What should we then do?

Please print Luther’s own words. Let Luther speak for himself and set the record straight about what is God-fearing faith during pandemics and what is not. During an outbreak of the Bubonic plague, Luther and his wife opened their home to care for the sick. Luther encourages us to make use of medicine and intelligence!

After praising those who lovingly serve the sick, Luther says, there are those who, “Sin on the right hand. They are much too rash and reckless, tempting God and disregarding everything which might counteract death and the plague. They disdain the use of medicines; they do not avoid places and persons infected by the plague, but lightheartedly make sport of it and wish to prove how independent they are. They say that it is God’s punishment; if he wants to protect them he can do so without medicines or our carefulness.”

Furthermore: “This is not trusting God but tempting him. God has created medicines and provided us with intelligence to guard and take good care of the body so that we can live in good health…If one makes no use of intelligence or medicine when he could do so without detriment to his neighbor, such a person injures his body and much be aware lest he become a suicide in God’s eyes. By the same reasoning, a person might forego eating and drinking, clothing and shelter, and boldly proclaim his faith that if God wanted to preserve him from starvation and cold, he could do so without food and clothing. Actually, that would be suicide.”

“It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have…

“No, my dear friends, that is no good. Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city. What else is the epidemic but a fire which instead of consuming wood and straw devours life and body?...Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it…If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. …But if some are too panicky and desert their neighbors in their plight, and if some are so foolish as not to take precautions but aggravate the contagion, then the devil has a heyday and many will die. On both counts, this is a grievous offense to God and to man.