Matthew Loftus (emphasis added):
Christians must develop and encourage practices of suffering that accompany those in pain, like Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross during Christ’s passion.[2] The ethical imperatives of the Church are only intelligible to a watching world to the degree that Christians are willing to walk alongside those who suffer and bear their pain with them. Without these practices of accompaniment, Christian moral teaching about issues like abortion or assisted reproductive technology is a cold set of rules enforced by people who have the privilege of not having to bear their cost. It is through these experiences — and not just experiences with those who forsake an accessible but immoral technological intervention, but also accompaniment with the poor, the imprisoned, and those whose suffering cannot be relieved by any human means — that Christians are able to experience growth through suffering and acquire the perspective from below that shapes their advocacy for those who need the work-towards-shalom the most. […]
The first goal of those with power will be to maximize the power of institutions and relationships not specifically governed by any professional authority. The weaker these institutions are, the more that the physical health of the community will suffer, and the more tempted that doctors and bureaucrats will want to step in and replace the social and spiritual pillars of human mutuality with an eclectic and insufficient patchwork of programming, subsidies, and drugs. The natural benefits of meaningful work, intimate friendships, loving family, rich spirituality, and shared spaces are self-evidently critical to human flourishing, but impossible for practitioners and policymakers to produce or purchase. Laws, regulations, and authoritative communications should always consider whether or not they help or hinder these contributors to shalom, and take seriously the possibility that horning in on the territory belonging to these things could do more harm than good, even if there are good intentions in doing so. Since these things cannot be measured or evaluated from afar, such assessments will require those with power (political, administrative, or medical) to spend a significant amount of time in whatever communities they purport to represent or serve. […]
[T]he inevitability of suffering and death in this age should humble those with power in their aspirations to shalom and force us all to constantly consider whether or not we are helping the people we know and love (especially the ones that we find it difficult to love) to do good themselves. The soil-tilling, trellis-building, stake-digging, stem-pruning, weed-pulling work that allows us to cultivate shalom in that smallest unit of health, the community, is ultimately subservient to the bonds of love that hold every thread in our shared tapestry together. Pursuing shalom, especially those with some sort of professional authority, must work with nature, respect the limits of the created order, avoid the trap of making every aspect of human existence a matter of “health”, allow smaller institutions to do what they do best, and be conscientious about what kinds of suffering to try to alleviate. […]
Christians should continue to be more concerned with loving their neighbors than they are about preserving their own lives. I have made the argument before that I think getting vaccinated is an expression of love, and I think that, given the relatively low risk of vaccine side effects even for those who have already had COVID-19, that this judgment still applies in the case of the vaccines which have undergone rigorous testing.[4] By the same token, allowing any preventive measure to trump other concerns in the name of health runs the risk of letting legitimate concern become paralyzing paranoia. In all seasons, those who follow Christ must not let a concern for an abstract “other” or suspicion of a malevolent “them” promulgate foolishness, grandiosity, hatred, or obtrusiveness.
The official pronouncements about public health we have heard in the last two years are merely one small facet of human health’s contingent nature. We all depend on one another for the flourishing of life, and I hope and trust that most people are willing to acknowledge that dependence and contingency as we deal with the greatest infectious health crisis of our era. In affirming that “conviviality is healing,” as Wendell Berry says, we must be willing to carefully consider about what sorts of sacrifices and risks are worth it for the sake of others — and then, having considered, to act as those who love the goods of creation and are willing to suffer as we proclaim another life to come.