Evangelical christians have been putting that bumper sticker on thier cars for years now. WWJD, What Would Jesus Do? As if they have exclusive access to the motivations and ethics that the semi-mythical founder of their religion would have espoused in any particular situation.
I sincerely doubt that they have that access; and the reason I doubt that they have that access is that so many of their leaders, including Donald Trump himself, clearly don’t know what Jesus would have done in any given situation.
Take the current pandemic. The evangelicals that make up the entirety of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University have decided that they will ignore medical advice on the subject of the pandemic and return to business as usual. President Trump wants to curtail social distancing and declare that the United States is open for business right at the point where we might be getting an idea of just how big the problem we are facing is. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said,
No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that America loves for its children and grandchildren?’ And if that is the exchange, I’m all in.
Those of us who are 70 plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
No one aside from Dan Patrick, Glenn Beck, and assorted other evangelical leaders has suggested that the trade-off is between saving the lives of seniors in the community, and giving up life in the United States as we have known it. Nor is it the elderly alone that will die in this pandemic, have died in this pandemic.
Anyone with immune deficiencies. Anyone with weak lungs. Anyone with hypertension. Anyone with none of the above, young and spry and outwardly healthy to all appearances, can fall victim to this virus and die. If you believe otherwise, you are simply whistling past the graveyard.
Evangelicals who seek to preserve their ideas of capitalism at any human cost prove only that capitalism is part of their religion. This is the prosperity gospel raising its ugly head and letting us know that it holds the reins in the evangelical world. In prosperity theology, true christians make money because that is god’s reward to them for doing god’s work. It would take a televangelist to believe wholeheartedly that getting people to give you money for nothing more than saying words that your audience wants to hear is doing god’s work.
Maybe we should try explaining to these folks that Jesus was a humanist, perhaps the first humanist. Washing the feet of his followers? Feeding the multitude? Curing the sick and the lame? What? The miracles don’t hold water with you? They don’t for me either, but how about we just take Jesus at his own word on this subject?
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus
Jesus would never start the trolley (trolley problem) much less have to decide when to stop it. The prosperity gospel is bullshit, to put it bluntly. If you think that being a capitalist is making your closer to god, then you are the same kind of person that believed that slavery was approved of by god because it is in the bible. You are going to seek wealth anyway, better to say god approves of it than to be seen as one of the merchants and money changers that Jesus drove out of the temple.
If you are suggesting we ignore the warnings of people we pay to keep us healthy. If you are one of those people that thinks we can’t afford to let the markets stop for a month to make sure we have a handle on this crisis. If you are willing to let the poor, the sick and the elderly die simply because we can’t afford to take care of them; then you are exactly the kind of christian that helped make me the atheist that I am today. I will have nothing to do with hypocrites like you if I have anything to say about it.
Twitter. Featured image is from Wikipedia: Maundy Thursday, a painting of Altar of Siena Cathedral
As I ran down riverside park in the 70-degree weather, I smiled at people walking their dogs, pushing baby strollers and also running. You would never know that a virus was overtaking New York City, unless you worked in the hospital.
Day and night ambulance sirens alarm through the streets. Sirens give me PTSD. It seems like I am the only one that notices though. I went to get groceries at Foodtown but there were so many people in the store that I walked out. I have a greater chance of getting coronavirus in the store than in the hospital. Other stores have taken a more serious approach and limited the number of people in the store, thereby reducing the spread of disease.
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The statistics are grossly under reported. Deaths are much higher – I tried to report two deaths yesterday and was on the phone for a half an hour before I grew frustrated and hung up the phone. I have to treat patients, I can’t sit on the phone for that long. Later I had one of the physician assistants call and she was on hold for an hour and still could not report a death.
Were these deaths counted?
Are prehospital deaths counted?
Are prehospital deaths being swabbed for the coronavirus?I’ve been swabbing all cardiac arrests and deaths. And guess what? They are ALL positive for the coronavirus.
archive.org/facebook.com/cleavon.gilman
Postscript
A year later and they are still at it. Unhappy that the solution to the pandemic they don’t believe in, a product of the science that they reject, can’t be limited to the good (wealthy) Christianists, United States evangelicals now want to keep all the vaccines, that they won’t admit to taking themselves, just for themselves, and not pass them out to the rest of humanity. Jesus would also tell you we need to vaccinate everyone, just like Bernie wants to do: