A very informal survey of what motorists are hanging from their rear-view mirrors these days reveals medical face masks are now running neck and neck with rosaries as the preferred object to display to other drivers. (Air fresheners are a close third.)
Those were just my observations this morning on the way to work, but assuming people advertise what’s important to them, the prominence of masks on mirrors might suggest COVID is as much a top priority for people as religious faith is. (I briefly considered mirrors may just be convenient places to hang masks, but after trying to loop one on my mirror I can state it’s neither convenient nor practical for driving.)
It’s obvious why face masks are replacing rosaries as the symbol of choice for so many drivers. COVID is top of mind for much of our society, and displaying a face mask shows you take it seriously.
The pandemic should be taken seriously. There’s a lot at stake. Over the past 12 months, we’ve been masked, locked down, isolated, and quarantined. In addition to deaths and illness, churches have been closed, travel shut down, businesses shuttered, elderly banished from family, and loved ones separated.
Regardless of your views about the virus, masks, vaccines, or restrictions, all of us have invested a lot of thought and sacrifice into this pandemic and how to negotiate it. We’ve all come up against people with equally strong opposing views.
Which explains the popular observation that COVID has become the new religion for many people. COVID can be all consuming, offering a worldview for a society that is running out of dependable worldviews.
People are bringing evangelistic zeal to their views on COVID, as they previously have to other neo-religions, from climate change to identity politics, from economic reform to globalization. The strident and opposing opinions people have on so many issues is an offshoot of the fact that the belief systems that used to serve us well have been largely blown up.
Where society once stood firmly on concepts like faith, family, patriotism, and tradition, the destruction of any sense of truth has rendered those concepts unimportant, if not meaningless. In the absence of anything enduring on which to build a belief system on, cancel culture and groupthink determine what is approved and what is offensive today, forcing people to renounce yesterday’s core principles and adopt today’s orthodoxy.
When nothing is absolutely true, today’s doctrine becomes painless to adopt and more painless to abandon, which is why it’s so difficult trying to keep up with what’s woke, what’s not, and what’s trending.
All this may sound like a gloomy assessment, but it’s not. It’s only a matter of time before average individuals admit that they can’t keep up with a creed that is constantly changing. Cognitive dissonance used to be the conflict experienced trying to hold two competing truths at the same time. Now it’s believing truths that keep morphing and becoming more reductionist on a daily basis.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ has had 2,000 years to shape the world today, and the neo-religions aren’t going to supplant it for good. I have a feeling they’re not going to supplant it for long either, considering the breakneck pace the world is going through belief systems. The God-sized hole in each person’s heart craves a divine worldview that can’t be cancelled.
