What COVID-19 Reveals about America’s Faith

If anyone needed further evidence that America is a hopelessly dualistic nation, enter COVID-19. Although the virus is no respecter of persons, attacking individuals on both sides of the aisle, the response to this global pandemic is unfortunately divided along party lines. To wear or not wear a mask is now a political statement. To open the country or continue the lockdown is a partisan standoff. Saving the economy or saving lives are the only options provided to a nation whose citizens seem incapable of envisioning a third way. We’d rather fight one another than fight the virus. We’d rather win and die than lose and live. The current health crisis is revealing our national insecurity.

To put this in anthropomorphic terms, if the United States was a human being, she would be permanently stuck in adolescence, refusing to grow up. In our modern world, adolescents are malformed to be dualists. They know the world in simple terms: black or white, hot or cold, pretty or ugly, right or left, Duke or North Carolina. This dualistic mind is essentially binary, offering either/or thinking. It knows only through comparison, fostering false divides and creating a defensive posture instead of an open, inquisitive mind. 

Dualism is the ego writ large, controlling, manipulating, and judging every situation and person based on how they align with our way of thinking. Dualism prioritizes what is best for me at the expense of what is best for you. And because dualism does not reflect reality, it handicaps the mind, rendering it incapable of processing things like infinity, mystery, God, grace, suffering, death, wisdom, or love—which is exactly why even Christians stumble over these very issues. We’d rather settle for quick and easy answers instead of deeper (but more difficult) wisdom. 

But even though dualistic thinking is a poor place to end up, it’s actually a great place to start, especially for children. This binary way of seeing the world helps create boundaries and safety nets. The problem arises when we don’t allow our thinking to mature beyond this basic way of understanding the world, when we want to continue to live according to an “us vs. them,” “this or that” mentality. 

Thankfully, as we mature spiritually, a natural migration away from polar extremes and into the messy middle occurs in our hearts and minds. Life becomes less and less bifurcated, and a third way of seeing and being emerges. Instead of “either/or,” we learn to be comfortable with “both/and.” According to Father Richard Rohr, “Non-dualistic thinking or both-and thinking is the benchmark of our growth into the second half of life...You no longer need to divide the field of every moment between up and down, totally right or totally wrong, for or against. It just is what it is.” Sadly, this way of being is antithetical to most of American evangelicalism formed by a dualistic culture, yet it has its ancient roots in the historical Jesus, whom Father Rohr describes as the first non-dual thinker in the Western world. 

Think about it: Whenever Jesus is presented with two options or two false choices that demand an answer (stone her or let her go, pay taxes or not, heal on the Sabbath or not), He always rejects both options and reveals a new way of interpreting the situation. Consider the woman caught in adultery and dragged into the light of day by men. Though it takes two to tango, it is only the woman who is outed, revealing the sinister backstory to this misogynistic tale. She is singled out as ‘‘the other.” Lines are drawn in the sand by these moral charlatans who believe sin exists somewhere out there, outside themselves and in people who aren’t like them. But Jesus refuses to play along: “Let him who has no sin cast the first stone.” And with that, they all slowly walk away, their dualism dismantled. 

But it’s not only in these stories that we find Jesus refusing to be confined by either/or thinking. His very essence proves that paradox and mystery are at the heart of our faith. Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, not one or the other. God is one in essence, yet three in persons. Scripture bears witness to a God who refuses duality: “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Like it or not, God doesn’t pick sides. Both/and thinking is not only central to spiritual maturity, it’s the hallmark of Christianity. 

So if we are trying to rebuild faith from the bottom up, it all starts with thinking as Jesus thinks and seeing as He sees. And even though we live in a hopelessly divided nation, we are a Holy people paradoxically called out of this world to be different, yet commanded to go back into the world to transform it from within. Our task is to hold these tensions together with grace, realizing that God is working on both sides of the street.