“We’re living in the branch of history it created”

Five years ago today, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

Just reading that sentence brings back horrible memories for me, as I’m sure it does for you. Images of portable morgues, patients dying alone in isolation wards, people masking out of fear of everyone they meet. It seemed nearly everything was shut down, from restaurants and businesses to schools and churches. No one knew when a vaccine would arrive, assuming one could be developed.

More than seven million people are confirmed to have died from the virus, though some estimates suggest the pandemic has actually caused between nineteen and thirty-six million deaths worldwide.

But these numbers, as horrific as they are, don’t begin to tell the whole story.

 “It shattered our cities and disordered society”

According to New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells, we’re living in the “branch of history” the pandemic created, one whose “contours are only now coming into view.” He writes: “We tell ourselves we’ve moved on and hardly talk about the disease or all the people who died or the way the trauma and tumult have transformed us. But Covid changed everything around us.”

Among the changes he lists, I found these especially relevant for today’s article:

• “It turned us into hyperindividualists” in response to a tragedy so unthinkable and massive, we learned to process it through the lens of personal experience—and still do.
• “It inaugurated a new age of social Darwinism” as the survivors credit themselves and blame others for the crisis.
• “It broke our faith in public health” as debates erupted (and continue) over vaccines, masking, and the credibility of health officials.
• “It shattered our cities and disordered society”—homicides jumped nearly 30 percent in just a single year, homelessness surged, and drinking problems escalated, as did drug overdoses and traffic accident deaths. Many of these effects were temporary, but the politics of crime and disorder persist.

Wallace-Wells concludes: “Perhaps the biggest shock was realizing we still live in history—and at the mercy of biology.” Foreign Policy agrees, warning that “the status quo won’t save us from the next pandemic” and urging immediate steps to construct a global system for responding more effectively to future pandemic threats.

Saying more prayers is not the answer

While political leaders and public health officials will be on the front lines of the next pandemic, you and I are on the front lines of culture now. There is only one answer to our hyperindividualism, social Darwinism, broken faith in leaders, and shattered and disordered society.

It is not a revival of religion, though Wallace-Wells notes that the pandemic “may have halted the years-long decline of Christianity in America.” The cultural Christianity that passes for religion in our secularized society is no match for biology and the disasters it produces in our fallen world.

You may be surprised to hear me say this, but being more religious—going to more church services, reading more Bible texts, and saying more prayers—is not the answer in itself. Nor will the anodyne and customized “spirituality” of our day meet the moment.

Instead, we need what humans have always needed.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Luke 24 tells us that a group of women went to Jesus’ tomb “on the first day of the week,” where they were shocked to find it empty (vv. 1–3). Then two angels met them, asking: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (v. 5).

This is such a powerful question still today.

We “seek the living among the dead” whenever we treat Jesus as anything or anyone other than our living Lord. When he is an idea, a theology, a model, or a movement, he is as dead as if he were Buddha or Muhammad. When we seek and encounter him as a living person, only then do we experience the strength, wisdom, and peace he alone can give us amid the crises we face.

The problem is that it’s hard in our materialistic culture to seek that which must be known through faith rather than through experience. We understand cemeteries, not resurrections. We’re comfortable with theology, less with Theo.

But when we meet the living Lord for ourselves, as two men did later that first Easter Sunday, we hear his word to us (v. 27). We experience his presence in prayer and worship (v. 30). Then our eyes are “opened” and our “hearts burn within us” (vv. 31–32). And we are compelled to tell others what we have experienced (vv. 33–35), so they can experience him as well (vv. 36–49).

And a religion about Jesus becomes a transforming relationship with him.

God is “able to make all grace abound to you”

This is a day to remember the millions who died from the pandemic and the multiplied millions who still grieve their loss. It is a day to pray for our leaders and public health officials in the assumption that more pandemics are in our future.

And it is a day to seek a deeper, more intimate relationship with the living Lord Jesus than we have ever known. Why?

• He is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).
• He is “able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
• He is “able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18).
• He is “able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).
• He is “able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24).

In short, as Paul testified, “he is able” (2 Timothy 1:12).

Where would you say you are on your faith journey with him today?

NOTE: I frequently write articles for our website on breaking news and current events. I invite you to visit our website daily for more content from me and our writing team.

Quote for today:

“How wonderful to know that Christianity is more than a padded pew or a dim cathedral, but that it is a real, living, daily experience which goes on from grace to grace.” —Jim Elliot

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Denison Forum

How to live above the partisan noise of our day

Some news is tragic no matter your politics, such as Friday’s announcement that Gene Hackman died from heart disease and Alzheimer’s a week after his wife died of a respiratory illness linked to rodents. But some news make headlines precisely because of politics, such as the comments of MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow following President Trump’s speech to Congress last week. Both focused on DJ Daniel, a thirteen-year-old brain cancer survivor who has always dreamed of being a police officer. During the speech, the president said to him, “I am asking our new Secret Service director, Sean Curran, to officially make you an agent of the United States Secret Service.”

After the speech, Wallace said, “I hope he has a long life as a law enforcement officer,” but added that she hopes he “never has to defend the United States Capitol against Donald Trump’s supporters.” Maddow called Daniel’s inclusion in Mr. Trump’s speech “disgusting,” accusing the president of making a “spectacle” of the boy’s illness while claiming that DOGE cuts have “cut off funding for ongoing research into pediatric cancer.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called their responses “sad and frankly pathetic.” And DJ’s father said Maddow “needs to shut her mouth if she has nothing nice to say.” He added, “This lady didn’t even serve time in the military. I was on the USS Kitty Hawk. She does not need to put her bad energy on us.”

Why we need “two strong and healthy parties”

The first time I traveled in Europe, I was surprised to discover the monolithic nature of the various cultures I experienced. Most of these countries have a history dating back millennia. Over the centuries, many have self-selected into particular demographics, languages, and societies.

When people came from these various countries to the New World, however, they created a nation of colonies that became states, many with widely different cultures. The Founders’ solution was to make a governmental system that recognized and gave agency to these various constituents.

As Yuval Levin shows in his brilliant book, American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again, the checks and balances built into our governance are a feature, not a bug. Our leaders are elected by districts and regions with very specific social features. Then they work together to represent these constituencies while serving the common good. Our president is the only leader elected by the entire nation; everyone else represents America’s broad diversity in hopes of fulfilling our national motto, E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one.”

As a result, partisan agendas and political parties that reflect and advance them are a necessary part of our democracy. As Peggy Noonan writes in her latest Wall Street Journal column, “two strong and healthy parties vying for popular support is good for the country.”

Who was “the most trusted man in America”?

While our governance was intended to represent the spectrum of subjective partisan politics, the media is a different story. The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of the press. But no one elects the press, nor are they paid a government salary for their service. As a result, media is a business that must make money, typically through subscribers and advertisers.

For much of my lifetime, they did so by being objective. People watched Walter Cronkite each evening because he was widely considered “the most trusted man in America.” No one knew what partisan views he espoused personally. Media platforms made money by appealing to the broadest possible audiences, primarily through their objectivity. Newspapers had opinion sections, of course, and were known in these sections for partisan alignments, but the rest of the paper was thought to be objective reporting.

Then came cable news, disrupting the “big three” networks by offering a plethora of competitors, and social media, disrupting the “legacy” news organizations in the same way. Competition for “eyeballs and clicks” grew fierce. As analytical data enabled platforms to target specific demographics, media began focusing on particular partisan audiences. Companies began advertising on platforms targeting the audiences they felt were most likely to buy or consume their products.

As a result, Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow know precisely the political views of their constituents and spoke to them after the president’s address. Those who disagree with these views will obviously disagree with their comments. Those who agree with these views will applaud their responses.

The Founders relied on a commitment to objective truth and consensual biblical morality to unify the disparate factions of the nation. Now that our “post-truth,” post-Christian culture has abandoned both, it is hard to see a path forward for our secularized society short of a unifying national crisis.

The good news is that there is a way to live above partisan noise and conflict available to any who will choose it.

“It’s not about success and failure”

The Westminster Shorter Catechism states, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

The former leads to the latter.

Because we are “created for [his] glory” (Isaiah 43:7), we are to “glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20) and in all we do: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

This is not because God is a divine egotist. Rather, when we seek to honor and revere God, we humble ourselves as creatures before our Creator. We serve a cause greater than our fallen “will to power” and partisan agendas. And the closer we get to him, the closer we draw to each other.

In this way, when our “chief end is to glorify God,” we “enjoy him forever”—in this world and the next.

Pastor and author Mark Batterson wrote:

“It’s not about success and failure. It’s not about good days and bad days. It’s not about wealth or poverty. It’s not about health or sickness. It’s not even about life or death. It’s about glorifying God in whatever circumstance you find yourself in.”

Do you agree?

Quote for the day:

“We must learn that the glory of God is to be preferred before all other things.” —Ezekiel Hopkins (1633–1690)

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Denison Forum

Why trust is the quality we can least afford to lose

News broke Thursday morning that President Trump was planning to sign an executive order instructing newly appointed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling the Department of Education. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt quickly wrote on X that such an order would not be signed on Thursday, though it’s perhaps telling that she did not refute the idea that such an order could come soon.

As of this morning, that order has still not been signed, though the situation could change quickly. And while the timing is still uncertain, Trump seemed to indicate that it won’t be long: “I want to just do it . . . I mean, we’re starting the process. We’re trying to get the schools back into the states.”

But why is dismantling the department such a high priority for the President? And what would it look like if he was able to succeed in doing so?

Before we can answer those questions, we first need to understand a bit more about what the Department of Education actually does.

What does the Department of Education do?

Congress created the Department of Education in 1979 to consolidate the various education programs that had previously been spread among different agencies. Ronald Reagan campaigned on dismantling it the following year, and seeing the department dissolved back into its disparate elements has been a goal for many Republicans ever since.

But while the department is responsible for a variety of education-related services, it doesn’t have nearly as much of an impact on high school and below as you might think. The states still set the curriculum and local school boards have far more influence over what is taught and how schools are run than the federal government.

Moreover, the states pay for roughly 90 percent of public education, with the remainder coming from the federal level. Still, that 10 percent is often enough for the federal government to wield a good bit of influence over what is taught, as evidenced by both the push for LGBTQ rights under Biden and warnings against the “indoctrination” of children under Trump.

The bulk of the Department’s energy and resources, however, is aimed at programs intended to support low-income children or those with disabilities, as well as grants and student loans for those continuing their education beyond high school. Were Trump to be successful, those responsibilities would return to other areas within the government.

Given that completely dissolving the Department of Education would require sixty votes in the Senate—Republicans currently have a 53-seat majority—it’s unlikely that the President will be able to accomplish his goal. And McMahon acknowledged as much in her confirmation hearings. Instead, the most likely outcome is that anything that can be jettisoned or reassigned will be, with the remainder forming a shell of what the department is today.

Would such a shift solve the problem? More than 60 percent of Americans seem dubious, though the latest polling also shows that both confidence in public schools and satisfaction with the quality of education they provide are not trending in the right direction.

Change of some sort is clearly needed, and it’s not hard to see why.

When trust is lost

In a recent article for Law & Liberty, Frederick M. Hess analyzed the loss of trust that many parents still harbor against the public education system in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Early on, when so much was still unknown about the virus, closing schools seemed like a necessary and correct precaution. As Hess points out, though, “By summer 2020, it was increasingly clear that kids weren’t at risk and weren’t major sources of spread.”

At that point, it made sense for schools to open back up to in-person learning, and many did while taking precautions like requiring masks, social distancing, and other steps that were—at that time—considered helpful to prevent the spread of the virus.

However, many not only remained closed but were heavily critical of any suggestions they should do otherwise. Their resolute rejection of calls to return to the classroom, coupled with clear evidence that the closures were “having devastating effects on youth learning, well-being, and mental health,” eroded much of the confidence parents used to have in the institutions entrusted with their children.

The fact that teachers were not considered “essential workers” in the same vein as doctors, sanitation workers, and grocery store clerks further inclined many to question the significance of their role.

To be clear, that assessment is not accurate for most teachers, who are routinely underpaid while devoting long hours and their last shreds of sanity to foster an environment in which children can learn and grow. And it seems like most parents still trust the individual teachers responsible for instructing their kids.

However, public trust in the teachers’ unions and the larger apparatus that enabled so many Covid-era policies to endure beyond the point of necessity in many parts of the country has not returned. And there’s an important lesson in that reality for each of us today.

The first step to rebuilding trust

For the most part, people understand that we’re not perfect. All of us make mistakes, and what matters most is what we do after. Will we try to explain away our errors, or even double down on the notion that we’ve been right all along? Or will we own up to them, ask forgiveness, and try to make things right going forward?

Having the humility to admit when we’re wrong is the first step toward rebuilding trust, and that’s just as true for you and me as it is for presidents, union leaders, and everyone in between.

Fortunately, today is likely to bring each of us the chance to practice such humility in the face of our mistakes. The question then becomes, how quickly will you take advantage of that opportunity? Will you respond in arrogance and defiance or humbly admit your mistake and ask for forgiveness?

Which path you choose is likely to have a profound impact on the degree to which others feel like they can trust you in the future. And, considering the impact of our witness is based largely on the degree to which people find us trustworthy, learning to face our mistakes well should be among our highest priorities.

I don’t know what will ultimately happen to the Department of Education, but I suspect its fate would be different—or at least the path to its dismantling more difficult to tread—if public trust in its institutions and those in charge of them were higher. And while their response to the pandemic was not the only reason why that trust has waned, it certainly had a role to play for many parents and citizens.

Will the same be true in your life? Will you move forward as if your sins and mistakes never happened, or will you own them and ask for forgiveness?

Only one of those answers can position you to experience the fullness of God’s loving mercy and help others to do the same.

Which will you choose today?

Quote of the day:

“Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil’s reach as humility.” —Jonathan Edwards

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Denison Forum