How Do We Function Together When We Have Such Differing Experiences and Perspectives During the Turmoil of the Coronavirus? — OR — The Body of Christ

Today, we go Yellow. Maybe this is akin to someone being moved from ICU back to their normal hospital room, and now they are waiting to be discharged, whenever that will be! We have been on lockdown for weeks and perhaps there is something surreal about the doors to our cells being cracked just enough to stick our foot out and see if we get bit. Did Noah have that feeling when he landed on the mountain and opened the door for the first time in a year?

This has been an interesting experience, to say the least. I use the word “interesting” because it’s somewhat of a neutral word that we can all agree on. My sense is that we have all experienced these last couple of months in significantly different ways. Let me explain and caution us.

Some of us have found lockdown to be an incredible blessing. We have enjoyed it. We wish that we could have a lockdown like this once every three years because it does the body good. Some of us hear that and think, “Are these people crazy? Do they not know what is going on in the world?” They do, and their thoughts on quarantine do not mean that they are heartless to the death toll, economic consequences or isolation that has been more difficult for some. But for them, this has been good. That’s not selfishness, it’s how they have experienced time in isolation.

Some of us have found lockdown to be more brutal than solitary confinement in Alcatraz. We have felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, but this isn’t a comedy. Everyday we wake up wondering when this nightmare will end. Some of us might hear this and think, “Whoa! They have completely missed how wonderful this time has been! They must be an ultra extrovert. They must not know how to rest.” Not necessarily. Perhaps they have been isolated in a way others haven’t. They haven’t been able to see or be with family that they used to see almost everyday. Perhaps they are more sensitive to the suffering around them than others.

Now I’m not going to go through all the permutations of our experiences in lockdown, but there are bound to be experiences like these two and everything in between.

There will also be different ways that people re-enter the world and different perspectives on… everything. Let’s rapid fire these:

Some are still fearful and aren’t ready for “normal” life, and think we should still be in lockdown.

Some think this whole lockdown business has been a colossal waste and everything should immediately go back to normal.

Some think this was a way for the government to grab power.

Some think our government was somewhat right in their actions.

Some think our government was mostly right in their actions.

Some think this has been a political hoax, greater than the conspiracy of serving sizes.

Some think the president lied.

Some think the media lied.

Some think everybody is lying and their buddy who has a youtube channel with 63 viewers is the only one who understands the complexities of the situation.

Some think China is to blame.

Some think that blaming China is racist.

Some think the virus is more serious than we are being told.

Some think the virus is no more threatening than a bad cold.

Some think masks will save our lives.

Some think masks will do nothing more than ruin a nice outfit and bend our ears.

Some think tanning booths should have been considered essential businesses.

Some think that not getting a haircut for two months is just as bad as getting the virus.

Some think the doctors in CA were spot on.

Some think the doctors in CA should be locked up.

Some think churches have not responded very well.

Some think churches have responded fairly well.

Some think churches have done the best job possible.

Do I need to continue? Have you come up with other polarizing versions of our circumstances?

Here’s the question: how do you get people with such different perspectives and experiences to function together? What could possibly unify them?

If you can imagine the wheel of a bicycle, you have the many spokes that extend from the hub to the rim. The spokes are important but they cannot ever take the place of the hub. Even if you got a bunch of spokes together, they could never function as the hub. They could never work as a unifier. That’s one of the functions of the hub: it’s the unifier. 

Think of our various experiences and perspectives as the spokes. They cannot function as a unifier for us. If we try to, we would collapse just like a bicycle.

Think of this in a circle of five friends. It’s often the case that, for various reasons, there is one person who is the hub for the other four. Without that person, the others would not spend as much time together, nor would they want to. Just like the spokes on a wheel, their relationships run through the hub.

This is probably obvious by now, but what I am trying to get at is that our hub can be nothing other than Jesus. A church cannot rally around any other agenda than Christ and his gospel, or it will collapse. We cannot function as a body if we try to make a spoke our hub. It doesn’t matter how unifying that spoke might seem to be. It can never function as a hub.

But this can’t just be theory, it must be practiced. How do we effort to keep our spokes from becoming hubs? Let me answer that with an obvious example:

If we think the lockdowns were (and maybe still are) a great idea and we are talking to someone who thinks the lockdowns were ridiculous, we must not allow the issue of the lockdowns to be what unifies or what separates. Our relationships are not grounded in such things. They are grounded in Christ. The issue of the lockdowns is a spoke, not the hub! Jesus is the hub!

This will require us to listen to each other, seek to understand each other, and avoid judging each other. This should be our posture in all circumstances, but perhaps it’s even more important today.

Let’s have our rallying point be along the lines of what we sing together in this song.