Love Thy Neighbor

Sept 13, 2020 | By Shi Wen Yeo MC ‘23

It was just after midnight last night. There were raucous shouts coming from Cross Campus. I craned my neck out the window and beheld throngs of college students mere inches from each other, merry-making, to celebrate the end of their two-week quarantine. I can almost imagine the conversations going on (at a distance of less than six feet, of course). “I was SO bored during quarantine. I want to live the full, real college life that I deserve, not this subpar quarantined version.”

That night, I was kept awake by the nagging question: how many of those students knew what they were doing? How many were going to continue throughout this weekend, when everyone is out of quarantine? Most importantly, how many of them were Christian? The thought still haunts me.

This is the world that we live in. Just a mile away from this gathering is a whole other world—families who have been torn apart by Covid-19, who have lost loved ones, who have lost their entire livelihoods to the pandemic and watch their children go to sleep hungry every day. They tremble knowing that the influx of college students into New Haven could mean even more problems to come.

Of course, as residents of New Haven (or wherever you may be this fall), we owe a civic duty to city residents to be as cautious as possible in regards to the pandemic. You’ve heard it a thousand times— lives are at stake, livelihoods are at stake, we need to social distance and keep safe. Yet, I remain convicted that this duty is not only a civic duty, but one that is also firmly religious.

On a basic level, Covid-19 cautiousness is one of the ways we fulfill the Lord’s commandment to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Mk 12:31b). Jesus says himself that this law is not distinct from the first, which is to “love the Lord your God” (Mk 12:30a). In fact, it is “like” it (Matt 22:39) (Greek: homoia). Pictorially, this is perhaps why the cross has both a horizontal axis and a vertical axis. Because God so loved us, that is why we have a duty to pour out His love, replenished daily, to those around us, that we might be witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ to them.

In non-pandemic times, “loving your neighbor” is more visible and easy to negotiate. Giving to charity, volunteering with organizations and being friendly to people are all “good Christian habits” that we are accustomed to. But what about when “loving your neighbour” involves sacrifice? Self-temperance? Denial of pleasures? Things start to get murky.

I think a central part of being Christian involves a denial of the self and a desire to follow God by loving our neighbours. In Luke 9:23, Jesus enjoins us to “deny (ourselves)” and take up the cross, because the model of Christian love is sacrificial love. For those of us in New Haven, it means being responsible stewards of this beautiful city we have been blessed to call home for four years, and, literally, loving our neighbours who live in it. Hundreds of New Haven residents have suffered the health and economic impacts of Covid. Loving them involves denying ourselves certain pleasures that we have been used to, no matter how important we feel these pleasures are. 

Being Christian also involves being the “light of the world” (Matt 5:14a) for even non-believers around us to see. In the small things that we do and the cautious meticulousness with which we conduct ourselves, in the temperance we evince when we take the pandemic seriously, that is truly when we show the Lordship of God, through our actions, to the wider community. 

Probing deeper, however, I also want to ask—how necessary are these pleasures? Many times, I have felt the conversations surrounding “going out” to be peppered with desires that are self-glorifying rather than God-glorifying, ranging from “I want to see my friends again” to “I’m just so bored in quarantine.” I feel these keenly too from time to time.

On deeper reflection, though, I have come to realize that these desires all reflect our fallen state as humans. We have come to idolize physical, human relationships and think that if we have these pleasures our life will be made whole again. Worse, we sometimes fall into the trap of feeling that we are entitled to these pleasures. “Why didn’t I get that graduation I wanted? Why do I have to wear a mask outside? Why can’t I go to the movies/concerts?”

The reality is, we deserve none of these pleasures. As humans, we are “by nature deserving of wrath” (Eph 2:3b) and it is only through God’s abundant grace, His “great love for us” (Eph 2:4a) that all of us are alive, let alone comfortably cooped up in our homes, most with a good wifi connection and parents willing to take us in. 

Why then, do we seek solace in human companionship to fill our lives? Why do we think the end of Covid will somehow make us feel content again? For someone truly saturated in the Word and seeking the heart of God, this pandemic should only be an opportunity to spend even more time reading the Word, praying to God and re-centering our lives on Jesus.

We should not be consumed with the need to continually go out and socialize irresponsibly during this pandemic, “gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts” (Eph 2:3b), because it only reflects our fallen desire to find satisfaction in human relationships, when the one true love in this world comes from Jesus our Lord.

If we think even for one second that the end of this pandemic will restore wholeness and completion to our lives, then we must think again. Wholeness and completion can only come from our Creator above, and not from earthly relationships, no matter how close to satisfying those may be.

Of course, I don’t advocate complete self-isolation and an ascetic approach to this fall term. The few friendly faces we are blessed to meet each day, like our family and close friends, are gifts in this difficult time. There are indeed ways to maintain these sparse, important physical relationships that also enable us to be good stewards of the city, like following state regulations on social distancing and meeting in outdoor spaces. Even web-conferencing tools are God’s blessing for us to be connected seamlessly with our friends and family. But when we begin thinking about this from a Christian perspective, then the impetus to be extra cautious about the pandemic becomes even more urgent and real. Not only is it a collective duty, it is our unique responsibility as Christians to use our behavior in this pandemic to exemplify the love of Christ to the world. 

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