After last week’s post, I received an email from a friend who felt I had painted with too broad a brush in my discussion of Covid masking. I asked her if I could share some of her thoughts, because a) she made good points, and b) they made me realize my argument depends on some factors I didn’t actually explain.
“You pointed out in your article a couple legitimate reasons people might choose not to mask (PTSD and claustrophobia) but I felt it came across as rather dismissive,” she told me. “I would also add asthma/allergies or any problems breathing on a regular basis. People with autism or OCD who have real issues with sensory things or just changes in routine as your friend posted about for the holidays with her kids. Someone who's hard of hearing/deaf or who is very close to someone who's ability to communicate was significantly negatively impacted by suddenly being unable to read the lips of everyone around them. And anyone who works with small children and is knowledgeable about how young kids learn to speak/read/learn about emotions/form emotional bonds with parents/relatives/teachers/caregivers. I'm sure there are others I haven't thought of.”
She’s right about all of this. As parents of a kid with Down syndrome, we were part of conversations about speech therapy and kids with disabilities (including hearing loss). I’ve also got pretty good contacts among people with other disabilities. I wouldn’t argue with anything on her list.
But those communities were largely comprised of people who were wrestling just as we were: "How do we serve the kids without putting them, and everyone, for that matter, at risk?" The people in those situations were being careful. They weren't running around the mall and the grocery store unmasked.
What I was actually thinking of, and referring to, in my post, was the hateful spewing of vitriol on Facebook. I can’t tell you how many times I sat in my chair, aghast, reading what people had to say about masking. I shared my daughter’s story so many times, with a plea for people to consider the risk to vulnerable populations. Again and again, the response was, “If you or your kid’s health is that fragile, then you guys just need to stay home. It’s not MY responsibility to guard YOUR health.” I can’t tell you how many times, with how many people, that exchange played out that way. It was as if a certain subset of people thought their “freedom” outweighed everyone else’s need to tend mental health alongside physical. It was as if they’d forgotten that when Cain said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God replied, “Your brother’s blood calls out to me from the ground!”
When I wrote that post, I was thinking about the leaders of a particular 4H club, who put 25+ people in a room, blocking the only exit, and no one was wearing a mask but us. People who met my protest about violations of county regulations with claims that they were following regulations, and accusations that EVERYONE ELSE was PERFECTLY FINE being unmasked around each other and therefore MY family was the problem, and should just leave the club altogether, because by the way, my son was a menace and everyone thought so, despite the fact that until that moment no one had ever said anything but positive things about my child. These were people whose teens, the club officers, wore MAGA hats (they had a variety of them) while they led every single group meeting. I’m fully cognizant that that should not matter. But it does. How you represent your group matters.
When I wrote that post, I was thinking about the man hacking up a storm in JC Penney while not masking. And the man in Bed, Bath, and Beyond who hissed “I don’t live in a communist country!” when it was pointed out to him that he was violating city regulations. As if being asked to protect public health during a global pandemic was in ANY way comparable to government seizure of all private property and sending people to gulags. The absurdity of it all—the sheer lack of understanding or proportion—might be funny, in a bleak sort of way, if the implications of such a distortion of reality weren’t so dire.
Where, I ask, is Jesus in any of this?How do these actions, views, and statements uphold “traditional Christian values,” especially the sanctity of life?
My friend is right: there were plenty of people during Covid who were struggling to figure out how to live with the impossible discernment. And their struggles should not be dismissed.
She also pointed out how “lack of transparency from health agencies and representatives undermined trust in authority. How many of those health agencies and representatives leaned into the political fighting. Unequal application of the rules across different groups. Etc.” These things, of course, contributed to the polarization around masking.
She thought it was unfair to assume that people who didn’t mask were “automatically selfish, callous, not pro-life, and unserious about their faith.” She wanted me to consider that calm, rational discussion was more productive than strong statements. Which is fair.
At the same time, I hope the examples above clarify who and what I was actually talking about, and why my reaction was so strong.
The foundational basis of the Theology of the Body is that actions speak louder than words. When I say, “How are you?” and you reply, “Fine,” but you say it like Eeyore, with your shoulders drooping and your face a mile long, your body language is the one telling the truth, not your words. And everyone knows it.
So I think this question of examining what our actions say, and whether that message coheres with what we claim to believe as disciples of Jesus, is a valid one. Especially in these times of deep polarizing politics, much of which is framed around faith.