What US culture can learn from the church about COVID-19

What US culture can learn from the church about COVID-19 

The Church can learn about culture by looking at COVID in the U.S., which has many cultural preferences. Libertarians do not trust experts, especially experts who insist on trusting the science and obeying mandates (who they look upon as authoritarians). Even authoritarians check who to believe based on their preferred authority.  

Asking people to behave is dangerous, because if you do, you can never be wrong. The medical establishment is still wrong in their model of COVID spread. It is hard for any bureaucracy to pivot to new information that it is not looking for. First you have a cold, then tye symptoms go away then come back with a vengeance. Any household where someone has a bad cold or what seems like bad allergies needs to quarantine.  No leaving the house, not even with a mask.

The Church is wrong on many things sexual. It is hard to tell gay people to be monogamous when you teach mastsurbation is a mortal sin or that an asexual ideal should be followed by everyone, not just asexuals in the priesthood (who think that they are heterosexual). The Church, like Government science, needs to learn humility. Especially in what data it chooses to see.

While we commemorate the Incarnation, Redemption and Eschaton as a Church, they are essentially individual affairs. We are each created and mortal sin is about knowing the sin of others, not some moldy Babylonian myth that Augustine took literally. Likewise, redemption is an individual journey to God whose sacrifice was a journey to empathize with us. Like Creation, the second coming is myth. We each find God in the air when we die.

The challenge for the Church, the Government and the Culture is to put personal responsibility ahead of the norms of the group. He who would preserve his life will lose it. He who would preserve his reputation will lose that too.