Behind the Mask
Not long ago, I was on Main Street, in Fort Kent, about to ascend the stairs that lead to my sister’s apartment. All of a sudden I heard a voice coming through a megaphone, rallying all listeners to attention. It was a woman’s voice. It reminded me of summer camp. “It’s been a long spring, hasn’t it? But, we’re going to get through this thing! Who’s with me?”
I couldn’t see anyone on either side of the road. Then, sticking out from behind a trashcan next to a lamppost was the front portion of a loud speaker. Craning out into the street in order to see who was attached to the other side, I found that there was no one. It was mounted to the streetlamp. Then, I noticed, there were megaphones affixed to lampposts up and down Main Street. The voice went on. “Nothing breaks the quarantine blues like a little bit of Chicken Dance? Are you with me? All right, come on then!”
The street was empty. Then, as if I had stumbled, unbeknownst to me, onto the set of a David Lynch film, the opening licks of the electric guitar began to resound throughout the downtown of this little Aroostook County village. I was now fully invested in finding out if anyone else was watching this. Or, was there a camera through which someone was watching me? One by one, they began to emerge from the shopfronts. A woman from the Family Dollar. A woman from the hair salon. Two women from the insurance office. All of them in masks. Maybe five in all, flapping their arms and strutting up and down the sidewalk. “Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!” they sounded in chorus with the blaring music. A lone driver in blue pickup moved through, windows up, mask on.
In addition to now being a partisan merit badge, part of the appeal of the mask has to do with a post-internet love of anonymity. People have become accustomed to a certain level of not having to be accountable for their speech or actions. Anyone who has ever read the comments section on a Doug Wilson post knows this is true. People are taller and bolder, more threatening and far more confident when they are not confined to real incarnate presence. For a long time the internet has provided avatar curtains for us to hide behind. Banksy once said something about anonymity being invisibility and invisibility being a superpower. Masks are a necessary part of the uniform. Masks are the new capes.
A number of people are caught in the crossfire of this strange skirmish. On the one hand, many people simply don’t want to get their grandparents sick. That’s fair. Some people can’t get milk and eggs for breakfast unless they put a mask on in order to shop. This is unfortunate but, again, if there’s nowhere else to buy eggs, then this is not what I’m talking about. Some people could care less one way or another, but they want to keep their job at Hannaford and so they will put the stupid thing on. Understood. However, when it is has become, as in our day, a statement driven by ideology, it should be rejected like the mini-skirt was by those who disavowed the sexual revolution.
Having said that, it is important to acknowledge that some people are genuinely afraid. We aren’t helping them by suiting up with them. There is a legitimate argument that we are emboldening an unfounded fear and thereby hurting, not helping. Grounded compassion is better than empathy, as many have said.
Purposeful prevention to stave off infection is a wonderful thing. It’s part of the glory of a post-germ-theory world. Sometimes, the use of masks by healthy people will be an appropriate component in that world; however, the idea that you quarantine the healthy instead of the sick is the worst kind of the tail wagging the dog.
In the Scarlett Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale says, “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” Christians need to be careful that, if they are donning masks it is for a good reason and not in order to be counted among those who are ‘being good.’ A Christian can easily have a clear conscience and wear a mask with Scriptural support if they are motivated by an honoring of our magistrates and a willingness to suffer while being wronged because one’s rights are being surrendered. That is a legitimate Christian position. If there was a divide amongst Christians over the Scriptural legitimacy of the American Revolution, we have to acknowledge that there will be significant division over smaller issues related to civil disobedience. But part of our dialogue has to incorporate that we probably won’t go, overnight, from being the freest country in the world to Americans being imprisoned for preaching the Gospel. We have to expect that there would be a number of smaller incremental steps that precede it regarding baking cakes, assembling or not, and wearing masks. May God give us men and women who are not conspiracy theorists, but who genuinely see where those smaller movements are . . . and discernment to know which ones are worth resisting.
The Church is this country’s only hope; but much of the Church in her present condition is only good for being tossed out into the icy driveway. Praise God there is a way forward; we have to repent and become a people of prayer.
We have to repent for spending most of our lives looking for something to eat when there has never even been a real threat of genuine hunger. We have to repent for working hard at committing Mumford & Sons lyrics to memory but not having time for the Psalms. We have to repent for tolerating porn addictions in our men and boys because it’s just so easy since the cell phone. We have to repent for not practicing church discipline because it doesn’t seem very loving. We have to repent for allowing our children to be catechized by Caesar and for being surprised when they end up as Romans. We have to repent for acting as though the Bible doesn’t have anything to say about sexual perversion or the murder of babies because these are political issues. We need to repent for quarantining faith outside the public sector, as if there was such a thing. We need to repent for not loving the God who gave love to the world. We need to become a people of repentance and prayer. God has promised that if we are willing to repent, to turn from our own wicked ways, and petition God, then He will hear us and heal our land. And our land is desperately sick and in need of healing.
Maine is the least-churched state in the nation. This makes this dark corner of the union uniquely qualified for the position of revival and reformation. God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. No one is less qualified than the church in Maine to spearhead a nation-wide turning from sin and to the Lord. We do not simply need God-fearing leaders, we need a God-fearing church. Today is the day.
