I Don't Like This Current World - Bravester
“Five years after the pandemic began, Donald Trump is president again, but he’s presiding over a very different country now. America is a harsher place, more self-interested and nakedly transactional. We barely trust one another and are less sure that we owe our fellow Americans anything — let alone the rest of the world.” –David Wallace-Wells, NY Times, March 4, 2025
How can we live bravely in this world?
“We have lived through history. We are living through history? At what point do we become a post-pandemic world? At this point, I do not know. I wonder if we ever will be post-pandemic.” I wrote those words in 2022 here, Healing Our Souls on the Other Side of the Pandemic. Here we are at the 5-year anniversary mark and there is still an underlying rage in all of us.
I don’t know if I would call David Wallace-Wells a prophet. I’m not that familiar with him or his writing. But his essay did touch the ache in my soul that I don’t like this current world we are living in. This is my confession.
Everything is harsher. We don’t trust our institutions (even though we need them). Everything is so transactional.
How can we live bravely in this world to not make America great again (a false belief system) but to live bravely like Jesus in this culture of heartbreak?
We’ve all been changed because of this pandemic. As much as we are trying to get back to normal (whatever that is), the truth is something has been jarred deep in our souls and we are creating a new normal. There is a rage just beneath our surfaces that we have not fully dealt with yet.
We can make some brave decisions to make it better.
Some of David Wallace-Wells good points are political opinions, and sensible. I don’t want to comment on those because I also am tired of the confusion of politics these days. I too am looking for a political leader who is not using fear to control the masses. Living through the Covid pandemic introduced us to real fear which has been manipulated for selfish gains. This is part of why I don’t like this current world we are living in.
Here are some of David Wallace-Wells insights that I chose for us to ponder and to find our way through, bravely.
It turned us into hyperindividualists.
(Photo credit: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/social-distancing-circles-painted-on-grass-toronto-mayor-1.5584402)
What does this picture do to your soul? Does it trigger an ache you’ve been trying to not remember?
I’ve written plenty about the documented loneliness epidemic. I’ve written about how people are a part of our spiritual formation. We need this gift of people.
But to trust people…
It is easier to live in our covid circles, even five years later. An economy has been created to keep us in our covid circles too. Think DoorDash, Instacart, and livestream church.
The brave decisions then becomes choosing to invite people back into your life. Choosing to join a group, any group. Choosing to leave your home and meet with people.
(Read this about the increase of friends canceling plans with friends at the last moments. You feel this, don’t you?)
I feel the risk in this decision. That is why it is a brave one. May the ache in your soul propel you to take the risk.
It inaugurated a new age of social Darwinism.
The pandemic helped us “other” people by strength and weakness. Not just by race or income levels, but by surviving and how you survived and the “other” did not.
To quote David Wallace-Wells: “Survival became a measure of merit. Pandemic history is written by the survivors, after all, but what does it tell us about the dead?” We now other those who followed the mandates. We other those who died as being less healthy, too old, too obese. …This was all a coping mechanism, but it turned Covid into a kind of morality tale in which your fate was ultimately your responsibility. Or, perhaps, your fault.”
This is so beneath the surface in your soul, now exposed.
We humans have a long history of othering the other, mostly due to scarcity and fear. As Christians, because Jesus called this out time and time again, we have to be better.
Read also: I Choose to See You Not as a Monster
It may have halted the years long decline of Christianity in America.
Some good news? People are more spiritually curious. Encountering death does do that. People are looking for the enchanted. Science wasn’t the end all to protect us.
As a 40+ year pastor I was so hoping churches would take the opportunity to change, because the pandemic gave them space to slow down and consider change. To my great sadness, churches didn’t change. The doors opened again and we went back to normal because we had mortgages to pay. Too many churches didn’t even bother to paint the interiors when the building was empty and there was time to do it. (I began my church in 2020 trying to do something differently. I made that brave decision and I like what we are building.)
Because of this pandemic disruption, I won’t be surprised if we see some sort of spiritual revival (hallelujah!) from souls seeking but it will not be happening in churches.
It turned parts of our economy into a casino.
I’ll just leave this thought whole from David Wallace-Wells. I had never thought of it before but now I can’t unthink it.
“Federal estimates suggest that more than $200 billion in Covid relief loans and grants went to fraudulent actors — almost one out of every five dollars spent by the program. It wasn’t hard to believe that your neighbors were cheating or that your job, on that front, was to keep up with the Joneses.
“The easiest way to spend stimulus checks, from home, was to dump the money into our computers. To many, Covid seemed to reveal that an intrepid country had been taken over by overcautious worry-warts — and that rebellion meant embracing risk. So we spent our money on meme stocks and SPACs, NFTs and crypto and smartphone gambling. From behind a laptop or through an iPhone, the economy came to look even more like a slot machine.”
Are you also disturbed at the increase of gambling in our lives today? Are you also disturbed that watching sports on TV has grown from watching to fantasy sports to gambling on sports. So to see hard-earned money (right?!) be spent like a casino whose business plan is to rob you of your money feels wrong. Our souls declare this as wrong.
It scarred children.
Youth pastor me knows this. Teachers know this. Parents know this. We just don’t know the full aspects of this yet. And this worries us.
We must be eyes-open, depending on the Holy Spirit to help us lead and heal the damage we aren’t even sure we know how to name yet. We will be learning as we go. Depending on the Holy Spirit to help heal children and teens is a lot of brave decisions. It is easier to trust what we’ve done in the past. But the past has been abruptly changed.
Perhaps the biggest shock was realizing we still live in history — and at the mercy of biology.
I’m adding we are also at the mercy of a Savior who isn’t us.
We thought with our smartphones and self-love decisions that we were in control of our own worlds. Until something like biology stopped our worlds. We are still susceptible to contagion, mass death and pandemic hysteria of various kinds—something our unlimited selves never considered before. We now are learning AI to further control our lives. But AI also can’t protect us from something like this happening again.
Hence the longing for enchantment–for those who bravely search their souls–wondering if there is more to believe in. There is. His name is Jesus and he saves you from what you can control and what you can’t control so you have placement and an identity that is secure in this insecure world. You begin as enough and then mature into who you already are. No contagion can take that away. You get to figure out this uncertain life that has limitations with a Savior who knows your name and counts your tears.
To quote David Wallace-Wells one last time:
“Today, when we retell the story of those years, we often diminish the actual disease, and in its place, everything else looms much larger: school closures, mask mandates, vaccine guidance. But at first the horizon was dominated by fear.”
