Easter, Maslow, & COVID-19

For the first time in human history, every church on earth will avoid celebrating the resurrection of Jesus in public. While this has been the tragic norm for the many persecuted Christians around the world, it’s now reality for every believer.

Actually, there was one other Easter Sunday in which the faithful were huddled behind closed doors with loved ones, hiding from danger and longing for hope—the first Easter. When Jesus rose from the dead that Sunday morning, he found them in a dark, stagnant room with its diminished quality of life. Waltzing through the locked door, Jesus embodied the living proof of God’s “resurrection-surprise” and offered peace and power to his beleaguered friends, along with a mission: “As the father has sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21, NIV).

God’s Easter miracle ended their self-imposed quarantine and sent them back to work.

This Easter, we find ourselves back in that room, waiting for hope without knowing exactly what we’re waiting for. Are we waiting for enough medical supplies to be manufactured? Are we waiting for ICU beds to be constructed? Are we waiting for the virus to just disappear? Are we waiting for experts to resolve the debate about drugs like hydroxychloroquine? Are we waiting for the creation and mass production of a vaccine, or for antibodies to be fabricated?

The most frustrating reality of the COVID-19 pandemic is that we haven't seemed to have an actual plan. We daily watch “experts” pointing at ever-changing bell curves and models while reporters ask as many irrelevant questions as possible. Social distancing is being compared to storming the beach at Normandy, which is supposed to make us feel better about doing little amidst the lack of strategic clarity. But the consolation prize of such platitudes quickly loses its luster, as the long days become weeks of isolation, anxiety, and chaos.

It has been particularly concerning to observe the false dichotomy being drawn between the economy on the one hand, and saving lives on the other. Even those who favor the radical redistribution of wealth as the cure to society’s ills now seem to ignore the consequences produced by economic calamity, including suicide, starvation, homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. But history clearly teaches the dire results of financial collapse in both wealthy and impoverished nations.

Why are most leaders ignoring this? Here are three possible reasons that lead politicians to operate as if COVID-19 deaths are the only deaths that matter:

1. Blame.

No leader wants blood on their hands. Humans have a predictable aversion to being blamed for the loss of life, whether one life or a thousand, especially those who rely on popular elections to keep their jobs. The Coronavirus can cause a quantifiable death toll rapidly enough to assign direct blame to leaders and their policies, while economic consequences will come about more gradually, with less of a direct connection to any specific person.

To be clear, our political leaders are right to adopt serious measures to curb the effects of COVID-19, at least until we have a better understanding of the virus and a plan to combat it. No state Governor should watch tens of thousands of their residents die because they failed to act with caution, and with all the unknown variables, a national shutdown has emerged as the best option for now. But this is not viable for an extended period, so that economic realities need to play a greater role in the conversation. Just as our military has civilian leadership in the Commander in Chief in order to ensure a wider perspective than the focused expertise of generals, we must ensure that the advice of epidemiologists and medical experts are supplemented by those of social scientists and economists.

2. Compassion.

Every leader wants to seem like they care more about people than they do money. If a leader spends hours each day talking about saving lives today from the risks of COVID-19, they appear more caring than a leader who ignores today's deaths to limit of tomorrows bills. Human life is priceless, the thinking goes, so we’ll do whatever it takes to save people.

3. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

If you’ll forgive this trip back to freshman psychology class, we’ll discover that a sense of urgency causes the myopic focus on preventing COVID-19 deaths. In 1954, Psychologist Abraham Maslow classified human needs in a “urgency pyramid,” or a hierarchy that lists the most fundamental and immediate needs at the bottom (air, food, water, etc). Maslow’s next level is “safety,” which is slightly “urgent” when you consider that employment fits within this category. Maslow's pyramid continues with belonging (intimate relationships), self esteem, and finally, self-actualization in the top quadrant, which can only be attained if each of the more urgent needs are met.

At first, this way of approaching needs makes perfect sense, and the "Maslowian" impulse often guides our thinking. If I don’t have food or air, I can’t prioritize a job, self-esteem, or personal relationships, because the immediate need is simply too pressing. So we'll consider the secondary needs only after the primary needs are fulfilled.

But the problem with Maslow, according to Dr. Pamela Rutledge, is that needs are interconnected rather than sequential:

“...here’s the problem with Maslow’s hierarchy. None of these needs—starting with basic survival on up—are possible without social connection and collaboration. Humans are social animals for good reason. Without collaboration, there is no survival. It was not possible to defeat a woolley mammoth, build a secure structure, or care for children while hunting without a team effort. It’s true now more than ever. Our reliance on each other grows as societies become more complex, interconnected, and specialized. Connection is a prerequisite for survival, physically and emotionally.”

In a soundbite culture that judges leaders by daily opinion polls, we’re quietly drawn to the lowest rung of Maslow’s pyramid. Here, we can be compassionate and assertive while avoiding life's tensions and complexities, which are difficult to understand and communicate. But according to Rutledge, “Needs are not hierarchical. Life is messier than that. Needs are, like most other things in nature, an interactive, dynamic system, but they are anchored in our ability to make social connections.”

We need our leaders to be honest and brave enough to call forth this tension, in this case by declaring the importance of balancing our economic needs with our physiological ones. Unless leaders stop minimizing the seriousness of a crashed economy, we will face the unintended consequences of Maslow’s flawed thinking.

How much death are we prepared to tolerate for the COVID-19 pandemic?

This flies in the face of New York Governor Chris Cuomo’s statement that all efforts to fight the disease are justified if they save only one life. Such words reflect both the idealism and the profound lack of thought in our culture, as if it’s possible and desirable to shut the world down in order to prevent death.

Imagine how many lives would be saved by outlawing all motor vehicles, banning the consumption of alcohol, or eliminating fast food? How many people could we save from the flu or from gang violence each year if we make shelter-in-place laws permanent, or require all citizens to live, eat and sleep in hazmat suits? But we don’t do these things because we have accepted a given level of risk as one of the most basic terms of human life… except, that is, when it comes to COVID-19. We have not yet faced this reality head on.

How much death results from an economic depression?

This figure is even harder to calculate than predictions related to COVID-19. We know that more people will be homeless, jobless, and hungry. We know that the life work of many small business owners will dissolve overnight, along with whole sectors of the economy. We can expect a sharp rise in chemical addiction, suicide, domestic violence, and mental illness. But we don’t know how many thousands and millions will fall prey and for how long. What we can say with certainty is that the economic fallout from our response to COVID-19 will linger for many years to come.

Can we balance our physiological and economic needs in a way that honors the interdependence and complexity of life?

Is it reasonable to accept as many deaths from COVID-19 as we do from the flu, which is up to 60,000 annually? Or could we use the number of traffic fatalities each year, in which 38,000 Americans die? Whatever the number, we must avoid the false dichotomy of Governor Cuomo’s statement by identifying an "acceptable" level of risk (like we do for every other area of life) and then organize and innovate our systems to reopen society once we can safely keep the death toll below that number, all the while protecting the most vulnerable. Failure to form this kind of strategic plan does not prevent death, as well intended as we are, but rather it simply causes other forms of death and destruction that result from a crippled society. Lives matter now, and lives will still matter next year and five years from now, and so we must ensure that our actions in the present factor in the human costs that will be paid later.

I’d like our leaders to create and implement an holistic plan of this nature, which takes all of our human needs into account, in the present and future, rather than those immediate needs at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy. Of course, we must do everything possible to prevent as much death and destruction as possible, which includes both COVID-19 patients and those that will suffer greatly in the event of a prolonged economic collapse.

Jesus did not rise from the dead so that humans would simply stay alive, feel safe, and avoid risk. He died to offer an elevated form of existence in a frightened world, which includes work and worship, school and shopping. Then and now, Jesus challenges His followers to face the complexities of this broken world head on, while savoring and sharing the Promise of life beyond the grave.

This Easter, let us thank God for the empty tomb, and let us beg the risen Christ for the wisdom, innovation, and courage that we'll need to roll the stone away from our economy.