Luther on Pandemics
Martin Luther was one of the great heroes of the faith. If you only know one thing about him, you probably know that he nailed a list of 95 grievances with the teachings of the Catholic church to the door of a church building in Wittenberg, Germany. This event turned out to be the spark that would be fanned into the roaring blaze we now call the Protestant Reformation.
Luther’s life (and his writings) span so much interesting subject matter that it’s hard to remember it all. For one example, he was a pastor during one of the many European outbreaks of the Black Death.
In a time before antibiotics, the Black Death was an incredibly scary disease with an incredibly high mortality rate. It was estimated at one time to have killed as much as half the population of Europe.
Luther wrote a letter to Jon Hess, another pastor in Germany at that time. The title of the letter was “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague.” If you want to read the whole thing, you can do that here. In classic Luther fashion, he is very blunt, even a bit crass at times. Even so, I think his advice is good advice, especially with what we’re experiencing today. I’ve included an excerpt below.
If one makes no use of intelligence or medicine when he could do so without detriment to his neighbor, such a person injures his body and must beware lest he become a suicide in God’s eyes. By the same reasoning a person might forego eating and drinking, clothing and shelter, and boldly proclaim his faith that if God wanted to preserve him from starvation and cold, he could do so without food and clothing. Actually that would be suicide. It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have. He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor’s death and is a murderer many times over. Indeed, such people behave as though a house were burning in the city and nobody were trying to put the fire out. Instead they give leeway to the flames so that the whole city is consumed, saying that if God so willed, he could save the city without water to quench the fire.
No, my dear friends, that is no good. Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city. What else is the epidemic but a fire which instead of consuming wood and straw devours life and body? You ought to think this way: “Very well, by God’s decree the enemy has sent us poison and deadly offal. Therefore I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely, as stated above. See, this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.
If you would like to read more about Luther, I recommend This Biography by Eric Metaxas.