#BoomerRemover: Today's Easy Fix
The article in BioEdge "World Elder Abuse Awareness Day on Monday" tells about a "World War II veteran named Chester Peake, [who] was diagnosed with coronavirus in a Twin Cities long-term care facility. He was asymptomatic, but spent two-and-a-half weeks in isolation. He died on June 2, just short of his 100th birthday. His death certificate listed the cause of his death as 'social isolation, failure to thrive, related to COVID-19 restrictions' -- loneliness, in other words."
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
This story is a stark reminder of the elder abuse taking place today. "Hate" is a popular word these days, tagged on anyone who doesn't toe the line on the latest politically-correct dogmas. We think of "hate" as doing something really mean and nasty to someone. But the Russian verb for "hate" is "nenavidet" that consists of two prefixes" "ne" for "not" and "na" for "at" plus the main verb "videt" for "see" or "look" - so the meaning for "hate" in Russian is to "not look at" someone. Hate or abuse can be simply ignoring, turning away from, not looking at, not caring about, or neglecting someone.
Monday, 15 June, was World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. Neglecting the elderly is a form of abuse. The above article quotes from the "Stanford Social Innovation Review" - "The hashtag #BoomerRemover emerged and started trending in mid-March as a way to mark and make light of ageist comments about the pandemic. And Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, had to repeatedly address public opinion that COVID-19 was not a serious concern because of initial public beliefs that it affected only older people." The horrible, hateful hashtag #BoomerRemover is a rather crass way to express "Get out of the way, old man! I wish you'd just drop dead - it's your time to go!" Or they are put in a nursing home, the one place where the highest number of COVID-19 deaths have occurred. It's the easy fix, the easy way to get rid of those cranky old people.
Older people, however, aren't the only ones who become very sick and often die from COVID-19. This disease strikes mainly people who have "comorbidities" such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, COPD, asthma or other breathing problems, etc. As people grow older, their bodies start to wear out, their immune systems weaken, thus they more frequently have the above conditions. But younger people can also have such conditions and succumb to COVID-19. This brings to mind the overall problem of suffering: Rabbi Harold Kushner's book When Bad Things Happen to Good People attempts to answer that age-old question of "Why, God?"
The Old Testament book of Job deals with the problem of unjust suffering: why does God allow it and how can He be a just God if people unfairly suffer? This is the problem of "Theodicy" - attempting to justify God. In ch. 8:1-3 we read - "Then Bildad the Shuhite answered, 'How long will you speak these things? Shall the words of your mouth be a mighty wind? Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert righteousness?'" In other words, can Almighty God possibly be unjust? Bildad implies that it is impossible for God to be unjust, so the problem must be in Job or in his children, as Bildad says in verses 4-6 - "If your children have sinned against Him, He has delivered them into the hand of their disobedience; if you want to seek God diligently, make your supplication to the Almighty. If you were pure and upright, surely now He would awaken for you, and make the habitation of your righteousness prosperous." Imagine saying that to a person suffering terrible pain from sores all over his body, just after all his children have been killed in a windstorm!
Then Job replies - "Though I am righteous, my own mouth shall condemn me. Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse. I am blameless. I don't regard myself. I despise my life. It is all the same. Therefore I say, 'He destroys the blameless and the wicked. If the scourge kills suddenly, He will mock at the trial of the innocent'" (ch. 9:20-23). Does God willy-nilly destroy the blameless along with the wicked? Does He mock and laugh at the suffering of the innocent? How can such a God even exist? These are some of the questions that nihilistic philosophers such as Voltaire, Nietzsche, and Sartre expressed. Even Rousseau's romanticist subjectivism influenced aspects of the nihilistic French Revolution. Thus we've come to the point of many people denying the existence of God, or atheism. how did that ever happen?
Jude, the "brother" of the Lord Jesus, wrote - "Beloved, while I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I was constrained to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all transmitted to the saints. For there are certain people who crept in secretly, even those who were long ago written about for this condemnation: ungodly men, perverting the grace of our God into unbridled lust, and denying our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I desire to remind you, though you already know this, that the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who didn't believe" (ch. 1:3-5). Certain people and ideas have crept into our Christian faith that have perverted the grace of God into lust, teaching that once you are saved you can never lose your salvation.
The idea of God's sovereign grace and man's bondage of the will - our inability to do anything good at all - in the final analysis, means that a man is passive, not morally responsible for his actions, everything is predestined and predetermined. If God predestines everyone, there is no morality, thus no sin: you can do whatever comes naturally. This idea of predestination or fate is fundamentally pagan: see the sections on St. Augustine and John Cassian on my literature page. At the end of his life, Augustine finally repudiated his earlier ideas, but very few people choose to recognize this (wouldn't you rather believe that you're one of the elect and can never lose your salvation?), so we can call him a saint, but his early ideas live on.
What ought to be our answer to this problem of suffering that has led mankind to the brink of nihilism and atheism? Take a good look at Romans 14:1 & 19 - "Now receive one who is weak in faith, but not for disputes over opinions. ...So then, let us follow after things which make for peace, and things by which we may build one another up." In other words, build up your weaker brother, receive him and encourage him. Don't argue over buzzwords, instead seek the things that make for peace: build him up instead of tearing him down. Use words and take actions that strengthen and edify rather than criticize and destroy. This is the law of agape-love.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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