Think back to September 11, 2001, do you remember where you were? I don't. Truthfully, I remember very little of that fateful day because the anesthesia had done its job for an early morning knee surgery. It wasn’t until about 10 o’clock that night that I finally understood (albeit slightly drugged) that the foreign terrorist attacks had occurred in our country and fear had enveloped our society.
This fear was so great that it changed the lives of countless people that following Sunday. A Barna study showed that there was an uptick of 25% in church attendance immediately following these attacks. People changed their regular routines all because of the present circumstances they now faced.
Fast-forward to 2020. Once again, everything has changed because of our present circumstances, hasn’t it? The fear is so great that it has changed countless lives and routines that had been a part of our lives long before the coronavirus.
- Masks are worn second-nature where once we never owned one.
- Hand sanitizer usage is at an all-time personal high. (Insomuch that the days of licking our fingers while snacking on some french fries is now a bad idea.)
- We’ve been forced to consider the health situations of other people where once we never did.
- We’ve had to consciously slow down in the pace of our lives where once we were too busy to even cook dinner apart from a microwave.
- We’ve rediscovered the joy of simply being with the people that are closest to us where once we had forgotten they were sitting on the other side of our smartphones.
Needless to say, if we’re honest things have changed for all of us because of this virus (among other present circumstances in our society that we will get into on a later date).
I digress back to the initial question, “What will 2021 look like because of 2020?” The short answer is that it depends on the circumstances that are present come January 1. Here’s what I mean—if the coronavirus is still around come New Year’s then things might look the same as the day on which I am writing this. If, on the other hand, the virus is eradicated OR a working vaccine exists OR the threat is covered less by the mainstream media then, practically speaking, JANUARY 1, 2021 WILL LOOK NO DIFFERENT THAN JANUARY 1, 2020. Yes, I really made that prediction.
So why do I think there’ll be no discernible difference after this pandemic that caused so many fears and changes? Because if human history has shown us anything it is this—change in our lives and in our world is only dictated by present circumstances and, therefore, past circumstances affect us very little if at all into the future. This fact alone is why we have all repeated the great-old saying, "History repeats itself."
Let’s go back to that Barna study following 9/11. In the same study that found church attendance went up by 25% immediately following the attacks, it also found that by November of that same year attendance was back to normal pre-9/11. Read it for yourself:
"The surge in church attendance has been widely reported, and while current levels of adult attendance are higher than before the attack, they are not statistically different than the numbers recorded last November, thus reflecting the usual seasonal increase. It appears that attendance, which nationwide increased by perhaps 25% immediately after the attack, is back at normal levels.”
This “bounce-back” to normalcy following an immediate change caused by present circumstances is a common trend throughout all of human history even in the narrative of Scripture. For instance, in the book of Judges, Israel's habitual idol-worship always led to captivity. This captivity then caused them to repent and turn back to God; who would then deliver them from that captivity. But, once freed and normalcy is restored, the Jews would return to their wicked ways beginning the cycle all over again. I can’t help but see a correlation between Israel in Judges and the post-9/11 religious example here in America—"History repeats itself!"
So what will 2021 look like because of 2020? Without God’s help and a conscious effort, we’ll go back to ignoring the health concerns of others, dinner will once again come out of a microwave, people in the same room will again be strangers lurking behind the screens of our phones, and besides a drawer full of unused masks and a closet full of hand sanitizer we are trying to unload on Ebay, it will all probably look exactly the same. Finger-lickin', french-fry snackin' here we come again...
That is…unless…we prefer the taste of changing history instead.
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