Letting God Kill You

 TWENTY BELOW ZERO feels surreal, but I'm glad I experienced it, just once in my life, albeit briefly.Only one faucet was broken, and I felt lucky. The plumber, a sole proprietor and Pentecostal with five kids and two sequential wives, was very friendly and mercifully inexpensive. We talked a little, I told him I believe in God because of the beautiful design of nature, talked about Einstein's belief in God, but was decent enough not to ask him whether he had ever spoken in tongue. I was content to assume so. He seemed so down to Earth, practical, reasonable, successful, hard working. How could such a person possible embrace a bizarre denomination invented in the nineteen twenties in Appalachia, a bizarre version of a bizarre and primitive religion to begin with? To be a good plumber, one must understand a little basic science, hydro dynamics if nothing else.. When we met we shook hands, and I briefly recoiled, reminding him of social distancing and all that, and he made it clear that he had long since abandoned masks, mandates, and all that. He was content, he said, to leave it all in god's hands. I told him that I could understand his point of view, which I could. What I didn't tel him was that God gave us brains, brains enough to figure out viruses, and that God helps those who help themselves, and that handling snakes is not such a good idea, even to prove a prove one's faith in God. When one is having one's water supply restored inexpensively, and is on the verge of being able to shower, one tends to be in a tactful rather than an honest mood, I found. What I really think is that he and people like him are crazy, idiotic, poorly educated, and irresponsible, and that he and his kind are the principle reason why more than half a million Americans are dead from Covid 19, an epidemic we could have controlled, but he doesn't need to know that. I even told him I might visit his church someday, although I am not religious, and I might. I might learn something.  I'm glad I was conciliatory rather than honest and confrontational; I got my water back on. We are now so close to ending the epidemic, an epidemic which, in military terms, the virus easily won, that I can do the smart thing and double down on safety, without needing to tell anyone else to. If they don't know by now, they never will. Against stupidity, the god's themselves contend in vain, an ancient philosopher said. I wasn't going to educate my plumber friend on the stupidity of his primitive religion, it harmfulness,and, anyway, he could have charged me much more.