Faith Matters | The one ‘truth’ about going back to school during COVID-19 that matters most
What is true?
This is a core question that has dominated the world in the last 6 months. Is what Dr. Anthony Fauci says true? What about your friend from high school who posted about the inefficacy of masks? Is that post true? Is it true that this whole COVID-19 business is a coordinated effort by elite world operatives to take over the rest of us? Is it true that children don’t get COVID-19 or is it true that they are super spreaders?
How we each understand what is true shapes how we respond to such truths. And we are seeing that play out in a major way as students head back to school on Monday morning. I am the mother of an elementary, middle and high school student. Three kids. Three levels. Three different types of schools: public charter, private, and public. That means that I am dealing with three very different realities for three very different children. And that means that our family has had to sift through competing “truths” almost all summer long.
At first it might be tempting to run down every statement of “fact” for its level of truthfulness. Try it and you will discover it to be a daunting and exhausting task. Like many of you, I have been a little busy these last several months and have been unable to obtain a degree in epidemiology, or medicine, or really any field that would speak to the science of what is happening around us. Therefore, I am overwhelmingly unqualified to sort through all the “truths” of the virus for us today.
So then, I should only speak to what I know to be true – the Word of God. Now, I realize that for some of you readers the Word of God is no more true than that post your friend put on Facebook last week that declared that owners of dogs are 113% less likely to contract COVID-19 than those who own cats. But, for me and my house, we see the Scriptures as truth. And those Biblical truths inform the decisions we make – including how to handle how our children return to school.
Proverbs 3:5 reads, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.” THANK GOD! Because after six months of endless claims about what is true, many of them outright conflicting, I’m not even sure what my own insight is at this point. Therefore, though like many of you, I have wrestled, I have laid awake at night, I have fretted and worried, and in the end, no matter the choice, I need to trust in the Lord with all my heart: and my heart is those three children. I am trusting the Lord with the most precious people in my life.
The next verse says, “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Here’s what is true: If we put the Lord at the center of what we do, God will make a way. If we come before Him in humility and simply say, “Lord, I’m trying here. I’m doing my best. But, you’ve gotta take this. You’ve gotta lead this,” then Scripture promises us that God will make straight our paths. Which we need to hear right now because every parent I know feels like they are the tennis ball in the final match of Wimbledon.
Moms and Dads, I know it’s really scary right now. I know you are trying to sort out physical health vs. mental health vs. economic concerns vs. childcare vs. employment, all while hearing a non-stop parade of competing “truths.” So, let me leave you with this one from Romans 8:38-39 : “I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow — not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below — indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Parents, you are deeply loved by God. Your children are deeply loved by God. Nothing is ever going to change that – not the choice to e-learn, not the choice to go full-time brick and mortar, not the choice to try the hybrid model. And this, without a doubt, I believe to be the absolute truth.
Faith Matters is written by members of the Bradenton clerical community. Hope Italiano Lee is pastor at Kirwood Church in Bradenton.