{"id":6681,"date":"2020-03-20T21:38:22","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T21:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/?p=6681"},"modified":"2020-03-20T21:38:22","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T21:38:22","slug":"excellent-article-in-christianity-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/?p=6681","title":{"rendered":"Excellent article in Christianity Today …"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

christianitytoday.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christians, Let\u2019s Flatten the Curve But Be a \u2018Religion for the Sick\u2019<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

\n Daniel P. Chin\n \n 12-15 minutes\n \n \n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Over\n the past week, the world has turned its full attention to the \nprotein-thorned crown of COVID-19. It is rare to experience such a \nwidespread global unease, in which we all find ourselves dwelling on the\n very same thing. In a way, the noise of modern life has been ousted by \nwhat C. S. Lewis called \u201cGod\u2019s megaphone\u201d: pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patients are dying. People are scared. And we find ourselves stuck \nbetween the flippantly arrogant (\u201cThe coronavirus is just another flu\u201d) \nand the fearfully paranoid (\u201cWe are on the brink of financial \ncollapse\u201d). Following Saturday\u2019s episode of the \u201cItalian COVID19 \nExperience\u201d podcast, in which American and Australian pediatric \nintensivists spoke candidly<\/a>\n with intensive care specialists in the ICUs of Italy, each of our \ninstitutions are preparing us for the next few weeks with a seriousness \nthat is unique\u2014even for those of us in medicine familiar with suffering,\n triage, and uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s okay to be fearful\u2014we are too. However, as Christians working \ninside and outside the health care space, this is a moment where our \nresponse might distinguish us as a people who practice what was once called<\/a> by early pagans \u201ca religion for the sick.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To that end, we want to share some of our experiences of the COVID-19\n pandemic as resident physicians and trainees\u2014and as fellows of the \nTheology, Medicine, and Culture Fellowship at Duke Divinity School, \nwhich brings together medical trainees, theologians, and pastors to \nthink theologically at the frontlines of health care\u2014in order to \nhighlight the unique Christian contributions of repentance, hospitality,\n and lament to our preparations for the new coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Should<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Repentance Among Idolatry of Health<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Health is a good in our society, and for good reason. The prophet \nJeremiah spoke of God\u2019s promise to bring health and heal wounds. In \nEcclesiastes we are told to delight in the health of our youth. The \napostle John prayed for the health of his readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While health is a good to be pursued and maintained, we sense we\u2019ve turned a \u201cgood\u201d into a \u201cgod.\u201d Indeed, while the coronavirus is novel, it does not represent a new fear. It merely reveals a quiet, well-nourished idolatry toward the health of our bodies and our trust in the ability of our medical institutions to save us. The West is feeling one of its greatest idols shiver.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orthodox theologian Jean-Claude Larchet goes so far as to argue that clinicians constitute a \u201cnew priestly class\u201d of this idol, in which doctors and other health care workers minister a new \u201csalvation of health\u201d to devoted worshipers.<\/strong> In A Theology of Illness<\/em>, he writes<\/a> that modern medicine \u201cencourages patients to consider that both their state and their fate lie entirely in the hands of the physician \u2026 and that the only way they can endure their suffering is to look passively to medicine for any hope of relief or healing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hysteria surrounding the new coronavirus and our obsession with \u201cflattening the curve<\/a>\u201d\n unmasks a deeply held belief that for any of us to die would prove both\n an extraordinary occasion and a failure of our society\u2019s efforts to \nprotect us. It should be little surprise then that in an effort to \ncounter our anxiety, we employ the language of medical control: \u201cthe \nmorbidity and mortality for the relatively young and healthy is low.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, it is precisely the opposite population\u2014the relatively \nelderly and unwell\u2014to whom Christians are called to pay closest \nattention. Psalm 82 and Romans 15 make it clear that worshiping our own \nwell-being neglects our call to the weak\u2014those whom Christ repeatedly \nidentifies with throughout the New Testament. It is medical hubris that \ntells us that 99 percent of our population will likely survive the \ncoronavirus. But it is the love of the shepherd that asks<\/a>, unashamedly, \u201cWhat about the 1 percent?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Health is a good thing, but it is not an ultimate thing. It is not something that we can master through biohacking<\/a>\n or guarantee through new vaccines\u2014even as it is a gift and a duty to \nseek such medicine. Our comfort ought not lie in the fact that we are \nprotected under the banner of epidemiological peace. Our comfort lies in\n the fact that even if<\/em> we are stricken with the coronavirus and die, our lives are known and sealed in Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"What<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hospitality Among Social Distancing<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Historian Gary Ferngren points out<\/a> in Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity<\/em>\n that the only care for the sick during a smallpox-like epidemic in 312 \nAD was provided by Christians. The church even hired grave diggers to \nbury those who died in the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something we have quickly forgotten, in the age of antivirals and \npersonal protective gear, is the sheer fear that the possibility of \nsickness like this would instill in others. If you interacted with \nsomeone with plague in 1350, or with Spanish flu in 1918, there was a \nreal possibility you would get it and die. The prayer \u201cand if I die \nbefore I wake, I beg the Lord my soul to take\u201d was a real plea, not a \nnighttime trope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new coronavirus has brought a bit of that fear back into our daily lives. It is a fear that manifests in shelves swept clean<\/a> of masks and cleaning supplies in department stores and hospitals and even xenophobia<\/a>\n and hate crimes against individuals for their perceived ethnicity \nrelative to COVID-19\u2019s origin in China. It is evident in our inboxes \nfilling with cancellations and ever-updating protocols.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Christians are a people for whom hospitality toward the minority \nand the potentially infected is a central virtue\u2014one that undergirds \nChristian tradition and the practice of modern medicine, whether we know\n it or not. We forget there was a time in which people did not \nunconditionally take care of the sick simply because they were sick. \nIndeed, the word hospitality<\/em> (from which we get hospital<\/em>), comes from the Latin hospes <\/em>meaning\n \u201chost\u201d or \u201cguest.\u201d The first prototype of the hospital arose from \nmedieval monasteries in which Catholic nuns or monks housed strangers in\n need of lodging and nourishment. These medieval institutions were \ncentered around the conviction that to serve the suffering stranger was \nto serve Christ himself. That clich\u00e9 metaphor for the church\u2014\u201ca hospital\n for sinners\u201d\u2014enjoyed a new depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It for this reason that the now household term \u201csocial distancing<\/a>\u201d\u2014the conscious effort to reduce interpersonal contact in order to prevent<\/a>\n viral transmission\u2014has Christians wondering what to do. Amid \nChristianity\u2019s longstanding tradition of communion and attention to the \noutcast, we should expect discomfort with the idea of intentionally \navoiding those in need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while the talk of quarantine is certainly unsettling, we might \nremember that it has been commonplace for some time to sequester the \nill. Indeed, we already isolate the dying in hospitals and often \npermanently displace them in nursing homes. We live in the midst of an epidemic of loneliness<\/a> that already leads<\/a>\n to adverse health outcomes. When real life-threatening illnesses arise,\n we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that we have no idea what to do. We haven\u2019t \npracticed for it. We haven\u2019t raised our children around it. Ours is a \nculture that treats death and physical suffering as an exception to \nignore rather than an eventuality to prepare for. Ethicist and \ntheologian Stanley Hauerwas puts it this way<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hospital is, after all, first and foremost a house of \nhospitality along the way of our journey with finitude. It is our sign \nthat we will not abandon those who have become ill. \u2026 If the hospital, \nas too often is the case today, becomes but a means of isolating the ill\n from the rest of us, then we have betrayed its central purpose and \ndistorted our community and ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The metaphysical poet John Donne wrote<\/a>,\n \u201cAs sickness is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sickness\n is solitude.\u201d Whatever practices of social quarantine we undertake, we \nwould do well to remember that our era of isolation will remain once \nthis practice of \u201csocial distancing\u201d fades. Perhaps this pandemic is a \nchance to wake us up to the reality that we have been surrounded by the \nisolated ill long before the new coronavirus found us staying at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, social distancing is something the church gets to perform charitably and courageously. It is a literally corpor<\/em>-ate\n (\u201cbodily\u201d) duty that we have the opportunity to enact out of love to \nprotect the vulnerable among us\u2014in which we partner infectious disease \nscience with practical wisdom and humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We get to be creative in how we reach out and practice \u201csocial accompaniment\u201d<\/a>\n to those who are already prone to social isolation: the elderly, \ninfirm, and disabled. We might bring the Eucharist to the sick in \nprotective garb, make calls to those in nursing homes (who will become \nincreasingly isolated as visits are limited to those communities), and \nwrite letters of prayer. One of our own pastors hopes to arrange \ncongregants at a distance while continuing to practice the sterility \nthat priests are already well familiar with as they handle weekly \nCommunion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we put Christian imagination to work, we discover practices like that of a medical student who participated in the Physician\u2019s Vocation Program<\/a>, created by John Hardt at Loyola University Chicago. As Christian ethicists Brett McCarty and Warren Kinghorn describe<\/a>\n the student: \u201cInstead of mindlessly applying the hand sanitizer, he \ninstead pictured his Catholic priests washing their hands in preparation\n for handling the Eucharist. \u2026 Through this theological vision, he \nprepared to meet Christ in the body of a sick patient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"7<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lament Among Anxiety<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

While the world laments the cancellation of sporting events or the \nhalting of the economy (all appropriate things to be dispirited about), \nChristianity recognizes that both the new coronavirus and our response \nto it through social distancing makes the church something less than its\n full self. If social distancing is something we must do, we shouldn\u2019t \ndo it without psalms of lament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And lament will become increasingly important in the coming weeks. \nMedical workers in Italy (perhaps North America\u2019s closest comparable \nhealth care system) have greatly limited family interactions with the \nsick in the ICU. Most families cannot view the bodies of their loved \nones after death. As we\u2019re learning from our Italian intensivist \ncolleagues, we may find ourselves unable to do what is best for each \npatient, and instead must balance what is best for the entire \ncommunity\u2014something that greatly troubles those of us in medicine used \nto being able to do all that is possible. All of this has the potential \nto lead to great grief and exhaustion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is uncanny that we are in the season of Lent. Perhaps we should \nlook to Easter Sunday with newfound hope, not only of open tombs but of \nreopened cathedrals. Holy Week in the time of COVID-19\u2014in which we \nremember the suffering of the King on his way to Golgotha\u2014will surely \ntake on new meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, it is interesting that the coronavirus gets its name from a \nspiked ring of proteins on its surface that resembles a crown, hence the\n title of \u201ccorona.\u201d In many ways, the coronavirus is revealing the \ncrowned heads we already worship\u2014health, self-protection, medicine. Our \nglobal, sustained attention to COVID-19 demonstrates that which we look \nto out of anxiety, control, and fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, we know that Jesus wore a different crown\u2014one that calls \nus to worship not out of anxiety or control but out of a love that \ndrives out all fear. That crown doesn\u2019t make this coronavirus moment any\n less serious; however, it does tell us where to cast our anxieties, who\n to comfort, and which thorned crown to remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brewer Eberly is a first-year family medicine resident physician at \nAnMed Health Medical Center, a community hospital system in Anderson, \nSouth Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben Frush is a second-year internal medicine and pediatrics resident \nphysician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Monroe Carrell Jr.\n Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, a high-volume university hospital \nsystem in Nashville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emmy Yang is a fourth-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each is a fellow of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Fellowship<\/a>\n at Duke Divinity School. The views expressed are those of the authors \nand do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of the \ninstitutions they represent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

christianitytoday.com Christians, Let\u2019s Flatten the Curve But Be a \u2018Religion for the Sick\u2019 Daniel P. Chin 12-15 minutes Over the past week, the world has turned its full attention to the protein-thorned crown of COVID-19. It is rare to experience such a widespread global unease, in which we all find ourselves dwelling on the very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6682,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6681\/revisions\/6682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}