Rev. Don Erickson

We are experiencing a dilemma these days. Public health versus personal freedoms. Collectively getting a vaccination for better collective health or refusing to do so using your individual rights. Wearing or having your kid wear a protective face covering to improve public safety or refusing the wearing of masks declaring personal freedom. I won’t get into the science that overwhelmingly shows the efficacy of both vaccines and masks. What I want to look at today is what ethics and Christian ethics has to say on the issue of individual freedom versus the pursuit of the collective good, in this case, good public health. Let me begin by looking at basic, secular ethics when it comes to individual freedom and the public good. First, we need to define freedom. I define freedom in general terms as the capacity to live fully, void of forced constraints. Put simply, freedom means being able to live without some kind of power constraining us. But that “us” is vital. Look at masks. You may say,