Contagious: (adj) ability to spread from one person or organism to another by direct or indirect contact.

“Don’t forget to wash your hands. It’s flu season.”

“I don’t know if I want to go to church–so many sick people.”

“Seems like everybody’s got the bug.”

“Wash down those counters.”

“Clean off that toilet sink.”

“Don’t forget to pick up some more hand sanitizer–maybe we should start buying it by the case.”

All of these statements seem rational to the average consumer, because we feel it is our right to be the sole individual who does not get sick–never aware that we will be more susceptible to that sickness if we’re never exposed to it, developing the protective antibodies within us.

I personally do not see anything wrong with trying to keep oneself healthy. But once we begin to think that human beings are germ carriers, it is a slippery slope to proclaiming them dangerous, infected, criminal, rapists or even worthless.

If you are afraid of the flu, that is absolutely fine with me. If you’re using your fear of the flu to establish your superiority over other people because you are so important that you shouldn’t ever get sick, then I begin to have a problem.

I see no case in the Good Book when Jesus embraced a leper to prove he was not afraid of the contagion. But I do see that when that leper wanted to be healed, Jesus risked touching him.

 

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(click the elephant to see what he’s reading!)

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