taking the place of serious discussion. But it is incredibly destructive and has no home in Christian life.

James, the brother of Jesus, said it this way.

         But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.

         And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. [1]

Reason is pure, peaceable, and gentle. Reason is full of mercy. You can go a long way toward achieving this by removing two phrases from your vocabulary: “You never …” and “You always …” When we say those things, we are saying that, even though we said we forgave some insult, we never really did; even though we promised we would agree to something, internally we never did.

Ranting raises walls. Reasonableness builds bridges.

“We have met the enemy, and he is us,” said Walt Kelly’s Pogo. We are our own worst adversaries in conflict resolution. We usually rush into it, raise our voices, and rant about the issue. Slow down, calm down, reason instead of ranting, and you will eat the fruit of peace in all your relationships.


[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. 1995 (Jas 3:13–18). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

YOU HAVE A STAKE

YOU HAVE A STAKE

“Imagine a world in which the government suddenly decreed that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east and penalized those who insist otherwise. The sun would still rise in the east and set in the west, but we wouldn’t be allowed to say so out loud, teach it to our children or organize our lives around that fact. The consequences would be absurd and dangerous. The world becomes similarly absurd and dangerous if the Equality Act becomes law.”  Mary Rice Hasson

Read any mainstream media account of the Equality Act, which the House of Representatives just passed on a party-line vote, and you will hear that it is all about making life safe and fair for transgendered people.  Read a conservative media account, and you will see something quite the opposite. I’ve read several of each, and the most charitable thing I can say about what the LGBTQ activists, mainstream media, and Democrat leaders in the house are saying about it is this: They are deeply deceived and deceiving. This proposed amendment is so bad for America, so bad for religious freedom, and so bad for women in particular that The Women’s Liberation Front is battling side-by-side with Evangelicals and conservatives of all stripes against it.

The Equality Act needs sixty votes in the Senate to pass. Ten Republicans would need to support it, and that is unlikely. Why make so much noise about it now? Because every time this bill comes up, and versions of it have come up several times over the last few decades, politicians, advocates, consultants, the corporations and financiers who support them, and ordinary voters count who is for it and who is against it. We want to think that all of our neighbors and political leaders have the courage of our convictions. Some do, but many follow the polls. The more the numbers shift in one direction or another, the more their vote is likely to change. Your voice matters more than you think. I’ve included a template for a letter to send to your Senators at the end of this post. I urge you to use it and contact your Senators today.

Another positive and child-affirming way to participate is by signing on to The Promise to America’s Children. John Stonestreet covered it in a recent Breakpoint interview with coalition leader Emilie Kao.

As John Stonestreet says, “ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims.” The Equality Act is a very bad idea. Whether or not you are a religious person, if you have children, if you have a profession, if you own a business or work for a non-profit, if you are an American, you have a stake in this debate. If this is the first time you’ve heard of it and wonder about all the fuss, I urge you to read Mary Rice Hasson’s piece, The Equality Act and the End of Females, quoted above.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”― Edmund Burke 

OPPOSED TO EQUALITY ACT

Letter template for communicating with your Senators.

Dear Sir,                                                                                                                      March 1, 2021

I am writing to express my intense disagreement with the Equality Act. The Equality Act abrogates my constitutional rights. Please take a stand and vote against it for the following reasons:

1. The Equality Act will designate schools, churches, and healthcare organizations as “public accommodations.” With this, schools, churches, and hospitals could be forced to accept the government’s beliefs and mandates about sexual orientation and gender identity. That would be highly intrusive and incredibly far-reaching. It will threaten everyday speech where people can be fined or lose their jobs for using the wrong name or pronouns.

2. The Equality Act will legislate that we allow boys in girls’ sports. This is anti-girl, anti-women, and anti-scientific logic.

It would also allow boys in girls’ locker rooms, men in women’s shelters, and men in women’s prisons. Anyone with knowledge of how sexual abuse begins or affects its victims will never consider voting for this law.

3. The Equality Act is immoral. It will force teachers and students to publicly pretend that a biological male is a female. Schools will be encouraged or mandated to instruct first, second, and third graders that they can choose to be a boy or a girl, or neither, or both, making biological sex (and science) a relic of the past.

Children are not developmentally capable of making such permanently life-altering decisions. If you vote for this law, you will be voting for child abuse on a national scale.

4. The Equality Act would use the force of law across all 50 states to strip Christian and other religious ministries of their right to hire people of shared faith to pursue a shared mission. Christians serve the poor, minister to drug addicts, work in adoption agencies, and thousands of other ministries with people of like mind precisely because they believe God has told them to do so. This law would force Christian organizations to hire people hostile to their deeply held beliefs. If you vote for this law, you are voting against first amendment rights and for the dismantling of thousands of Christian ministries throughout America. Is that what you are trying to achieve?

5. The Equality Act will strip health professionals of their rights of conscience. It will force doctors and medical professionals who take an oath to do no harm to engage in gender transition treatments such as hormone-blocking, cross-sex hormones, or surgery. It is obvious that a Catholic or faith-based hospital should not have to perform gender transition surgeries that go entirely against all they believe, nor should any religious medical professional have to do that in any place of employment.

6. The Equality Act would be a tool used by the government to deny or threaten accreditation to private colleges and universities if they do not satisfy the demands of the Left to apply sexual orientation and gender identity to dorms, sports, places of privacy and even teachings. The Act could be used as a weapon to threaten the availability of federal student loans and grants to students at certain disfavored religious schools.

If you vote for this law, you will be making a direct assault on women’s rights and the rights of tens of millions of religious believers across the United States. I urge you to vote against it.