The Church's Response

“But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house.” – Psalm 5:7

“We need to redirect social energy from anxiety and panic to love and preparation. This crisis presents an extraordinary opportunity to fortify small communities of love and care for our neighbors. That will only happen if we lead in a way that reduces fear, increases faith, and reorients all of us from self-protection to serving others.” – Andy Crouch, Love In The Time Of Coronavirus

What is the response of the church during this time?

As Dave and I were dialoguing about this, we discussed three main reactions we see in people around us: first, the urge to acquire information. We’re all sitting around trying to read everything we can, and with this comes the confusion of sorting through various levels of accuracy and being affected, consciously or not, by the tone of what we are reading in the news or social media. Secondly, there is a polarization of opinions, the tendency to judge what others are doing or not. It’s easy to judge the policies being made, testing being done, personal choices being taken, organizational changes happening, without understanding the broader social factors, deeper personal histories, or contextual stories behind them. It’s easy to judge someone else, or feel myself judged, for having a different threshold of risk. Lastly, people have reacted in self-protection, as the rush to buy out paper products from Costco these days attests to. 

The church’s response, Dave argued, should be the opposite of these reactions. Rather than relying primarily on the latest information, we should be people led by the Holy Spirit. We need to be soaked in prayer and contemplation, to start and end each day as beloved children of our Father, even more at this time than any other. It’s good to stay informed, but our wisdom comes ultimately from walking in step each day with the Spirit who is alive and in us. Rather than becoming polarized in our opinions, we ought to be people marked by humility. We should feel okay admitting we don’t know everything. We should be more willing to listen and understand than to complain or air our views. 

Lastly, the church should be people who respond not from self-protection or fear, but from love and sacrificial courage. Andy Crouch talks in his article about how times of scarcity and threat can bring about exploitative, ethical, or redemptive modes of action. Exploitative action occurs when someone takes advantage of situations to protect themselves at any cost. Ethical action is doing what is right and trusting others to do the same. But Christians, he says, are called beyond that to redemptive action, “which is characterized by creative restoration through sacrifice… [making] courageous, creative, sacrificial choices that restore what has been broken.” We as the church ought to ask, how is this an extraordinary opportunity to be the hands and feet of Christ? One of our younger neighbors sent out an email offering to make grocery runs for any elderly folks on the street. Dave worked extra shifts doing video visits with people who may require testing for coronavirus. I see in all of that courage, and creativity, and sacrifice. The reality is, we are people who enter every day into an abundance of steadfast love from our God. He loves us more than is necessary, and his love does not change, no matter what else does. We should be the faces of that love to the people around us.