Compassion. Kindness. Humility. Meekness. Patience. Thankfulness. Boy, that does not sound at all like our present culture, does it? Yet that is to be the attitude of our hearts daily before God. As we are told in 1 John 3:16, “By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

In Colossians 3:1-4, we read, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.”

Today, upon opening my web browser, a certain article came up for recommended reading. The title was a quote from within the article: “I Do Not Trust People in the Same Way and I Don’t Think I Ever Will Again.”

The image that accompanied the article was of a woman in a paper mask—you know, the kind Dr. Fauci says you will have to wear until the end of time—with her hand over her head like she’s about to fall over backward onto a fainting couch, just at the thought of having to go back to work again. It’s a melodramatic presentation, but this is supposed to be a serious article about how: “Workers are really, really not ready for offices to reopen.”

The article begins, “As COVID-19 vaccinations continue to run ahead of schedule, many workplaces that went fully remote last year are starting to set timelines for bringing people back to the office—and their employees are not happy.”

Of course not. Their employees have now gotten used to never having to change out of their PJ’s in order to do their jobs. They’re able to choose their own hours. They’re saving money on fuel, which now costs more than before the COVID lock-downs, and they have not had the hassle of that morning commute and the drive at five. If they can get the work done from home, why go back?

But given the title of the article, there’s another, more major factor at play—Americans are less trusting of one another than they have ever been. The reason they do not want to go back to work is less because they like working at home and more because they do not like people.

For more than the past year, we have been infected with so much rhetoric about suspecting your neighbor of being a potential killer—whether the chatter has been about COVID or police brutality or white supremacy or those dreaded Trump-voting Christian Nationalists or churches with teaching that turns young men into hunters of Asian women.

We’ve been told, “Don’t leave your house, or you might kill grandma,” which means perfectly healthy people who leave their homes must be suspected of spreading deadly contagions. Last year, I shared a story on Twitter about going next door and checking on my neighbor, and no kidding, the majority of comments were berating me for not loving my neighbor and putting them in danger.

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