There is a great deal of talk about returning to a state of normality after the great challenges posed by the novel coronavirus pandemic. But no one can state emphatically or categorically when the pandemic will end. We are breathing a little easier with the hope that the Omicron variant may usher in endemicity — which means that the virus’s persistent threat has subsided and we have now begun to live with it as we do the common cold. What we call a state of normality after that is often not clearly defined. I do not believe that any neat definition is possible either, given the revolutionary ways in which the virus has upended every facet of human existence on the planet.

There is no institution that has not been affected or changed for good by its unrelenting assault on what we had come to take for granted. The true extent to which it has devastated our lives will not be seen anytime soon, whether on an individual, national, or global level. We now have a mere glimpse into what this can be like, but I believe its more grotesque implications are yet to be seen.

But, as we know, there are opportunities in every crisis and so we do not have to be overwhelmed by the negative characteristics of this virus. I believe the pandemic has given the world an opportunity to pause, breathe, and re-examine many things to which we have become accustomed and which were not necessarily serving us well.

For one thing, there has to be a reassessment in every country of the health infrastructure and equity in the distribution of health benefits to the wider society. The virus has revealed the ramshackle nature of much of the world’s health infrastructure. Even in developed countries this inadequacy was clearly evident.

Also, the glaring economic inequities in the world have been made more apparent by the virus. This was evident in the parlous distribution of vaccines between rich and poor countries. And, to date, we have not yet got it right. There is still a disproportionate distribution of the precious commodity between rich and poor countries.

The rich in every country became richer while the circumstances of the poor continued to deteriorate to alarming levels. The world now has more of an opportunity to recalibrate its economic prospects than it has ever had in 100 years. Will it seize the opportunity for this great reset, or will it continue with the kind of neoliberal economic policies that make the poor poorer while the few get grotesquely rich?

The question of political leadership and governance will also have to be re-examined. What COVID-19 has revealed in almost every country is a lack of accountability and transparency in the management of infectious diseases. It is not that these problems were not present before COVID-19, but they have been forced to the front because of the sudden existential threat to survival presented by the novel coronavirus.

The attempt by some countries, like the USA, in the early days of the pandemic to politicise the virus marked the lowest levels of immorality to which any country could sink in the fight against a global crisis. Conspiracy theories, spawned in some instances by political operatives, and given succour by political charlatans, aided and abetted the descent into the moral abyss. Former US President Donald Trump was the poster child for this.

The Church has not been spared the need to seriously re-evaluate its message and mission in the world. For the Jamaican Church, I would submit that this task should have been an ongoing one before the pandemic, but the virus has amplified the need for this to be done.

Forced to go indoors, the Church had to rely on digital and virtual presentations of their services to the faithful. One hopes that the Church would come away from the pandemic with a heightened sense of what it is about; an understanding that, as the body of Christ, it is a living, organic entity made up of people who have recognised the lordship of Jesus over their lives; and a recognition that the Church cannot be contained within the walls of a building or within fossilised structures defined by rigid concentrations of hierarchical power.

One hopes that the Church would have learnt that the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ — its insistence on love and justice; the execution of the mandate given to it by its Lord, as seen in his first message in a synagogue in Nazareth, to heal the broken-hearted, set at liberty the oppressed, and proclaim liberty to those who are bound by all kinds of oppressive systems (Luke 4: 18-19) — should be at the core of its message to a weary and divided world.

It is in the efficacy of its message to the wider society that the Jamaican Church has the greatest challenge.

The message of the gospel does not change, but the way it is transmitted is critical. In America many young people are re-evaluating their relationship with the Church. The Church of their parents, and certainly grandparents, is not what they are interested in. They have seen and heard of the horrible scandals in the Church, especially the Catholic paedophile scandals and the sex and financial scandals that have rocked the evangelical world, and they do not want to have anything to do with it.

The concern is not so much with the message that is preached as this seems to be well understood by those who seek to preach it. The problem for many young people is whether those who preach the message believe it themselves, and whether they are sufficiently seized of its importance to apply it to their daily lives and hang their very lives on it.

There is no reason to think that Jamaican young people are not seized with a similar thought process. We have seen a growth in the number of people who do not profess faith in God. I submit that God is not the problem, and never will be the problem, but those who convey the message about God. As Bill Maher of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO once opined, the problem lies in how the Church has made a bureaucracy out of God. And that bureaucracy today is stultifying. COVID-19 has given the global Church a wonderful opportunity to breathe again and open the windows of faith that the life-giving spirit of God can once again refresh it and free it from bondage to institutionalism.

If we are not serving a bureaucratic God, there are serious questions with which the Jamaican Church must wrestle. If it wants to be frank and honest, and if it takes its mission to the society seriously, then it ought to be concerned about the legitimacy of its message to a society of three million people riven with murderous criminality and corruption on a mere 4, 411 (now made less by global warming) square miles of real estate. It must ponder why as a society that has the distinction (or disgrace), according to the Guinness Book of World Records, of having the most churches per square mile, it seems to be so content with the tearing of the social fabric as we are now witnessing in the country. I say disgrace because there should be collective shame that, with a potent, transformative message as that contained in the gospel, the Church has not been able to make a dent in preventing the social rot that has set in, in the society for far too long.

What has gone wrong? Why is there not greater collaboration among the churches in sharing resources to get things done, especially in depressed inner-city communities? Each church sits in its denominational silo protecting its own turf and ecclesiastical doctrines, while people yearn for transcendence and the calm and peace that faith in God can give them.

The Church cannot any longer be concerned with church as usual. The pandemic has given it the breathing room it needs to chart a new path in really working towards the transformation of the society for good.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storm and Your Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.