One day a couple weeks ago, the top three
headlines on the daily news emails from both the NY Times and LA Times were all
concerning Ebola, and ominously, the focus of each was on Ebola-related topics here
in the USA...who’s actually sick, protection measures, CDC guidelines. It
seemed to me then that America’s focus was shifting inward once again, that the
thousands of Ebola victims in West Africa were taking a backseat to the two or
three possible cases here.
Since then, the mix of Ebola stories hasn't
changed much, despite a few very moving profiles of West African medical
personnel who risk their lives daily to staunch the growing epidemic at its
source. If we can take our eyes off ourselves, through print and video
stories like this one we can witness in our lifetimes the drama of those
risking their own lives in a modern-dayplague: http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/africa/100000003187061/the-ebola-ward.html?smid=fb-share
But these stories are increasingly the
exception. And the shift by the media to insular coverage both reflects and stokes
the fires of more fear, less compassion. It came to a head for me
yesterday...
During our team devotions, a colleague gave
thanks for her successful trip last week to Zambia, in southern Africa. But she
also asked for prayer for two of the travelers.
The first was a teacher at a parochial school in
the Midwest. As the team changed planes in Johannesburg on their return trip,
she began receiving unexpected emails and texts about her upcoming “voluntary” 21-day
quarantine before returning to the classroom. Then she saw the email from
her principal about how parents were applying pressure to keep the teacher away
from their children. So she was being asked (read: told) to take a paid, 21-day
leave.
Now, I must stop here and point out that Zambia
is further from the Ebola zone in West Africa than Omaha is from...wait for
it...Caracas, Venezuela. Can you imagine
someone traveling from London to Omaha and being quarantined when they returned
because they were deemed too close to Caracas? Or take the analogy north
instead…they were deemed too close to Fairbanks, Alaska! It's absurd.
On top of the sheer absurdity of it, it'd be offensive to the people of
Omaha that Londoners wouldn't have any better sense of geography than that.
The returning teacher prayed about it and
decided that to comply with this commanded absence would only perpetuate fears
and stigma. So instead, she resigned, telling the administrators of the school
that the parents’ fears were unwarranted and that as a Christian she could not
in good conscience contribute to this uninformed stigma against any person who
touches an entire continent.
My colleague's second prayer request wasn't
much better: another woman who was on the same Zambia trip got a call from her
housekeeper when she got home. The cleaner explained that she wouldn't be able
to come clean the lady’s house for at least 21 days, because her other clients
told her they would not allow her to clean their homes again if she entered the
traveler's home. Of course, the charwoman had little choice—she is a pawn
in this little drama; she needs the money the most and would lose multiple clients
by not giving in to this demand. Again, we’re talking about a traveler who was about
3000 miles from any Ebola-impacted areas.
Call this what you will: fear,
hyper-diligence, snobbery in its own way, etc. Here's the tricky part:
I'll bet many/most of the housekeeper’s clients are parents. They are thinking,
as are the parents at the Christian school, "I'm responsible to protect my
children from harm." Who can argue with that?
But we've taken this principle to be supreme,
as though it has no boundaries. There is nothing in our faith that calls this a
first principle. If it were such, there would never have been a missionary who
took their family with them to serve others. No, we must admit it: this is
completely a cultural overlay that we decorate in a Christian wrapper to
justify as honorable and diligent. We throw up two or three weak Bible references
about children being a gift from God, and act as though those gifts are to be
hoarded.
Whatever happened to civility, to treating
others as we would be treated? Whatever happened to bearing in our bodies the
sufferings of Christ, to bearing one another's burdens?
Our nation’s current response to Ebola, in the
Christian as well as secular community, breaks my heart as we elevate our
personal safety, and that of our children, above practically every other
consideration... compassion, mercy, justice, selflessness… meaning, of course, that
we stand in direct contradiction to everything Jesus ever stood for.
Cory
November 2014
PS: I’ve since heard several other equally
shocking Ebola-phobia stories, and also read this useful piece on discerning
reasonable fears from unrealistic worry… http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2014/october/what-ebola-panic-reminds-us-about-worry.html
