Pray For Our Nation

Fay Voshell, as one who holds a Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, has a unique perspective on the current masking requirements gripping the nation.  And Joe Biden promises more of this nonsense if elected.  We are being forced to accede to things we do not believe by a combination of legally and scientifically dubious "orders" from our governors, and peer pressure from scared to death neighbors and colleagues.  Our neighbors are being frightened by nightly news reports that resemble reporting during the Vietnam War.  They hear of increasing number of cases, which are implied to equate with numbers of deaths.  Without additional context, it is no wonder they think Covid-19 will kill them all.  And the governors, of course, also enforce these orders by threatening to take away their business licenses if they don't comply, making them complicit in enforcing their wishes.

Last night, Mrs. PolyKahr and I took our grand daughter out to a steakhouse.  The steakhouse had a bunch of signs announcing that masks were required to be worn by all who entered by order of the State of North Carolina.  So the governor is now "the State of North Carolina"?  Once seated though, we could all take our masks off.  How does that work?  When we are standing, we are spreading Covid-19 around, but when we are seated we don't?  Now, I'm just an old civil engineer, but this doesn't sound like any science I learned in college.

Fay Voshell, with her unique perspective, makes the universal wearing of masks clearer to me.  It is not about the virus, but about ritual purity, about social castes, about changing who is in power and who is out.  You can find her latest article at the American Thinker entitled The Ritual Masking Of America. Ms. Voshell writes:

During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as repressive regimes seized vast areas of the world, their leaders established severe regimens formerly characteristic of the deeply religious. The habits of strict religious orders were simply retrofitted to suit secular regimes. Practices rejected as useless superstitions, such as fasting, prayer and sacramental rituals were replaced with equally severe routines. Rigorous calisthenics performed in fresh air, natural foods, and detailed public sanitation measures imitated and replaced former spiritual rituals meant to deal with the health of the soul. Socialist, fascist and communist societies saw a transference to the material realm what had once been characteristic of the spiritual realm. It was considered better to preserve the body and lose the soul.

...snip...

It’s fairly clear by now that the vast majority of Americans have been made leprous outcasts even while still living within their own society. Citizens have been cordoned off into their domiciles and in Joe Biden’s plan, not permitted to go out without a mask covering the lower part of their faces as a signifier of their potential lethality to their fellow human being.

When outside their homes, most Americans are required to sit, stand or shuffle at least six feet apart from one another -- much as lepers in Christ’s time were required to stand at least sixteen feet from everyone else. So far no one has been required to shout, “Unclean!”

Even were Americans to be unmasked tomorrow by decree from the increasingly absolutist states most of us presently live in, it’s apparent that the masking of Americans has gone beyond any genuine health issue and has devolved into a signifier of castes having societal purity.

During the Obama administration, we were treated to being "nudged." A little nudge here, a small prod their. There is a tree across the road ahead, but, hey, there's a left turn ahead. How convenient!  But now, the Left is no longer just nudging us.  Instead, they are out and out forcing us.  Apparently, the Left thought that we weren't taking nudges fast enough.  Voshell again:

Purity rituals now extend to almost the entire populace and to every aspect of life. Go to get food at a grocery store and violate the mask or social distancing rule, and you will be called out by the reigning religious authorities -- much as Jesus was when he and his disciples were rebuked for gathering and eating grain on the Sabbath.

If you dare to go outside the parameters permitted you, be it travel to another state or to the dentist, the ritual priests will test you to see if you are fit, taking your temperature, testing for antibodies, and then pronouncing you clean or unclean. Go to church and be masked, socially distanced and don’t dare sing.

Persist in your transgressions and you will be at least temporarily cut out of the community by having to live outside the camp until you are healed. You will be a leper.

So, how do we heal our ailing society?  Well, clearly, we must resist. We can not accede to the demands.  We must insist on seeing reality at all costs.  And, of course, Ms. Voshell has a solution, one I believe in myself:

It lies in the Judeo-Christian foundations of our nation. It lies with a body of government that has self-rectifying mechanisms. It lies with the permeable and flexible class system that allows merit and effort to determine one’s rise. It lies in a Constitution that allows reform while not permitting the annihilation of the Union.

t lies in the belief that no man or woman has to be a supplicant kneeling before a fellow citizen. It lies in the conviction that each man and woman must be free to exercise his or her religion without interference from the State. It lies in the conviction that beings made in God’s image kneel in supplication and plead for restoration before God alone.

Our country was established with the Blessings of Providence. It's time we humbly asked Him for His Blessings again.