Among my pet peeves is Parson Goat’s insistence that he closed his church “out of love for our congregation and community.” This is hogwash of purest vintage: he closed his church from idolatry of the State.
Meanwhile, Dave reports he’s reading about actual charity, not self-serving blather, among early Christians; our forbears suffered real pandemics and diseases rather than the ginned-up hysteria of COVID19. Dave quotes from Why You Think the Way You Do: The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home by Glenn Sunshine:
Even more striking, however, was the reaction of Christians to people with contagious diseases. When life-threatening diseases struck, most people ran the other way, including physicians. … Christians reacted differently. … the route to a meaningful life was found in sacrificial service to others in imitation of Jesus. And Jesus was a healer.
The net result is that Christians nursed the sick at great personal risk. Dionysius of Alexandria reported that during a pestilence that devastated the city:
The most of our brethren were unsparing in their exceeding love and brotherly kindness. They held fast to each other and visited the sick fearlessly, and ministered to them continually, serving them in Christ. And they died with them most joyfully, taking the affliction of others, and drawing the sickness from their neighbors to themselves and willingly receiving their pains. And many who cared for the sick and gave strength to others died themselves having transferred to themselves their death.
And since even basic nursing care is effective in helping people get well, survival rates among the sick went up because of the ministrations of Christians.
Dave adds:
How interesting that when Christians focus on eternity, follow the commands of Jesus and actually act out “love of neighbor” that survival rates go up. But, I guess corona is different so we all must cower in fear…
Yep, corona is one powerful virus. It’s cancelled such Biblical commands as “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together” and “We ought to obey God rather than men.”
1:16 pm on June 15, 2020
