The Blue Church

There are many mysteries in life, but what we are witnessing in the meltdown of our culture is not one of them. People who are wringing their hands, wondering what is happening, have not been listening.

We know very little about Pontius Pilate, except that he was a weak and compromised leader who allowed an innocent man be put to death. From God’s point of view, of course, Jesus came to die for us, but that does not negate or change the role of human responsibility, as the Apostle Peter explained to all Jerusalem (Acts 3:12-18).

During the gold rush, prospectors had to know where one deed ended and another began. Establishing those boundaries for yourself involved fulfilling certain requirements and then staking your claim.

“My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.”

This week I watched an interview of a man whose son had committed suicide a few days earlier. Clearly heartbroken at his loss, this dad was convinced that the Corona Virus was to blame indirectly, because of the quarantine and its isolating effects.

When something goes wrong, or even is out of the ordinary, it is quite normal to seek the reason. Mechanically we look for a glitch, morally we look for a culprit, and philosophically we look for an ultimate cause.

“We’re all in this together” meant being in the same room?
“Flattening the Curve” implied a weight loss program?
“Hang in there!” meant being patient for a couple of hours?
“Being Safe” was a baseball term?

There is a saying in the business community that “Your organization is perfectly designed to get the results that it is getting.” The idea, of course, is that if you want different results, you have to organize differently and/or use different methods.

When the COVID shutdown began, I was in another country, in fact, another continent. When I returned, it seemed like a different country. That seems like months ago. Wait, it was months ago, and that is remarkable in itself.

Officially, Memorial Day was first celebrated on May 30, 1868 at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia. The occasion commemorated the 620,000 dead from Confederate and Union armies of the Civil War.