The Covid saga acted like a nuclear bomb. The devastation from a nuclear bomb is the initial blast, followed by the shock wave, and the fallout. With the many conversations about the angst of people these days, we are in the fallout stage. Peter Kreeft’s book, “Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensees” chapter on Diversion plays this analogy out. Core to Pascal getting people to accept Christ is the issue of diversion and silence. Simply put, we are not comfortable in our own skin. Butt once we are at the point of silence, we see a void only God can fill.

The diversion and the covid bomb

If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it.

~Pascal

Since you are probably impatient like most people today, I will tell you Pascal’s answer immediately. We want to complexity our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very thing we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.

~Kreeft

No country or culture refined being diverted down to an art form more than America. We are terrified of death and try to run and hide from it. Rather than having funerals we now have celebration of life services. We try to cheat death, which then turns to trying to cheat accountability, which then turns to endless business and distraction so we don’t have to face the reality that we are mortal or the reality than many in America do not feel comfortable in their own skin. Being faced with death and forced to be with our own thoughts is traumatic for Americans. Covid hit us like a bomb where we are most vulnerable. It blew away the curtain to something we cannot unsee: we are mortal and we do not like ourselves.

The Blast- we are mortal

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.

~Pascal

We cannot change the truth… We can change our awareness. The ostrich cannot defeat the tiger, but he can hide his head in the sand. The “solution” is ostrich epistemology.

~Kreeft

The explosion is we had to, really for the first time in generations, face our mortality. Post WW II, America has largely been isolated from facing her mortality. Even with significant natural disasters, we had a robust recovery. Covid pulled the ostrich’s head out of the sand and we were forced to see the tiger of death. Like the young lady scolding an old lady at Walmart that she could die without a mask, we lack the courage of the 85 year old’s response: “I’m 85 years old and my friends and family are dead, what have I to lose?” Our fear of death blew another thing we distract ourselves form: We are not in control. Faced with death, we created a shock wave of all shock waves.

The Shockwave- we don’t like ourselves

I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room… What people want is the agitation that takes our mind of it and diverts us. That is why we prefer the hunt to the capture… That is why prison is such fearful punishment; that is why is why the pleasures of solitude are so incomprehensible.

~Pascal

Surely it is a development of spectacular social significance that the very thing ancient saints and sages loved and longed for is the thing we impose on our most desperate criminals as the cruelest torture our minds can devise- solitude… This is why most suicides happen during summer or winter vacations.

~Kreeft

Being forced to be isolated at homes. Being forced to contend with our own thoughts. When the boredom irrupted after all home diversions were depleted. Americans were left alone with their own thoughts, and most Americans did not like what they saw in the mirror or heard in the silence. Like Wiley Coyote, we saw the chasm of air beneath our feet. This created a mental health Tsunami over the last couple of years. Our souls, seldom fortified even in church contexts, essentially imploded.

The fall out- trying to unsee what we saw

Wretchedness. The only thing that consuls us for our miseries is diversion. And yet it is the greatest of our miseries. For it is that above all which presents us thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to destruction… to our death.

~Pascal

Diversion’s greatest danger is that it acts like a sedative; it keeps us just content enough so that we don’t make waves and seek a real cure. It deadens our spiritual nerves, it muffles our alarm system.

~Kreeft

People often lash out unrelated to what is really going on inside them. We tend to do this to people who are safe to vent on, so we treat them as a punching bag. We start acting like Junior Higher. Insecure and unsure of ourselves, lost in our purpose in life, we vent, agitate, create drama, act unsettled, and are over all miserable. Behind all that is our scramble to put the curtain of diversion back up. We want to be sedated again, but it numbs and crushes our souls, and leaves our mental and emotional health wanting.

Three suggested cures

Recognize that Jesus is our rest. The Gospel is not a cheat out of death, though it does provide eternal life and the need to fear death. The Gospel communicates the supreme value of who you are. That death has an expiration date, and that date was given because you are so valuable God Himself died for your and in your place. To survive the explosion is to simply trust in Jesus, not as cliche, but as the bedrock that your soul can rest upon. Hence Paul’s words to Timothy “Be strong in the grace of Christ Jesus.” 

Recognize that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Not just as an intellectual or theological exercise, but in such a way that our soul knows it well. This is how we survive the shockwave. The lack of diversion allows our souls to take in the majesty and presence of the God who made us. Solitude is a moment for His presence. We should often have these moments both briefly and extended through the weeks and months we live. One whose soul can handle quiet and solitude is one who is secure in who God made them to be. This is is the greatest act of humility. To accept how God made you, and strive to be a more Christlike version of that.

Recognize that building endurance takes trials. Standing firm is a choice of obedience to Christ. This strength comes from feeding our soul the Word of God, and knowing how to use it effectively as a sword. Stop starving your soul. Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that precedes from the mouth of God. Strengthen your soul that after having done all, you stand firm. The New Testament in its acknowledgment of persecution does not set up a victim mentality. Jesus rewards those who endure and are victorious. That in the fiercest storms we can echo the hym “It is well with my soul.” So don’t quit! Persevere and keep moving forward. In the end we win. In today’s angst, be the man of strength and honor.