To Mask or Not to Mask…
Once again Masking and Social Distancing is a sign of Power during this pandemic. A mask is a sign of strength, respect, and a caring and kind attitude to others. It is not a sign of weakness. It is the courage of one with a healthy ego. It shows the true measure of one’s heart.
Wearing a mask means love of others and love of self. It demonstrates power. It is a sign of respect to elders. As I write in my book Return of a Green Philosophy: “society has lost many of the values treasured by past indigenous cultures, such as a partnership with nature, truth telling, and elder/ancestor respect and honor. We need to discover meaning in life—not accumulate money and material things.” And the meaning of life—Love.
To the ancient Norse, an action not taken (not wearing a mask) may be more harmful than an action taken. In a community setting, “inaction on the parts of individuals could affect the survival of a community. The man who out of sloth failed to do his share of the harvest or the man who out of cowardice did not join in battle beside his tribesman could cost lives through his inaction. These are crimes in which the individual has not so much committed a wrong as he has failed to do what is right. In other words, he has failed to act. An inaction is usually not beneficial to the community and does nothing to maintain the community.”[i]
Ones with unhealthy egos will not wear a mask. Is it vanity, is it to show I am a tough guy, is it because the “obese guy” at the top does not wear one? On the other hand, he is for choke holds but maybe not (double talk/gaslighting which he is famous for). And I can guarantee you, he has never had a choke hold put on him, as I have, and almost passed-out. It is nothing to fool with except in a life and death situation.
I wonder how many refusing to wear a mask are professed Christians. Isn’t there something about caring and loving your fellow man/woman? When Jesus taught “love thy neighbor as thyself,” he was referring to the metaphysical realization “that you and that other are one, that you are two aspects of the one life, and that your apparent separateness is but an effect of the way we experience forms under the conditions of space and time. Our true reality is in our identity and unity with all life.”[ii]
This is what Jesus taught: his teachings emphasized love, which unites, over fear, which separates. He saw no cosmic battle between God and the devil or a duel between good and evil. He only saw the evil deeds that people are capable of doing to others as well as the lack of regard people have for the poor and the outcast.
Jesus walked his talk as an example to his students—both male and female. Deeds were more important than words. He made mistakes and got angry—his human side. He talked and walked his truth, forgave, and healed—his divine side.
He lived the importance of self and other. He felt more comfortable in the presence of the “outcasts,” as they were more authentic, whereas the rich and the temple elite were greedy and hypocritical—false faced.
He embraced life in all its shades of light and dark and asked others to do so as well.
If you consider yourself a Christian and do not wear a mask, you are a hypocrite. Jesus loathed hypocrisy, feeling that it was one of the most abhorrent of human behaviors. Today, if you evoke the name of Jesus, you’d better believe in and promote social justice and a culture and society of unity, freedom, equality, choice, and an egalitarian way of life. If you do not, then you are a hypocrite.
Let me restate the words where action needs to be taken—unity, freedom, equality, choice, and an egalitarian way of life—for all.
Another hypocrisy of the church is wealth. It is evident that Jesus was contemptuous of wealth and its accumulation: “Don’t worry about tomorrow. Don’t accumulate savings. It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Accordingly, he taught that you can’t have two masters—money and God. Spouting the Bible and attending church while casting a blind eye to poverty and hoarding millions or billions of dollars while homelessness and hunger are rampant and the chasm between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is great and ever widening is hypocritical. As “such hoarding of treasure—or in current speech, the ‘amassing of wealth’—is in itself productive of many evils, e.g. greed, avarice, covetousness, leading to all manner of temptations and crime; for ‘where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.’[iii]
I believe in Choice. Your Choice—Mask or Not to Mask!
[i] Husfelt, Return of a Green Philosophy, 60.
[ii] Husfelt, Do You Like Jesus—Not the Church? Jesus: His True Message – Not the Lie of Christianity, 108.
[iii] Ibid, xxxii – xxxiii