Lelen Singsit
Dimapur
According to various reports on the news, more than 7000 people have died so far from COVID-19. But it appears that some religious or church leaders are still hesitant to suspend church services in line with WHO guidelines to ban public gatherings.
The church is mainly concerned with saving human souls while science and doctors and concerned with saving our body. Since COVID-19 is a worldly disease, we must all listen to the worldly authorities like scientists, doctors, WHO and national and state governments while dealing with it.
A major challenge now is that most common people do not read or watch the news. And most people do not listen to the warnings of young people who read the newspapers. If there is a conflict in the advice of state government and the church, most old people prefer the church. As such, in order to save our people from getting COVID-19, church leaders like NBCC must issue an order to its member churches to suspend church services in line with the state government advisory.
Nagaland is not a medically advanced state. If COVID-19 reach or spread in Nagaland, it will be catastrophic. When rich and advanced countries like UK and Italy can suffer so much, our death toll can be much more than them since our hospitals are way below the rich countries.
As such, at the very least all of us must follow what other developed countries like UK, France and Italy are doing on COVID-19, namely, suspending or banning all public gatherings including church services for some time. If people are found to contact and spread COVID-19 from church services, church leaders must be charge of the crime of causing the death of its members since they have ignored government orders to ban public gatherings.
It doesn't sound nice but prayers cannot cure worldly sickness. 7000 dead bodies from COVID-19 attest to that. When the state government has suspended schools and colleges to stop the possible spread of COVID-19, these actions will be useless if church gathering go on as usual.
As such, church leaders are requested to take decisions as per the advice of other scientific bodies like the WHO. Otherwise, they will have to be made accountable like the leaders of a church in South Korea where many members got the COVID-19 during a church service and who then went on to spread the disease far and wide in South Korea. When it comes to saving the soul, we can listen to religion, but when it comes to the saving the body, we must listen to science.
