{"id":1966,"date":"2021-01-21T22:42:43","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T22:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=1966"},"modified":"2021-03-09T19:31:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T19:31:27","slug":"why-christians-should-welcome-face-masks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/reflections\/why-christians-should-welcome-face-masks\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Christians should welcome face masks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jesus Christ \u2014 and through him, God \u2014 has given us tools to make it through this coronavirus pandemic.<br \/>\nPrayer, faith, and community are familiar tools. We have been using them for months now to get by.<\/p>\n<p>But I want to talk about another Christian tool: face masks.<\/p>\n<p>One might be surprised to see face masks described as Christian. At first, I thought face masks were instruments of medical science only: non-religious items that doctors tell us to wear. In fact, I doubted whether something that<br \/>\npartially hid my face could be Christian at all. Covering up a face feels like covering up a flame, and the Gospels<br \/>\nwarn against that: \u201cNo one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar\u201d (Luke 11:33).<\/p>\n<p>As a philosopher and a teacher, however, I believe it is important to question our assumptions. So I did some<br \/>\nresearch. I began scanning through the Bible, looking for anything that might support \u2014 or contradict \u2014 my thinking.<\/p>\n<p>The Bible had a lesson for me. As I quickly discovered, it contains many stories of people wearing protective<br \/>\nclothes. Fabric, strips of cloth, and other garments are divine items, used throughout the Bible to cover, heal, and express sorrow in times of tragedy. And when viewed in the light of these stories, face masks appear to be strikingly biblical garb:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Take sackcloth, for example. It was used by Jacob when he mourned the passing of Joseph (Genesis 37:34).<br \/>\nAnd it was used by Ahab to express fear and despair when he heard Elijah\u2019s prophetic condemnation (1 Kings 21:27).<br \/>\nFace masks play a similar role. Like sackcloth, they express sorrow and fear. They mark our grief in times of<br \/>\nmourning.<\/li>\n<li>Or consider Moses\u2019 veil. When Moses returned from Mount Sinai, his face shone with the light of God.<br \/>\nIt shone more brightly, in fact, than others could take. In order to shield the Israelites from the overwhelming<br \/>\ndivinity that radiated from his face, Moses wore a veil (Exodus 34:33-35).<br \/>\nAgain, face masks serve a similar function. Like Moses\u2019 veil, face masks serve to protect. We wear them to<br \/>\nprotect one another.<\/li>\n<li>Similarly, Jesus\u2019 garment was a conduit for healing. Remember the suffering woman who dared to touch his<br \/>\ntunic (Mark 5:25-34)? After doing so, she was immediately cured of her illness.<br \/>\nJesus\u2019 divine power flowed through his clothing, making believers well.<br \/>\nSo, too, with face masks. Of course, face masks do not directly heal people in the way Jesus did. Face masks do not<br \/>\ndispense medicine, for instance. But by preventing the spread of coronavirus, face masks have the power to make<br \/>\nourselves and our communities healthy. Like Jesus and his tunic, face masks instill wellness.<\/li>\n<li>Clothing features prominently in many other biblical passages. For instance, according to the Gospels, Jesus\u2019<br \/>\nlife \u2014 from birth to crucifixion \u2014 begins and ends with clothing. As soon as Jesus was born, the Gospel of Luke tells us that Mary \u201cwrapped him in bands of cloth\u201d (2:7). And as soon as Jesus died, the Gospel of Matthew reports that Joseph of Arimathea took his body and \u201cwrapped it in a clean linen cloth\u201d (27:59). Clothing \u2014 in particular, strips of fabric and clean linen \u2014 was a vessel for Jesus, welcoming him into the world and bearing him out of it.<br \/>\nEven here, there is something to learn about face masks. For just as clothing bookends the story of Jesus\u2019<br \/>\nlife, face masks will bookend the story of this pandemic. We put on face masks at the start of it, and we will remove<br \/>\nthem at the end.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So face masks are not un-Christian. By expressing sorrow, protecting each other, keeping us well, and framing this<br \/>\npandemic\u2019s story, face masks embody the divine significance of sackcloth, veil, tunic, and wrapping. And Christians,<br \/>\ntherefore, should welcome them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can something that partially hides your face be Christian? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[248,249,251,250],"class_list":["post-1966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reflections","tag-christians","tag-face-coverings","tag-isaac-ottoni-wilhelm","tag-masks"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1966"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2231,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966\/revisions\/2231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}