Posted July 30, 2026
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee yesterday, where he invoked his Fifth Amendment protections more than one hundred times in refusing to answer the committee’s questions. Many are focusing today on the contentious nature of the hearing and a possible contempt resolution against Dr. Fauci that the committee will consider next week.
For me, the hearing brought back terrible memories of frightening days when pandemic deaths outpaced morgue capacities and the cough of a stranger could prove fatal to others. Mortality related to COVID-19 continues: the CDC reports that between thirty-four thousand and fifty-three thousand people died from the virus last year.
If you’re like me, you don’t want to hear about this. You’re frustrated that we still don’t know with certainty how the pandemic began and worry that health officials will be unable to respond effectively to future pandemics. But you’ll otherwise do whatever seems practical to avoid what could cause your death today and go about the business of living.
However, here’s a biblical fact: embracing our mortality empowers our flourishing in this world and the next. Let’s learn why.
St. Basil the Great (AD 330–79) reminded his people, “You are going to leave your money behind here whether you want to or not. As for whatever share of glory you have received through your good works, that you can take with you to the Lord.”
In other words, living for the eternal in the temporal is the best way to approach both.
To this end, these words in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer are worth noting:
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal (my italics).
Here’s my problem: I often reverse the order.
In C. S. Lewis’s final sermon, he admits the same. He states:
Not long ago when I was using the collect for the fourth Sunday after Trinity in my private prayers, I found that I had made a slip of the tongue. I had meant to pray that I might so pass through things temporal that I finally lost not the things eternal; I found I had prayed so to pass through things eternal that I finally lost not the things temporal.
Using the eternal to serve the temporal is a persistent temptation in a temporal world. Satan would rather we dismiss the eternal entirely, of course, joining our secularized society in focusing only on the secular. But if we insist on reading our Bibles, praying, attending worship, and so on, our enemy will entice us to use such activities for our own purposes.
If we give God what he wants, perhaps he will give us what we want. If we are faithful to him on Sunday, we hope he will be faithful to us on Monday.
This is not biblical Christianity. Jesus calls any who would follow him to “take up his cross daily” (Luke 9:23). Paul testified that he has been “crucified with Christ” so that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). He called us to do the same, to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” to God (Romans 12:1).
Later in his sermon, Lewis observes, “It is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves.” He explains why:
[God] has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but himself; and he can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for him in our souls. Let us make up our minds to it; there will be nothing “of our own” left over to live on, no “ordinary” life. . . .
He claims all, because he is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless he has us. When we try to keep within us an area of our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, he claims all. There’s no bargaining with him.
The bad news is that our fallen nature clings to our fallen world. Frederick Buechner was right: “Intellectually, we all know that we will die, but we do not really know it in the sense that the knowledge becomes a part of us. We do not really know it in the sense of living as though it were true. On the contrary, we tend to live as though our lives would go on forever.”
The good news is that God can empower us to recognize our temporality so we can use it for his eternal purposes. Rather than declare his mortality, David prayed that God would help him recognize it: “O Lᴏʀᴅ, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” (Psalm 39:4).
God answered his prayer so fully that he could then testify, “I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers” (v. 12).
God will bless in this life and reward in the next that which is fully entrusted to him. The writer Katherine Mansfield was therefore right to advise,
“If you wish to live, you must first attend your own funeral.”
The best way to live every day is to be ready to meet the Lord every day. And one day, we will be right.
Do you “wish to live” today?
NOTE: For more on today’s theme, please see my new website article, “$167 million lottery winner arrested for fourth time.”
“The waters are rising, but so am I. I am not going under, but over.” —Catherine Booth
The post Dr. Fauci repeatedly invokes the Fifth before Congress appeared first on Denison Forum.
