So what does this mean in the age of COVID-19? Please understand I completely love the rights and freedoms that we enjoy in America. I am asking this question to people of faith? More specifically my fellow Christians?
I believe the scientists and medical personal on the front lines of this pandemic. I do not believe a falsified media that feeds into fears, fortune-telling (masquerading as prophecy), and us vs them thinking. Remember all forms of media are in fact a media. If you want to engage in the pursuit of your preconceived subjective truth, you will find it. This doesn't make it accurate. Mainstream media definitely has issues but how does one fact check the sources that confirm their bias? Is there a Snopes for the conspiratorial? Conspiracies can be a whole other blog but I will refrain from diving in too much at this point. Lets just say COVID-19 is a real virus that is spreading that does in fact result in the suffering and deaths of our neighbors.
What is more important, our individual rights or how we treat our neighbors? The Lord said to Love your neighbor as yourself. He also said to love your enemies.
Why would a Christian choose not to wear a mask, not social distance and gather in groups? In light of the command to love; what would be our calling in this regard? What would be a good reason to disobey this calling? Do our individual rights trump our commitment to love?
According to polling data on Wikipedia in 2015, 75% of americans identified themselves as Christian. I know we have several denominations and I have spent time in a few over my lifetime. Love is still the central command of Christ to all of His followers. Why is it a problem to wear a mask and socially distance and avoid large groups for so many of us? Have we mixed the call of the Gospel with American ideals?
There is no rugged individualism in the christian life; even the hermits depended on community to survive. In the scriptures we are taught that our freedom is not license to do whatever we want, particularly when it comes to harming others or going against God.
So, even if you do not believe the data about COVID-19 and believe alternative forms of media, the question is still present, why would you not, for the sake of love of neighbor or perceived enemy, wear a mask, socially distance and avoid groups. What is it about your individual rights that makes you feel it is okay to have disregard of your neighbors and refuse to submit (Roman 13:1) to the governing authorities advisories that are not a hardship??
Is it a fear of armageddon? As a believer, what is there to fear in the culmination of all time? I believe there will be an end. I also believe we were also taught not to be overly concerned with it but to rather be prepared, watch and wait. Again I ask, what is the believer worried about so much that they would risk harming their neighbor because they don't believe the hype? They haven't been personally affected; is that it? Or is their faith just lip service until the deathbed? A personal faith that asks nothing of you in terms of loving your neighbor except maybe to share with them what you believe in the hopes they will believe the same as well. Is it a fear of losing our rights that can cause us to stop being led by love or even consider it? Our faith cannot be taken from us, ever. Many, many dominoes would need to fall for a sort of 'Left Behind' scenario. I don't see that apocalyptic reading as good theology. Have our rights become an idol?
I don't trust the world's systems, I want to trust God.
This issue is like the old argument of Pascal's wager: the rational person should live as if God exists and lose nothing and could gain everything but if they choose not to believe there could be consequences. If you take the necessary precautions in regards to COVID-19 and it is real you have saved a life or lives, and there won't be as significant of a second or third wave, you would be showing humility and love. If it is not real, it was an inconvenience. I know the economic issues are real, I am speaking to now when things are opening up and it is being left to the individual to be responsible.
Maybe I am wrong and this is the grand plot to take away all our rights but I think that underestimates a very powerful evil in the world, greed.Greed needs people with money. Maybe greed will become subject to power and dominance but I do not see the evidence other than the current authoritarian regimes. Keep us concerned with our toys and greed will grow and grow and infect many a soul.
They can never take away our faith, hope and love.
Choose love, not your rights if it can harm another person. Remember yours and all of our knowledge is finite so err on the side of caution and humility. If our rights are truly given to us by our Creator and not the government then what is there to worry and fear? Is God no longer God?
To whom do you put your trust, to God or to your rights that God has given?
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 NRSV
Love
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.