I really want to write a good column for you, because these are important times. But I’m tired.
As a leader in my congregation and community, I’ve had more over-stuffed days and more anxiety-dream nights in the last 10 days than any other period in my life. So, please forgive me. The best I can do is to offer you some bullet points — reflections based upon my experiences and what I’ve witnessed other Christians saying and doing. My hope is that some of what follows finds resonance with your own experiences and your own observations.
- We are not meant to be the regulators on other people’s responses to a historic, once-in-a-lifetime event. To be sure, our faith does train our emotions just as much as it trains every other aspect of our lives – our identity, our relationships, our way of thinking, our way of being, our way of doing – but the faith has always done this through habituation on the way to virtue. It is impossible to know exactly what to habituate in the middle of a pandemic. As such, I’m okay with a little hysteria — as an emotion. Anxiety, paranoia, straight-up fear — these things make sense when facing a threatening unknown. The emotions, here, aren’t the problem. Feel what you’re going to feel. There is no such thing as “over-reacting” in this situation; all of us are just reacting to the level we need in order to return to some emotional stasis in our lives. That’s not a sin.
- Speaking of sin – and sort of building off of the above – “faith” is not a feeling. One of the reasons there’s so much emotional regulation being peddled by Christian leaders is because they’ve mistaken faith for an emotion. (This is, itself, a small aspect of the moral therapeutic deism that ravages most churches). Faith is a way of trusting God, even in spite of your feelings (when necessary). Faith is a way of living and moving and being in the world. This internalization of faith actually only reveals the insecurities of the Christian leaders who peddle it so hard.
- If feelings are of second order, then what is of first order is bodies. Bodies and life. COVID-19 is not feasting on people’s feelings. It’s feasting on their respiratory systems, sometimes to enough of a degree as to shut that system down altogether. God blows God’s breath into our lungs and gives us life; COVID-19 tries to steal that breath away from us. If Christian leaders really want something to focus on, it should be the mitigating of COVID-19’s bombastic attempts to steal God’s gifts from us.
- Any Christian leader who wants to do everything they can to mitigate COVID-19’s thievery should suspend their in-person worship services, close their church building and seek new ways to worship God and fulfill God’s mission in the world. I recognize that the readership for this column is all over the U.S., but at the time I write this, there are only three states – West Virginia, Idaho, and Alaska (the 39th, 40th and 49th states by population, respectively) – that have no confirmed cases. So, almost all churches should be shuttering in-person contact. They should be leaders in their communities in doing this — doing it before any governor requires it. These churches should recognize that the church holds together across all time and space (just as our Great Thanksgiving liturgy makes clear), so we don’t have to worry when we can’t come together. Naturally, it is quite pleasing to come together in worship and fellowship, but in these times, it is not necessary. What is necessary is stopping COVID-19 from stealing God’s gift of breath.
- Work for common good. Christian leaders heap hot coals of hypocrisy on their own heads when they elevate themselves to rarified air in making pronouncements against neighbors who hoard, but then turn around and fail to take the essential and decisive actions necessary to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 by still gathering in large groups (and, according to Centers for Disease Control guidance handed out March 15, “large” now means 50). Some people hoard toilet paper; some churches run contrary to reason and fail to love their neighbor by pushing on in worship when the opposite is what is needed for the common good of the community. Both actions are equally reprehensible. At least that toilet paper will find eventual use. I’m not sure the same can be said for the failings of the church.
- Churches are being driven by a subtext of relevancy. There really is nothing like a national crisis to make people interested in the church. (Just remember how full the pews were on Sunday, September 16, 2001). Most churches and most Christians spend most of their time feeling as if they are irrelevant to the culture. COVID-19 has given us a sense of being relevant again and we’re so desirous of this sensation that we’ll forsake good habits in our pursuit of relevance. But relevance is not the same thing as leadership and certainly not the same thing as witness. If more people are going to look to the church in this time of trouble, then we ought to use this attention to direct people toward the habits that are important for this unique season. No, you won’t get a new convert out of this, most likely, but you could save someone’s life.
- What’s most important now is right action. Right actions almost always involve self-sacrifice. We’re going to have to sacrifice our routines, our sense of normal, our well-worn habits, our very instincts. We’re definitely going to have to sacrifice our autonomy. Quarantines are likely coming. Even without them, to the degree that we are economically able, we ought to self-isolate. COVID-19 is a wildfire. One of the ways that firefighters fight a wildfire is to create a barren barrier where the fire can find no more kindling to keep itself going. Once it fails to find new fuel, it burns itself out and many are saved. Folks who can manage their routines – even if sacrifice is necessary – in such a way that they become this sort of barrier for COVID-19 will cause the virus to burn itself out and die.
- Church leaders need to learn from our global siblings. Probably we’d be better served if Western Christians had any sort of a robust relationship with the global church because pandemics (or, at the very least, epidemics) have ravaged Asia and Africa even within my lifetime. Likely, the Christians there have something to tell us about faith in the time of coronavirus. Most of us, though, don’t have that sort of pre-established relationship, so we’re going to miss the best gifts those brothers and sisters could give us. Maybe one silver lining will be that we find ways to more deeply (re)engage with the vast majority of Christians on the globe.
JEFFREY A. SCHOOLEY is the pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Marysville, Ohio. You can reach him at thinklikechristians@gmail.com.
