A recent post at The Orthosphere on the topic of obeying evil governments because that is God’s will, (a ludicrous proposition that would render the life of every saint to be against the will of God), reads very much like an act of someone who is desperately trying to rationalise their own poor choices and behaviour over the past two years.
But I should not be so smug in my evaluation of the writer’s motivations. While I myself got many aspects of the Covid hoax correct, and while it is indeed true that I successfully resisted the constant pressure to get vaccinated, even though it caused me at times some very real hardship, I do not have a perfect score by any standard of men, let alone of God.
My biggest failing that I can identify at this time was my passive acceptance of the general idea that the Covid virus would mostly kill off the old and sick, which was somehow not that much of a big deal because either in the case of the old they’re primed for impending death already, or in the case of the sick then it’s mostly their own fault, (in relation to issues such as obesity and diabetes.) I did not speak out against such attitudes because I wanted the world to quickly get back to where it was before, and a quick scything through of these populations could well have given us all that desired result.
But it is a distinctly Christian attitude, and a traditional one at that, to revere the elderly and care for the sick and dying. We revere the elderly because we should have the foresight to understand that the way in which we treat our elderly today is the way in which we ourselves will be treated when each one of us finds ourselves in that period towards the end of our lives. When our own personal winter has come.
The elderly were shunted into nursing homes and left to die there alone. Nowhere was this more egregious than in the belt of Anglo-Saxon nations, a group of countries which have embraced the concept of retirement homes more than any other part of the world. And this is because we simultaneously turned to worship the cult of youth at the expense of our elders while doing our very best to destroy the family unit.
I am very aware of the ironic predicament that this puts me in as regards to the Boomer generation, the same generation which has done more to push this disastrous state of affairs than any other, but which is now itself approaching elderly age. Am I now proposing that we must begin to venerate the awful Boomers? The very thought is anathema to me but if we do not begin the process with ourselves then where do we expect to end up?
One of the most striking aspects of my time spent living in Saudi Arabia was to observe the reverence there for not just the elderly but those who were perhaps only twenty years older than another individual. At a family gathering the father never has to reach to pour some Arabic coffee into his cup as his many sons will be hovering close to ensure that they will be the one to give him this honor. There is no babble of youth or children; instead, the elders talk and discuss, and the younger generations listen, observe and try to learn. Needless to say, there are no retirement homes in that part of the world as there are pitifully few large family gatherings of native Anglo-Saxons in their own countries, and any such gatherings will be the inverse of the Arabic standard, with the elderly shunted into a corner while the youth scream at each other or remain affixed to their glowing mobile screens.
I watched part of a recent Project Veritas take down of a principle of a large American school, who proudly boasted that he would not hire any teacher of a certain middle age as they would invariably be conservative. What he left out is that the youthful teachers which he favored are just as susceptible to the manipulations and brain washing which he desires them to administer onto their charges.
Likewise, whenever I hear of the latest new writer to hit the headlines with a massive bestseller and I discover that the young man is in his twenties, (rare for a young man to be published these days but not due to a failure of the cult of youth), then any interest that I might have had dissolves like sugar in a hot cup of tea. The same goes for young artists and musicians; nice ideas and all, but come back to me in a couple of decades when you have gotten good, if you managed to stick with it at all.
I did not receive my passive and unmentioned wish for the virus to quickly finish off the elderly and sick and let us all get back to our very worldly lives. Instead, I got two years of a pressure to choose, a gift from God to all of us. He wants us to be discerning. He wants us to be charitable. And He wants us to do these things not only for the joy that they bring, but also because they are pleasing to Him.
God is not depicted as a youth. He is an elderly man with a grey beard and much experience written on His face. Likewise, Jesus died at the age of 33, an age of much maturity in those times. And an age which the Boomer generation considered to be untrustworthy and having no message worth considering when they were in the flower of their youth. But what more charitable act than to venerate the Boomers? That we forgive them of their collective sins as we work to undo the damage done. That we ask them their help in such a project while we seed the ground for our own old age, where I would hope that the youth not yet born would hold us in high esteem.
Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill. You can purchase Adam’s books here.