Daily Verse | Nehemiah 4:14
“Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.”

Welcome to Tuesday, my friends. Why does everything good for you taste like it isn’t?

To say that the Coronavirus pandemic has been a preoccupation for our nation and for countries around the world is to understate the case. Wearing masks, social distancing, washing hands, shutting down businesses, closing schools, quarantining everybody (not just those who are sick) and getting the vaccine (or not) have been at the center of our social lives for the last 14 months since “two weeks to flatten the curve.”

The pandemic has also proven to be very divisive, with people opposing each other over mask mandates and generally making life more difficult for everyone over concerns of “safety.” Those who see masks as useless are thought to be inconsiderate and potentially lethal threats to those who believe masks and social distancing will keep them safe, while people like me consider demands to wear a mask to protect others to be a misplaced responsibility.

The chaos and division in society spurred by the pandemic has even, perhaps unsurprisingly, affected the Christian Church. Churches initially cooperated with government orders to quarantine to help stop the spread of the virus. When government began choosing which businesses or services were “essential” and which weren’t, churches were surprised to learn that they weren’t considered essential, provoking legal confrontations between them and the state.

Even worse, the virus caused church members to divide over those who wore masks and those who didn’t, and those who wanted to keep meeting and those who trusted the “reopening plans” of their state government.

As I’ve been reflecting on all of this recently, it occurred to me that the Church’s response to this pandemic has been very different from how it responded in the past. For instance, one of the earliest plagues was The Plague of Cyprian (249–262 AD) that, at its height, caused 5,000 deaths a day in Rome. Yet Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, wrote:

Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead.

He then contrasted that with how the pagans reacted:

But with the heathen everything was quite otherwise. They deserted those who began to be sick, and fled from their dearest friends. They shunned any participation or fellowship with death; which yet, with all their precautions, it was not easy for them to escape. (Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 7.22.7–10)

It was similar with the Bubonic Plague (or Black Death) in Europe where it wiped out half the population in just five years. Martin Luther wrote about it, saying “We must respect the word of Christ, ‘I was sick and you did not visit me.’ According to this passage we are bound to each other in such a way that no one may forsake the other in his distress but is obliged to assist and help him as he himself would like to be helped.”

In every case, we see that Christians moved toward the sick and the dying, even being willing to die themselves to obey the commands of Jesus to love one another, to carry one another’s burdens and to care for the sick.

The Peking Lung Pox is not the bubonic plague. Not only is it not the bubonic plague, but it’s a virus that has a 99% survival rate that mostly affects those with comorbidities. In other words, not only is the Covid Pandemic not the Bubonic Plague, but many of us have actually fled from it in fear rather than leaning into it as believers to minister to others. We’re masking up and isolating ourselves in an effort to save our own lives.

My question is, how will Christianity be seen in the wake of Covid-19? Were we known for our willingness to serve those who needed it most? Or were we indistinguishable from the rest of the population?

How “loving our neighbor” manifests itself may look different in different eras, but we can take encouragement from the example left by Christians who preceded us. We remember that we are to have sacrificial love, which may from time to time expose us to dangers to our health or safety. But we don’t fear; we act with courage to be obedient to the scriptural guidance to care for the sick.

Christianity grew exponentially during the plagues of the earlier centuries because they impressed Caesar and the local populations with their sacrificial love toward those who needed it most.

Can the same be said to be true today?