Masking the Imago Dei
THE IMAGE OF GOD
The Christian concept of Imago Dei, that we are made in the image of God, is a profound and foundational idea in the Christian faith. In Genesis it says “in the image of God he created them.” When we look into the faces of our neighbor- we see a glimpse, an “image” of the creator. This means we were created innately sacred. It is the fundamental reason why we fight against sex trafficking, child abuse, and human slavery. Every human was created to reflect God’s image. When you degrade, abuse, or deface that image, you not only violate your neighbor (or yourself), you also violate God’s creation. When a cultural rallying cry involves anything that truly can save or preserve life, the Christian cannot and should not hesitate. It’s not difficult to see how powerful of a motivator protecting the lives of others is for the Christian.
Sometime around April 2020 the idea of facemasks to prevent spread seemed to grow in popularity, at first with varying degrees of reactions- from mockery to full on enthusiasm. I was one of the enthusiastic ones. Wow, is it true that a simple mask could turn this thing around? I was in. I enthusiastically wore them any time in a store, well before any “mandate”. We got some for our kids. Donning our new Covid-killing masks we gratefully walked into the door of our first in-person church service in a couple months. Like in every TV commercial and Social Media ad, covid-safety positive wording and safety marketing started permeating the evangelical world. “Love others by not gathering” was a line in one of the normally benign church updates. “Until we can safely do so” was the reason for why children’s ministry was cancelled till further notice. My church could not send an email without reference to this newly adopted safety morality. This moral imperative was cemented in the psyche of both secular and sacred spheres. “We’re all in this together” was a popular trope that was inescapable in every sphere of life, and a new army of omnipotent moral busybodies were tasked to implement sweeping re-orderings of our normally benign routines.
BLAME & SHAME
In the Bible, after Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, they became aware of their nakedness. In the story, God sees their fear and shame- and he covers them, after they had already covered and hid themselves. It is the archetype imagery of innocence and guilt. Innocent, unafraid, naked. Guilty, afraid, covered.
Guilt is a necessary pre-condition for shame. Guilt must exist for shame to maintain its power. Perhaps the guilt is real and internal. It can also be an externally projected, an accusation. The recipe for toxic shame became complete when our “Public Health” leaders gave us the worst kind of accusation- “asymptomatic transmission.” The possibility that we could be carriers of a deadly pathogen and not even know it created a chronic, even if subconscious, low level fear that we carried everywhere we went. Every single physical movement or social interaction was now subject to be judged from the moralized lens of public health. Every behavior was subject to public health scrutiny for its level of “safety.”
In our hyper-politicized and polarized environment, we are hopelessly addicted to blame. Social media gave us a 55-gallon barrel of algorithm-enhanced gasoline to throw on the blaze of hysteric digital finger pointing. Mask shaming became a thing. What is so insidious about the idea of “asymptomatic transmission” is that it effectively reduced the burden of guilt to nothing. We adopted a guilty until proven innocent mindset with every public health intervention, and thus created an entirely upside-down framework with which we were to behave and treat our fellow humans. Our public health leaders constantly hyped up this risk, and the effect (intended or not) was to effectively treat everyone as if they are all infectious all the time (For the record, we actually know this risk to be many times lower than the messaging lets on, and we knew this in May). We now had every necessary element for this experiment we are conducting on ourselves: guilt, fear, coverings.
Our original sin? Breathing.
THE LETDOWN
As the months went on, we heard more and more about how great masks work, and how they were going to be a crucial “way out” of this pandemic. By then they had become an annoyance, but we were continually reminded of their importance, efficacy, and how they “Save Lives.” We won’t have to force business closures or close school! The outlook was optimistic. Then come late summer (with mandates firmly in place) it became clearer and clearer that the power of these cloth pieces were overstated. It seemed this promise of face coverings as a way out of anything were starting to come up empty. Public schools stayed closed for in person, or severely delayed opening (wait, what about the masks? Don’t they work?). Sports were delayed or completely cancelled for our children. The dilemma over to mask, not to mask, raged onward among parents for back-to school. Mask requirements for opening schools were almost universally adopted. “It’s only temporary” was in everyone’s mind when they made the trade-off to suck it up and get on with it. Well, here we are a year later. We’ve all worn them, made our children wear them, and by now it’s clear that whatever masks did do, we certainly know what they did not do. They did not bring the pandemic “under control in weeks” as our CDC claimed in July.
BREATH OF GOD
In Genesis, it says that God “breathed into [Adam’s] nostrils the breath of life.” Here we have the first reference of breath being life. It was the breath of God that created life, it is our breath that sustains life. When we treat the very thing that sustains our life- breathing, as deadly, we must maintain an active suppression of our instinct. To the Christian, an inhibition of our design. Despite such low statistical probability of a brief hug, handshake, or conversation shared with a friend being a threat to our health, (the truth is it’s incredibly good for our health), we were told to work against these normal habits and exchange them for newer, weirder ones. We have been conditioned over the past year to insert moralized, medical calculus into every single event or interaction. We have twisted ourselves into mental and emotional knots having to account for what the other person thinks/feels/believes about the “right” way to behave, and it has been exhausting.
What have we exchanged for the pleasure of seeing smiling faces? Was it worth it? After so many of us “behaved” and put up with it, all while people kept getting infected despite their masks, what have we got in return other than an imaginary scenario of felt safety? How long are we going to keep pretending?
THE COSTS
One of the major justifications underlying the usage of masks is the complete absence of downside. Why not? Cloth is cheap, readily available, and hey- they save lives! Who could ever argue with that? At first, I didn’t. Masks were the obvious choice if in fact they were that powerful, and they were a minor inconvenience at best. Well perhaps that’s true, except for people with breathing difficulty, trauma, special needs, or medical disabilities, who have been completely ignored. Sure the rest of us can “suck it up”. At the same time, study after study confirmed that children rarely spread to adults, and they are at incredibly low risk from the virus itself. Should not we have considered that when we decided the children had to “suck it up” too?
Perhaps the most tragic outcome of our collective response is what we’ve done to our children. We’ve now rationalized and normalized the masking of our children, perhaps through positive reinforcement but more likely simple behavioral conditioning. We have taken the truly innocent and we have cast shame upon them. What are the long-term effects of teaching children to avoid physical contact and touch? How will this affect their bodies and self-image in the years to come? How will this shape the critical development of our young children? Are we willing to continue this experiment on our children for an indefinite amount of time?
In our failure to have courage and protect our children’s mental, emotional, and physical wellness, we have forced them to bear the physical reminder and burden of our internal anxiety and fear. Our children were the first to have normality taken away from them, and they will the very last ones to get it back. I pray they will forgive us.
A PRAYER
To the Christian, to cover one’s face is to cover something sacred. We can debate about the value/effectiveness of masks to prevent disease, but one thing a Christian cannot deny is the intrinsic sanctity of our faces. To many, masks have become not just a reminder of a pathogenic threat, but a physical embodiment of the damaging effects of our pandemic response. A pandemic response that has been an “assault on human dignity and flourishing” in the poignant and discerning words of Edward Hadas. Was masking the Imago Dei necessary? What covid outcomes did we gain? Whatever it was, we better darn well recognize that what we’ve done wasn’t harmless. It wasn’t nothing.
Viral transmission is a surprisingly still not fully understood phenomenon that has been with us for all of our history. How arrogant of us to believe in our limited knowledge that we could exert ultimate control over something that has survived for as long humanity itself.
A pandemic is not our neighbor’s fault, it’s not our children’s fault. I pray that soon we will put away the blame, shame, and fear that has defined much of this past year. That we may all look upon each other’s faces and smile again, knowing we are more than mere biology, but reflections of our Creator.
There is a prayer from the book of Numbers that I often pray over my children: “the Lord make His face to shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” When I look at their precious faces, I take joy and reassurance. We need that same reassurance, the smiles, the expressions from our fellow image bearers. We were created for it. I’ll take whatever the “risk” that your smile brings with it, if only I can have the pleasure of seeing it.
