Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
God commands me to love my neighbor. I am not, however, commanded to put any effort into making my neighbor's life risk-free.
Biblical love does not equal safety; much less does it equal the comforting illusion of it. If I'm not breaking any of God's commandments in my relationship with you, then I am acting in love toward you, as defined in Romans 13:8-10. However, none of those commandments are about the elimination of risk.
Of the 613 commandments found in the law of God, only three of them are about making my neighbor safer. (Safer, not risk-free.) These involve verifiable, objective dangers, not speculative, practically invisible ones. The standard is never absence of risk.
Check out the “goring ox” law found in Exodus 21:28-36. The owner of an ox that gores a man could be held liable for damages if he had knowledge that the ox had a tendency to do such things, and he nevertheless failed to keep the ox under control. The fascinating thing is, owners of oxen that had not displayed such tendencies were not commanded to restrain their animals. If a previously docile ox freaked out one day and hurt someone, the owner wasn't held liable for that.
This shows that the law did not seek to eliminate all risk, but only that which was easily observable. If the law had meant to reduce risk from oxen goring to zero, it could have banned the ownership of oxen altogether, or, even simpler, demanded that they all be tied up at all times.
It won't come as a shock to hear that I'm relating these things to our response to the pandemic. Some of our reactions bear the marks of people hoping to get to a risk-free situation, and now we're forcing our neighbors into compliance in that endeavor. Ironically, that involves the coerced taking of medicines that everyone admits are not risk-free.
In a county of about 8,000, since the pandemic state of emergency was declared around 18 months ago, we've had less than a quarter of one percent of that population die with COVID-19. That's greater than a 99.75 percent survival rate, and would be much higher if we went month-to-month instead of cumulative. To continue to act like we're living in a “health emergency” is, really, to demand that the risk be zero.
This is never going to be the case. Yes, the threat is real, and I've wept at the death-bed of one who died without pre-existing conditions, other than old age. It kills people for real.
But, what are we willing to do to get to risk-free?
I note that although there is a non-zero chance you will kill someone with your car whenever you drive it, even the people who are most fearful of this virus continue to drive, or want others to. Risk-free is apparently not the consistent goal across the board.
What is the Bible's remedy for dealing with a deadly disease? Though medicines were certainly administered, the answer is, bottom-line, prayer and repentance from sin. You will know our churches are leading us out of this mess when that becomes their main response.
Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at: