by, Renee Wood

On August 5^th, I was scheduled to meet a friend in Berlin Ohio for lunch.  Berlin is part of Amish Country located in Holmes county.  My husband and I have frequented this area many times in the past, and really love it there.  I was particularly looking forward to this trip because the 2020 pandemic has me mostly locked-up since mid-March, but it wasn’t to be, because of people’s choices touted as “God’s Will”.  Are our choices always in alignment with God’s will?  Or, our we simply exercising our “free will” to choose as we please, even if it’s not in accordance with the will of God?

The story

As I said, I was scheduled to meet a friend during the pandemic for lunch in Amish country, when I received a text the night before, from a different friend who actually lives in Holmes, saying I may want to reconsider coming.  She explained that the Amish are not complying with the mandatory mask mandate to control the spread of the virus.  I was pretty surprised that the Amish weren’t complying since their business there is mostly tourism, and if outsiders get sick it could hurt business for some time to come.  Not only that, the Amish, being God fearing people, one would think the most loving thing one could do during this pandemic, where many are dying, is simply cover your face so you won’t potentially hurt your neighbor.  This just didn’t make sense, so I inquired why.  She said many of the Amish have mild cases and feel if one gets it and dies it’s God’s will!

Reflection

I believe I am a spiritual person – I am Catholic.  I’ve taken ministry formation for 3 years in the mid ‘90’s, for a year I did the St. Ignatius Exercises in my home guided weekly by a great Jesuit Spiritual director.  Plus I’ve had stays in several convents.  These things don’t make me an expert on “God” because no one is, but it has given me the tools of discernment to assess where God wants to use me right now.  One simple tool and I would say primary tool for discernment is the Question; “Will this bring me closer to God (spiritually), or lead me further away from him”?  Classically this is known as “sin”, so if one can’t get past that question without a yes, or at least “It’s possible”, then they should be changing direction rather than continuing to discern if this is God’s course for them.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing God truly wills is for us to “love one another the way He loves us”, everything we do, or don’t do, can be measured by this standard of how we love one another.  It’s seems quite simple, but it’s actually not as “black and white” (I’ll use the term “clear cut” from now on in all my writings) as one might think.  For example, a married couple with kids, one of the spouses is physically abusing the other.  The most loving thing for all involved is for the couple to be apart – whether for a period of time, or forever, depends.  But the most loving thing for all, including the abuser, is to be apart.  What about “To death do us part, in sickness and in health …”?  Isn’t separating against God’s will”?  Again, there’s no clear cut answer because each situation is different so has various ways of showing love, but whatever the answer, love should be the basis, rather than fear (remember fear is different than being prudent), revenge, hate, etc.  So if one thinks that God expects one to risks death or being permanently disabled by a spouse for the sake of staying in the same living quarters, I personally don’t see how that’s loving one another the way God loves us.  You’re risking that spouse getting life in jail or the death penalty if they kill you!

The next question is, is it God’s will for people to die, especially at the hands or through the willful neglect of others?  The garden of Eden was paradise where death didn’t exist.  God wanted Adam and Eve to love Him by their own will, not from demand or out of obligation.  For love that is not freely given is not true and pure.  Part of love is trust – if one cannot trust the other, there’s diminished love.  Since God is God he wanted to see if Adam and Eve trusted His love for them, so He asked them not to eat from the tree of good and evil because it would change their relationship with Him as well as one another.  He explained the consequences, but pride and intrigue tempted them to act against what was in their best interest.  What scholars never discuss is what if Adam and Eve would have asked God if they could partake from the tree of knowledge?  What if they started a discussion with God, would He have given them the knowledge but also kept the relationship intact because they asked?  But they didn’t even honor the relationship with a discussion and now we have to go through a physical death to hopefully have the relationship God originally intended with us.

The answer to “Is it God’s will for people to die” is clearly no.  The will of Adam and Eve chose that for us.  However, God still desires our free and pure love, so He kept our free will intact.  How we love one another on earth will be the judge of how well will be with God in heaven.

It’s proven that if we wear a mask for just this short period in time (1 or 2 years) we could prevent people from getting sick and potentially save the lives of others.  If God loved us so much that in order to save us, He sent His Son to die for us, then isn’t it an act of love to save one another by simply wearing a mask?  We still have free will, how we choose to exercise it during the pandemic will judge our love for one another.

Hypothetical: Adam and Eve in the garden, God’s gardener says, “There’s some nasty stuff going around out here, if one of you gets it you could pass it to the other and they will die.  God has granted me the responsibility of giving you knowledge of what will protect you both from this nasty stuff.  Here, wear these fig leaves to protect one another, if only one wears it, the one wearing the leaf still could die”.  God’s gardener leaves them to their free will to care for one another.

Adam; “Eve these are as ugly as all get out”!  They put them on.  Adam continues “And they stink and itch”!

Eve; “Oh Adam, it’s only until it passes.  It will protect us from losing each other – surely you can tolerate it for a little while until it passes”.

Adam; “How do we know the gardener isn’t making it up, or exaggerating just to make us look like fools!  Or wants to control us forever”.

Eve; “God gave the gardener knowledge in seeing stuff like this, as well as the know how in the best way to protect us.  If he’s abusing his authority that’s on him.  God will take the matter up with him, and I assure you if he is violating our free will, rather than protecting us from harm – it won’t go well with God.  Right now there’s no evidence, so we have to protect ourselves from one another, and wear the leaf protection.  In the future if we discover it’s a hoax to control us, we’ll take the leaves off together. But for now we have to do what the expert says”.

Adam; “But Eve, the gardener is a damn Leafer and I don’t believe Leafers”.

Eve; “But Adam dear, he’s the expert.  If we die cause we don’t wear a leaf, that’s a tragedy!  If we wear a leaf and it’s a hoax, it’s an inconvenience.  Do you want to protect my life?  Or your pride”?

Adam; “If you die because I don’t wear a leaf, it must be God’s will because He must know I ain’t going to wear no damn leaf because a leafer tells me to”.

Eve wears a leaf, but Adam doesn’t.  Eve dies from the nasty stuff, Adam doesn’t.  Who’s actions, or inactions are at fault?  Who showed love for the other person.  Who trusted and respected the position others.  Who depended on themselves for guidance.  In the end, who really lost?

Conclusion

If we believe God, and that God gave us the gift of free will, then we must accept responsibility for the results of exercising that free will.  If we send our child to play in traffic and they get hit by a car and die, that wasn’t God’s will, that was our neglect of our child.  If we smack someone and they hit their head and become brain damaged, that wasn’t God’s will, that was the result of inappropriately using our anger.  Just because God doesn’t intervene to prevent bad things, that doesn’t mean he “wills it”.  It means He allows it because He doesn’t want to “control” us by His will, but hopes we’ll learn to control our behavior through listening to one another and loving one another so much we’ll protect them from any harm.

God also made us stewards of this planet, so we better start to use its’ resources wisely, rather than turning it into a molten-plastic-rubbish-pit for our future generations to survive in – if it’s even possible to survive in.  How selfish and thoughtless to only think of our own comfort and ease of living in the here and now, and to hell with everyone else!  See where that gets us in our time of need.  Stop passing the blame for our thoughtless and cruel actions onto God and own the responsibility for what we do and don’t do.   Finally, even if we don’t believe in the virus/usefulness of masks/or whatever, risk it in case it’s true.  Let’s sacrifice for a little while and fall off that prideful horse, pull-up our big boy/girl panties, and wear a freaking mask, so we don’t potentially pass our killer coronies onto one another.