The eCrozier

As I write this: the CDC has confirmed 32 U.S. deaths from COVID-19. To put that in context, last year in the U.S. 2,493 people died from falling down stairways, 569 died from falling off ladders, and 36 were killed from dog attacks. I’m not suggesting anyone take COVID-19 lightly, by no means. I’m merely putting its risk in some context. This virus is now a pandemic and we should listen to the infectious disease and public health experts. There surely will be more deaths this year from COVID-19, but the reaction from some in government (treating it more as a public relations crisis than a public health concern) and from the news media who make money by getting us worked up (so we’ll tune in), isn’t at all helpful.

According to the CDC, they don’t expect most people who contract the virus to develop a serious illness. Reports out of China looked at 70,000 COVID-19 patients. 80% of the patients had a mild illness and easily recovered. Of those 70,000 cases, only about 2% were in people younger than 19. This then seems to be a disease seriously affecting older adults and those with underlying health conditions. This is a real public health concern, but our collective anxiety will do nothing to help us. And it’s help we need.

So, why are we so anxious? My hunch is it has to do with our desire to control our lives. We want some agency over what happens to us, so we stockpile hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and bottled water thinking that’ll do the trick. This is just a “presenting symptom” of the larger issue we have with our mortality. We’re in denial about our finite bodies, so we diet (“I’m on Keto, keep those carbs away!”), try the latest exercise craze (“Cross Fit anyone?”), spend billions of dollars each year on cosmetic surgery (“I could use a Botox right now”) all to deny our embodiment, to stave off death’s inevitability, to fool ourselves into believing we have control over our finitude. News flash: We don’t.

Now, I’m all for eating well, exercising, and avoiding viruses, but not as a way to forestall the inevitable or to deny our finitude. Rather, it’s a way we can be good stewards of God’s blessing, which is our lives. That’s why what we all did a few weeks ago on Ash Wednesday was so necessary, but also so utterly bizarre given our current cultural context. It’s necessary because we live in a culture that denies the inevitability of death at every turn. So, the ashes imposed on our foreheads serve as a liturgical slap in the face, saying: “you’re going to die – you’re dust.” It’s also utterly bizarre because it’s the last thing our culture wants to be reminded of. Our anxiety narcotizes us into an amnesia about the reality of our lives, but especially about our deaths.

COVID-19 will eventually spread all across our country and the world. Like our deaths, it’s an inevitable reality. Smart and caring people will find a way first to relieve its worse symptoms and then, in a few years, develop a vaccine to protect us…this time. But there certainly will be other viruses, other dangers we face. Life has never been safe in any generation. Why do we never learn that? Yet, our faith addresses head on all of life’s dangers and our anxiety about death. By faith, we’re called to trust in the truth of both Good Friday and Easter, in our deaths and in God’s promise made possible in Jesus.

+Scott

Notre Dame Sociologist, Christian Smith, coined the term Moral Therapeutic Deism (MTD) to describe the operative religious commitment of many people today in western culture. As Smith describes the term, MTD has these beliefs:

1. God created and ordered the world, and watches over it.
2. God wants people to be good to each other, as taught in all world religions.
3. Life’s goal is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God isn’t directly involved in life except when God is needed to solve a problem.
5. Good people go toheaven when they die.

While people are welcome to believe these four points and see them as summing up their creed, we must be clear: They aren’t Christian convictions and not by a long shot.

MTD basically renders God to be an idea that’s only operationalized when one has belief in this God. Such an “idea of God” never requires anything of the adherent. So, if having such a belief causes one to be unhappy or feel guilty about a wrong done, then one merely alters their belief to accommodate their perceived unhappiness. MTD turns God into a water faucet that one can turn on or off depending on one’s feelings at the time. MTD’s focus is on the individual’s personal journey through life, so their moral behavior is also fluid as long as they can rationalize it to be good and as long as it continues to make them happy and helps them feel good about themselves.

The Christian witness, however, is that God is more than an idea who can be reduced to only an object of belief. God exists outside of the material world, beyond our capacity to fully comprehend, and God can’t be controlled by human behavior. God has also, according to Christian witness, chosen to enter this world in the person of Jesus (see Philippians 2:5-11) in order to accomplish two goals: to reveal God’s nature to humans and to redeem those very same humans from sin and death.

MTD’s growth as a popular belief system is hardly surprising in an increasingly secular culture that also needs some sort of sense-making spirituality. Tom Holland, in his masterful work, Dominion, traces human history from the 6^th Century B.C. to the present. He contends that much of Christianity’s moral code has prevailed (e.g. all humans have rights, each person has an inherent worth and dignity, we’re responsible for caring for the less fortunate, etc.) so much so that secular persons now don’t even know the origin of these still relatively new claims in human history. Read ancient history. These claims certainly weren’t present in any society prior to Christianity.

What hasn’t prevailed for many is the other part of the Christian proclamation: the incarnation, crucifixion, & resurrection of Jesus that brings mercy and grace to humanity. So, secular culture has adopted, to some extent, Christian “practice” while rejecting the central contentions of the Christian faith. But there can’t be one without the other. Christian morality is all contingent upon the God who inculcated such practices specifically through the means of Jesus’s incarnation, crucifixion, & resurrection. Otherwise, we’re left to our own devices.

+Scott

The political polarization we’re experiencing right now has little to do with the particular policies each side espouses, rather it has more to do with how we view and understand human agency and responsibility. We normally bifurcate the question this way: Is it all on the individual or are there other forces out there preventing people from their ability to flourish? In other words, whose fault (we love laying blame) is it if someone struggles and then fails to take care of themselves and be responsible for their life?

This goes back to the old nature vs. nurture continuum. Are we born a certain way and that determines our fate or is it the environment in which we’re raised that will be most important in shaping us? Generally speaking, people who see themselves as progressives want to put more onus on people’s environment. It’s the “externals” that hold people back. If we just eliminated the negative isms out there, then people would thrive. Likewise, people who call themselves conservatives tend to focus more on the “internals” of the individual. It’s on the individual to make something of their life. They believe anyone can flourish if they just work hard enough.

Both of these are insufficient explanations. Their respective arguments lay the blame on whatever their default position happens to be without accounting for the complexity of human life. Besides, the extreme form of the “nature” argument leads to racist or sexist assumptions about innate superiority, claiming one race or gender is “naturally” superior to another. Similarly, the “nurture” argument doesn’t adequately account for an individual’s capacity to overcome challenges in life. In its extreme form, it would confine all who had difficult contexts in life to be objects of charity. That ends up objectifying them and can rob them of their God-given dignity as human beings.

As I wrote, neither goes deep enough because neither is willing to acknowledge human limitation. Both assume that if all the things that bind us, however they see them, were removed, then people would flourish. Progressives want to throw off the limits imposed by the isms in society. Conservatives desire to remove all limits to individual choice and achievement. So, they both believe once these limits, as they define them, are removed, then life will be good for everyone. That’s why both are deeply flawed assumptions.

Both sides are naïve and overly utopian because each is assuming something that’s just not true by observing human life. Even if all the “external” isms that bind us were removed, even if government “got out of the way” so the “internal” of each individual could thrive, we’d still have plenty of brokenness and failure to deal with as the human race. The sooner we learn that truth, the sooner we’ll quit the blame game that thrives in our current political culture, which prevents us from seeing our need for compassion and mercy toward others. Life is just plain hard and some of us just can’t make it through very well for myriad reasons. A society more interested in compassion and mercy rather than blaming and scorekeeping would understand that truth. And then we’d account for that truth in our common life. Our politics would focus as much on caring for the weak as it does for rewarding the strong. After all, life is hard.

+Scott

My mother loved me to pieces, as she often said, and I’m still trying to pick up the pieces. – Roy Blount, Jr.

There’s no consensus in our society on what exactly constitutes a family. That’s probably wise. Some would argue it’s limited to one’s blood relatives, but I have cousins I’ve never even met and I often feel much more “familial” with people who I’m not related to by birth. Since WWII our culture has come to define family as only the nuclear family: wife, husband, children. Once it became defined thusly, we soon were told that this nuclear family was under assault by adverse cultural forces. People who touted “family values” sought to alarm us with supposed threats to the nuclear family. That often was code. The alarmists simply didn’t approve of the kind of families being created. The Bible doesn’t help us with many virtuous examples of godly families. Most biblical examples just make us blush by their R-ratedness. For example, King David’s “family values” displayed murder, rape, adultery, and filicide (and he’s considered the greatest King of Israel).

David Brooks, writing in the March 2020 issue of The Atlantic, argues that since family was redefined to be only the nuclear family, it’s been a disaster for our culture. As we jettison the larger, interconnected web of relationships of blood and “adopted” relatives, we lose a vital source of health and well-being in our society. Yes, our families at times exasperate us and some family systems are so unhealthy that escaping them is simply self-preservation, but for most of us, family is that group of people who help us learn patience and compassion while also keeping us grounded in our personal narrative.

In my first parish as a curate, the Rector formed a committee to support me as a new priest. We met monthly so they could encourage me and offer me feedback on how I was doing. After one meeting when we were walking out, one gentleman took me aside and said: “I didn’t want to say this in front of the others, but it’s ‘get’ and not ‘git’. If you don’t pronounce words right, then you won’t go very far in the church.” I thanked him, but I left troubled. I had no idea I talked funny. I later came to realize my accent was part of growing up in the Appalachian part of southern Ohio. And I didn’t want to lose that because it was a reminder from whom I came and their claim on my lives.

Family, in its broadest definition, are simply our neighbors, because they’re the ones most “nigh” to us (nighbors?); those whom Jesus calls us to love as we love ourselves. Often, it’s their very “nighness” that makes it hard to love them. I hope we can recapture some of what Brooks is talking about, revisioning family as that broad, diverse collection of blood and non-blood relatives that have a claim on our love and our lives. That’s what the “Church family” is at its best. Church should be like that 80s sitcom, Cheers, where everyone knows your name and loves you even (especially) when you behave like the back end of a horse. This way of seeing “family” views it as a training ground for such virtues as compassion, endurance, and mercy, virtues we seem to be in short supply these days. Most virtue is gained through not what’s easy, but what’s hard. Being family, however we define it, takes hard work with a lifetime of pieces to pick up.

+Scott

Our diocesan candidates for the priesthood recently completed their General Ordination Exams. It’s a week-long set of questions designed for them to show proficiency in six canonical areas. Back in my day in 1983, the exam was much longer and far harder plus we had to walk six miles uphill backwards in the snow every day just to take them. And if you believe that, then I have prime Okefenokee swampland to sell you. Anyway, this year’s exam helped me recall one exam question I had back then. It was a moral theology question about the state’s right to require motorcyclists to wear helmets. The question got at the tension when we try to honor both individual and social agency as it relates to moral behavior. On one hand, individuals are the prime moral agents. It’s up to them to make the choice to wear a helmet and no state has a right to tell them otherwise. On the other, the state is the moral agent. It realizes that if individuals are seriously injured in a motorcycle accident because they weren’t wearing a helmet, then the state would probably be on the hook for a lifetime of medical bills and personal care for the disabled person. So, whose rights to moral agency should prevail in this discernment? Both have legitimate claims.

Today, for example, drivers over the age of 18 aren’t required to wear seat belts in New Hampshire (State Motto: “Live Free or Die!” – of course) even though all other states require them. Seat belt laws are one of the most successful public health campaigns in U.S. history. They have (as have motorcycle helmet laws) greatly reduced deaths and disabilities saving families from the loss of loved ones and their ability to contribute to the family’s welfare. One person’s right to be uncontrolled by the state is in tension with another’s right not to have to pay (in multiple ways) for a person’s reckless behavior.

In this flu season, a similar public health case could also be made for requiring flu shots. The human and financial costs saved from missed work, hospital stays, even death would be far more than the cost of the shots. So far, the Center for Disease Control estimates that in the U.S. over 10,000 people have died and another 180,000 people have been hospitalized during this flu season (far more than the Coronavirus in China). And what about gun laws? One person’s right to carry a gun could come into conflict with another person’s right not to be killed by that gun’s misuse. And what about those who oppose vaccinating their children, thus potentially exposing their children and other children to deadly diseases? Do those parents have such a right when it could come into conflict with the rights of others?  You see, these are all significant moral dilemmas when we try to honor both individual or social moral agency.

Since we in the U.S. aren’t a people given to deep moral reflection about much of anything, my hunch is most people simply head to their respective corners and defend their position without bothering to see the other side’s point of view. The Christian moral tradition most often leans to the side of what would be best for the well-being of most people, but even that can be sometimes complicated. I’m not suggesting that it’s always obvious which side to honor more. These are the difficult choices we face, which is akin to walking six miles uphill backwards in the snow every day.

+Scott

I believe that each person is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done

• Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy

As we observe human nature, the evidence seems to show we should all have a low anthropology, that is, we shouldn’t assume we’ll behave in a virtuous way all of the time (maybe even most of the time?). And even when we do behave well, the thoughts that go through our heads reveal we don’t always have the purest of thoughts (think of the guy who just cut you off in traffic, bless his heart). While we should hope for virtuous behavior from ourselves and others, indeed strive for it, we should also practice mercy when such virtuous behavior isn’t attained. Kind of like Jesus did, right? What I find most interesting though is how we come to decide who merits such mercy from us and who does not? That question came home for me again listening to the hagiography (mostly) of the great basketball player Kobe Bryant, who along with eight others, including his young teenage daughter, died in a helicopter crash.

In 2003, Mr. Bryant was charged with the sexual assault of a young woman in Colorado. The case never went to trial as the 19-year old woman chose not to testify even though the authorities had a strong case. Mr. Bryant claimed the sex was consensual, but the evidence clearly showed from a hospital examination that the young woman had neck bruises and tears in her vaginal wall. There was also blood on her clothes and Mr. Bryant’s. Later, the young woman filed a civil suit that led to a private settlement with a non-disclosure agreement. Had Mr. Bryant not had the money to pay excellent lawyers, there could’ve been an entirely different outcome. Mr. Bryant’s career afterward was relatively unfazed by the sexual assault. He played in the NBA for another 13 years until 2016. During that time, Mr. Bryant and his wife had four daughters. From all accounts, he grew into a good husband, a doting father, and a revered ambassador for the sport of basketball. He also pursued philanthropic and educational work for children.

So then, which part of his life defines his legacy? At least according to some loud voices online, he can never be forgiven for his sexual assault – he’ll always be known as a man who did that. He’s been canceled and no good he did afterward will alter that particular fact. For others, his legacy will be his basketball prowess, his family life, and his philanthropic work (his repentance?). Many people I listened to chose to ignore the 2003 incident. Still others can remember nothing else but that incident. The voices seem to fall into those two camps, both of which ignore the truth of the other.

Bryan Stevenson reminds us “that each person is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.” This doesn’t mean we forget that “worst thing” or ignore the awful pain it may have caused, but it’s to say that we’re more than that – more complicated than that – more human than that “worst thing.” If our culture were more mature, we’d be able to hold both truths at the same time about Mr. Bryant. But it clearly isn’t mature at all. We seem to have a warped need to paint with a broad brush only one part of a person’s life. May God have mercy on Mr. Bryant. May God have mercy on us all.

+Scott

A dear friend, a trail-blazing palliative care doctor who specialized in caring for dying children, once told me: “My job is to deal with the pain. Modern medicine can now treat most people’s pain, at least make it endurable. Your job (I was his parish priest) is to help people make sense of the suffering. Pain and suffering are two different things. Pain is physical. Suffering is spiritual.” My friend took his own life a few years later. His suffering must have been unbearable, but he never let on how much.

America’s suicide rate, as a percentage of our population, continues to grow, alarmingly so. It’s one factor that has led to life expectancy in the U.S. actually falling for three years in a row. That hasn’t happened since the years of WWI. No developed nation over that time period has seen that happen. It’s happened only in the U.S. Let that sink in for a moment. We’re “Number One” in a way we shouldn’t want to be.

Add to that the rapidly increasing death toll from drug overdoses and alcoholism (and those can reasonably be seen as “suicide by another name”). We have a trifecta of a crisis. Hundreds of thousands of us each year are dying from this crisis and the number of deaths is still rising. If these deaths were attributed to terrorism, then we’d be mobilizing a nation-wide effort to address the crisis. But we’re not, are we?

Too many people, especially those with the power to do something about it, still see those three things as signs of moral weakness and thus label the suffering as those people simply getting their “just deserts.“ Their rationale, one based on Social Darwinism, goes something like this: “Those people just need to stop complaining, get a grip, and take charge of their lives. If they’re unwilling to help themselves, why should we?” But such thinking assumes the fault lies with the individual alone. It doesn’t.

Even if we wish to be unmerciful in our assessment, our own self-interest (enlightened or otherwise) should lead us to prioritize a robust intervention. Our society can’t sustain this trajectory much longer. And any successful intervention will have to understand the nature of the suffering occurring. The data shows us that the primary source of the suffering is a profound despair. Many are experiencing this despair as our economy changes and the prospect for a living wage is out of reach. So, while addressing this has economic ramifications, we should see this as a spiritual crisis of despair. Too many people have lost hope for their future. Many in the working class today, according to the data, suffer from broken families caused by suicide, alcoholism, and drug addiction. People are literally dying from despair.

Our economy for more than 200 years has helped us become the most prosperous country in human history. But now, that very same economy is devastating many working-class families. While the crisis has spiritual consequences, the solution isn’t just more politicians offering their prayers (although prayer is always needed). The solution requires us to jettison Social Darwinism as the lens we use to understand this crisis. Compassion and mercy will actually be the most effective social strategy going forward.

+Scott

In our baptisms, we’re sent out to proclaim the Gospel by word and deed. That means we’re evangelists. But how do we evangelize in today’s culture in a way that follows the model of Jesus while also humbly recognizing our own failings, sinners that we are?  Otherwise, our arrogance and a “holier-than-thou” attitude will be front and center rather than our trust and faith in the grace of God in Jesus.

Well, first, in a diverse social and religious landscape, we can remain true to our calling while also staying open to other cultural voices. We can root ourselves in Jesus while not disregarding what we might learn from others. We don’t hold a monopoly on truth. We worship and follow the One who is “the way, the truth, and the life,” but we ourselves aren’t even remotely that. Vaclav Havel, the former President of the Czech Republic, noted nearly thirty years ago that the biggest challenge facing western culture was to remember that we aren’t God. But our culture has become increasingly narcissistic and self-focused, so it’s hard for us not to be affected by this. So, we must remain true to who we are and the One we follow while also remaining humble in our relationships with those who believe differently than we do. No easy task.

Second, as we evangelize, we should be careful how we share the Good News in this polyreligious and spiritualized culture. Many who claim no religious affiliation these days still describe themselves as “spiritual.”  They may not see the need to be part of a church or a religious tradition, but they do recognize a spiritual core to their lives. These people are primarily under 40 years old and we’ve not done a good job of sharing the Gospel with them. I think we’re well suited to invite and welcome such people in our church. We’re a tradition with both breadth and depth. We need to be clear about who we are and what our mission is, while remaining open to the new and the challenging.

And third, as we invite people into a relationship with God through Christ, we should do so in a way that transcends the culture wars. These wars are fought over the issue of who has the correct belief on a given topic. And its logic goes like this: If I can convince you I have the correct belief, then whether I act on that belief is unimportant. Whatever I do or not do has to be correct because I have the correct belief. This is a logical result of 300+ years of Enlightenment thinking that more recently has been basted in post-modernism. It holds that what’s most important is what we think. I’m sure that some scientist who is an ape expert will one day teach them to communicate completely in human language. And soon after that some well-meaning person will teach them to how to communicate: “Jesus Christ is my Savior.” But what will that prove? A Jesus-modeled evangelism will get us out of our heads. Spouting propositions about Jesus means nothing if there aren’t also corresponding practices that go with such propositions, practices such as humility, hospitality, forgiveness, and compassion.

My hunch is that people outside the church are longing to belong to a community of people that engages intentionally, faithfully, and humbly in these practices. In other words, people need to see our faith, not just hear us go on about it.

+Scott

When you come to the fork in the road, take it. – Yogi Berra

This well-known “Yogi-ism” at first blush might seem to be just another of his famous malapropisms, like “it’s déjà vu all over again.” But like with a lot of things, if we take the time to learn and maybe to suspend judgment, we might arrive at a different conclusion. You see, Mr. Berra lived in a large house on a hill in suburban New Jersey.  The house’s driveway wound up the hill and at the top, it forked. But the fork was actually a circle and both directions led to the same end – the house’s front door. So, when Mr. Berra told guests, “when you come to the fork in the road, take it” he was accurately telling them how to get to his front door. What might have seemed at first misleading is actually a clear direction.

One of the most vexing moral issues in America today is access to quality, affordable health care. Morally speaking, such health care is a human right. Receiving quality health care shouldn’t be contingent on someone’s bank balance. Now we can debate the best way to accomplish this, but quality health care is a human right, at least for those of us who follow Jesus. Right now, over 36 million of our fellow citizens either don’t have any health care insurance or they live in a part of the country where access to quality care is poor. This problem in Georgia is rapidly growing as we see rural, county hospitals closing. When people do get to a doctor and need medicine, millions don’t have the funds to pay for these medications. And yet, even for those who can afford to pay or who have insurance, our health care costs are still far higher than other developed countries. Princeton University economists Anne Case & Angus Deaton determined we pay $8,000/person/year more than Switzerland, the next most expensive, but the Swiss have better health outcomes and longer life expectancy. As Ms. Case said: “We can brag we have the most expensive health care. We can also now brag that it delivers the worst health of any rich country.”

Added to this access and affordability problem, many people are now swimming in medical debt. Medical debt destroys people’s financial stability, many of whom are the most vulnerable: the sick, the elderly, the poor, and disabled veterans. It also effects the middle class, driving many families into poverty. Medical debt isn’t the result of bad decisions. People have to incur it in order to pay for their needed health care.

Smarter people than I must figure out how to solve this, but we’ve come to the fork in the road of access to quality, affordable health care. We just need to take it by learning what it means to be a civilized, compassionate society. Until we solve the accessibility and affordability problem, we can do something now to help relieve people of their debt burden. A non-profit group called RIP Medical Debt ripmedicaldebt.org helps donors, like churches, wipe away the burdensome debt for many people by buying up that debt for pennies on the dollar. They’ve done so to the tune of over $1 Billion so far. I invite the parishes of the Diocese to do this as part of their Lenten discipline this year. After all, God’s forgiveness of our debt is at the heart of Lent.

+Scott