G.K. Chesterton once observes that, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.” Dennis Prager starts off with that quote to illustrate that nature has become a substitute god for many today.

That’s not surprising. Many pagan religions had some form of nature worship. They worshipped the sun god, the moon god, or the goddess of fertility. Today there is a religious foundation to the environmental movement. We need to protect Mother Earth. Back in the 1970s, James Lovelock developed the “Gaia hypothesis” and more recently noted that “environmentalism has become a religion.”

But nature worship has run into some tough times with this virus pandemic. Nature can be beautiful, but nature can also be brutal. Alfred Tennyson describes nature as “red in tooth and claw.” There are no moral laws. It is the survival of the fittest.

How should Christians think about nature. First, nature is part of the fallen world and should not be worshipped. G.K. Chesterton explained, “Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us.”

Second, in Genesis 1:28, God commands us to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion.” Being fruitful (having children) is just the opposite of what environmentalists would allow. One of my professors at Yale was the founder of zero population growth, dedicated to limiting the number of children that could be born.

Moreover, environmentalists and animal rights activists reject the idea that humans should subdue nature and have dominion over the earth. An article by Lynn White in the 1960s even blamed Christians and this passage in Genesis for our environmental problems.

This pandemic is a reminder that nature is not a friend, and nature is not our god. The Christian worldview is the true picture of reality.

Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives want to investigate the US response to the coronavirus pandemic. In Watergate investigative style, they want to know what the president knew and when he knew it. It looks like merely another attempt to criticize the president. But if they are really interested in knowing what we knew back in January, the person they should question is Senator Tom Cotton.

While most of Congress was preoccupied with other matters (like impeachment), the senator was warning the US government of an impending danger. On January 22, the Arkansas senator sent a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services warning that the Chinese Communists were likely censoring key information about the disease.

During the impeachment trial, the US Senate held a classified briefing on the virus. Only 14 senators showed up for the hearing. By January 28, his letter to many cabinet officers was calling for a ban on travel from China to the US while also urging an evacuation of Americans from China. He even missed hours of the impeachment trial because he was meeting with administration officials.

Why did he see the danger that so many others missed? He says that he has been aware of the Chinese government’s dishonesty for years. He also noticed the extreme measures the government was taking in January (putting more than 75 million Chinese in lockdown). People were confined to their apartments. Sometimes the front doors of the buildings were welded shut. People were being arrested if they left their homes.

The words of the Chinese Communist were meant to be reassuring. But their actions told another story. They were doing all they could to stop the spread of the virus. Senator Cotton is not a doctor nor even a health care expert. But he could see what China was doing and did what he could to alert the president and the US government. He deserves our thanks.

We are told by medical experts and politicians that we have to set aside many of our constitutional rights during this lockdown in order to keep people safe. And we are assured that this sacrifice of our freedoms is only temporary. But are we setting a precedent?

Who would have predicted that a virus would become the justification for some governors and mayors to lay siege to our civil liberties? Six months ago, if I told you that political leaders would close down nearly every church service (even on Easter) and close down huge sectors of our society, would you believe it? Even many of the most dedicated preppers would have had difficulty believing it. Yet here we are.

A retired UK Supreme Court Justice explained his concern. “The real problem is that when human societies lose their freedom, it’s not usually because tyrants have taken it away. It’s usually because people willingly surrender their freedom in return for protection against some external threat. And the treat is usually a real threat but usually exaggerated.”

The other side of that equation is also disturbing. Not only do citizens willingly give up their freedoms, but governments are traditionally reluctant to give up power that was granted to them during a crisis. Once we give government leaders power, they find it hard to return to the previous status quo.

Some of the worst threats to freedom can be seen in other countries when government leaders implement the most draconian of rules and regulations. America’s dedication to limited government and federalism have provided some protection against such action, so far. But let’s remember that we have had some governors and mayors threaten to permanently close down churches, gun stores, and a number of other establishments. That’s why we need to make sure we aren’t setting a precedent during this pandemic crisis.

Yesterday I talked about the need for economists and political leaders to create an endgame to the current lockdown on our society. The obvious objection to this can be found in the numerous clichés that portray any discussion as an attempt to trade dollars for death.

The governor of New York, for example, scolds, “No one should be talking about social Darwinism for the sake of the stock market.” He argues that, “We will not put a dollar figure on human life.” But even the editors of The New York Times recently described this as a false choice. Shelter-in-place has been necessary, but there must be a time in the future when government leaders must consider the economic and humanitarian trade-offs.

Reopening American society isn’t as much about the stock market as it is about the everyday lives of millions of Americans. Frankly, the wealthy can probably weather the current lockdown, but that is not true of the poor and even middle-class who have no savings to rely upon.

As I mentioned yesterday, income is a strong predictor of health outcomes. People who are poor don’t live as long. Americans who have lost wages and lost jobs are less likely to proper. They won’t eat at well. They won’t go to the doctor. They won’t buy medications because they are simply trying to buy food and pay the rent.

For the purist who argues that we should never talk about trade-offs, we can point to many current examples. Fewer people would die on highways if the speed limit was 25 mph. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that highway fatalities rose 8.5 percent for every 5 mph in a highway’s speed limit. Cigarette smoking is responsible for 480,000 deaths per year and 88,000 die each year from alcohol-related causes. But we don’t ban either of these. We make policy trade-offs every day.

We need a national conversation about the cost and benefit of our current lockdown.

The country has effectively been in lockdown for weeks, but many are asking when all of this will change. President Trump optimistically hoped Americans could be in church on Easter. Yesterday was a reminder that we aren’t even close to bringing normalcy to our society.

We need to start talking about an endgame, or to use a military term, we need an exit strategy. Epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists rightly focus on the medical health of humans. But economists and politicians need to focus on the economic and social health of a country that has been shut down.

One of the best ideas I have seen came from a New York Times column by Thomas Friedman who writes about “A Plan to Get America Back to Work.” He quotes Dr. David L. Katz, a public health expert at Yale University. He proposes a targeted approach in which we reboot the economy while also calling for the most vulnerable to shield themselves from infection. He also calls for establishing mobile testing and temperature-check systems like Korea.

Ronald A. Klain (who served as President Obama’s Ebola response coordinator) writes that it is time to reopen production facilities, even if it has to be done with fewer workers per shift who are spread further apart. We could even allow some stores to open with limited capacity and hours.

These are good ideas that the president and governors should consider, especially since all of these ideas come from people who certainly are NOT fans of the Donald Trump. But this is an election year. The moment the president or governors mention these ides, they will face a firestorm of criticism. We need an endgame, but there will be a political price to pay for implementing it.

Although America is certainly a divided nation, the divisions between the various tribes are not as great as you might be led to believe. Yes, the social and political debates are loud and intense, but the fringe, rather than the mainstream, gets most of the attention.

A study done by the group “More in Common” discovered “The Hidden Tribes of America.” The researchers discovered that a small group (8%) in the liberal wing and a smaller group (6%) in the conservative wing are the ones who consistently shout, post, and vote while the rest of America is often exhausted by all of the rhetoric.

Here is an interesting contrast. On the one hand, these two groups hate each other and disagree with each other on just about every topic. On the other hand, they are very much alike. Both groups are mostly white, educated, and politically active. They always vote and give time and money to political campaigns.

But here is the relevant fact: the two groups combined only constitute 14% of the American population. In other words, the 86% of most of us watch and listen to these two groups argue and criticize each other while ignoring the many points in common we might have.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to you if you have been listening to my commentaries for any length of time. In the past, I have talked about various points of agreement. For example, Dirk Philipsen made the argument many years ago that you could fill a room with Tea Party members, Occupy Wall Street activists, and concerned Americans and find agreement. He says you would find people concerned about concentrated power, out-of-control change, and concerns about a government that no longer represents the people.

After this divisive election season, we need to find a way to bring the American people together. But we won’t bring people together if we let the two fringe wings of the political spectrum dominate all our discussions.

The term anti-Semitism has been loosely thrown around for years, and used recently to label the president, even though he has Jewish people in his extended family. It is about time to give specificity to a real problem that has often been redefined and demeaned by misuse.

At the core of anti-Semitic thought is that Jews are the source of many social problems and thus the Jews are guilty of everything. This is what is so crazy about this false belief. Supposedly Jews are the reasons for problems in commerce and our culture. Arab countries have 40 times the population of Israel and occupy land area that is 500 times great. Yet, it is Israel that is the problem and must be pushed into the sea. And the United Nations routinely passes resolutions condemning Israel while ignoring significant human rights abuses in other countries.

The murderer who rushed into the Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 Jews certainly believed that Jews were the problem and needed to be killed. If you read some of his Gab posts, you would be horrified by his anti-Semitic words and images.

Dennis Prager reminds us that Jews understand this hatred. On Passover, they read from a Jewish prayer book these words: “In every generation, they arise to annihilate us.” Notice it doesn’t say “persecute us” or even “enslave us.” Anti-Semites wants to kill all Jews and eliminate them from this planet.

The level of this hatred isn’t just irrational; it’s demonic. That’s about the only explanation you can have for people possessed by a level of hatred that makes no sense. Jews number 18 million in a world population of 7.5 billion. Israel occupies a land mass no bigger than New Jersey. Yet, Jews are the problem, and Israel is the problem. This only makes sense when viewed through the lens of spiritual warfare.

The U.S. Constitution reminds us that the responsibility for our government rests with “we the people.” In order for us to be effective, we need to know something about our government and our history. Citizens in countries ruled by dictators don’t need to know much since the major decisions are made for them. But we Americans should be educated and informed.

Unfortunately, we are not well educated and informed. A study done by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation discovered that only one in three (36%) Americans could actually pass the U.S. citizenship test. And I might add that you only have to get 60 percent of the questions right in order to pass the test.

For example, a majority (57%) did not know how many justices serve on the Supreme Court. Nearly three-fourths (72%) could not accurately identify which states comprised the 13 colonies. And only a quarter (24%) even knew why the American colonists fought the British in the Revolutionary War.

Most disturbing was the fact that young people performed worst on the test. You might excuse an elderly person for forgetting some facts about government or history. But less than one in five (19%) under the age of 45 could pass this test.

In previous commentaries, I have proposed a solution that some states have considered. Require students to pass the citizenship test before they graduate from high school. Consider the fact that a naturalized citizen probably knows more about America’s history and structure of government than someone who was born in this country.

Young people in America cannot pass a citizenship test for one of two reasons: either they weren’t paying attention in class or they weren’t taught this material in the first place. Let’s require students to pass a citizenship test before graduation. We require it of people who want to be American citizens. Why not require it of students who are already citizens because they were born here?

A recent research paper concluded that first responders are more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty. The Rudman White Paper on Mental Health and Suicide of First Responders is a chilling look at the sobering statistics of the lives of men and women who protect us each day.

The paper explains that, “Police and firefighters, when compared to the general civilian population, are at heightened risk for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicide.” We should remember that people in these professions “have front row seats to the horrendous aftermath of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, violent domestic 
disputes, traffic accidents, and more.” In fact, one study concluded that police officers witness 188 “critical incidents” during their career. No wonder their rates of PTSD and depression are as much as five times higher than the rates within the general population.

Another reason for suicide is the reality that so many first responders have prior military experience. That means they are piling onto their career more “incidents” after already having a previous career rife with trauma. They may be strong, brave, and resilient, but they are only human.

Another concern is the unwillingness for men and women in these professions to seek help. Often they want to avoid the shame and stigma that might come when they ask for counseling. And these same barriers often prevent families from talking openly about the suicide of a loved one.

One obvious solution is to break the silence that surrounds this issue of first responder mental health. That is why I wrote this commentary. We need to support our first responders and ask them to get help so they can continue to keep us safe.

Most Christians understand that the problems facing America are not going to be solved in Washington. But it is noteworthy when a sitting U.S. Senator says that, “Politics Can’t Solve Our Political Problems.”

That was the title of a commentary by Senator Ben Sasse. He believes that the tribalism in our nation has a deeper source and is tied to loneliness in America. We are relational beings and want to be in tribes. He observes that, “the traditional tribes that have sustained humans for millennia are simultaneously in collapse.” Those would be family, friendships, and communities of worship.

At the core of this is loneliness in America. It is not a new problem, a quarter century ago I wrote a book with the title Signs of Warning, Signs of Hope. One of the chapters dealt with a “crisis of loneliness.”

A book we often quote on our radio program is Bowling Alone written by Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam. We no longer are involved in community. We often move and have few friends. We have few shared projects and belong to fewer civic groups.

On the other hand, we don’t want to be left out. We don’t want to feel the “same isolation we felt at the edge of the cafeteria or as the last kid picked for kickball.” So we yearn for a group (often a political ideology) as the basis for our intimate connections. Our cable news tribes offer a common experience.

To reverse these trends we need to read his new book, Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal. In his commentary, he shares how he and his wife “put down roots” in a small community and became friends with people from every race and income bracket. We must find ways to replenish the social capital and reverse the tribal conflict in our culture.