How to Handle the Next Pandemic

Mark Galli notes that the swine flu scare was apparently over-hyped but wonders how Christians should be prepared if and when the next real pandemic strikes. Here's the conclusion of his article:

Christians believe that our faith helps us live bravely in the face of fear. Still, it is not easy to do so, and it's no surprise that among the people who irrationally panic in face of pandemics, many are Christians. But we do have resources that can help us to transcend fear and to experience a different type of contradiction.

In The Rise of Christianity, sociologist Rodney Stark describes those dark times in Roman history when city-wide epidemics wiped out whole sections of the population. The empire would do its best to quarantine sections of cities, and those remaining were abandoned to a slow and painful death. The only people willing to risk life to care for these suffering souls were Christians. Many of them flocked to the areas most infected and literally gave their lives to care for the dead and dying. This heroic example was one reason the empire took a second look at this outlandish sect.

Last I heard, some churches were creating preparedness plans in the case of a flu pandemic. One 3,000-word plan I read tended to focus on institutional survival. It encouraged churches to answer questions like: Will staff come into the office? How will the church communicate with members if public gatherings are forbidden by the government? If the church does meet for worship, how should members share in the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper? And so on.

It's all well and good, but I wonder if churches would be better served by asking its members to read Stark's account. That would be the most crucial form of preparedness, no? That would prompt us to start thinking about the discipleship choices that will face us in a real pandemic: Who should visit the sick and dying, and who should not? Should clergy protect themselves from the disease at all costs to guarantee ongoing leadership, or is effectual leadership at such times to model sacrifice? If vaccines are in limited supply, as news reports indicate, should entire churches forgo their right to a vaccine so that others can be protected?

Christians at their best concern themselves less with the church's institutional survival, or even their own survival, and more with the welfare of the suffering. We live with a host of contradictions that give us courage in the midst of a culture of panic. We've learned that in weakness there is strength, that in giving we receive, and that in losing our lives, we save them—all because of history's greatest contradiction, that story about a suffering God whose death brings life.