Perfect diagnosis

It is our duty to do our utmost in restoring physical health, but it is sinful to ignore the most essential requirement of being a person: the sense of significant being. Our community’s need of thought, understanding, intellectual expansion is profound and urgent. If not satisfied, we will all be bankrupt.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 28

<idle musing>
Yep. He diagnosed the current malaise of christianity in the US perfectly (even though he was talking about Judaism). And not just christianity, but the culture in general. While we are (sort of) fighting this pandemic, what of our intellectual and spiritual wasteland? Material goods don't give meaning to life!

The pulpits and the talking-heads in christianity are offering up a Trumpism that will never feed the soul with anything other than lies. We slice the budgets to universities, hiring only adjuncts. We expect public schools to function when we only offer them a reluctant slice of cash and then complain that the teachers are whiners and don't really want to teach when they are legitimately concerned for their (and their students') health.

Yep. Heschel was correct in his diagnosis.
</idle musing>