Suppose there is a 75 year old man that lives at one end of your street. Based on average life expectancy of a man in the US, we expect him to live another 3.4 years. By “social distancing” and “staying home”, we hope to give him that chance…and that is a good thing.
Now suppose there is a 40 year old woman who lives at the other end of your street. Due to “social distancing” and “staying home”, this restaurant owner has just permanently closed her restaurant – her sole source of income – and filed for bankruptcy. She cannot pay her mortgage and all her other bills, but she will have food on the table due to government assistance. She just lost $75,000 of her life savings that were invested in her restaurant… all these are bad things.
Here lies our moral dilemma in COVID-19 response: Do I have the right to cause significant harm to my 40 year old neighbor so that my 75 year old neighbor can live for 3 more years? Most moral frameworks would certainly say “it is good (if tragic)” if the 40 year old VOLUNTEERED to take the hit for her 75 year old neighbor. But is it still good if I FORCE her to do so?
To complicate this scenario more, let’s say your 40 year old neighbor is the single mother of two young children. Does the fact that they are also impacted make a difference?
And now let’s say your other neighbor is not 75 but 28 years old but with a compromised immune system. Does 50 more years of life for the 28 year old somehow make it more reasonable to cause harm to the 40 year old and her children?
There are two things I think are worth thinking about with respect to this moral dilemma:
First, this dilemma highlights the pitfall of utilitarian ethics (put simply, utilitarian ethics means I’m trying to define what is “right” as “the most good for the most people”). What is “most good”? Is it three more years of life or allowing someone to enjoy financial stability for 40 more years? Is it one life saved verses three lives suffered? (And please don’t be tempted to weasel out of the dilemma by saying, “they don’t have to suffer” – reason says in all likelihood they will.) If my role is to “balance” good, there is no objective standard by which to weigh these very difficult questions– finite humans lack the knowledge to do so in situations like this. And, in reality, when we judge others lives and worth and determine who lives/dies or prospers/suffers, we are at least in some part playing God.
Second, this dilemma highlights the foolishness of saying that decisions about how to respond to COVID-19 are matters of life versus money. These decisions are in a very practical way about determining which people suffer. In this respect, this is a zero-sum game: one of your neighbors is going to suffer. Who should determine which it is? Why? These are key questions that have very clear answers from a Christian worldview.
I challenge you to think through this, and if you are stuck on “what’s right”, start a discussion in the comments or contact me so we can think it through together. Both of your “neighbors” are very important, and God wants you to ignore neither one.