the greatest commandments
Dr. Sanjeet Singh-Saluja is a Canadian physician and a Sikh. One of the major tenets of his faith is called kesh, the practice of allowing one’s hair to grow naturally out of respect for the perfection of God’s creation. This is why you always see Sikh men with a full beard. Another of the major tenets of Saluja’s faith is called seva. It pertains to selfless service, particularly to mankind, with no expectation of result or award for performing it.
Dr. Saluja faced a conundrum, though — a conflicting of two major tenets of his faith. The N-95 masks that are necessary for him to treat COVID-19 patients are ineffective over a full beard. He did not feel that he had the luxury of simply letting others treat such patients, as the ranks of his colleagues are being decimated by the virus. So, he had to choose — shave his beard and violate kesh or refuse to treat such patients and violate seva.
After much soul-searching and consultation with spiritual leaders and advisors, he decided that seva trumped kesh in this instance, and shaved his beard. Several of the other bearded men on his team, as well as the hospital president, shaved their beards as a show of solidarity.
And I decided to join them.
I’ve had a beard for over 30 years. It’s been shaved off twice before — once when I messed up trimming it (and there was no other option but to shave completely) and in 2014, when I had everything shaved from the neck up (well, except eyebrows) for a Charlie Brown Halloween costume. And it took nearly 45 minutes today just to get down to the missed-a-few-spots and cut on my lip that you see in the picture. So, this was no small event.
But I didn’t choose to do this simply to honor Dr. Saluja. There was a greater issue here. Namely, that a Sikh was being far more Christ-like than many Christians and here was a tangible way to point this out.
When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
Look at that second commandment: that’s seva. Even if it isn’t blatantly obvious from this verse alone, combining it with scores of other verses throughout the New Testament makes it obvious that seva is no less a major tenet of Christianity than it is of Sikhism.
Now, let’s look at a stunningly obvious application. Many Christians embrace a traditional sexual ethic that says that homosexual acts are sin. The vast majority of those people also believe in eternal conscious torment (ECT) — i.e., the belief that those who die without Christ spend eternity in hell.
When a baker (or florist or photographer) refuses to ply his trade for a same-sex wedding, two things happen. First, those who believe as he does are happy and (to borrow from Jesus), “he has his reward”. Second (and far more importantly), the couple getting married, their friends and family, and many of those who hear about the incident are all driven further from Christ. If the baker believes in ECT, he is greasing the skids to hell for any and all of these people who are unbelievers.
THIS IS THE POLAR OPPOSITE OF SEVA!
No matter how strongly a given person might believe that homosexual acts are sin, no one in his right mind — not even the wingnuts of Westboro Baptist, if pressed — would say that this belief is a major tenet of Christianity. Dr. Saluja set aside one major tenet of his faith to fulfill another for the physical well-being of others. Christians of the beliefs that I’ve cited here aren’t even doing that for the eternal well-being of others.
To borrow from James, the brother of Jesus, “these things ought not to be so.”