Contagion! Contamination! -- A Newspaper Column

What are you catching? What are you spreading? I have found that much of the important stuff in life (like our beliefs and attitudes about each other, about ourselves, about the world) is caught. We pick it up by osmosis, by contact, sort of like the flu. So what are you catching?

First a story, I like stories. One of the few vegetables we can grow successfully in our house is potatoes. The manse where we lived in Ontario had a cold room under the front steps, so we had a place to store our potato crop, which some years would last us most of the winter. One day I went downstairs and there was a foul odour coming from the cold room. Maybe I had not knocked all the dirt off, maybe it was still wet when I put it in the box, maybe it was just bad luck, but one potato had started to rot. Which in and of itself would be smelly and off-putting but easy to deal with. But of course it was not limited to that one. Each potato that was touching that first on had started to rot. Had I left it long enough the whole box would have turned – imagine the smell in that case.

I think as people of faith we are supposed to be like that potato. Or maybe we should be like the first patient in a flu epidemic. Or maybe that first drop of food colouring in a glass of clear water. We need to be that contagion or contaminant that seems small but can, over time, change the surroundings.

There is a time when Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven that gets mixed into three measures of flour until all is leavened. In the end many traditional leavening agents are contaminants. What is yeast but a fungus with dreams of grandeur? What is sourdough but partly rotting dough? But centuries ago people discovered that some contaminants can be very helpful. Contamination can, sometimes be a very good thing.

Of course the reverse is equally true. Contamination and contagion are words which do not bring up the best of images. They are generally seen as negative things. The Kingdom of God can spread like a flu bug, but so can hatred and violence. Like my rotting potato, the promise and power of love can infect each person it touches but so can fear and distrust. Which are you catching? Which are you spreading?

It strikes me that some things are easier to catch than others. Some forms of contamination spread really quickly and some forms of contamination are kept walled up pretty easily. At the same time a lot more energy goes into spreading some things than others. So if there is something we want people to catch, if there is some thing we want to spread out that will change the world in a positive direction, we need to be find a way to make sure people get in contact with that instead of something less helpful. Unfortunately it appears to me that the beliefs and attitudes and understandings that spread easiest these days are contaminants and contagions in the worst sense of the words.

To be a person of Christian faith means we are called to ensure people are contaminated with love. We are called to ensure people catch hope. We are called to help change the world to align more with our vision of God’s Kingdom. What do I see spreading most easily in the world today? Not those things.

I see fear spreading like an ebola outbreak. I see the politics of division, of wall-building, of “us or them” discolouring the waters of public discourse. I see distrust and possessiveness and prejudice against “the other”. I see things like these all over: in our politics, in our economics, in our approach to immigration, even in our churches. Our world is full of negative contamination and contagion and I think the only way to counter it is by offering an alternative. Love is caught not taught.

“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened...”. As people who follow The Way of Christ we are called to be infectious, to contaminate the world with Good News. As people who live in this world there are a lot of other things that try to infect and contaminate us. What are you catching? What are you spreading?

Let’s all go out and try to infect the world with the Love of the God who has created and is creating. Maybe the infection we carry will kill off the bugs of fear and distrust and division.