This Pandemic Feels Like War

Watching the Pandemic’s reaction around the globe and feeling the burn of local politics, we feel helpless as we add the individual challenges we each face. Attempting to be upbeat when so many tragedies happen around us all, I’ve concluded, and not to minimize the struggle of anyone, but this feels like a war. Loss of life, new strains (new battlefronts), alongside the personal battles we all feel, it just seems like every facet of life is the face of war. Weary faces. Emptied store shelves. Rationed good and health care.

The Pandemic Feels Like War!

It was 1980, and we had just moved to Alaska. Winter and sub-zero temps were my friends. The job was going to be exciting and scary. The first day, I was treated to lunch at Clinkerdagger, Bickerstaff & Pett’s. The second day I was invited to play a board game over the lunch hour. Diplomacy. Have you ever heard of it? Introduced commercially in 1959, it’s the European theatre during WWI. The players control countries, and you may have ships, tanks and armies commiserate to the size and wealth of your country. You used one season (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer) to plan the next battle season. Making deals with one another in private, you would write your troop (ships, tanks, armies) movements on a slip of paper and give them to a controller – who would then read them out so you could make your movements one at a time.

The game revolved around strategy and diplomacy. Can you trust one another? I’m sure they explained it to me, but I did not fully comprehend the process. Teach the newbie a lesson, “Gang upon him, and destroy his confidence!” Of course, that happened to me, and I’m out of the game before you know it! I trusted my boss and my newfound friends – and they wiped me off the table of play!

That was the Last Time I played board games at this job! This experience made me look at my fellow workers in a different light! Suddenly, I learned to compete to survive!

This Is Today

We compete to survive the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse! Vaccines, shots, closures, passports, deaths, masks, social distancing, stripping the store aisles clean, breaking down our supply chain (did you know there are over 100 container boats off the harbor of Los Angelas waiting to be unloaded?).

You name it. The Pandemic is setting us up to realize the future will not be like the past. As with war, businesses are failing, never to return. Hoarding, staying put until you have to move, and, in our case, getting tax money and support to survive. When businesses do open back up, new rules change how we adapt to the new model. Everything has changed from the business model to the social context of life. Libraries, churches, potlucks, and this is a long list. Nothing will be the same again – at least not in my lifetime.

Elongate these battle lines and times, and we may never see normal in our lifetime again. The Pandemic will change how we address every facet of life. Every person lost is another nail in the final coffin.

I’ve watched people “stay away” from gatherings yet, get on an airplane and fly halfway around the world for vacation. Not going to work, but go to a memorial service or conference or a theme park. From wearing a mask at work, they find it an impossibility to do so at Church. Get vaccinated for Mumps, Rubella, Typhoid, Polio, Pertussis, or even the annual flu, but refuse on principle to reject the C-19 vaccination. (I understand this, but don’t blame me for writing what I see!)

It’s almost like we want to be safe, so we pick things where we feel the safest. I will not wear a bicycle helmet, no matter what the law says! But I’m around people who don’t mind “helmet hair.” We don’t run with scissors. Until the time comes that we must do so to help someone out of danger. We accept and expect the usage of seatbelts, but I grew up in a time when seatbelts were a new-fangled option to be installed in your car by the dealer or local installer like the Glass Repair tents that pop up all over the place.

What’s Next?

Life changes. Some change with it. Others reject it. Most of us “go with the flow.” Eventually, the acceptance of the practice hits the youngsters among us, and they grow up just accepting it, enforcing it, and writing new self-protection laws we would disagree with today.

Looking back through history, we can easily spot the trend. Tragedy strikes, the world changes, and we struggle to fit into a new normal.

For example, the Titanic sank for specific reasons unrelated to an iceberg;
hence, we don’t build ships the same way as the Unsinkable Titanic.
The change did not happen overnight, but certain practices stopped,
and new standards began through a season of time.

As we learn from the tragedy, we constantly adapt. That’s survival! From invasions to prior pandemics, from the stone age to the bronze age. Changing from and to what we were and what will be. Throw technology into the mix, and we adapt even more differently.

Back in my IT beginnings, I never envisioned working from anywhere in the world because I was stuck in a Keypunch Card frame of reference. Back then, seatbelts were just being introduced, and the laws were written to enforce their use. FM radio was still an add-on feature. Airbags? Dreams of the future. Cameras and sensors on the cars to help guide you through the maze of traffic? Cell phones? GPS positioning? Science Fiction! Self Driving Cars? Surely you jest!

Maybe you can define what’s next, but I’m sure I cannot. Everything we dream up sounds like magic! Zoom Meetings will probably become 3-D projections where we all sit around an imaginary table and see everything happening in the “meeting room.”

The Church

What if this is the way we enjoy being at Church?

We’ve defined a church as a place and not the person that happens to show up in a building on a set schedule. Though we need our meeting places, we need to modify our view on what constitutes the “church.” We should be wary that information is disseminated only when you show up and participate in person. This more profoundly defines our viewpoint that the building is “the church.” Yes, scripture tells us to gather, but it also tells us to “make disciples of all nations.” Between the gathering and the discipling, we find our comfort level. Some only want to gather, and others only want to make disciples. Some will do both, and others will walk away and find something else to do with their time and resources.

Could we not meld the two extremes into the identity of what we can accomplish as the Church?

Perhaps the new standard will be simple: Come to the Church for fellowship, community, instruction, corporate worship, and identifying our calling. Go to the world we are living in and make disciples. In between these extremes, we need to introduce new folks into the mix. How do we assimilate new disciples? Personal study leading to corporate attendance but helping them to become disciple-makers themselves. This requires us to “go to church” as well as be “the church in this present day.”

Wait! Isn’t this what the Church was always supposed to do?

If we make the building the focus, we lose the opportunity to be involved in our community. In our pandemic-driven world, we are finding people content to be online and not in the building. We all understand this is not the same. In-person experiences are still more meaningful than online attendance. When we focus online and not participating in a formal church event, we lose the chance to celebrate Jesus corporately. At least, in the old ways of doing it. If we are not careful, everything crumbles as we lose our community, fellowship, acceptance, and all the connections this entails.

The Holy Spirit breathed the early Church into existence in the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost. The First Church. 120 souls. They were gathered and awaiting a power-packed event. The new Church spilled out into the streets, and on that first day, 3,000 were added to the church body.

The Great Commission spread throughout Jerusalem, and for a while, everyone was engaged and happy. Then Saul showed up, and suddenly the Church was dispersed throughout the region due to fear. Jesus converts Saul, and he becomes Paul in the process. Suddenly, the Church is flaming through the known world, led by the greatest missionary of all times!

During tough times, the Church grows!

Church growth should be the result of the Pandemic! The Church spreads, and grows, and reaches a new plateau of normality. What will it look like after this war? Who knows. I’m sure I don’t. But, we serve one who does know and is not surprised at the happenings and knows how we should and will respond.

It is said the underground Church in some countries is so strong we would be surprised. It may be that we will face similar political and spiritual challenges in our lifetime.

Underground, we go. Strong, we stay. Grow, we must!

Underground will be different, and we will become stronger. Regardless, growth is a by-product of stressful times. Paul defines these times like this:

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:
For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.
And from such people turn away!
(2 Timothy 3:1-5 NKJV)

Paul does not tell them to ignore these people. They are lost and searching, and we know God is with us and commissioning us to reach them. Paul appears to imply that it’s easy for these last-day temptations to do what the word alludes to – Tempt. Perilous times draw out the worst in us. That is what we are to stay away from, yet, we may be drawn there due to circumstances. Paul even addresses that:

Greet every saint in Christ Jesus.
The brethren who are with me greet you.
All the saints greet you, but especially those who are of Caesar’s household.
(Philippians 4:21-22 NKJV)

How do you live in Caesar’s house? Probably not of your own will! Even in the worst of possible places, stay identifiable as one of the children of Jesus!

Be The Church

Perhaps this pandemic war is teaching us the importance of “being the church.” As the world crumbles, we see the desire grow for a spirituality of any type. One article I recently read describes this as a search for “Super Heroes,” and Hollywood has found the solution to their profitability. Only with technological changes can they create any powerful creature their minds can conjure!

Super Hero examples have found their way into the church setting. Regularly we hear sermons and messages touting the lines of Hollywood as a drawing card. Of course, everyone wants to know how their Marvel heroes will fit into a Christian setting! Teachers are taking phrases and events and showing how entertainment has a heartbeat of Christ at the center – so it must be okay.

People are searching for spirituality and finding it in fiction and fantasy!

Google Searches

If you do a Google search on “spiritual significance,” you will find 208 million results in less than a second. Go ahead. Enter your own search words and note how many times you will find a staggering number of search results. From pornography to Hollywood, people are searching for something that will satisfy their desires. It matters little if it’s illegal or accepted, there is a hunger to find results. When they grow dissatisfied, their search will go to how to raise their children, rebuild a marriage, or the location to a divorce attorney nearby.

Try this. Search for your Church. Do it by name, and then do it by looking for a church “close to me.” Now, look for marriage counseling, and then a “divorce lawyer near me.” Google Search Results Work! Yet, they also show what people are hungry for.

I’ve even learned the search engine is better for research my blog than using the search tool within my platform. “Michael Gurley Breath Prayers” shows my new blog, old blog, and other social platform references.

Google Search Results Work. Yes. But you still must do something with the results!

What are you searching for? What do you need? A real-time church service with connected family and friends always works for me. See you in the building!