In the days before Christmas, networks interviewed many travelers, most of whom said they were concerned about COVID spread, but not enough to cancel plans to visit friends or relatives. One woman told a reporter she wasn’t worried about getting sick. "I take precautions,” she said confidently, “If I get it, I really don't think I'll die."
I yelled at the television: That's NOT the point. The point is that you might spread COVID and kill someone else. You aren't the point. Your neighbor is.
How have people NOT understood this? How do people NOT care? We are in this together. What one does echoes in a thousand other lives.
On December 29, the United States reported more than 3,500 COVID deaths in a single day — including the death of Luke Letlow, a 41-year old Congressman-elect from Louisiana. The total number of sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents, friends, and co-workers we’ve lost to the pandemic is now more than 340,000. In the last year, 1 out of every 1,000 Americans has died from the virus. At this moment, approximately 1 out of every 2,700 Americans is currently in a hospital with COVID.
December has seen a COVID surge fueled by travel, parties, and Thanksgiving visits. January will likely be what Dr. Fauci called, “a surge on a surge,” with rapidly increasing cases and multiplying deaths. Experts predict that the next six weeks will be the worst of the pandemic.
Yet a significant number of Americans persist in COVID-denial, including those who refuse to take even basic precautions like wearing a mask and limiting group activities. It was particularly depressing that a pandemic-record number — 1.2 million — Americans flew on the Wednesday before Christmas, ignoring pleas from doctors and epidemiologists to stay home.
In an article in Huffington Post, Beth Prusaczyk, Ph.D., a public health expert and a researcher at Washington University, shared how her family and friends regularly flaunt mask-wearing and have continued to gather. “These are not people who don’t know the guidelines or who disbelieve science,” she wrote, “But…there is a disconnect between what they know is the right thing to do and what they actually do.”
Her remark reminded me of Paul in Romans 7:15: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
Prusaczyk doesn’t come to any conclusion about why her friends and family are behaving in such a manner. However, she relates how hurtful it is to those who have been trying to save us — researchers and scientists and health care providers — to have been ignored. One of her colleagues said that the only good to come from the pandemic is now knowing “how selfish and self-centered our fellow citizens are.”
That answer comes perilously close to the one offered by Paul: Sin.
Old-fashioned sin. Selfishness. Self-centeredness. Self-gratification. Overlooking the needs of neighbors. Harming others. Hubris. Or, as Paul wrote in another letter, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3-4).
On the wall in The Cottage, there’s a poster, a gift given to me years ago. It is plain, no images, just black lettering on ivory paper:
Ageless Wisdom: THE GOLDEN RULE
It lists eleven versions of one of humanity’s greatest principles, an idea shared by nearly all the world’s great religions and philosophies.
Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Christianity)
None of you truly believe until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself. (Islam)
Hurt not others in ways you yourself would find hurtful. (Buddhism)
Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. (Taoism)
Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. (Judaism)
I don’t talk about sin very often.
But not much else makes sense of 2020.
People willfully doing what they know they shouldn’t do. Whether that be ignoring public health, believing things that are obvious falsehoods, undermining our political system, or voting for reprehensible candidates whose character flies in the face of simple decency. Sins — all.
Beneath all these sins is one big sin: the violation of the Golden Rule.
Americans have always had a problem with selfishness and individualism, but our faith traditions and even our civil religion tried to balance our national tendency toward self-centeredness with the Golden Rule. Sunday schools taught it; politicians quoted it; parents repeated it. The words hung in public spaces — a kind of pluralistic and even secular creed — Do Unto Others.
Shortly after my own birth, The Saturday Evening Post featured the Golden Rule on its cover — memorably painted by Norman Rockwell.
I think about that Post cover frequently — it is really an American icon — an image of hope, of unity, of shared humanity. You can feel the aspirations of the dawning Kennedy presidency; the yearning of a post-war world to make true peace; the desire to live together and ward off nuclear destruction; to overcome division. The image drew us toward what we could be, what we hoped democracy would do, and how a great religious and philosophical principle might mitigate our worst tendencies and bring out our better angels.
Millions of our fellow citizens don’t seem to understand that masks and not traveling and limiting activity isn’t about them — it is about us. It isn’t about saving your own life, taking these precautions. Following good health practices is about your neighbors. And when vaccines are more widely available, those aren’t about you, either. Vaccination is a public responsibility. We get vaccinated to save others.
Although many have failed to recognize this, there are millions of others who have listened to public health guidance, who have made sacrifices, who have served their neighbors in the midst of all this. Yes, 2020 has been a year we learned about sin. But it is also a year when “Do Unto Others” was a necessity, a commitment, a matter of life and death. When better angels have showed up. More quietly, perhaps. With less fanfare.
Ask yourself: How much worse would it be had not silent throngs of Americans followed the Golden Rule?
Love of neighbor has guided many, even if that quiet, subversive love has gone unnoticed. And even if those practicing this ageless wisdom feel isolated and alone, perhaps wounded and worried. You aren’t really alone. We are millions. More than any of us know.
April 1, 2021 marks the 60th anniversary of Norman Rockwell’s “Do Unto Others” painting. We need to remember: That we are one, all human beings, with mutual responsibility to care for each other, and in caring for each other, to care for our planet. We are in this together. We need to teach it, preach it, sing it, shout it, pray it, practice it, live it. And not be shy or reticent about it.
What if we make 2021 the Year of the Golden Rule?
That’s the only New Year’s resolution for which I hope and dream — that we can imagine, commit, and to work toward a world of neighborly love. We humans may share the sad tendency toward self-centeredness, but we also share the luminous wisdom of the Golden Rule. And the latter is the antidote to the former.
May 2021 be the year we rise in its light. And may the shadows of 2020 recede, cast out by love of neighbor.
INSPIRATION
Remember! — It is Christianity to do good always — even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbors as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us.
— Charles Dickens
If you contemplate the Golden Rule, it turns out to be an injunction to live by grace rather than by what you think other people deserve.
― Deepak Chopra
When you’re kind to people, and you pay attention, you make a field of comfort around them, and you get it back—the Golden Rule meets the Law of Karma meets Murphy’s Law.
― Anne Lamott
Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.
― Augustine of Hippo (5th century)
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
— Elizabeth Alexander
I’d been reading up on comparative religion. The thing is that all major religions have the Golden Rule in common. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Not always the same words but the same meaning.
— Norman Rockwell
This is the rule of most perfect Christianity, its most exact definition, its highest point, namely, the seeking of the common good. For nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ as caring for his neighbors.
— John Chrysostom (4th century)
2021 AT THE COTTAGE
Next year, I plan to expand The Cottage to include a monthly book club, interviews with other authors in religion and spirituality, “Ask Me Anything” days, and previews of my next book (Freeing Jesus — to be released on March 30). This will also include an option to support The Cottage financially. But rest assured — there will still be free posts and inspirational quotes on faith, politics, culture, and spirituality. I’ll be sharing more information about what’s coming in 2021 — and how you can connect with the additional offerings and content — in the next three weeks.
Please invite your friends to join us in the new year.
Thanks for your descriptive words, which challenge our stagnant thinking in our analysis of current events. I fear the fissuring of our relationships, communities, families, and, of course, our spiritual communities.
You have given us much to ponder for the days that lie ahead, Diana.
Thank you, Diana, you continue to inspire me.