There was a moment. It was at the beginning of 2020. I was doing my youtube channel at the time, so I was fortunate to record some of the conversations that went on. My camera was rattling, as my hack equipment failed me, but I had to catch this remarkable moment, for me, for you, for sanity. I’m glad I did. In this video, among other things, I captured Governor Murphy saying something prescient, “Something has changed that is never going back.”
Unfortunately, he was right. But I was one of the few persons, I suspect, who was quite okay with that. No, I wasn’t okay with the pandemic. No one was. People were getting sick and dying. But life was never normal for me anyway. Now, everyone else was on the same page. We were living together in a strange world that we could not adequately define. In my little Uber car, we tried together to define it, to understand it, or just express our amazement, “What in the world is going on?” Or, “This is crazy!” We just shook our heads in co-amazement. We mused over the way everyone emptied the shelves of toilet paper. We all learned to use Zoom for our social activities. We enjoyed more time with our pets. We made the most of it. We built gardens and learned to cook. So many of us seemed to make the abnormal normal, somehow.
But ab-normalcy persisted. Churches became places where attendance dwindled. The church either reinvented itself, or failed. I left the church I had been attending, finding it woefully inadequate for my needs. But more than this, with so much time for prayer and reflection, I was able to see, this church never really was a good fit for me. As the world changed so drastically, I was apt to follow. I let it transform me. After all, ab-normalcy has always been my friend. I was relieved as the rest of the world finally began to catch up. I assume I was one of the very few who found myself comfortably in place when our world changed. Perhaps I was “born for such a time as this,” as per Esther 4:14.
Some of us have gotten into our Bibles more since the world shifted. There we find prophecies that fit what we are going through and adequately make sense of it all. It seems that the line is getting much more distinct between those who will adapt to God’s ways in the “new normal” and those who will fail. I am taught in the Scriptures not to judge (Romans 2:1) so I leave this to God. But I can see evil in our world as it has become much more distinctive. Evil is worse than ever, and I am caught off guard, as I guess we all probably are.
I play a game with myself where I think of people one by one and wonder what they think of what Putin is doing to the Ukraine. We all are following the daily news like a hawk. Or else, like my mother, we are backing off as we just cannot face it. I think of people I have known, and famous people. What does Joel Osteen make of this? Pastor Rich? Pastor Chris? Musical artists like Michael Card, Stephen Curtis Chapman? What does Rob Frazier and his wife, who are my Facebook friends, think? Shane and Anna? Michael and Amber? What is Virgil thinking? What about Adam? Or Sarah and David? What are they thinking? Old professors of mine? Old friends? The list goes on.
I had known all these people during normal times. How are their minds processing the fact that a world dictator is now attacking innocent people, blowing up maternity wards, killing innocent children, taking over nuclear power plants, as the commentators warn, “It’s only going to get worse?”
Normal was stolen from us over night. We will never have normal again. Many have gone deep into conspiracies which I would explain with a scripture from the book of 2 Timothy, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables (II Timothy 4:3,4)
There is a lot of teaching these days among church leaders which is plainly not Biblical. The trick is, one has to know the Bible in order to detect such error, and frankly cannot be a follower of the Bible and agree to these teachings. One really good example involves an AM “Christian” radio station right here in the New York area. They are clearly not loving in their assessment of what is going on. If you know the Bible, you will see this right away, just as I do. In short, they are not loving, nor compassionate in their approach, and there are tons of Scriptures in the New Testament that tell us to love our neighbor, and even our enemies. Let me include some of my favorites here for you. One does not have to go far into the New Testament to understand the love of God. But the Old Testament is also rich with proclamations of God’s great love and mercy toward his creation (Psalm 139, Matthew Ch. 5, I Corinthians Ch. 13, practically the whole book of I John, Romans Chapter 8, and many more).
The reason I am bringing this up today is that the line I see being drawn in the spirit, is more and more clearly separating hatred from love. When the Taliban was somehow permitted to take over Afghanistan last August, Putin got the clear message that he would not be restricted from doing the same to the Ukraine. As upsetting as the situation in Afghanistan was, the situation in the Ukraine is much worse than anything any of us has ever seen. And there is a deflation in the air which is much worse than how most of us seemed to process the pandemic. It is now feared that China will do the same with Taiwan. This is something I’ve yet to look into.
In my own life, things are not bad, except that I cannot get away from what is happening in the Ukraine, especially as cyber-warfare, and even bio-warfare is feared, and all the possibilities stemming from this. However, the fact that I am training to be a chaplain seems to be setting me up for anything which may happen. And if I keep my eyes on heaven (Colossians 3:1-3), everything actually makes a lot of sense. We are in the end times, no one denies that.
To those following an evil and inconsiderate mindset, the bar has been raised. Evil is more evil now. This is indeed very scary. We all know on the larger stage something big could happen at any moment. But the way we interact with one another is also in jeopardy. Some will conceive that since a “great” leader is acting in such a way, a door is open for them to also act with such callous disregard.
I didn’t want to say this, but I think I should. The kind of evil we are seeing now in Putin causes me to think that perhaps this pandemic, which surprisingly seems to be over now, could have been intentional. If so, the American leaders know and, respectably, have not let us in on it. If I am correct, and this is the case, I’m glad they are protecting us. I don’t think I could even handle knowing the pandemic was intentionally inflicted as an act of war.
My internship as a chaplain has revealed to me I can handle some surprising things. As long as there is hope and possibility, even in times of death, there is wonder to be embraced. But pointless, cruel, intentional death is on a whole different level.
There is one more observation I would like to make on the topic of normalcy. Now that the world has changed, seemingly in one day early in 2020, almost exactly 2 years ago, the stage is now set for anything to occur. It does not seem like anything would be out of place now that we have seen so much. Therefore, the coming of the Lord will somehow make sense. Before it seemed like a strange thing that could never happen. But anything could happen now. The world is not normal anymore. Even dead people rising up out of the graves to meet the Lord in the air, as the Bible says they will (I Thessalonians 4:13), somehow does not seem out of the realm of possibility.
I do not miss normal. I want the world to look more like the Bible. And only the Bible can truly aid us to make sense of everything now. A great Bible scholar I used to follow name Jack Van Impe, who ironically passed at the beginning of 2020, frequently informed his viewers of what to expect.
Of all things, I remember most him talking about how in the end of times China and Russia will begin to work together. The fact that this is beginning to happen would be a frightening occurrence otherwise. Indeed, the daily news has become so frightful it has come to light that only the Bible truly brings comfort. There are those, even in the Ukraine today, after their town was bombed, given to denial and living life as usual. This sort of denial of the new reality does seem to work to an extent. But the truth is that only faith in God will bring true peace to any soul willing to see things for what, and how, they really are.
Where is God in All of This? 