Faith: Golden Rule discarded by so many in Idaho who hamper the fight against COVID

“F--- you!!!!!!” screamed the young man in the pickup truck that careened around the corner and raced past us. My husband and I were the only people walking on that particular block downtown just then, an ordinary couple strolling back to their car from the bookstore. We were wearing masks.

Dozens of people have gathered around the private homes of Boise’s mayor and of Central District Health board members — public servants who are doing their best to save the lives of our citizens from the ever-looming specter of COVID-19. Outside these houses, those sacred centers of hearth and home, of children and elders, the mean ones are beating on garbage cans, blasting air horns, screeching insults and spewing irrationality.

What on earth is wrong with these people? What has happened to their values, their common decency? Or their human hearts, which surely once must have beat in sympathy with others — others who are doing hard jobs that must be done? Have they never felt the call to give something up for a larger cause? Are kindness and benevolence foreign to them?

This is a religious column, but today civic and spiritual virtues come together as one. Take the Golden Rule. If practiced, the effect is the civic and religious virtue of improving the common welfare, of increasing the common good.

We have a terrible disease stalking us, one that on some days kills as many or more people daily in the U.S. as American lives lost on 9/11 or the day of the Pearl Harbor attack. We have a disease among us that can be slowed — perhaps stopped — if every one of us gives up a little convenience, in the sure knowledge that the long term will be served well. To me, doing unto others means wearing masks.

I am conflicted and puzzled about what can be done about the immoral and inhumane behavior of those who do not or cannot or will not see the larger picture.

A not-so-worthy part of me asks, “Can’t we just lock them all up, until our world is safe again?” Well, OK, we can’t, for a number of reasons.

The only other thing I can think of is that used-to-death phrase “keep them in our thoughts and prayers.” Many people’s humble energy going forth can make a difference. What if every single person reading this column prayed that these strange persons may have their bound-up hearts relieved? For the readers who do not actually pray, what if you meditate, sending healing to these inflamed spirits? And if what you most like to do is think, perhaps you can think generous thoughts toward them. Who knows? It is possible that there will be a new spirit of increased common sense and compassion, if we all bend our spiritual efforts toward public safety, higher good and spiritual uplifting.

In Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” poor, tortured Marley’s ghost declares how his life should have been lived, instead of in self-centered greed. “Humankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence were, all, my business!”

Charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence. May they be the business of all of us.

And may all of us be safe and loved this holiday season. “God bless us every one.”