The faith healing anti-maskers of Phoenix in 2021


It's April of 2021, and I've spent the past year being fascinated by the different responses to the idea of wearing a mask during the current pandemic. I'll admit that I've always had a fascination for those kinds of things, going back to trying to understand why people chose to not wear seat belts (long before there was any law requiring them to do so). And like the no-seatbelt people of my youth, I'm fascinated by the no-mask people who are following their faith.

I have to admit to being a little jealous of people who have such great faith. When I learned to drive, in the mid-seventies, I had a basic understanding of physics, and imagining my face slamming into the windshield on impact was all I needed to convince me to wear a seat belt. No one ever grabbed me by the lapels and convinced me, and I was never threatened by anyone, it just seemed to make sense to me. I had a good friend who never wore a seat belt and who simply said, "If it's my time to die, I die". His faith was great. I don't recall if he had a little religious statue on his dashboard, but he probably did.

My faith, by comparison, is very weak. I visited the dentist today, and while I prayed that all would be well with the old choppers, I've been brushing my teeth, and flossing regularly. And sitting there for three hours gave me a lot of time to ponder, and I pondered the power of faith to heal.

A couple of months ago, while I was out pedaling around Peoria (a suburb of Phoenix) on an early Sunday morning I went past a church that was open for the congregation, and no one was wearing a mask (I slowed down past the parking lot to look). It puzzled me until I went and Googled the type of church, and yes, that's what they do. I couldn't help but wonder how many people there wouldn't wear seat belts if it wasn't the law, and as I pedaled on it gave me more food for thought about how faith healing works.

Of course I'm a man of faith, I can't even begin to understand all of the stuff around me. I take the meds that my doctor prescribes for me for cholesterol without having the slightest idea how it works. I never learned to do my own brakes, so every time I've left a repair place and pushed on the brake, I had faith in them. I've had faith in my bank to not accidentally lose my money, I have faith that the dentist who put my crown in today used the right kind of glue, the list goes on and on. And I take comfort in my faith, because it's right for me. And maybe that's how it should work.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more