A Sunday Sermon

blogCO-VIDA 19
Written By Open Plaza

Dr. Lloyd Barba invokes Timothy to remind us of our God-given gifts

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“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of...”
— 2 Timothy 1:7

POWER (that is, the power of self-restraint to practice social distancing, to not gather in large social settings, restaurants, and yes, even churches),

and of

LOVE (that is, love for your neighbor, especially the elderly and immunocompromised, so as to want them to stay unharmed)

and of

A SOUND MIND (that is, don’t lose your minds and hoard the toilet paper —unless you have unsound bowel movement —in fact, use your sound mind to consider the most vulnerable and check to see if they have the supplies they need but fear to go out and get).

I’ve seen the first part of this verse (up to the part about “fear”) quoted over and over in the past few days as reason to ignore professional recommendations against going out to large public settings. Consider the whole verse.

To those who use 2 Timothy 1:7 to blithely go against medical safeguards, your approach to scripture and faith might already be infected.

—A loving layman named Lloyd
Facebook, 15 March 2020

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Lloyd Barba

Dr. Lloyd D. Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion and core faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. He holds a PhD from University of Michigan, an MA from University of Michigan, and a BA from University of the Pacific. He has published essays on the history of race and religion, Pentecostalism, Catholicism, the Sanctuary Movement, and material religion. Dr. Barba is the author of Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California, 1916-1966 (Oxford University Press, 2022).

 
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