GOP Should Heed Martin Luther on Pandemic Behavior
For those of you who remember your history of Western Civilization, plagues were a recurring terror throughout Europe and Northern Africa during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. One such occurrence took place in the year 1527, when the bubonic plague re-appeared in Wittenberg, Germany, the town where the religious theologian, reformer, and formative voice of Protestant Christianity, Martin Luther, was living.
Questions regarding how Christians should respond to the plague led Mr. Luther to pen an open letter entitled, "Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague". This document is a fascinating read, one with much relevancy today as people throughout the world search for appropriate responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.
 (Luther image from BBC History)
The following passage is especially relevant to the current debate over vaccinations and social behavior. Our fundamentalist friends in particular, not to mention far too many Republican Governors and legislators, may be surprised by Mr. Luther's positions on medicine, social distancing, freedom, and the difference between trusting and tempting God:
"...Others sin on the right hand. They are much too rash and reckless, tempting God and disregarding everything which might counteract death and the plague. They disdain the use of medicines; they do not avoid places and persons infected by the plague, but lightheartedly make sport of it and wish to prove how independent they are. They say that it is God's punishment; if he wants to protect them he can do so without medicines or our carefulness.
This is not trusting God but tempting him. God has created medicines and provided us with intelligence to guard and take good care of the body so that we can live in good health."
Mr. Luther goes on to explain how God will view those people who choose to shun available medicines or who refuse to use their own God-given intelligence in combating a pandemic like the plague:
"If one makes no use of intelligence or medicine when he could do so without detriment to his neighbor, such a person injures his body and must beware lest he become a suicide in God's eyes. By the same reasoning a person might forego eating and drinking, clothing and shelter, and boldly proclaim his faith that if God wanted to preserve him from starvation and cold, he could do so without food and clothing. Actually that would be suicide.
It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have. He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor's death and is a murderer many times over.
Indeed, such people behave as though a house were burning in the city and nobody were trying to put the fire out. Instead they give leeway to the flames so that the whole city is consumed, saying that if God so willed, he could save the city without water to quench the fire.
No, my dear friends, that is no good. Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city."
 (Luther image from BBC.com)
Mr. Luther concludes this section of his document by reminding his readers that:
"… If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others."
We'll repeat one of Mr. Luther's arguments below and hope you will consider sending it to those misguided conservative politicians who love to argue they are pro-life but who fall all over themselves trying to legislate against the common-sense Covid precautionary measures (masks, social distancing, vaccinations, etc.) that will save lives:
"It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have. He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor's death and is a murderer many times over."
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