Ask a Pastor Ep. 85 - A Christian Response to the Coronavirus
Welcome to Ask a Pastor, a podcast from Orchard Hill Church! Have you ever had a question about the Bible, Faith, or Christianity as a whole? Submit your question and one of our pastors will answer on the program. New episodes every Wednesday.
This episode, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund, Joel Haldeman, and Dr. Terry Thomas sit down to have a conversation about the coronavirus, how Christians should respond to the situation and how the church can love people through it.
Mentioned in the Podcast
Today, Explained Podcast - https://www.vox.com/today-explained
Worship Center Renovation - https://www.orchardhillchurch.com/thrive
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Podcast Transcript
Joel Haldeman: All right. Well, welcome to the Ask a Pastor podcast. We're going to jump in on something that's pressing in the news right now. And if you have questions, as always, send them to askapastor@orchardhillchurch.com. Kurt and Terry, we're going to address the issue of the coronavirus because that's hot on people's minds right now. And the question overall is how should Christians ... Let's start with this question. How should Christians respond? Should I say this with my mask on or no?
Terry Thomas: Apparently, masks don't help.
Joel Haldeman: Is that right?
Terry Thomas: That's right.
Joel Haldeman: This filters asbestos, but not corona.
Terry Thomas: Yeah, it's nothing to do with it.
Joel Haldeman: So the question is, what's a Christian response to something that's in the media and that's a little bit scary?
Kurt Bjorklund: Well, there's a couple of ways to look at that. One is Christian response isn't probably any different than a human response initially, meaning what's uniquely Christian about there's a virus spreading and what do you do? I think there's a Christian responsibility to care for people when there's maybe a health crisis. You look back in the middle ages and sometimes when Christians really stepped in and served their community in a down and out time. Right now we don't know where this is going, so it's a little early to be like, "Christians are going to do this or that." I mean, a few weeks from now it might be that it's peaked and it's going down or it might be growing. We don't know the answer to that. And certainly there's a lot of reaction and I think it's wise to try to understand where something's going and do the best you can to prepare yourself. But I don't know that there's a biblical mandate anywhere around this other than to say, "Wash your hands," but that's not really biblical, so yeah.
Joel Haldeman: Eating with unwashed hands, right?
Kurt Bjorklund: That's right.
Joel Haldeman: I'm reminded of a moment where Jesus put his hands on a man who had leprosy, a highly contagious, deadly disease. And now Jesus had a bit of an advantage there. I think the context was he was healing the man and Jesus knew that he wasn't going to die from leprosy. But there's that model of yeah, Christians stepping in and being the ones that care for people and are not primarily thinking about myself.
Terry Thomas: Yeah, you'd have to say that there are a lot of people who if they get sick with whatever they get sick with are going to have a hard time taking care of themselves. And so you want to have an ethic that says, "We're going to care for people who are ill." And what that means is that if you do it, you're maybe putting yourself at risk. That kind of self-sacrificial action, I think Christians can confirm. They can say, "Yeah, that seems to be the way God would want us to act," that we love people even ... no greater love [inaudible 00:03:11] lay down his life for his friend. And if you can lay it down for a stranger, even better. So I think there is a sense in which the care for people may put you at risk, but you got to be willing to take that risk at a certain point. And I think a lot of Christians have and do, do that already in a variety of different ways. No different than some of the other things.
Joel Haldeman: Yeah. It's interesting in the way that this is inducing panic and that you can't find a dust mask, you can't buy hand sanitizer right now and economy, all kinds of stuff, are happening. Every time I open my news app, there hasn't been a day in the past two weeks I've opened my news app that that wasn't one of the headlines. So what kind of counsel do we give to people who, what the media wants us to do ... I don't mean to make it sound nefarious, but what it's driving us to do is to panic. So how is a Christian supposed to see something negative that's in our world yet think about the future?
Terry Thomas: Well, one thing I would say, I agree with you. I think that we live in a kind of media-driven culture in the sense that whatever makes a great story and is hot, doesn't matter what it is, that's the thing that's going to get attention because that sells. That makes the consumer, the process continue to move on and newspapers or websites or whatever, it helps you to be able to [inaudible 00:04:49]. That's probably not a healthy type of a thing to do, particularly in an environment like ours where there's a great polarizing. That's one of the ways in which media seems to always continually show in the polarization between different positions on something, not really addressing the issue oftentimes, but just hyping the polarization. So-and-so said this. Oh, and then these guys turned around and said that. Oh, then so-and-so apologized, and then they turned around. You're like, "Okay."
Joel Haldeman: Someone apologized?
Terry Thomas: [crosstalk 00:05:24] But that that sort of thing doesn't really help you address the issue that's going on. So maybe that kind of hype and that kind of focus distracts you from actually doing something that might be valuable in a particular situation.
Kurt Bjorklund: It seems like certainly the hype is an issue, but to ignore the hype isn't necessarily wise. And the reason I say that is because hype can create its own drama, right?
Joel Haldeman: Well, it is.
Kurt Bjorklund: And so in that sense, just wisdom would say that you have to pay attention to what's going on, not just be like, "Oh, I'm not going to. I trust God." I mean, trusting God sometimes also means taking care of things and certainly looks at this exact moment, like there's going to at least be some economic downturns because of it. There will be some potential shortages of some things, maybe some quarantines that might come about. And whether those are all justified or not is almost secondary to the fact that it looks like those things are possible. So it's wise to just say, "Okay, how do I prepare for that? Am I prepared to share, care for some others in the midst of it?" and all of that. And certainly I think as a Christian, one of the things that, from what I've heard, and obviously that's a developing story, so this could be totally wrong, but it's basically the flu with a higher incident of death per incident of infection. So there is some fear to that, especially people who have issues.
Kurt Bjorklund: I listened to one podcast, this podcast called Today Explained and they had a guy who was actually on that Diamond Princess who got coronavirus who was infected, and he told the story of his infection. He said, "I basically had a fever for 24 hours and then it was like having a head cold and I was done in two weeks and that was my experience of having the scary coronavirus." But right now because of the fear of death and some of those things, there's maybe a greater concern about where that goes. And so again, I think my point is just to say it's not untrusting to say, "How do I take some steps to be prepared for people's response?" While at the same time saying, "If I'm truly a person of faith, then even a higher incident of death shouldn't be my primary fear because I wasn't created just for this world," while not being stupid and saying, "Bring it on," kind of a thing.
Terry Thomas: Yeah. There are certain people that are more prone to it, I mean, people who have compromised immune systems sometimes or if you're older. What are you looking at me for? Yeah. So if you're older, apparently not that abundant among the little children, for instance, again, unless they have some kind of immune problem. And the same sort of thing. If you've been sick and you get this in addition to being sick with something else, maybe a problem. So again, you begin to ask, "Okay, well, what are the wise steps to take?" okay. So what do you think some of the wise steps? You got any ideas?
Joel Haldeman: The wise steps?
Terry Thomas: Yeah. What are you doing?
Joel Haldeman: This comes from somebody who doesn't feel ... Let me put it this way. I think that we've had an unprecedented period of peace and success in America
Terry Thomas: [crosstalk 00:09:09] for the last 16 years.
Joel Haldeman: But I don't even know about that one. No, I mean, I think that for the past 70 years, since World War II, we haven't had a truly a significant period of our history that has felt like it hasn't been peaceful. Certainly September 11th was significant, but for the most part we've experienced a lot of peace and prosperity as a country. And I think that sometimes we take that for granted and assume that it's going to continue like that forever. So there is this part of me that thinks America's not going to last forever. Something's going to happen that's going to change everything. So there's that part of me. And so personally I-
Kurt Bjorklund: So, you're an optimist.
Terry Thomas: Yeah. Wow.
Joel Haldeman: Well, hang on. Hang on. So I think when it comes to preparedness, I do take seriously the fact that FEMA and the CDC and lots of other people tell us that we should have two weeks of food on hand. We should have water on hand. We should have ways to filter water. So I take that seriously. I'm not a crazy person that has a year's worth of canned food in my basement. However, I do want to say that I think, and this is why I asked the question about media, is that I think the story is a pessimistic story, but Christians have an optimistic outlook on the world. And so regardless of what happens in this world, I think that we need to continue to be optimistic about the future. Even if catastrophe may lie in the future, just knowing that God works through that and he does his good in the midst of that.
Terry Thomas: Well, let's talk about a couple of particulars just related to the church. So for instance, one of the things that seems to enhance the spread is when people are confined together. People should say, "I need to take a month or two off going to church." After all, we get confined together. We're sitting right next to each other and such.
Joel Haldeman: Yeah, I know. You're around all those students all the time. He could have had this 14 days ago.
Terry Thomas: Well, hey, the schools have closed. They have suspended school because again, and here's the thing. Even though kids are less likely to receive this, kids are much better transferrers of every disease there is because of the way they act and so forth.
Joel Haldeman: I mean, I think we don't treat it any different when we think about schools. I mean, we're a couple miles from a school where a couple thousand kids are sitting in classrooms all together all day long, and so I don't think that churches [crosstalk 00:11:58].
Terry Thomas: It's the church's responsibility to let the people in the church know that there are people who are members of the church that are affected.
Joel Haldeman: Oh geez.
Kurt Bjorklund: I would think if somebody's infected, they should stay home at this exact moment, and yeah, we should probably say if somebody has been here and been infected, we should probably let people know that so that there's clarity.
Joel Haldeman: And we would do that in Pittsburgh anytime something like pink eye or lice or something like that comes up.
Kurt Bjorklund: Right. We already do that for things like that.
Terry Thomas: Do you think that would affect church attendance?
Kurt Bjorklund: Oh, of course. Yeah. No, I would guess that you're going to see church attendance take a hit, just like I think you're going to see attendance at Pirates games take a hit.
Terry Thomas: That's another reason [inaudible 00:12:38].
Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. There's other reasons for the Pirate attendance [crosstalk 00:12:43], but that's right. But I think to shut down unless there's a compelling, unique reason doesn't make a lot of sense. Maybe if the schools all shut down in the area, that's another level to think about. But obviously people need to make their own choices about whether or not they think that's safe. The only thing I would say is be careful of using it as a reason not to go. If you're doing everything else that you otherwise do, and church is the one thing that you decide isn't safe [crosstalk 00:00:13:14].
Terry Thomas: What about this, though? You think, though, you think the church has a responsibility to tell people from upfront, you telling them, "Here's how you ought to participate in church given the particular health issue that we're dealing with"?
Kurt Bjorklund: What do you think that would be?
Terry Thomas: Well, for instance, we say, hey, on the way in here, we have containers of hand ... We encourage everyone to go buy them because we realize that's one of the ways in which this is transferred is from your hands. We encourage you not to, if you see people-
Kurt Bjorklund: No fist bumps.
Terry Thomas: [crosstalk 00:13:51] elbow or foot rather than shaking hands and getting close and hugging people. Maybe you want to leave off the brotherly kiss for a little bit.
Joel Haldeman: We should bring that back.
Terry Thomas: Especially no tongue.
Kurt Bjorklund: That's right. That's right.
Terry Thomas: But I don't think [crosstalk 00:14:03].
Kurt Bjorklund: Well, certainly, I think again, people will start self-selecting into that. I think there's some [crosstalk 00:14:11].
Terry Thomas: You don't think it's the responsibility of the church to-
Kurt Bjorklund: To tell people how to shake hands or not shake hands? I usually feel like that's over the top. One of the things we will do is we certainly have online options, which generally I think can be a cop out, but there are times when if you're legitimately sick or concerned about something, it's a really good thing to have. And so we have several good opportunities for people to [crosstalk 00:14:34]. Correct.
Terry Thomas: Which is a great thing. In other words, if you went to pandemic level where there was all kind of disruption of the culture in terms of people needing to stay away from other people, having all the kind of media-oriented stuff that we have I think is really-
Kurt Bjorklund: Right. We'd be able to stay connected via the media stuff that we have as a church, which would be helpful to us. But you're right, a lot of churches don't have that option.
Terry Thomas: It's not the same as being with each other or seeing each other and that kind of thing. But it's still ... Hey, I got another question for either one of you. What do you think about another practice of the church about communion? Joel, what's your thought?
Joel Haldeman: Yeah. I think, well, obviously we want to keep doing communion. We don't share a cup, like some traditions do.
Terry Thomas: No, we stick our hand in the bowl.
Joel Haldeman: I know. And so we're talking through all that just to make sure that at least in this season that that's as sanitary as possible.
Kurt Bjorklund: As opposed to other seasons.
Joel Haldeman: Well, I mean, it's not-
Kurt Bjorklund: I know what you mean.
Joel Haldeman: Yeah. And this Sunday in the strip, we're using cups instead of all sharing the thing that we're dipping in and we're just trying to experiment and see how can we make that feel as clean as possible.
Terry Thomas: We've done that [crosstalk 00:15:54]. We've done it both with cups and with-
Kurt Bjorklund: And we were scheduled to do it this weekend and we just decided not to without making that a big thing, but just because of the concern, just to say, "Let's not create that issue," we certainly, because our tradition, we take it frequently. We're not like a church that's once a month and then all of a sudden says, "Oh, we skipped it for months," and kind of-
Terry Thomas: Because the alcohol in hand stuff is what does a job on the germs, do you think maybe we ought to go to alcohol-oriented [crosstalk 00:16:25]?
Joel Haldeman: Maybe vodka.
Terry Thomas: Vodka.
Kurt Bjorklund: That would be a change of-
Joel Haldeman: Or brandy. Brandy is distilled wine, so there's some biblical precedence there, right?
Terry Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Joel Haldeman: I will say that the team that cleans the building here does an incredible job, especially in Kidzburgh, sanitizing everything. And I know for the next few weeks, we're going to make a concerted effort in the strip to [inaudible 00:00:16:50]. We're going to walk around with wipes, Clorox wipes, and do every handle and railway, whatever, those handrails. And so, yeah.
Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. And again, I mean, here's my cynic coming out. If this thing continues to emerge at the level it is, you're not going to be able to avoid some exposure unless you stay home from everything. I mean, you go to the store to buy food, you're going to be exposed. You go to an airport, get in an Uber, you're going to be exposed. So at some level, this thing's going to have to run its course. And yes, strategic quarantines may help and all of that.
Kurt Bjorklund: But yeah. Terry, we were thinking about this. We actually are starting, for those of you who don't know, an auditorium project here where our auditorium is going to shut down, which is a fairly large room and we're going to smaller and holding multiple services. And for a long time we've been very concerned that we wouldn't have enough space. So maybe this is all going to work out well-
Terry Thomas: That's right.
Kurt Bjorklund: ... for us here at Orchard Hill in terms of just the attendance dropping for a short season and some of those things.
Terry Thomas: What about this? You think the church has a ... There are certain people ... Let me put it to you this way. When the AIDS epidemic hit back in the '80s, the church was criticized pretty heavily for their lack of concern and love for people who find themselves in that situation. You could figure out who the community was that needed help and the church didn't move to help those people to a great degree. There are people in this sort of thing that again, are highlighted. I think of elderly people who live in apartment complexes for instance, or in retirement homes of various kinds, where their plan is they always eat meals together, they're in common facilities, and they're old and oftentimes many of them have health issues. Do you think the church has some obligation to start thinking of a new strategy to say, "Hey, we know who's at risk here and we ought to figure out how to address the issues they're dealing with"?
Joel Haldeman: I think if we felt like we could do that in a unique ... or not even unique ... in an excellent way, then yeah, maybe. I feel like there are so many services and other entities that can do that better than us and do it with excellence. So I think what we can do is we can care for those people and love them and surround them with community and all that sort of thing.
Kurt Bjorklund: I think a church should at least look at its own members and say, "How can we help?" If there are some older people here who say, "Going to the store might expose me to risk," can people in the church shop for them, help them? That would be a beautiful manifestation. I think my mom is older, obviously [crosstalk 00:20:12] but fits into that demographic of people who you could say easily could be at risk. She lives in a facility not far from here, but it's UPMC run. I would hope that with what's paid to UPMC, they could think about how to contain the virus in their own facility in terms of maybe they have to think about that. I don't know that the church needs to say we're responsible for every facility in the area. But I think if we said, "Yeah, who are the people in the fellowship that are hurting?" And certainly if there are other neighbors who say, "We can't get out because of this," if the church could serve that, I think that'd be a great response.
Terry Thomas: Okay. What's your biggest concern?
Kurt Bjorklund: With this?
Terry Thomas: Yeah, with this. What's your biggest concern? You realize it's not a big deal right now, but-
Kurt Bjorklund: Fear driving a huge economic slowdown and that there will be ... yeah, or legitimately the supply chain getting disrupted of products and goods that could create. And it's the kind of thing that could spiral late. I heard the government talking about saying they wanted to force companies to pay people to be off. Well, a lot of companies don't have that kind of margin to all of a sudden say, "We can pay people to do no work." So what companies will do instead is they'll fire or lay people off.
Terry Thomas: That's right.
Kurt Bjorklund: And so that becomes a huge spiral and it's just one thing leads to another, so that'd be my biggest concern.
Terry Thomas: Right. What do you got?
Joel Haldeman: The end. That's it.
Terry Thomas: What?
Joel Haldeman: That's it. We're out of time. That's it. That's all I got. I just want to say that I think-
Terry Thomas: [inaudible 00:21:50].
Joel Haldeman: I think that Christians should be optimistic and remember that Jesus is on the throne and that this isn't the black death of the 1300s and we've learned so much about sanitation and so many other things, and we're going to learn through this and grow and become better as people. And yeah, God is still good. Thanks for tuning in to Ask a Pastor. Send your questions to askapastor@orchardhillchurch.com, and thanks, Kurt. Thanks, Terry.
Terry Thomas: Sure.
Kurt Bjorklund: Thank you.
Joel Haldeman: All right.
