Will we learn our lesson

On the 5th anniversary of "2 weeks to flatten the curve"

The half-decade that felt like a century

We are about to celebrate the 5-year anniversary of what would be one of the most detrimental decisions made by any politician in Canadian history. On March 17^th, 2020, Premier Doug Ford declared a State of Emergency in Ontario in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Non-essential businesses were ordered to close, and public gatherings were restricted to no more than 50 people. Places of worship were closed to in-person services.

What followed over the course of the next 3 years would be a series of policies, mandates, and requirements that changed Ontario forever. Below is a brief but detailed outline of the actions of our Provincial government.

This timeline, by the way, only scratches the surface of what happened in Ontario. Within those dates are several moves back and forth, using a colour-coded system of re-opening and targeted lockdown by municipalities. It was probably one of the most convoluted and unnecessary series of policies and mandates in Canadian history.

Plenty of take-aways

There has been and will be much to learn concerning this period of time in Canada. In a previous series titled “The Great Revealing”, I outlined five distinct realities that the COVID era brought to the surface of our society (here, here, here, here, and here). These were written in January 2021, just ten months after the first lockdowns and COVID mandates.

With the passing of years, there’s even more clarity and understanding. It’s been five years since Ontario implemented its first COVID policies. It’s been five years since we were introduced to the alleged deadly virus that would ravage Canada. It’s been five years since people were bombarded with fear and anxiety from the legacy media and health establishment, forced to stay in their homes, laid off and fired from work, and plunged into all manner of economic and psychological turmoil.

What have we learned since March 2020? More realistically, what SHOULD we have learned? I don’t want to examine five distinct revelations, as I did in my “Great Revealing” posts. Rather, I want to ask and answer five questions, and conclude with a plea to remember what we learned and apply it for the rest of our lives. The questions are:

1. What did we learn about the State?

2. What did we learn about our health and media institutions?

3. What did we learn about other “Christians”?

4. What did we learn about the local church?

5. What did we learn about ourselves?

An insatiable Leviathan

Prior to March 2020, most Canadians assumed that the civil magistrates in Canada, at all levels, were trying to work for the average Canadian and were therefore governing to the best of their ability. There was a general trust in our politicians that they would never do anything to intentionally harm Canadians or take advantage of us. This is due, in part, to Canada’s history, specifically post-World War II. My grandparents came to Canada from post-war Italy, which had been ravaged by fascism and utterly decimated economically. When they arrived here, they were welcomed into a democratic society that was meritocratic. Of course, they trusted their elected officials, because they fought against the likes of Mussolini and Hitler.

Those are not the same kind of politicians we have today in Canada, certainly not as they have operated over the last five years specifically. Our civil governments have grown exponentially in size, becoming an over-bloated managerial State that sees itself as both dad and god for the citizens. They have spent insanely irresponsibly, and our actual deficit and overall debt are completely out of control and almost entirely beyond repair. They required total obedience to their mandates and policies and punished dissenters with the harshest of consequences, including imprisonment, enormous fines, and ruining and closing small businesses.

What did we learn about the State? They lied to Canadians, openly and brazenly. In the quest for consolidating more wealth and power, Canadians were crushed under their tyranny. They would force us to obey COVID rules, while they had no problem breaking them regularly. Any elected officials that had a different opinion were either kicked out of their political parties for expressing that opinion, or they were forced to self-censor for fear of being punished. We learned that our State is an insatiable beast that grows and grows, and must take more of our money to feed its appetite. We learned that our civil governmental structures are not seeking the well-being of Canadians and they are not serving us, but are seeking their own well-being in self-serving corruption.

The mouthpiece and the syringe

Prior to March 2020, few Canadians seriously questioned our news and media establishment. Sure, they had their biases, but they would still allow for differing opinions and at least represent all sides of a story, no? The same measure of trust was also extended to our health institutions. Most people would follow their guidelines, including getting their annual flu shots. If they say a certain food is good, or a certain medication is bad, we should just give them the benefit of the doubt.

Those days are over. Our legacy media apparatus is essentially one propaganda unit delivering one united message. We know they were subsidized by the State, but we had no idea just how much they were State-directed. They would peddle the same false statistics and stories about jabs, masks, PCR tests, lockdowns, cases, and yes, even deaths. It was a common occurrence for different news outlets and news broadcasts to have the exact same articles and the exact same script. Canadian legacy media has become the Ministry of truth from “1984” (if you doubt it, read this).

If legacy media was the megaphone, who was the needle thrust into our collective arms? Our medical industrial complex was using legacy media to administer their messaging and their medicine. They used fear to drive us to obedience, all the while overseeing the exchanging of trillions of dollars and lining their pockets, while conflicts of interest abounded. They prohibited effective medication and encouraged heart-destroying poison. We now know they have been wrong for a very long time. Beef, butter, bacon, and eggs are REALLY good for you. Vaccinations do a lot of harm, and the diseases they were reported to have eradicated ACTUALLY began to go away BEFORE the injections were created (here is an interesting read on the Polio vaccine, for example).

We learned that legacy media and health institutions do the bidding of the State, not serve the interests of the citizens. We learned that money and messaging were of more value to our institutions than truth and healthcare. We learned that they have been actively working against truth and against health, and that we would be better off if we did the opposite of whatever they tell us to do.

The “Lord, Lord” people

March 2020 began the first real faith tests for many Christians in Canada. Would they be gripped by the fear of a virus that was said to be super-deadly? Would they go against their consciences? Would they cover their faces and not sing when gathered in corporate worship? Would they choose not to go to church for an indefinite period of time? Would they essentially abandon centuries of Christian teaching and practice on the limits of State authority? It turns out the answer was yes, they would, all of it and more.

As strong of an assertion as it may be, the last five years have proven that many people who profess to know and follow Christ neither know nor or are following Him. It turns out that instead of worshipping Christ as supreme their gods were the gods of comfort, safety, fear-of-man, and materialism. It’s easy to point out comfort and safety, because apparently many feared death much more than they feared God. The fear of what people might say, think, or do forced many people to act in ways contrary to Scripture. And for many pastors, rather than put their jobs at risk, or have people leave their churches (and take their offering along with them), they chose to trust in their wealth and possessions to take care of them rather than God.

To their shame, many of these people were happy to see actual Christians who were arrested or who lost their jobs, because it validated their Statism and their cowardice. They had no problem reporting on Christians who continued to meet during lockdowns, because far from honouring Christ as King, they tacitly proclaimed that they have no king but Caesar.

A broken Body

Local churches are physical representations of the Universal Church – the Bride of Christ – and they exist to make disciples and to equip those disciples to serve Christ. The local church is supposed to be a place where people gather to sing songs, pray, study the Scriptures, use their gifts, and encourage one another in physical ministry. Throughout history, when meeting as a church and doing ministry was costly and difficult, Christians persevered, because Christ is worthy of even a very costly obedience.

This is not what we saw in the vast majority of churches beginning in March. Churches forwent meeting together in person – often times for years – and settled instead for a Gnostic pseudo-church that was no different than a Board of Directors Zoom meeting. They substituted celebrating the Lord’s Supper for fruit punch and Goldfish crackers in their living rooms. They abandoned baptizing people with water to having their digital avatar baptized inside of a lake in a video game. This was a sad, pathetic time for churches.

We learned that most churches are not true churches at all, but rather clubs and community centres, open to the public when it’s convenient and safe. We learned that most churches have a very poor ecclesiology – the study of the church – and have their churches influenced more by business models, pop-psychology, and unprincipled pragmatism. We learned that when people are literally suffering and dying, most churches, which have historically stood in the breach to feed both the bodies and souls of people, opted for a safe, sofa-spirituality, hooked on a steady diet of Zoom-church and CBC news updates.

Let’s get personal

Considering all of this, perhaps the most important question we must all ask is, “What did I learn about myself?” Obviously, I can’t answer that question for you, though I would suggest taking significant time to answer that question if you haven’t already. So, the best I can offer you is what I learned about myself, and I want to simplify it down to two things, and as you’ll see, this is not a chest-puffing opportunity for me.

First, to my surprise (and at times discouragement), I learned about how limited, weak, and human I am. Before March 2020, as a man in my mid-thirties, I was as strong as anyone could be (mostly mentally, but also physically). Criticism would have little effect on me, and difficulties in the world would never rattle me that much. All of that was pushed to a breaking point during the COVID era, and the cracks abounded.

Feeling like a lone voice of what I thought was reason and common sense proved to be exhausting, especially when almost everyone around me, from the legacy media, to my entire extended family, to those closest to me in the church, disagreed strongly and publicly. It was an emotionally and mentally taxing time. I would often come home from work, after holding everything together, and fall into my wife in a heap of tears and frustration, telling her just how alone I felt. I actually suffered at least one major (and a few minor) panic attacks that forced me to go to the emergency room because my heart was beating uncontrollably fast (everything was and still is fine with my heart). I lost friends, I was disinvited to family get-togethers, and I had to witness dear brothers and sisters in Christ lose their education, jobs, and their peace, and I felt the weight of all of it squarely upon my shoulders. I realized that I have my own limitations, and I was not as strong or capable as I thought I was. I entered my forties a very different man than I was in March 2020, and, though exceedingly painful, I am thankful for it.

Why? This leads to the second thing I learned about myself, and that is I am even more strong-willed, persistent, and committed than I ever thought I was. I was faced with the allure and ease of going along with everyone else, or doing and saying what needed to be done and said, and life would be as normal and easy as it could have been, given the circumstances. We would have had a wonderful time with family and friends, we would have not gotten hatred and bad media coverage, and I probably would have avoided most of what I mentioned above. But the Lord has given me a steely resolve, and when I believe that something is true and right with all of my heart, I will do whatever it takes, pay whatever cost is required, to honour the Lord and see it through until the end. “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:12-13). Interestingly enough, knowing this about myself more fully, along with accepting my limitations more readily, I feel even more equipped to deal with whatever difficulties and challenges Christians will face in the days and years ahead.

History as teacher

We have learned many things over the last five years, about the State, about our institutions, about Christians, about churches, and about ourselves. While it’s good and helpful to have learned these things, even more necessary is the question, “Will we learn FROM these things?” Will we learn the lessons from the COVID-era? Will we apply what we now know to be true, although it may have been hidden under the cultural surface. Will we repeat the mistakes of the past five years when new challenges present themselves?

May the Lord grant us wisdom and courage for what lies ahead.