Call the Plague Doctor

Death stalks the streets like a huge, giant, stalking thing.

During the lockdowns of 2021 I had this idea of donning a mediaeval plague mask and walking around town. I imagined adorning the ubiquitous yellow, black, and white posters with plague mask stickers. Perhaps I’d post gimmick propaganda commanding everyone to stay inside, and to keep away from each other. I’d tell everyone to fear the stranger; to avoid one another like the plague. Ultimately I’d link people to a blog where I explored ideas with a bit more seriousness.

The mask would be haunting. Reminiscent of the bubonic plague and the darkness we associate with the medieval age. It felt like an apt reflection of covidtide: dark and frightening. Like the fear of disease that had possessed us, the fear we all had about getting it wrong, and for those of us with reservations or disagreements with the consensus, the fear of speaking our minds. The plague mask would parody the mandated surgical variety to a grim extreme; removing fully face to face, person-to-person communion. And - I’ll admit - it would preserve some anonymity at a time when speaking one’s contrarian convictions against felt impossible.

It was a strange and dark idea in response to a strange and dark time. In truth I was struggling to comprehend our governmental and collective response to the pandemic. I found elements of it truly horrifying, but I was also conflicted. The Plague Doctor was a piece of drama by which I thought I’d act out the confusion. My wife wisely cautioned me: ‘Don’t do that, you’ll scare children!’ Fair enough. But I also thought - aren’t we all terrified already? This gives it expression.

In the end, for a few reasons, I decided not to act out this morbid street theatre. It was too self-indulgent; more about me processing my strange emotions than helping people. I was deeply conflicted; not in favour of what was happening, but nor was I clear about why. My focus in life and ministry was needed elsewhere at the time. I really didn’t want to scare children. Nor did I want to cower behind a mask. That silence left me though with uncertainty about how to speak my mind, and a measure of guilt at being too quiet.

Then I had a series of clarifying moments in February 2022. First, I read through Paul Kingsnorth’s three-part Vaccine Moment series, in which he described his journey, and my own feelings, far better than I could.¹ Shortly after that, the Canadian truckers did their thing, which prompted the anti-mandate protest in Wellington. I watched the police push against the crowd and wept. I saw the complete misapprehension of our media establishment. I realized in that moment that I knew where I stood, but hadn’t been standing there. Finally an article questioning the protestors’ aims and understanding came out in the NZ Baptist Magazine. I decided then it was time to say something, so I wrote a response.

We live in strange days. Covid is fading in the light of other crises, and our attention pivots with the attention of the world. But the issues are much the same. Even as I fantasized about stalking the streets in a plague mask, I knew that the real disease was neither covid, nor the particulars of our response. These are simply the latest manifestations of a perennial spiritual drama unfolding across time; patterns woven deeply through the fabric of things. What Paul Kingsnorth calls (following Orwell and Lawrence and others) “The Machine” keeps chugging.

There’s still a lot more to say and to understand about the world. We in the Church especially need to reckon with our past and future decisions. We are called to be in this strange world, to live for its benefit (for the world is loved by God). But we belong to a Kingdom that is not of this world.

This newsletter or blog or whatever I should call it will be my continued attempt at diagnosing some of what ails the Church and world, and an exploration of what a healthy course of medicine might be. Now as Aragorn said to Frodo: “these wounds are beyond my skill to heal.” I am not the Doctor. In these writings I’ll aim to draw on a broad tradition of thinkers, authors, Christians and not, and from a deep history.

Ultimately, I will try to return my attention and yours to the Great Physician who alone knows our disease, and who alone can heal. It will be Him who gets us through the coming days and years. Exactly how that healing will be made manifest among us, and exactly what our faithful response might be, is not entirely clear. Discovery of that way is what this blog is for.

Christus vincit!

1. I wrote to Paul Kingsnorth in thanks, and he wrote back with a very gracious encouragement.