Commentary
By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on April 17, 2020
In the midst of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States and around the world, landlords and tenants are battling over unpaid rents. From luxury retailers like Louis Vuitton, to office supply stores like Staples, to animal suppliers like Petco, to department stores like J.C. Penney, and to renters of apartments and homes, America's tenants have stopped paying their rent. Politicians promised Americans that landlords would work with tenants who were adversely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Some landlords have relaxed payment obligations, but most of them have not.
Many nonpaying tenants are taking the legal position that the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a "force majeure" or "Act of God" event that is outside of their control. This event, they argue, prevents them from meeting their rental obligations. This position is correct both as a matter of law and as a Biblical truth.
Landlords, lenders, and other creditors, speaking through paid lawyers, are denying that the COVID-19 pandemic is an "Act of God" event. This legal position is contrary to law and is adverse to the Biblical description of an "Act of God." This denial is based upon corporate greed, as retail sales have plunged a record 8.7% and industrial outputs have fallen at the steepest rate since the 1940s. To landlords, lenders, and other creditors, money is their god.
The arrogance of landlords, creditors, their parasitic lawyers, and the spineless politicians who traditionally empower them guarantees that a second, more deadly wave of the coronavirus is coming in our direction. This insensitive body of business interests has: (a) reduced God's wrath to a mere business and legal dispute, (b) denied that COVID-19's death, affliction, and economic destruction constitutes an "act of God," and (c) offended God by promoting the erroneous belief that biomedical researchers can nullify God's wrath with a cure or vaccine for COVID-19 in the coming months. What is worse, this misguided group of men and women believe the power of modern-day science to stop the spread of COVID-19 is greater than God's power to impose a plague on the lands.
The Second Wave
With COVID-19 deaths in the United States totaling more than 2,000 per day, it is apparent that God it trying to get our undivided attention. We have strayed far away from his Biblical teachings. God wants us to change our ways toward each other and toward the "least of these." However, our merchants of commerce only seem to care about returning to business as usual.
Our political leaders seem to be focused on jump-starting the economy and taking care of Wall Street. The economic stimulus checks they are providing to Main Street have proven to be inadequate and embarrassing. In reality, the financial relief for Main Street is too little, too late. This is especially true for the 22 million American workers who have lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
What is worse, our church leaders have largely remained silent about why America is incurring the brunt of God's COVID-19 wrath. These leaders would rather offend God than upset the Washington politicians they have come to adore and support. This course of action reveals the lack of authenticity of today's church and the true character of its pulpit occupants.
The suffering, affliction, permanent injuries, death, and economic destruction coming in the second COVID-19 wave will strongly test the faith of mankind. There is nothing that can be done to stop it. The righteous will suffer, along with the unbelievers. Job 9:33-35. What we are suffering now is nothing compared to the glory God will reveal to us later. Romans 8:18.
Enduring Another Storm
As for me and the Carmichael/Varnado/Watkins family, we have always worshipped and trusted in the Lord our God. Since the 1830s, my ancestors and family members have publicly and privately acknowledged that only God could: (a) deliver us from slavery in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, (b) allow our black, biracial and multi-racial ancestors to educate their children and prosper in the Deep South during the Post-Civil War Reconstruction era, (c) protect our family members during the Post-Reconstruction era of harsh Jim Crow segregation laws in the Deep South, (c) shield our entire family from eight decades of Ku Klux Klan lynchings, beatings, cross burnings, house and church bombings, and other acts of domestic terrorism in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kansas, (d) nurture and shield our family from the sweltering heat of racial discrimination and brutal oppression of blacks during Alabama Gov. George Wallace's era of "segregation yesterday, segregation today, and segregation tomorrow," and (e) keep us safe in the post-Wallace decades that included (i) massive resistance to equal opportunity, (ii) the benign neglect of blacks, (iii) neo-racism masquerading as conservative political thought, and (iv) today's right-wing extremist abuse of women and minorities by our institutions of government.
The Watkins family fully understands who God is, what he has done, and what he is capable of doing. We have seen many "Pharaohs" come and go along the road to freedom and dignity for blacks, women, and the "least of these" in America.
Until we fundamentally change our ways as a society, Americans will suffer unimaginable pain and suffering. How long we will suffer is entirely up to us.
Do some research on "herd immunity". Since we currently have no vaccine for this, we have o reason to expect that there won't be a second wave of the virus, With no vaccine, the only folks who are really immune are those who have had the disease. That's why all the talk of getting the economy going is blind to reality. "Opening" early will just speed the re-occurrence and may make it worse.