How Are We To Live in an Age of COVID-19?

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I try not to get into popular culture or politics on the blog - normally we just talk about gardening, raising farm animals and country living.  Sometimes things come along, like the current situation we're all in, that warrants a mention.  As Tricia and I discussed the pandemic, we noted that as a mobile society, we're all over the place - our daughter lives in Baton Rouge, one son in Welsh, on son in college in Lake Charles, and I work in Sulphur (42 miles away).  My job deals with oil and gas and we're not shutting down.  We have to keep emergency services, power generation plants, and other vital industry supplied with fuel and oil.  The fact is, we're all separated.  What would happen if suddenly, all movement was halted and we were to shelter-in-place for an extended period of time.  Seems far-fetched, but is it?

I remember when the kids were young, we had fire drills at the house.  Our kids lived upstairs.  We purchased a chain ladder that attached to the dormer window on the second story.  We stored it in the window box upstairs, and we actually practiced the drill of them climbing down.  But that wasn't the end of it.  We told the kids if there was a fire, follow the drill, get out of the house, AND we were all going to meet on the west side of our neighbor's shed.  If everyone didn't meet at this pre-arranged spot, I would go back in the house and get them.

Yesterday we discussed the fact that if we would be separated TODAY, we needed to do the same.  Our meeting spot is our house, and no matter if you had to walk to get back here, we would do it.  We would wait a reasonable time and then I'd go looking for the missing family members.  Family is important and our safety and togetherness is paramount.

How do we live in this age of the coronavirus pandemic?  Well, I read something today that C.S. Lewis wrote years ago in regard to living in the age of atomic warfare.  I think what he said holds true to a certain extent with this threat as well:

In one way, we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

One more thing, I looked this up to ensure I recalled correctly.  My other question that extends how we should live in this age is "How should Christians live in this age of coronavirus?"  I can best describe the answer to that by a story I heard from a publication:

The year was 1527 and Wittenberg, Germany was under assault by the bubonic plague.  It was a terrible disease, causing its victims to die painful deaths with high fevers and nasty boils.  It was very contagious.  This disease, in 1347 killed 60% of the population of Europe.  This time, people were scared and everyone was "high-tailing it" out of town.  Martin Luther elected to stay (along with his pregnant wife) and open his home to serve the sick.

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Bubonic plague was spread by fleas and was transmitted through the air.  No one knew this in 1527, but they did know that being near someone who was sick was VERY dangerous.  People not infected fled the cities, leaving the sick and dying.  Martin Luther did the opposite.  He ministered to the ill, not caring about his own life.  Watching this, another pastor asked Luther if it was alright for a Christian to leave?

Luther wrote a letter "Whether one may flee from a deadly plague," explaining that we must care for our neighbor.  With COVID-19 we can learn from what Luther had to say.  It was not necessarily wrong to flee from death (King David fled from both Saul and Absalom), but one must consider his family and community.  If you left, you should make sure your neighbors were cared for:

"[N]o one should dare leave his neighbor unless there are others who will take care of the sick in their stead and nurse them…. we are bound to each other in such a way that no one may forsake the other in his distress but is obliged to assist and help him as he himself would like to be helped."

We should take preventative measures and take care of our neighbors.  Stay safe, ya'll.  Talk to you tomorrow.