Here’s something we in Korea – particularly in Gyeonggi-do and Seoul areas – will have to get used to seeing over the next several weeks: “Participant in the Gwanghwamun protest.” We’ve seen it several times over the past few days. It comes with just about every new message on the phone announcing the latest victim of Covid in the area: “Corona 19, Pyeongtaek City patient number 46 (60s/female/P’osung village/Gwanghwamun protest participant/tested on the 18th/confirmed patient on the 20th).”
The participants in the Gwanghwamun protest are a devastating problem for a country that was doing quite well controlling Covid 19. They took busses in. They rode the subway in. They massed 60,000-strong. And then they left the way they came, but many now not only carrying the virus into public transit, but also to their homes and churches. And now the bill must be paid, and of course one of the payments has to be the closing down of churches in Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi province. Not just the churches that sent their people to the protests, but all of them.
As I wrote a few days ago, we must be mindful of how the church acts within the community. Unfortunately, some in the area felt it more important to protest the government than to be responsible. While the protests were not entirely by members of churches, members of churches are the very ones who should be caring for their community. Who should be the peacemakers but those who are supposed to be lovers of peace? Who should protect their neighbor but those who are commanded to love them?
This display of self-centeredness and refusal to sacrifice for even a short time will now extend this crisis further and cost more lives. Oddly though, I don’t think the greatest tragedy of the virus is the deaths it causes. Death comes with every pandemic and plague. It is the very groaning of creation at work that Paul mentions in his letter to the Romans, a part of which is evident whenever disease, pestilence, and disaster decimate populations. No, the great tragedy of this virus is its demonstration that we live in an age now where humanity cannot even put aside its political differences long enough to overcome a threat to us all. It’s happening in America, it’s happening in Korea, and I’m sure it’s happening elsewhere. It’s being exploited by nations against nations, and the pattern is set. Those in power play games. Those who want power counter with their own. And in all of this, they lose sight of the need to come together and actually succeed.
Then again, success might make someone we don’t like look good, so perhaps we don’t really want this all to end. We just want it to make our point for us.