Following Christ in a Time of Plague

The following essay was inspired by a blog post written by a member of the leadership team in my parish.   Since this man has been a friend for about a decade and his post inspired me to write the exact opposite of what he had written, I shall do him the courtesy of leaving out his name.   

 

My parish, like all other Churches, sectarian congregations, and sacred communities of other religions for that matter, are presently forbidden to meet in person here in the province of Manitoba, in violation of three of what the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms identify as “fundamental freedoms” and, indeed, in violation of the entire Common Law tradition of justice and liberty that has been the bedrock upon which the Dominion of Canada was built since Confederation.   This insane government overreach, which evokes memories of the persecution of religious communities in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Red China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba and North Vietnam, is called a “Code Red” lockdown, and has been ordered by the public health mandarin, because he and the premier don’t like the fact that the dishonest media concentration on rising numbers of people who test positive for the Wuhan bat flu, regardless of the facts that the tests used are not diagnostic tools and that the majority of the “cases” are people who are not sick in any conventional sense of the term, make them look bad.   Most people are incapable of distinguishing between what the media says and reality and therefore have been duped into thinking that the tearing apart of the fabric of society, dissolving of communities, eroding of social capital, and brainwashing us all into fearing ordinary human contact and distrusting our friends, relatives, and neighbours outside of an extremely small so-called “bubble” of contacts is somehow “necessary.”   The isolation this causes, is not merely an experience we don’t enjoy, something unpleasant, but is downright harmful to our social, moral, spiritual, psychological, and yes, as everyone who knows the meaning of mens sana in corpore sano is aware, physical wellbeing.   Anybody capable of distinguishing between the bare facts and the slant imposed upon them by alarmist adjectives in the news and drawing rational conclusions from the facts will know, regardless of what “most of us” may or may not agree upon, that these measures are by no means precautions necessitated by the spread of a virus which for the portion of the population under 70 and in good health is less dangerous than the seasonal flu and for the portion of the population that is most at risk, that is to say those over 70 and with two or more serious chronic health conditions, these measures are quite evidently not effective at protecting since that portion of the population has been under lockdown since spring.   Furthermore and more importantly, not only are the lockdown measures not necessary, they are not good.   (1)

 

It is not just disappointing, then, but actually rather disgusting, to see so many people, including professing Christians and even Church leaders, so determined to load the burden of these restrictions upon their family, friends, neighbours, strangers and countrymen in general, as if they were not familiar with our Lord’s warning to His disciples about imitating the Pharisees in loading burdens upon others.  

 

For much of the last nine months, but especially since the new lockdown was gradually introduced over October and November, I have struggled to reconcile how professing Christians could so callously disregard not only the civil rights and basic freedoms of their neighbours, but their needs as social and spiritual beings as well.  Jesus told us that to love our neighbours as ourselves was the Second Greatest Commandment after that which tells us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.   It is one thing to say that the voluntary sacrificing of our personal rights and freedoms in the name of keeping our neighbours “safe” is a fulfilment of this Commandment, it is quite another thing to say that sacrificing the rights and freedoms of our family, friends and neighbours is such a fulfilment.   Supporting public health orders that impose maximal restrictions on everybody’s freedom of association, assembly, and religion is doing the latter.   To mistake sacrificing the rights and freedoms of others, which is what support for these public health orders amounts to, for the voluntary sacrificing of your own rights and freedoms, and patting yourself on the back about how much you love your neighbour, is to give the text of the Second Greatest Commandment merely the most superficial of readings.

 

There is a popular but very wrong and misguided notion that says that to insist upon and stand up for our rights and freedoms is to act selfishly and that to blindly support and obey every rule and restriction that is enacted in the name of public health is to put the common good ahead of our own.   While it is true that at the experiential level rights and freedoms are things that we primarily enjoy on an individual basis it is entirely wrong to say that insisting upon them and standing up for them is selfish.   Once again, voluntarily agreeing to limit the expression of our rights and freedoms for the sake of others may very well be the loving thing to do, but supporting government action that limits those rights and freedoms, not just for us as individuals but for everyone in society, is the very opposite of a loving act.   Our Lord summarized the message of His Sermon on the Mount in the Golden Rule, which states “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you; do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”   That is the rule worded positively, in terms of what we are supposed to do.   It is a coin with a reverse side, which expresses the same thing negatively, in terms of what we are not supposed to do.   Rabbi Hillel the Elder famously gave the negative form of this as “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary” (Shabbat 31a in the Babylonian Talmud).   If supporting government measures that restrict to the point of taking away completely the rights and freedoms of all members of our society does not constitute doing to your fellows what is despicable to you, it is difficult to conceive of what would.

 

When, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, the most famous student of the said Rabbi Hillel’s grandson Gamaliel who went on to become an Apostle of our Lord, St. Paul, in his first epistle to the Church in Corinth instructed them to be careful in how they exercised their Christian liberty so as not to be as stumbling block to those of weaker conscience and to put the good of others ahead of their own good, he clearly meant that they should voluntarily limit and restrict their freedom for the sake of others, not that they should write Caesar and ask him to do it for them and everybody else, nor that they should become Caesar’s cheering section if he did so of  his own accord.   When it came to limiting the freedom of others, St. Paul’s thoughts on that can be found in his epistle to the Galatians, in which the very first anathema sit (actually anathema esto since St. Paul wrote in Greek not Latin) was pronounced on those who presumed so to do.    It is worth pointing out that in I Corinthians the recommended voluntarily imposed limits on freedom involved eating meat of dubious origins and in Galatians the limitations on others that were condemned involved forcing people to cut off their foreskins and to stop eating bacon.   Locking people away in their own houses for months, even if they are healthy, without even the pretence of a criminal charge, let alone trial and conviction, forbidding them any sort of healthy social contact, ordering the businesses in which their life’s work, and possibly that of several generations of their family, is all tied up, and upon which they depend for their living to close and this sort of thing goes far beyond what St. Paul condemned in the legalists troubling the Galatians.    What would he have thought if he had foreseen that some would take his plea to the Corinthians to exercise their liberty prudently and wisely and seek the good of others as an argument for supporting imposed limitations of this nature?

 

I suspect the answer would be close to what St. Peter had to say about those who misused St. Paul’s epistles in his own day “As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.”  (II Peter 3:16)

 

That Jesus demonstrated by His own life what love looks like is most certainly true.   Indeed, His life was a demonstration of what a love that goes beyond the love spoken of in the Greatest and the Second Greatest Commandments looks like.   Remember, those Commandments He said, were the summary of the Law, i.e., that which God rightly requires of us.   A self-sacrificial love, such as Jesus demonstrated by allowing Himself to be unjustly condemned, tortured, and brutally killed for the sake of us all, goes far beyond that, and it is Jesus’ example that Christians are commanded to follow.   To suggest, however, that support and obedience for the lockdown measures is what that kind of love looks like today, is to say something that could only be true in some sort of parallel world where everything is the opposite of our own.

 

Think about it.   In the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry, the disease that everybody feared, for which everybody who contracted it was excluded from the community and forced to announce themselves as “unclean” lest any unwary traveler come too close, was leprosy.   Jesus encountered several lepers at various points in His ministry, each encounter ending with the healing of the leper.   One particular encounter stands out, however, which is related in all three of the Synoptic Gospels.   In St. Matthew’s Gospel it follows immediately after the Sermon on the Mount.   After He comes down from the mountain a great multitude follows Him and a leper comes to Him, worships Him, and says “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.”   He answered, not just in word but in deed:

 

And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

He did not warn the leper to stay a safe distance away.   He did not warn His disciples to stay a safe distance away.   He did not stay a safe distance away Himself.   He “put forth His hand, and touched him.”

 

In 1832, the plague of cholera hit the city that is now called Toronto.   It killed a twelfth of the population.    It was, in other words, a plague that makes the one that has been generating an insane amount of panic this year, look small and pathetic in comparison.   While droves fled the city, John Stachan, the Anglican archdeacon of York who seven years later would become the first Bishop of the Diocese of Toronto, remained, personally attended to the sick, volunteered on the wagons that collected dead bodies, conducted the burials, and arranged for support for those orphaned and widowed by the plague.   He did precisely the same thing when the “second wave” of cholera hit two years later.

 

What does following Jesus’ example of self-sacrificing love for others look like in a time of plague?  Is it what soon-to-be Bishop Strachan did in 1832?   Or is it lecturing other Christians on how abiding by rules that destroy the economy, bankrupt small family businesses and enlarge the market share of big box chains and online corporations like Amazon, tear the fabric of society to pieces, dissolve communities, exhaust social capital, eliminate third places (2), keep families apart, close Churches, encourage distrust of neighbours, and accustom us to accepting severe government limitations on everyone’s basic rights and freedoms, all without accomplishing the stated purpose of saving lives, for the people most at risk and who have been under lockdown much longer are dying anyway and to their number are being added the underreported but rising numbers of suicides, murders, addiction-related deaths and other deaths caused by the lockdowns themselves, somehow serves the “common good”?

 

Go thou and do likewise.

 

(1)   For Christian insights drawn from Plato’s distinction in the Timaeus between “The Good” and “The Necessary” see the Notebooks of Simone Weil.

(2)   Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day, 1989.

 

A Truly Stupid Move

 Suppose it was drawn to your attention that something you had done had adversely affected a large number of people.   It had not affected them all in the same way and to the same degree however.   Some of the people had been merely inconvenienced, others had been seriously injured.   Would it make sense to try to rectify this situation by taking further action to injure those who had merely been inconvenienced?

I would hope that your answer was no.   This is the sort of crazy move that ought to make sense only to socialists, egalitarians in general, or, to be somewhat redundant, madmen.   It appears, however, that it also makes sense to Brian Pallister, Premier of the province of Manitoba and to his Public Health Commissar Brent Roussin.   I don't know what, if any, political views Roussin holds, but Pallister is the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, which, should anyone think I have a partisan  motive in the strong criticism I have sent his way this year, is the closest thing that exists in Manitoba to something I would affirm as my own party.   This is not very close since my party would be fully and genuinely Tory rather than watered-down conservative and would be reactionary or anti-progressive rather than progressive.    Margaret Thatcher once told Brian Mulroney that he put too much emphasis on the adjective and not enough on the noun in his party's name.   While I agree with what the Iron Lady was saying, much as I hate to correct her this is an instance where her grammar was off.  In the name of the party both Progressive and Conservative are adjectives.  Party is the noun.   My point in bringing all of this up, however, is to say that this famous line also seems to apply to Pallister.   Perhaps it has something to do with the name Brian.   It is also true of Winnipeg city mayor Brian Bowman.

To properly explain what I mean by that we need to think back a month or two to when the cases of Chinese bat flu (Wuhan flu or Wuflu are also acceptable) started to rise in the province.   At the time Brent Roussin said that he would not impose another lockdown on the province.  He acknowledged, as even some officials of the Communist-dominated World Health Organization that first advised the lockdowns have done, that lockdowns do too much positive harm to be a viable strategy in combatting the spread of infectious disease.   As he has done many times in the past, however, Roussin has flip-flopped.   When the media began to hype the rise in case numbers, he began imposing restrictions, then piling restrictions upon the previous restrictions, each more ineffective than the last, until finally we were back under full provincial lockdown and a more severe one than the earlier to boot.   He has tried to disguise this by calling it other things than a lockdown.   While the rose of Shakespeare's Juliet may smell as sweet under any other name, the pungent stink of lockdown remains attached to Roussin's public health orders whatever he chooses to call them.

When he placed us back into lockdown, restaurants were forced to close their dining rooms again - the rapid approach of winter makes patios impractical - bars, theaters and gyms had to close, and small retailers of goods deemed "non-essential", except to the extent that they could provide curbside pickup and/or delivery, were ordered to close as well.

When this happened a number of small businesses complained -and rightly so - that this would drive them out of business.  They had not been able to fully recuperate from the previous lockdown, especially since, to be allowed to re-open, they had to strictly limit the number of people allowed inside and make all sorts of other changes, sometimes rather expensive ones.   These business owners drew attention to the fact that the big box stores which are part of large chains owned by mega-corporations, were allowed to remain open because they sold groceries and medicine and other "essentials" but they also sold the sort of things the small retailers that were ordered to close specialized in.   This, the small businesses argued, gave an unfair advantage to the larger stores which, unlike themselves, have the resources to survive a lockdown.   It has also been pointed out that Roussin's orders made no sense because someone is far more likely to catch the virus in a large supermarket than in a small store that in compliance with the previous, crippling, public health orders, could only allow a few people in at a time.

All of this was perfectly fair, reasonable and legitimate.   The government led by the phony Conservative Brian Pallister, however, decided to redress the situation, not by doing anything that would help the small stores, such as allowing them to remain open, but by taking a page from the book of Gretchen Whitmer, liberal Democrat Governor of Michigan, by telling the big stores that they could no longer sell "non-essential" goods.

There are two things wrong with this approach.

The first, which has already been stated but is worth repeating, is that this does nothing, absolutely nothing, to help the small stores which Roussin's evil public health orders - yes, they are evil - has so grievously injured by placing their solvency in jeopardy. Preventing other people from selling what they would  have sold if they were allowed to be open will not help them in any way to survive the month of forced closure.

The second problem with this whole approach is that the distinction between "essential" and "non-essential" is just as wrong and nonsensical when applied to goods and services as it is when applied to the businesses that sell them.   Government is not competent to decide for everybody what is "essential" and what is "non-essential".   While there are some basic needs that are common to all  people, the sum total of any given person's needs will differ from the sum total of the next person's needs, because people are different and have different needs.   Government is capable of identifying the common needs of all people, but not the specific needs of each and every person whom they govern.   Even a city's government would be incapable of this, much less the government of a province the size of Manitoba.   Ludwig von Mises' argument that centrally planned socialist economies cannot arrive at just prices for goods because they lack any mechanism, such as exists in the market, for accurately processing consumers' subjective preferences applies as much here as in its original context. (1)  All "one size fits all" decisions made by government and imposed on everyone are bad.   This is the lesson of the myth of Procrustes.   Pallister and Roussin would do well to study that ancient story and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s modern update, Harrison Bergeron, until they understand it.   

Pallister was interviewed on television a few days before the ban on "non-essential goods" which, coming as it does at this time of year, translates into a ban on Christmas shopping, perhaps as a prelude to an even Grinchier move, was announced.   In the snotty, arrogant, bullying tone of voice that has become all too common with him as of late, he lectured Manitobans that stores had been allowed to remain open so they could buy their groceries, not a new stereo system.   As grating as his hubris is - his whole stinking attitude of I am allowing these stores, which I am perfectly in my right closing, to stay open, so do as I say, you ingrates - there are those, probably many, who would be inclined to think that he has correctly distinguished between "essential" and "non-essential" here.   People cannot live without food - they can get by without stereos and other entertainment technology.   Such people, however, have not thought the matter through as thoroughly as it warrants.

The reasoning that groceries are "essential" because people cannot live without food, but entertainment technology is "non-essential" because we can survive without it, while it might be true under ordinary circumstances is invalidated by those of the lockdown.   Pallister has ordered everyone to stay home for a month.   He does not want them  socializing during that month.   Socializing outside of the immediate household has been forbidden.   All of the "third places" as Ray Oldenburg used the term - places other than home or work such as churches, coffee shops, libraries, etc. where people meet and socialize in a more relaxed, neutral atmosphere - have been closed.   There are many more people now than in previous times who live by themselves.    Under this combination of circumstances entertainment technology no longer seems so "non-essential".   Imagine someone who lives by himself, whose job has been deemed non-essential, who can no longer go to any of his regular haunts, and whose television breaks down the first day of lockdown.   With a month of lockdown ahead of him, he cannot replace the television because Pallister and Roussin, the people imposing these conditions on him, consider it to be "non-essential".

Rather than helping small businesses, all that Pallister's ban on the in-person selling of "non-essential" goods will accomplish will be to drive the entire market for such goods online.   If we think that saving small, family-owned, local businesses is a good things, which is one of the rare times when communitarians of the right, such as myself, and communitarians of the left, agree, this as a further step down the same wrong road in which huge, corporate owned, and unrooted chain retailers  represent an earlier step.   

The bottom line is that governments are not competent at deciding for each and every person what is "essential" and "non-essential" and ought not to try.   Socialists may think otherwise, but we have a socialist party in Manitoba already, the NDP, and we don't need the Conservatives following their example.   

If they really want to help the small stores they will lift this Satanic lockdown and allow those stores to re-open.

(1) See Mises' Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949) and Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (1922, English 1936).