In a Christian perspective, lives are very important–this is not a point of contention. But is it true to say that in a Christian perspective, work is important or that an economy is important? If so, how should we think through locking down our nation to save lives in the face of coronavirus (CV)? I have heard people castigating the government for not doing more to curb CV deaths. I’ve heard other people declaring, “We need to get back to work.” Let me offer a few things to think through as we address the moral question of a proper response to CV:
1. Every life is sacred, but prolonging every life is not a moral imperative. People matter tremendously and God’s greatest commandments testify to this. Our Savior died to give people eternal life, but it’s of significance that he did not die to give them eternal life here on earth.
– Jesus called his friend Lazarus, dead for at least 4 days, to come out of the tomb. Yet Jesus didn’t call all the other dead people as well (John 11). Why didn’t he?
– Jesus, the author of life, overcame the sting of death (1 Cor 15:54-55), but he did not stop death. In fact, Jesus said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).
– The disciples went to their deaths proclaiming Jesus (for example, see the story of Stephen in Acts 6-7), and God did not stop that even though He could have.
God makes abundantly clear that as Christians we must affirm the sanctity and beauty of life, but we must acknowledge that God has not said, “Preservation of life is the ultimate good.”
2. Economics is not primarily about accruing wealth. Imagine if you lived in a small village where your only water supply was a nearby river. If man-eating crocodiles suddenly appeared at the river, you would not say, “I guess we’re not going to get water anymore.” Getting water is how you and your neighbors subsist. But suppose the village paid you to get water. If you said, “I’m not getting it anymore” and then a tribal elder said, “We need to get you back to work”, would he be concerned about your wealth? No, his primary concern is that the economy of the village brings life-giving water to the village. Keeping the water-economy going is not a concern primarily of wealth but of existence. Now let’s expand that village to 330,000,000 people (i.e., the population of the US). As I go about my work and interactions in the economy, I may personally be 1000 transactions removed from getting water, but our economy is still, in aggregate, about subsistence. What I mean is that if we allow over-highway transportation to drop off precipitously, there is no more food at Walmart, and I starve. My concern with the economic impacts on transportation is not about gobs of wealth, it is fundamentally about existence. (I find it interesting that during the 1918 Spanish flu, when many may have had gardens and chickens, this may not nearly have been as universally the case, but it certainly is now). We FEEL like keeping the economy up is just a matter of keeping people wealthy, but the truth is that a catastrophic downturn literally undermines subsistence (go read about the Great Depression if you want a historical example of how this works). The point is this: When we are concerned with keeping the economy running, we are not necessarily concerned with increasing the stock market average…we very much need to be concerned about literally undermining subsistence for ourselves and our neighbors. The Bible is full of admonitions regarding how we should transact, lend, engage in commerce, etc. Jesus uses economics (e.g., Matt 18, 20, 21, 25; Mark 12; Luke 13, 14, 15) over and over to illustrate how the Kingdom of Heaven works. Economics is about how people relate to and provide for each other, and God cares greatly about that. Concern for the economy is not necessarily a concern for being a wealthy fat-cat or lining one’s pockets.
3. We are not supposed to control everything. This is a point that I’ve not heard discussed much, but it is absolutely critical to consider. If you and I were sitting on a beach and were told that a tidal wave was coming, we would try to get to high ground. We would not try to stop the tidal wave. Why? Because we understand implicitly that stopping the tidal wave is beyond our control. That’s God’s job, not ours. Are we looking at the current pandemic that way, or are we still laboring under an illusion that if I (or we, or the Feds, or the docs) just DO ENOUGH, we won’t have to see death? We in America are not used to looking mortality in the face. Except in those relatively rare circumstances where we hear something like “cancer”, “tornado”, or “earthquake”, we still feel like we should be able to beat whatever’s coming our way. We just need the right meds or safety gear or guns or shelters or whatever. But the Bible is very clear that so much is out of our control (see Psalm 31:15, Prov 16:3, 9; Isaiah 46:9-11). That is one of the roots of the repeated statement that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5). We are not in control of COVID-19. We should not expect to be. We should not expect others to be.
Now, let me offer a framework at putting these three points together as we wrestle with the question of what the morally right response to CV is. Consider the last point first: Because we are not in control, any response must not flow from the false idea that we can try to eliminate death due to CV. Nor is it realistic to entertain the idea that we can contain CV. Recently a politician implied on national news that even saving one extra life was worth anything. That is foolish. Figuratively speaking, the tidal wave is upon us, and we must resign ourselves to the reality that people will drown (and if we are willing to do so, it will keep us from jumping into the blame-game as death statistics rise). With that said, our response must embrace the sanctity of life, and so we should steward and employ the resources and abilities that God has given us to reasonably minimize death and suffering from CV. (The word “reasonably” is super important and harkens back to the reality that we are not in control.) As we do what we can to care for the sick, we must consider that it is unreasonable to stop the economy to minimize deaths. Recognizing that on the whole our economy is about our subsistence, we should advocate that we, as a society, must pull back from “lockdowns” and “social distancing” long before we get to the point where that economy will collapse. Predicting a line beyond which the economy will collapse is murky for even our greatest economists (and I would not for an instant claim to have the expertise to identify it), and so I think that line should be treated like the edge of a cliff on a dark night – you stay a good way back from it because you know going over is catastrophic.
As I close, I’m wondering if you, the reader, feel like I’ve drifted way away from the idea of “Christian Combat” and just descended into the many chattering masses discussing CV all over the internet. I don’t think that I have, and here is why: The world has no guide for balancing life and economy. It has no narrative that can embrace the idea that “we are not in control” without plunging into terror and despair. You, Christian, can engage in discussion with a uniquely Christ-centered foundation, knowing that life is precious–but not the ultimate, that the economy is important–but not because of profit, and that we are not in control—but we still have hope for everything (pandemics and even death) because of Jesus. We can and should engage in this discussion both for the near-term opportunities to give hope to those fearing death and for the longer-term opportunity to prevent our society learning the hard way that economics is about subsistence.