Whether in prayer or public health, there’s no room for absolute certainty. Remember that the first thing God created was chaos, and the whole rest of the Creation process is an ongoing effort to create and maintain separation in that chaos. This effort fails frequently and dramatically, like the post-COVID attempts to get things “back to normal” we talked about in Chapter 31.
There are things that we can do to maintain the separation, reverse the slide back to chaos, or postpone the inevitable—sometimes. The great fallacy of Western medicine is that we’re in control of the body; the great fallacy of pagan religion is that we’re in control of God. Even as the Abrahamic faiths turned from the worship of many to the worship of one all-powerful God, they couldn’t uproot the deep-seated belief that there was some way to game the Great One, whether according to the recipe of one’s own creed, or by following the latest science or pseudo-science.
Let’s acknowledge that chaos is always going to be there. The science that describes the impact of changing any single risk factor is complex and dreadfully boring to read, so it’s no use trying to catch the public’s attention that way. And the impact of spiritual change and growth is one of the universe’s eternal mysteries, one we may be fortunate enough to understand after it’s already too late to keep us alive in this world.
It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of chaos, but we aren’t. How much power do we have? Who knows. But we have agency, which is better than nothing. We have repentance, prayer, righteous action, seat belts, vaccines, strong relationships, home care for the elderly, cholesterol medicine, exercise, suboxone, compassion, defibrillators, and emergency surgery, and we hope (no, pray) that it’ll be enough.