I’ve noticed a lot of polarization in people’s responses to COVID-19. While a good fraction of folks I know seem to be taking a reasonable approach, I also see a good deal of polarization from different places on the political spectrum – and not just from end end or the other. If you’ll allow me to oversimplify a bit, I’d say that some seem to think the whole thing is an overblown, overhyped artificial catastrophe created by the liberal media and folks who stay home are essentially cowering in fear. Others seem to think the entire thing a fiasco created by a combination of Trump, science deniers, and a lack of universal health care/adequate support for the poor in our society. And many seem to be trying to figure out how to blame someone for our present predicament.

I believe there’s a better way for us to navigate this time, one which starts with giving one another the benefit of the doubt – then working together to try and find the best way as a nation to navigate these challenging times. We need to get away from the blame game.

We need to start by wanting good for others

Our starting point in navigating this time needs to be desiring the best for other people, whether we like them or not – and genuinely trying to do good for them. We’re all of course familiar with the “Golden rule” of (e.g.) Matthew 7:12:

In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you…

but are we really extending that to others in this time? Or, in Matthew 22:39, Jesus summarizes the second half of the Ten Commandments as:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

In his classic book “Mere Christianity”, C.S. Lewis addresses these ideas in his chapter on “Charity”. He writes:

Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.

I pointed out… that our love for ourselves does not mean that we like ourselves. It means that we wish our own good. In the same way Christian Love … is quite a different thing from liking or affection.

The kind of love the Bible calls us to, in other words, is doing real good for other people – not feeling a particular way about them.

What he’s getting at here is that we need to extend to others the same attitude we naturally have towards ourselves. If we do something wrong, we don’t typically begin by thinking of all the reasons why what we did was completely horrible and inexcusable. Of course we don’t like what we did. But we know what our intent was, and all the extenuating circumstances which might make our act not really that bad after all. Well, we’re called to have that same attitude towards others too – not to assume that they did what they did out of terrible motives, to harm people, etc. In other words, we must begin by desiring their good – as we would for ourselves.

Lewis goes on to argue that we can’t begin by working up the right feelings for others. We ought instead to start with action:

Do not waste time bothering about whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. … When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less…

The Germans, perhaps, at first ill-treated the Jews because they hated them; afterwards they hated them much more because they had ill-treated them. The more cruel you are, the more you will hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become – and so on in a vicious circle for ever.

I suppose that’s part of what I’m worried about at present. One political party begins to hate the other and begins mocking it, ridiculing it, scoffing at it, etc., and that leads to hating them still more. And the other party does the same in reverse. The whole thing just leads to more and more hatred and polarization, instead of being able to come together and work to solve problems together. This ought to be a bipartisan problem, one we face together – but it won’t be if we hate one another.

COVID-19 is neither a liberal conspiracy nor a product of Donald Trump

I hope we can all agree that COVID-19 is a real disease that’s killing lots of people – by latest count more than 200k people confirmed worldwide but the real toll is likely much higher as evidenced by deaths in excess of normal. And this is with lockdowns reducing infection rates, so it easily could be far worse. If that’s the case, it’s neither a liberal conspiracy nor entirely a product of Donald Trump and any mismanagement on his front. After all, it’s affected the whole world, and many countries have far more deaths per capita than the US. Do I think there was mismanagement? Yes. Do I think that liberals (and conservatives) are going to use the crisis to further their political aims? Yes. But it’s not the fault of any single entity or individual.

The best path forward will be challenging and is not yet clear

The best scientists in this area don’t yet know the best path foward. There are a lot of questions we still need answered. This Bill Gates interview is quite accessible and highlights a number of the key issues. Why Gates? Since his Microsoft days he’s gotten tremendously involved in philanthropy relating to human healthcare and infectious disease; his Gates Foundation may be the largest private foundation in the world. Whatever you think of the origins of his money, there’s no question his foundation has done a great deal for human health, and he’s accumulated considerable knowledge in the area over time. Anyway, expert or no, this article is a good and accessible summary of some of the key issues and questions. For more, another great source is Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the FDA, who is a clear, outspoken and reliable source in the area. Here’s a recent Gottlieb interview which is helpful. Gottlieb’s Twitter is a great source for key developments.

In any case, the best path forward is not yet clear. Here are some of the things we don’t yet know: 1) If people become immune after having COVID-19 and how long immunity lasts 2) What fraction of people have really had it (recent studies haven’t quite answered this yet) 3) How we can best use testing/tracing to keep this from getting out of hand again (or if we’ll have to – see item 2) 4) Whether it will vary seasonally like the flu (e.g. see the 1918 pandemic, which had multiple peaks) 5) How relaxing different measures will affect the rate of spread of infection

The 1918 pandemic The 1918 flu pandemic had multiple peaks in deaths.

Studies of a number of these are underway, and we need their results to chart the best path forward. Many of our best and brightest scientists are working on it. Yes, we should have had a good plan in place before this happened, and we probably should have funded more work in this area sooner. But they’re on it now, and we need to give them time.

I think I can safely say that all of us – or certainly the overwhelming majority – don’t want the economy to stay shut down any longer than it has to. But we also don’t want to go through the scenario predicted early on by the Imperial College team where we would have waves of “lock down, then begin letting people out, then lock down again”, over and over again for 18 months until a vaccine is developed. So, let’s give scientists time to work, and pray for our policymakers to heed their conclusions and make wise decisions.

Oh, and don’t go crowd the beaches just yet until it’s wise to do so.

The other party makes some very good points

I think another thing we ought to do in this time is assess the good points the other political party is making. For example, do we really have an adequate safety net in place for those who lose work during this time, particularly those engaged in the gig economy or with their own small businesses who might not be eligible for unemployment? Or what about those who are earning minimum wage in “essential” jobs who get no or very minimal sick leave and may need to continue working to support their family even if they’re in high risk categories? As a Christian, I’m very concerned about such folks even though I’m typically “conservative” politically and those questions align with what we think of as the “liberal” agenda. I’m also very concerned when large publicly-traded companies begin to benefit from “small business” loans – though fortunately we seem to be headed towards correcting that. Further, there are real inequalities in our society we may need to do more work to address. Conservatives, let’s give our liberal friends the benefit of the doubt – maybe even show them some love – and assume that they, too, care about people and want what’s best for our country.

On the other end of things, I’d challenge my more liberal friends to recognize that not everything which benefits a business is immediately bad or intended to make companies rich at the expense of the poor, nor does everyone on the conservative end of the spectrum reside there because we want to make companies rich. A vast number of Americans work for a business of one form or another, and most of us benefit daily from technologies operated by these big businesses. Many of us are also paid by them. Using the present pandemic as an opportunity to clamp down on big business may backfire. Also, know that some on the far right are trying to stoke the “it’s all a big liberal conspiracy” narrative, so perhaps ramping up the pro-Sanders and anti-Trump rhetoric right now is not the best way to help conservatives seriously consider the social equity issues you’re highlighting. Don’t assume conservatives are all trying to make big business rich at expense of the little people. Maybe now is a good time to ask why conservatives think the way we do rather than telling us how foolish and anti-science we’ve been.

Remember, some of us are conservative because of social issues, and/or because we prefer to handle more at a state or local level. It’s not that we don’t want to help the disadvantaged – but that it’s not obvious that large federal programs are always the best way to do this. For example, if you think implementing something like a universal basic income is going to make things way better than everyone – well, you’ve probably never gone to buy food for someone who couldn’t afford it and found that the reason they couldn’t afford it was because they spent their welfare check on fancy Christmas decorations and a big-screen TV (I’ve been there and done that).

A while back, I highlighted how sin causes our problems, but losing sight of that divides us. It’s easy for us to blame our problems on the opposite political party. And while that might have made some mistakes, our real enemy here is a virus.

My daughter saw something harsh an acquaintance of ours had written on Facebook about how much we need to reopen things and how all of this is an overreaction, and she wondered what was wrong with him that he was so upset. We spent a couple minutes taking her through an “imagine you’re in his shoes” kind of scenario – he’s not in an area which has been affected much by the virus, probably knows no one who has had it, and his business and livelihood has been dramatically hurt by the lockdowns. From his perspective, it’s easy to see how it could all seem like a big overreaction – though I disagree with him. But if I put myself in his shoes I can see why he sees things the way he does, and I wanted my daughter to do so as well. That doesn’t mean I won’t try and change his mind – I will – but really, I can’t begin to change his mind effectively until I understand why he, as a reasonable and respectable person, has the views he does.

So, let’s begin by giving one another the benefit of the doubt. If you meet someone you disagree with, even on your Facebook feed or that of a friend, don’t assume they’re an idiot or motivated by corporate greed or a desire for a socialist utopia in America. Find out what matters to them and why, and figure out what common ground we have. Find ways to love them. And if you want to try and change their mind, do so after first understanding how they arrived at their views in the first place.

Other posts in my coronavirus series: