Old Virus – New Threat
“Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer…”
Romans 12. 12
The virus in simple terms functions by consuming it’s host for it’s own benefit. Essentially coopting its benefactor, it overwhelms a healthy system with out of control reproduction. If it’s not interdicted, it overcomes the bodies defenses, leading to organ failure and death.
A media becomes viral when sensationalism, loaded questions and conjecture are substituted for facts. For a free society to survive, media must be a source of critical information, factually reporting events and uncovering the relevant issues from which informed and constructive decisions are made. When real information is overwhelmed by opinion and propaganda, it becomes viral and deadly.
The media fueled COVID-19 hysteria, has the same effect on the public as a drowning victim climbing desperately onto their rescuer; threatening to drag both the economy and the public down together, making rescue impossible.
Governed by ulterior motives, some secular media has demonstrated a willingness to exploit any event for their own purposes. True to form, they have latched on to COVID-19. Fanned by these media charlatans and political partisans, COVID-19 has morphed into an unholy alliance with a life of its own. The result is an existential threat to our economy and a public firestorm of fear and disabling panic.
Christians stand in the gap between hysteria and fact; rejecting the hyperbole designed to inflame human passion for malignant purposes. Wholistic solutions, that work for the long term, must take into account the economic realities of strategies to contain this outbreak. This has been painfully absent in the present environment of coronavirus hysteria.
For perspective, if you are one that believes economic considerations have no role to play in the current crisis, then imagine yourself suddenly without money and employment. Furthermore, imagine that many of your friends are in the same condition, including many currently employed in the public sector. Where are the resources to deal with this crisis? What happens if the economy collapses under the crushing federal debt load, failing businesses and rampant unemployment?
Horrific losses in the stock market provide a visual for this unthinkable prospect. The current stock market collapse paints a graphic picture of investor assessments of the economic impact of the strategies being deployed to deal with the COVID-19.
Sequestering the public, forcing businesses to close, shutting down whole sectors of commerce, deprives the economy of fuel, stalling the economic engine powering all services. The mindless fear driving the destruction of jobs and commerce runs the risk of making this permanent. To account for these realities, we need real risk assessments, not platitudes or hysterics. We need our news to function, giving us facts and proven information, not politically influenced, biased, or fake news.
Biblical Christians and historians know that command economies have always failed. The reason is simple. They don’t acknowledge the greed and depravity of the human condition, unchecked by Biblical morality. They are fraught with waste, corruption and poverty where ever they have been tried. Command responses to this crisis will suffer the same fate. Free enterprise, governed by the moral principles and accountability, enshrined in Biblical truth and coupled with Christian compassion, will provide solutions that work.
It’s time to face this virus realistically and head on. Allow the God given gifts of enterprise, technology and resourcefulness, empowered by faith in divine providence, to overcome what fear and hysteria have surrendered.
“…for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
Mattew 17.20
