Pursuing Life, Liberty, and (COVID-19 Free) Happiness

Like it or lump it, slowly but surely America has started to roll back the COVID-19 shutdown restrictions. Endless debates rage between the hawks and the doves of society. Opinions, of course, are legion. They divide our nation, many of our churches, and some of our families. As always, truth touches both ends of the spectrum, but wisdom tends to settle someplace in between.

The key questions for us this morning are:  Which fork should the Church take on the road back to normal, and can you travel down the one that we, your elders, select?

First Things First

Right reason begins with principles not factoids. In our thinking, we should move from the general to the particular. So in the abortion debate, we don’t begin on the horns of some hypothetical, worst-case dilemma and ask, “Can we justify abortion here?” No, we begin instead with the inherent dignity of human life, stamped indelibly as it is with the designator: Imago Dei. This  illustration brings us neatly to...

Principle #1: Life Is Precious Enough To Protect

When it comes to evaluating relative risks to human life, as Christians, we need to remember our duty to obey the sixth commandment. “We must take all lawful means to preserve not only our own lives but also the lives of others”  (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A#68). 

So we use ropes when climbing, legislate sensible speed limits, take the time to get yearly checkups with our physicians, vaccinate our children, exercise self-discipline at the dinner table, lock our doors at bedtime, punish murderers, and wear appropriate personal protective equipment, etc.

In the Church, the State, and the home, God has ordained all lawful authority with this purview: We are to protect the lives of the weak from the “liberty” of the worthless (or the careless). Governing authorities need much wisdom and humility here. For they too can be worthless, careless, and foolish, overreaching their mandate and upsetting the delicate balance connecting form and freedom, law and liberty.

Principle #2: Life Is Precious Enough To Define

As one sage father said to his offspring, “In all your struggle to make a living, my son, don’t forget to make a life for yourself.” 

Our Founding Fathers were surely onto something when they said, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” 

In other words, who wants to have the right to a pulse if they don’t have the freedom to quicken it pursuing the glad abandon of good things run wild? Surely, things like choral ensembles, public worship, holy communion, the tender touch of friendship, mealing together, fireside chats, and gathering as families around the deathbed of mother, father, husband, wife, sister, and son should be considered good and worthy activities!

Let the culture of death embrace life at an eternal social distance (what an ugly oxymoron!). But living souls thirst for intimacy; God fashioned us for fellowship!

The apocryphal story bears repeating. As one government bureaucrat said to another, “If we ban bacon, every subject can expect to enjoy an average of 10 years longer life expectancy.” To which an angel, close enough to overhear, remarked, “Ten, long, miserable, baconless years!” Which brings me to Principle #3.

Principle #3: Life Is Precious Enough To Risk

Here is the logic of the cross: “He who seeks to save his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake and the gospel shall save it.” Like in a business where you have to spend money to make money, so it is here: You have to risk your life to live your life. Or like Princess Leia’s observation to Darth Vadar, when she likened the controlling efforts of a tyrant to holding sand in his hand: The harder you squeeze, the more it seems to slip through your fingers. So it is with life: The more we try to control and protect our lives, the more life itself seems to slip through our fingers.

The psychology of this risk is interesting and never completely rational. Have you ever wondered why you find flying in a plane much more stressful than driving to the airport? Yet, our chances of dying in a car wreck are roughly a hundred times greater than dying in a plane crash. And those odds include the much more risky and poorly regulated flights by private aircraft and air taxis. In fact, you are three times more likely to die choking on your dinner than you are flying in a plane. But when was the last time you stressed out before eating a steak?

While we are on the subject of food, after coronary bypass surgery, doctors present their patients with a simple choice: Change your diet or lose your life. But over 90% of such patients choose death over change. I remember long ago, in a different part of the world, telling one morbidly obese lady who had recently been diagnosed with cancer, “I understand the cancer diagnosis is terrifying, but to put things in perspective, you need to realize that the greatest, most immediate threat to your health is your weight-induced type II diabetes. You have literally been eating yourself to death for years. Focus all your efforts on losing weight, not fearing cancer!” Alas, though she won her fight with malignancy, my pleas for a deeper lifestyle change fell on deaf ears.

All that to say that before you completely stress out about the real (but relatively small) risks COVID-19 poses to your health, take a moment to think about the myriad ways you risk your health with ne’er a thought. Keep things in perspective: Don’t strain at a gnat only to swallow a camel.

Principle #4: Life Is Precious Enough To Defy the Tyrant or Too Much Law Will Kill You Just As Surely As None at All.

Many a tyrant has won over a frightened populace selling them security at the price of liberty, only to leave them devoid of both.  For this reason amongst others, tyrants love crises and determine never to waste them. I can’t write these words without thinking of Regan’s famous speech, “A Time for Choosing.” He wrote these words during the Cold War, and it was a bleak time for America. Many voices counseled surrender over defeat. Listen to Reagan’s rousing response:

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace -- and you can have it in the next second -- surrender.

Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face -- that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand -- the ultimatum. And what then -- when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin -- just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this -- this is the meaning in the phrase… "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits -- not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

In like manner, I must plead with you: Do not trade your highest joys for the promise of security. Life is dangerous, but it is worth the risk. 

Every year 37,000 Americans die in car wrecks, and another 4.4 million of us are injured severely enough to require hospital treatment. But how many of the “If it saves only one life” brigade are willing to suggest banning cars to lower the carnage? Exactly. NONE. Why? Because the automobile brings more life to 300 million Americans than it takes from the 37,000. Can we not say similar things about the public worship of God, the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, the manly grip of a good handshake, the tender touch of a sister’s embrace? Are we to bid these things forever adieu? Would we trade these joys to avoid COVID-19? For a time perhaps, but surely not for long, and certainly not forever. 

I am reminded of Robert Duvall’s famous riposte in a Western when the townsfolk cautioned him against standing up to the bad guys, “But they’ll kill you,” they said. “Yes, they might, “ he replied, “but there are some things that eat at a man worse than dyin’.” Lest we lose our lives trying to save them, we simply cannot allow this quarantine to become the new normal.

With that in mind, let me unveil before you the path which your elders have laid out for the coming weeks:

On Sunday mornings, we will have two indoor/outdoor services, one beginning at 8:30 and running through 10:00 a.m. The other will start as normal at 10:30 a.m. We strongly encourage our more senior or more vulnerable members to worship at the earlier service. In these services, we will have seating both inside the sanctuary and outside under the portico (for those who prefer a breeze to minimize any risk of infection). 

Inside, we will space our members appropriately using every other pew, with family units worshipping at least six feet apart. Similar spacing will connect those sitting outside, as well. We encourage those who wish to wear masks to do so. We implore those with fevers or cold and flu-like symptoms to refrain from attending these events. We regret that we will not be able to provide nursery or children’s church facilities for the foreseeable future.

We encourage those who prefer to remain at home for worship to follow their own consciences with the full support of your elders. For your edification, we will post the audio of the early service around 11:00 am. We appreciate your patience.

While we applaud the faith and courage of many in our congregation who feel totally free to get back to life “as if nothing has happened,” we would encourage them to remember the more conservative brethren in our midst. Please be careful when it comes to greeting one another. I would encourage you not to lead with a hand offered to shake, or arms opened for a hug. This can present an awkward dilemma for those preferring to keep their distance for the time being, leaving them feeling weak or cowardly if they demur, or being offended if they go against the dictates of conscience just to keep up appearances. Let’s be sensitive and remember Paul’s largess to the Corinthians, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law” (1 Corinthians 9:20, ESV). Let us be all things to all men for the glory of God.

On Sunday evenings, we will continue our Zoom devotional and prayer time from my study at 6 p.m.

We realize for some of you, this plan may represent a move too far and too fast. And I am quite sure there will be some on the other side of the fence who may suspect we are dragging our feet. We hope that you will all understand our heart in this. We have taken this step only after much prayer, discussion, and careful consideration of the collective wisdom of both your elders and deacons.

May the Lord continue to keep us all kept, watching over our going out and our coming in from this time forth and forever.