Last week’s sermon reminded me of a book I read for church history many years ago called The Rise of Christianity by sociologist Rodney Stark. Stark wrote about the early Christians’ response to a plague, who stayed in the cities to help people while others like the priests fled. He concluded that one major reason why Christianity spread so rapidly back then was because Christians were just loving and serving people. Stark himself, after his research, switched from being an agnostic to a Christian. Centuries later, the work of those early Christians led to the conversion of yet another person.
There are a lot of debates about when things should open up, how they should, and whether or not churches should start physical meetings. Those are good discussions to have, but my emphasis here will be to point out that whatever those answers are, churches and Christians should not simply retreat from the world in fear. We can understand why others do it, but we who have eternal life secured in Christ should not. Instead, it is time to serve people who are struggling with disease, loneliness, unemployment, etc.
Whenever controversial events happen, people tend to leap to extremes. Wise Christians should be balanced, so we should take reasonable precautions, such as wear masks and not have 100 person parties. At the same time, we should not live in paranoia. One meme I saw circulating online from certain Christians made me laugh out loud because it stated that “Jesus would socially distance too!” Would he, though? We’re talking about a guy who intentionally interacted with lepers in order to heal them. I understand that we are not Jesus who can heal people on the spot, but whoever created that meme probably should have read his Bible first. Yet there are Christians who are just fine with holing themselves in their homes for extended periods of time.
Our view of eternal life doesn’t mean we aren’t careful, that we’re suicidal, or that we otherwise devalue the importance of this life. It simply means that we know where our final destination is in Christ, and while we don’t seek death, we are not to fear it either, at least not like everyone else. Those early Christians understood this despite having far less medical advances than we do.
Is there risk in ministering to others, some of who may be sick? Of course there is. I don’t think that risk was lost on the early Christians, and I don’t believe that any of them wanted to die. But I think they also understood another risk, which was the risk of retreat. Lost people needed to hear about Jesus and suffering people needed healing. We are here to obey the Great Commission and exhibit the same heart that God does for the lost (1 Tim. 2:4). There’s no way we can do that in fearful retreat. –Isak Lee
One Light Church 