David Brooks recently wrote an arresting article in the New York Times entitled “Pandemics Kill Compassion, Too: You might not like what you’re about to become.” In it, he gives a lean, yet incisive history of how epidemics expose human nature.
Brooks quotes Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, who lived through the Great Plague of London in 1665. This plague claimed the lives of near 100,000 people –a quarter of London’s population in just 18 months. Defoe later reflects on this experience,
This was a time when every one’s private safety lay so near them they had no room to pity the distresses of others. … The danger of immediate death to ourselves, took away all bonds of love, all concern for one another.
Brooks gives this summary of Yale historian, Frank Snowden’s work Epidemics and Society. “Pandemics hold up a mirror to society and force us to ask basic questions: What is possible imminent death trying to tell us? Where is God in all this? What’s our responsibility to one another?”
Citing several other historical examples, Brooks illustrates the kind of cruelty and self-preservation found during pandemics.
In 17th-century Venice, health workers searched the city, identified plague victims and shipped them off to isolated “hospitals,” where two-thirds of them died. In many cities over the centuries, municipal authorities locked whole families in their homes, sealed the premises and blocked any delivery of provisions or medical care.
Pandemics induce a feeling of enervating fatalism. People realize how little they control their lives. Anton Chekhov was a victim during a TB epidemic that traveled across Russia in the late 19th century. Snowden points out that the plays he wrote during his recovery are about people who feel trapped, waiting for events outside their control, unable to act, unable to decide.
Pandemics also hit the poor hardest and inflame class divisions.
Cholera struck Naples in 1884, especially the Lower City, where the poor lived. Rumors swept the neighborhood that city officials were deliberately spreading the disease. When highhanded public health workers poured into Lower City, the locals revolted, throwing furniture at them, hurling [the public health workers] down stairs.
Professor of theology, Millard Erickson, captures the history of human nature during times of crisis in one laconic statement. “What happens in situations of exigency may be a better indication of the true condition of the human heart than are the normal circumstances of life.”
After painting a gloomy picture of humanity, Brooks tries to end his article on a note of hope.
Some disasters, like hurricanes and earthquakes, can bring people together, but if history is any judge, pandemics generally drive them apart…Dread overwhelms the normal bonds of human affection… [But] maybe this time we’ll learn from their example.”
Maybe there’s another way to interpret these events. If history teaches anything, it tells us we need an impelling power to move us past fear and dread. A force apart from ourselves to drive us into the danger and need found in the face of an epidemic.
Although Brooks provides powerful examples of callous, even cruel behavior during times of human suffering, history also provides us with unusual stories of mercy and self-sacrifice.
For example, the Plague of Cyprian ravaged the Roman Empire in the third century AD. Most consider it one of the deadliest pandemics in history, which brought the Roman Empire to its knees. One historian, Kyle Harper, argues that this plague nearly led to the Roman Empire’s collapse, “The structural integrity of the imperial machine burst apart… The empire fragmented and only the dramatic success of later emperors in putting the pieces back together prevented this moment from being the final act of Roman imperial history.”
Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, describes the inhuman way people treated victims of this deadly contagion.
At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treating unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.
But the Christians took it upon themselves to serve, not only their own sick, but non-Christians as well.
Most of our brother-Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of the danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbours and cheerfully accepting their pains.
What drove these Christians to compassion and fearless self-sacrifice? Jesus’ own example. After Jesus descended a mountain, a large multitude gathered around him.
Suddenly, a man with leprosy approached him and knelt before him. “Lord,” the man said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.” Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared. (Matthew 8:1-3, NLT)
Jesus didn’t shun this man. He didn’t retreat in fear. He healed the man. You see, Jesus was willing to sacrifice himself because it’s intrinsic to God’s nature to serve. Jesus did not come in the form of a servant in spite of being God, he came in the form of a servant precisely because he is God (Philippians 2:6-7).
Further, Jesus’ assurance of one day returning to the Father drove him to serve sacrificially. The Apostle John makes this comment before Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. “Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. So he got up from the table…” (John 13:3-4, NLT). Followers of Jesus can serve sacrificially because God gives them confident assurance of their salvation. This is why believers during the Plague of Cyprian served with utter disregard for their own safety and “departed this life serenely happy.”
Jesus also directly commanded his followers to serve the vulnerable and those in need.
For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink…I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me…Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? …Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’ (Matthew 25:35-40)
Jesus views Christians serving those in need as an act of service toward him. Certainly, the believers who gave their lives serving the sick during the Plague of Cyprian saw their care for the sick as service to God himself.
Followers of Jesus have a unique opportunity to rise above the ubiquitous self-protectiveness and cruelty found in past pandemics. In a day when most people in America associate Christianity with hypocrisy, corruption, and hatred, maybe our selfless response to this epidemic will finally change people’s perception of the church and ultimately Christ. Maybe we can use this crisis as an opportunity to communicate compassion.