Pandemic Learning: The Need to Respect Everyone
February, 2021
“As servants of God, live as free people, … Honour everyone.” (1 Peter 2:16a, 17a) These words appear in the middle of a section of this 1st Letter of Peter from the New Testament, written about 90 CE. The author is explaining how Christians should live in the midst of the Roman empire.
The juxta-position of “live as free people” and “honour everyone” results in an interesting paradox. Initially I might think that if I can live freely, then I can choose whom I might honour, or respect, and whom I might not.
Of course, most of us would agree that we ought to “respect everyone” but we make that affirmation in general – as an expression of an appropriate attitude. How easily we unconsciously (at least in most cases) define “everyone” as the persons that we love, like, do business with, or even view as worthy competitors. Those whom we think we have nothing in common with, whose lives seem to follow a foreign path, who are far-removed from our daily existence whether by geography, socio-economic status, or ethnicity – they quickly fall outside our working definition of “everyone.”
And then we are dumped into the middle of a global pandemic. Suddenly, we have something in common with every other person whether we wanted it or not. With our 21st century patterns of global travel, the risk of infection of persons in Brazil, South Africa, England, North Dakota and Lynn Lake, Manitoba are suddenly important. I have to respect the seriousness and severity of what is happening to those persons. Even if I am able to carefully observe the public health protocols, if homeless persons in Winnipeg, or persons in over-crowded, under-funded indigenous communities aren’t able to self-isolate or are wary of Covid tests and contact-tracing, and are at increased risk, it forces me to notice and be concerned. In what may be a novel situation for many of us, it causes me to respect those persons and their situation.
In many Christian churches there has been an increased emphasis on what is being called “The Baptismal Covenant.” It is a statement of belief (Apostles’ Creed) followed by six (in the case of the Anglican Church of Canada) promises that define the attitudes and actions of the baptized disciple of Jesus Christ. The promises are phrased as questions to which the one being baptized responds. The fifth one reads: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? [emphasis mine] This call to respect every person is embedded in the very foundation of this faith.
While it may be a sorry fact that it takes a global pandemic to bring us into a new awareness of this fundamental expectation, perhaps we can still appreciate the enlarged vision it has given us of “everyone.” May our eyes and our hearts continue to engage long after our experience of the pandemic fades away.
