Evangelizing the Virus

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS are people who believe that the virus is God's retribution for homosexuality, environmentalism, liberalism, and the Democratic Party. I intend to never forget any of the conversations I have ever had with any of them, so interesting and memorable they are. so, the lady says to me, something like: are you a christian? I forget what precipitated the query, perhaps nothing. I responded, as I always do, with my favorite quote from Einstein: "my religiosity consists in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself, in what little we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. I cannot conceive of a personal God who would sit in judgment over creatures of his own creation. morality is of the highest importance, for mankind, but not for God. For me, that says it all, a perfection description of my religious beliefs. As they always do, she looked at me with a bemused, slightly condescending expression, and ignored what I said. then came more questions. Do you believe in God? Yes ma'am, I believe that I just said that, essentially, I did, in the form of an intelligent creator, an infinitely superior spirit of creation. Do you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior? Well, ma'am, I do not believe there is anything from which I need to be saved. The very fact that I have lived a wonderful and happy life for sixty five years seems to me to prove that I do not. I believe my existence clearly proves that I am, "saved", whatever that term actually means. Then, are you happy? Happiness, at least in my universe, is not the same thing as religion. Happiness is a state of mind, religion is a belief system. One can be happy, or unhappy, by being either religious, or not religious, in my opinion. Her failure to show any sign that she has any idea what I'm talking about indicates to me that she finds my answers entirely inadequate, nonsensical, missing the point. And so it always goes.to me it is amazing the anyone would think that other people couldn't be happy unless their religions was identical to the evangelical. But, that's evangelical thinking. how difficult is it to simply accept that everyone has his or her own beliefs, and that what works for one person, does not work for others? Very difficult, in evangelical thinking. But blaming Covid 19 on gay people, environmentalists, liberals, or anyone else goes quite beyond the bounds of reason. At that point, our evangelical brothers and sisters have departed not only the realm of logic, but of decency as well.