Face coverings have become a political and polarizing issue today. The range of opinions are legion yet there is a growing consensus among policy makers that masks should be mandatory in public.
In Alberta, the province has shied away from making masks mandatory in public. Calgary City Council will make them mandatory effective August 1st. This new bylaw does apply to churches and other places of worship. What will our policy be as a church? As we gather for worship on Sundays (and meet together for Bible studies and prayer), masks will not be enforced at our gatherings. Since the end of May we have left the choice to wear a mask or not up to you and this will be our continued policy.
This is all you need to know for our gatherings. If, however, you are interested in the reasoning behind such a decision, then set aside a few minutes and think with me through the recent discussions concerning masks and the church.
Many influential groups have released long statements on why Christians should wear a mask:
- https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/4-reasons-wear-mask
- https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/explainer-how-masks-can-help-prevent-the-spread-of-covid-19/
Others have written against the wearing of masks. I would encourage you to read all these articles with charity and grace. We should also remember that even when we agree with teachings about loving our neighbor, living in submission to our governing authorities, and being a witness to the world, we can have differing convictions on how those biblical teachings apply to this situation.
Consider the following biblical teachings:
Loving Your Neighbor (Matthew 22:39)
We can choose to wear a mask motivated by love for neighbor by reducing the risk of sharing COVID disease with them (e.g., see articles listed above).
We can choose not to wear a mask motivated by love for neighbor. How can this be? In Ephesians 4:15–16 it describes the church being built up in love by speaking the truth in love. It is loving to speak truth to people.
The truth is that COVID-19 is not the kind of disease people originally feared it was. Consider these statistics taken from the Alberta.ca website on July 28, 2020.
- The current death rate in Alberta is 1.8% (186 deaths with 10390 confirmed cases). That means 98.2% recover from this virus. Considering that confirmed cases will always be lower than the actual cases, the recovery rate for this disease is more than 99%.
- The average age of a person who has died with (not necessarily of) COVID is 83. The life expectancy in Alberta is 81.5.
- While only representing 6% of the total cases of COVID, 73% of all COVID deaths were residents of long-term care facilities. This means that only 50 people have died with COVID outside of care facilities. Outside of a long-term care facility people with COVID have a 99.5% recovery rate.
- 74% of all people who have died with COVID had 3 or more comorbidities. The recovery rate of those without a comorbidity (such as dementia, cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc) who contract COVID is 99.9%.
- In the last year we have statistics for deaths in Alberta (2016), 24594 people died. That is 473 people every week. This means that over the last 5 months when 186 people have died with COVID, in the same time period 10248 people would normally die of a variety of causes. With these averages, COVID accounts for only 1.8% of the deaths here in Alberta. This doesn’t even put COVID related deaths into the top 10 causes of death in Alberta.
- In 2016 the flu accounted for 1.6% of all deaths and other respiratory diseases accounted for 1.1% of all deaths. Combined, whether flu or other respiratory illnesses, these accounted for 2.7% of all deaths—a higher death rate than we currently see with COVID.
It also can’t be denied that COVID has become a very political issue. There is controversy regarding actual numbers, possible treatments, censorship, and hypocrisy in allowing mass protests but restricting churches. We can all affirm that racism is wrong, but we can’t support the organization Black Lives Matter because of their narrative and political motivations. We can also affirm our responsibility to steward our environment, but we can’t support the narrative and political motivations of “climate change.” So too we can see COVID as a real disease, but we can’t support the narrative of fear and political motivations leading to more government control.
Considering this, some will choose to express their love for neighbor by wearing a mask in order to reduce the risk of spreading any disease to them.
Others will choose to express their love for neighbor by not wearing a mask to resist anti-Christian politics and communicate that this disease should not be feared nor alter our lives in harmful ways.
Respecting Authorities (Romans 13:1–7)
We can choose to wear a mask out of submission to our governing authorities.
We can choose not to wear a mask because we consider the governing authorities have overreached their mandate.
A good example of this is a recent statement by John MacArthur on why their church is going to disobey their governor and meet as normal as a church. This invoked a response by Jonathan Leeman and 9Marks. Both agree that there is a time that we “must obey God rather than men.” They differ on whether COVID-19 is that time.
Therefore, some will choose to wear a mask considering the governing authorities are acting reasonably to preserve life.
Others will choose not to wear a mask convinced that the governing authorities are acting unreasonably and hindering peoples livelihoods, and most importantly, our free worship of God.
A Living Testimony for Christ and the Gospel (1 Corinthians 9:19–23)
We can choose to wear a mask as a testimony to the world that we care about our neighbors to the point that we are willing to give up freedoms and not risk spreading the virus.
We can choose not to wear a mask as a testimony to the world that we don’t fear this virus and that gathering together with loud singing, hugs, and handshakes is essential to following our Lord.
An example of this occurred last weekend at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church in California. Thousands of people attended their service in defiance of orders not to gather with no distancing or masks and sang rather loudly. Some saw this as a great testimony of boldness for Christ and fidelity to the word. Some saw this as a poor testimony since it puts people at risk of COVID.
We all must wrestle with the Scriptures and exercise wisdom concerning this issue. Whether you wear a mask or not this Sunday, let’s have grace and charity for one another (Romans 14) and be sure that we have biblical reasons for what we do and why we do it.