America on the Brink

5. We need to do a better job valuing human life . Our social tendency to take a reductionistic approach to people dying is callous, immoral, and counter to the example of Christ. This hard heartedness is a byproduct of our legacy as a nation built on the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans. America has always had an appetite for death. Our society has been built on the necessity that some must die so others can have a better life. Any country with this nihilisitic approach will eventually unravel, as we are witnessing in America daily. A global pandemic could not curb our appetite for death. How easy it has been for us to minimize the loss of life around us. We see people as numbers and statistics not living, breathing persons who are valued by family and friends, beloved by God. We have significant work to do in this country. We must recover a sense of the precious value of human life before the next crisis or how many more will needlessly die. The Covid Pandemic was a Wakeup Call for America What the pandemic has exposed about us is our inability to recognize and understand a global problem and manage it on the national and local level. It revealed the deep divisions in our country and our inability to bridge those divides to work together with the shared goal of keeping our country strong, safe, and healthy. On a more troubling level, it also showed that most Americans cannot be galvanized around anything today, even something as basic as trying to keep people from getting sick and dying. We are losing touch with our humanity and weakening our nation by the day. Is God using the pandemic to expose America, to show us how deep our selfishness and our disunity runs? Maybe God has exposed these things not just to indict us or embarrass us but to grant us an opportunity to reflect and correct. Maybe it is time we identify what changes we need to make to heal and do better another crisis envelops us. A statement in the Bible describes this moment in graphic detail. The prophet Hosea said, “My people perish for a lack of knowledge.” Millions of people died because of mass ignorance and reckless group thinking that playing out on social media. They died because of our arrogance. The apostle Paul described the last days as “perilous times” in a letter to Timothy when people would be “ever learning but not able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Those words resonate in powerful ways today. Hiding ignorance under the pretense of intelligence is the epitome of arrogance. As citizens we have to be more than smart or even passionate, we need enough understanding, curiosity, discernment, and wisdom to acknowledge what we don’t know and the humility to listen and learn. If we cling to this arrogance rooted pride, it will not only compound our current challenges, it will be our undoing. The Bible talks about knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. We need all three today. People are surrounded by information but do not always have understanding. Socially, we are drowning in confusion, sickness, strife, poverty, and death because we lack understanding and wisdom. We do not

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