Following Jesus When Fear Goes Viral

We live in a viral world. Because of communication technology, it’s never been easier for a message to reach millions of people and circle the globe in a matter of minutes. As we’re learning right now, it’s not just information that can instantaneously spread throughout a community, city, or country. Fear can go viral too.

COVID-19 is a real threat. It’s not something to be ignored or downplayed. I’m grateful for the experts God has raised up to lead health agencies across the globe, and the valuable information their experience and research is providing. But facts don’t necessarily have to lead to fear. In fact, for followers of Jesus, they should lead to a radically different response.

God calls us to respond to crisis with a dynamic one-two punch of faith and wisdom. Faith calls us to set our minds on God’s power, knowing that He is infinitely stronger than any sickness or disease. David, a man who faced his own giant and overcame fear with faith, once spoke to the power of having a faith-filled perspective. He wrote, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7).” We should read reports from the Center for Disease Control, but we don’t trust IN them. We should listen to interviews from leading health experts, but we don’t trust IN them. We put our trust IN the faithfulness of God.

Next we add wisdom, which is complimentary, not contradictory to faith. Wisdom calls us to pay attention to the experts and submit to our governing authorities. Unfortunately however, it’s possible for wisdom to be diluted with fear, which leads Christians to provide an impotent response to a world in crisis. Instead of selflessness, we live out self-preservation. Instead of serving our neighbors with courage, we can hide and cower.

Courageous Christianity

If you read church history you’ll see page after page of Christians courageously serving their neighbors during seasons of pandemic. In fact, some of the most explosive seasons of growth that God’s Church has ever seen has been when sicknesses were spreading through communities.

For example, during the first few hundred years of Christianity, the Christian church grew in large part because disciples of Jesus selflessly served others who were sick. As a result of the smallpox epidemic in 165 AD, and the measles epidemic less than one hundred years later, almost 50% of the population of the Roman Empire were killed. At the height of the outbreak, 5,000 people were dying every day in the city of Rome. But while most people were just trying to survive by leaving the cities and isolating themselves, Christians risked their lives to care for the sick. Instead of hiding, they served their neighbors and changed the world forever.

In his book The Rise of Christianity, sociologist Rodney Stark describes the impact they had. He estimates that someone with the disease who received no nursing had a 30% mortality rate. But if someone received even the most basic care (food and water), the mortality rate dropped to 10%. As a result, the mortality rate was much lower in the Church than in the larger community, because Christians were caring for one another. Secondly, many of the unbelievers who did survive owed their lives to the Christians who fearlessly nursed them back to health, leading them to put their faith in Jesus. Rodney Stark estimates that at the end of the First Century, the Christian population made up about 0.4% of the Roman Empire. But by the end of the second epidemic, about 20% of the Roman Empire was following Jesus.

Right here in Philadelphia, there was a similarly inspiring example of courage in the face of crisis during an outbreak of yellow fever. In the fall of 1793, the disease had become a city-wide health crisis, causing thousands of people to leave Philly. Hospitals weren’t equipped to handle the need. But Bishop Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), led his church community to serve the suffering. In Christians in the Age of Outrage, Ed Stetzer describes his impact. “Despite the overt racism he faced, Allen modeled an empathetic approach to loving his neighbors. Allen and his fellow volunteers were heartbroken over the suffering of the sick. They resonated with those patients who had been cast out…Allen never lost sight of the truth: Those around him were lost and needed Jesus.”

A Pandemic of Hope

What if this current outbreak is actually an opportunity? What if followers of Jesus in the spring of 2020 could be filled with the love of God that casts out all fear, and leverage that love to spread a different sort of pandemic throughout our communities – a pandemic of hope.

What would Jesus do if he were here today? I think Pastor Scott Sauls gives us the answer in this beautiful challenge. “In a time like now, Christian neighboring looks less like fearful self-preservation and more like servanthood toward the elderly, those with HIV, autoimmune disease, or no healthcare, fatigued and under-resourced healthcare workers, etc. Wash hands, for sure. Then, wash feet.”

I’ve never seen anything as fluid as the news surrounding the Coronavirus. Our phones are constantly buzzing as the updates flood our newsfeeds at a dizzying pace. We don’t know what tomorrow may bring. But we know someone who does. And He can be trusted.

This is not the time to spread fear. It’s the time to declare, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21).” Mission in this life. Eternal life in the next. Jesus in both. That’s called a win-win situation. And it frames reality for everyone who is living by faith in Christ alone. So while we use wisdom and sanitize our hands, let’s live by faith remembering that our lives are in His.

Let Good News Go Viral

Even though we may not be gathering in our building this weekend as normal, we are not alone. We are surrounded by the angels of God. We are united as a vibrant community as we gather online. And we are teammates with thousands of other followers of Jesus all over our city. Together we are on mission to make Jesus known. May God transform this pandemic into a platform from which we declare some really good news. Jesus defeated sin, sickness and death, leaving nothing left for us to fear.

That’s a message that deserves to go viral.