In moving to the precise term “facial covering,” instead of “mask,” it becomes clearer that the effect is to blot out the human face and ultimately blot out God from our sight.
On a recent visit to Charleston, South Carolina, I had an experience that led to a disturbing realization. Since then, I have been reflecting on the deeper consequences, and perhaps nefarious motives, of mask-mandates.
The Historic City Market of Charleston required patrons to wear a mask just like every public place in America at this point. So I put on a disposable mask as I entered the collection of shops. As I was passing by a store, a female shop attendant, who also was wearing a mask, greeted me in a charming southern accent. In response, I smiled at her and returned her greeting. But I realized that she could not see me smiling and that I could not see her smiling. In that instant, I said to myself, “Dang, they have stolen our faces!”
The issue of mask mandates has been gobbled up by our polarized nation. There are fierce arguments about the medical effectiveness or need for masks. Some people go blindly insane when they see others not wearing a mask in public. On the other side, many people sense that masks are just one more thing that the ruling elites are imposing on the unquestioning masses. The battle-lines over masks have drawn up largely according to political lines now. However, most of the controversy does not really address the true meaning of what is happening. Whatever the motives are, the effects of mask-mandates transcend health and safety.
It seems that official parlance has now settled on the term “facial covering.” This subtle shift and coordinated resolution regarding a more precise term is telling. It reveals the deeper effects and perhaps the motives of the mandates themselves. There is a significant distinction between masks and facial coverings. Historically, masks have been associated with playing a role, like in the theatre. In fact, the Latin word persona comes from the Greek word prosopon, which originates from the dramatic arts. From this understanding, wearing a mask is more like putting on the face of another or portraying someone else.[1] In moving to the precise term “facial covering,” instead of “mask,” it becomes clearer that the effect is to blot out the human face and ultimately blot out God from our sight.
In continuing to reflect upon my realization in Charleston, the C.S. Lewis book, Till We Have Faces, came to mind. I have to admit that even after reading the work twice at different times in my life, I still don’t really understand it. However, among the multiple levels at work in the book, Lewis is undeniably trying to connect the discovery of self through the gods to discovering the One True God ultimately. The intersection point lies in the title. Toward the end of the book, Orual says, “How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?” Lewis tries to draw this connection through a retelling of a pagan myth. The connection between God and man becomes fully concrete in the Incarnation. God becomes man and bears a human face.
Icons are commonly known as “windows to Heaven,” but what do they usually feature? The majority of icons feature the face of Christ or one of the saints. Usually it is exclusively the face. The theology behind iconography further illustrates the connection between the human face and the face of God.
David Clayton, an artist and iconographer, explains that “the purpose of icons is to give us a glimpse of how things will seem when we are in heaven.” For the iconographer, the account of the Transfiguration provides the foundation of the spiritual theology behind his art. During the Transfiguration, the Evangelists are specific in mentioning the faces of Christ and the Apostles. “Christ is described in Luke’s gospel: ‘the fashion of his face was altered, and his garments became white and dazzling’; Matthew says that his face was ‘shining like the sun, and his garments became white as snow’; Peter described a ‘splendour that dazzles human eyes’.”[2]
All the stylistic elements that the iconographer uses, to portray the “transfigured face” is meant to “create a dynamic process that first pulls the viewer into the icon and then sends the attention beyond the icon itself to heaven. The full-faced gaze of the saint arrests our attention, pulls us in and holds us on itself.” [3]The spirituality of the iconographer is wholly directed to what St. John describes as heaven in the book of the Apocalypse when he says that the saints “will see the Lord face to face.” (cf. Rev. 22:4)[4] Face to face is the only way to describe man’s intended finality. The human face signifies human dignity.
The most profound reason for the importance of the human face is that God has a human face. About three decades ago, Christoph Schonborn, OP, produced a scholarly work titled God’s Human Face, The Christ Icon. It has been published in several languages. This work surveys the Fathers of the Church and explores the Trinitarian and Christological implications of God’s human face. The apex of Schonborn’s research centers on St. Paul’s passage in Second Corinthians: “For it is God who said,’Let light shine out of the darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6) Among other things, St. Paul is saying that it is the human face of Christ that is the glory of God and the light shining out of the darkness. More specifically though, St. Paul is also saying understanding in our hearts is linked to the gaze upon the face of Christ. This is an intuition that has inspired iconographers throughout history.
Schonborn further explicates St. Paul’s passage by highlighting St. Cyril of Alexandria.
If the Word identifies with the flesh and entirely appropriates it, then this flesh must, in a certain sense, participate in the innermost essence of the Son, in his hypostasis. This also changes the conception of the image. Cyril at one time comments on “the Day of your countenance” (Ps 21:9) in these words: “Rightly can we understand the ‘time of the Father’s countenance’ as a time of the Incarnation, for the Son, after all, is the face [prosepon] and the image of the Father.’[5]
Cyril’s contention here goes in two directions starting from Christ. In the Incarnation, when the Son becomes flesh, He appropriates our flesh. He makes possible the divination of our flesh through the cooperation with grace. Christ makes it possible for the human face to reflect God’s face. Christ elevates the human face and gives it its dignity. At the same time, the face of the Word made flesh is truly the face of God. What we see day to day in the human face bears Divinity.[6]
There is a deep theological foundation for the importance of the human face. My unsettling experience with the shopkeeper in Charleston was really about the inability to connect through a smile. The human smile has profound significance for human relations. Han Urs von Balthasar reflects upon the mother and a newborn child in Unless You Become Like This Child. “Here is where the miracle occurs that one day the child will recognize in his mother’s face her protective love and will reciprocate this love with a first smile… This understanding opens up in the child the dormant bud of self-awareness.”[7] The smile from a child is the first small act of love. It is only brought about by the smile from the mother. The human smile is the basic symbol of man’s capacity to love. It is also the basic vehicle for human relations.
As our various societal crises move forward, Joe Biden says that he would mandate facial coverings nationally. This could be political posturing from a desperate candidate. Nevertheless, the mask movement seems to be gaining steam even as the spread of COVID is declining. I tend to think something far more significant is at stake. Yes, I think masks are being used to stoke fear and cultivate compliance. However, on a basic and fundamental level, facial coverings are stripping us of our humanity and blotting out the face of God from our sight.
You might think that the governing elites cannot possibly be thinking at this kind of theological level. Maybe not, but I wouldn’t be so sure. There are many instances where the elites have been caught showing what they really believe. Facial coverings are required for the unquestioning masses, but not for the governing elite.
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Notes:
[1] Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the notion of person in Theology,” Communio, vol 17 (Fall 1990) p. 441-442.
[2] David Clayton, “How the form of Byzantine icons relates to the Christian worldview,” The turn to aesthetics: An interdisciplinary exchange of ideas in applied and philosophical aesthetics, Liverpool Hope University Press, 2008, p. 86.
[3] Ibid, p. 90; p. 85.
[4] Ibid, p. 85.
[5] Christoph Schonborn, OP, God’s Human Face, The Christ Icon, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1994, p. 83.
[6] Ibid, p. 83.
[7] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1991, p 17.
The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.
The masks have to go– it’s that simple. Politicians who mandate them have to go too, hopefully in the next election. It’s also no accident that liberals are invariably angry and hateful; I have yet to see a picture of Andrew Cuomo or Nancy Pelosi where they don’t look like angry, raving madmen. The masks are a way of saying, “Wipe that smile off your face!” It’s also noteworthy that one of my favorite comedians, Floyd Vivino, has often rightly observed that in a totalitarian society, the comedians are the first to be rounded up and imprisoned or executed. Mask requirements are just another way to drain all the fun out of life, regardless of the supposed justification.
Some great stuff in here. And as you say at the end, it’s hard to know why, with all the other regulations being imposed, that the mask has become the symbol of all of it. I continue to wear mine, albeit reluctantly, whenever I have to, but I’ve noticed as well that the covering of mouths and noses seems to also make it harder to make eye contact, probably for some of the reasons you mention in regard to your Charleston encounter.
An entire volume could be written here, but I propose one other layer to it; would we be as primed to fall into the “mask malaise” if we hadn’t already as a culture fallen into another “facial fallacy” through the prevalence of social media? Through avatars and profile pics, we’ve already become accustomed to detaching faces from the persons bearing them. We see eyes, nose, mouth, and in my case, a bald head, but it’s digitized and disembodied. And just like masks, that depersonalization fosters a subconscious lack of empathy.
It’s impossible at this point to put the genie all the way back in the bottle on either the mask revolution, or the social media revolution at this point, but I’m grateful for your reflection, which is a wonderful reminder that noses and mouths are not reducible to mere respiratory devices.
I appreciate the literary merit of this article, as I am an English major and literature teacher. I would describe myself as an intellectual Christian conservative. All of us hate wearing masks, no matter your political persuasion. I have learned to smile with my eyes and actually tell people “I’m smiling at you” and try to be extra friendly in public. But my persona is much more than my face. I’m afraid your article doesn’t really help to advance any meaningful dialogue. Those who are vigilant about wearing masks, especially those who are liberal and progressive, are only going to read your lack of care for others in this article. You wrote that “facial coverings are stripping us of our humanity” – well, I would say that it is COVID (and ignorance of how to defeat it) that is stripping us of our humanity, most notably our lives both literally and figuratively speaking. These are strange and worrisome times for many reasons, but we still need to do what it takes to take care of our most vulnerable members of society. God is not being blotted out just because we can’t smile at each other – He still has hands and feet in us.
No germ has the power to strip us of our humanity, we can only strip ourselves of our humanity through our behavior whether that is through covering our faces, or being unkind.
It’s not the article that lacks merit, maybe it’s your response that lacks merit. Covering the face is dehumanizing. Why do you think the women in middle-eastern countries are made to cover their faces and hair? CONTROL. No one has a lack of care for others, it’s just you and people like you that have a lack of understanding of other’s opinions that you can’t seem to accept.
The cloth mask has a 97% transmission respiratory virus transmission rate according to a hospital based 2015 pubmed.gov study. They are unkind as they give people a false security.
If the ruling elite can discuss “the problem of the legacy cultures” as an impediment to the establishment of the global managerial state, there is good reason to believe that their diktat on mask-wearing is, indeed, a further effort at the diminution of the image of the human and, thus, of the divine. Thanks, Mr. Woltering, for this discernment.
I wore a steel helmet and flak-jacket in Viet-Nam.
I wore a hard hat when I worked offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
I wore a mask PRN when I worked my way through university as an LVN.
Just wear the mask. It is one of the many layers of defense to protect the vulnerable. It is not a plot. Just wear the mask. Think about the good of others. Just wear the mask.
“There is a deep Theological foundation for the importance of the human face.” That’s why I’d like to keep that face alive by wearing a mask. It’s a simple way to not contribute to the death of another person.
The sloganeering is creepy and off putting. Not at all convincing.
Thanks for this observation related to your own life. Of course masks are necessary to prevent the spread/spray of the virus. There is nothing deeply theological about that except to be kind to your neighbour.
I wore a gas mask and full MOPP-4, which is how the NBC warfare folks deal with biological agents. Masks don’t do a thing and you know it. Moreover, I have had Covid-19, so why should those of us who have have to wear anything at all?
Btw, very few Vietnam vets wore their protective gear all the time, and tended to lighten their loads even outside the wire because they recognized the ineffectiveness of much of the kit. Not a compelling argument.
Where I live we have a .01117% chance of dying of Covid 19. The mask is required. Ridiculous to take away free choice and connecting ability and to do the psychological damage we are doing to our children when the odds are so low, and even lower for those with no comorbidities.
This is really deep.
There was and is no pandemic. Deaths from “covid-19” are much less than the flu. Don’t get tested, for it puts you on the fast track for mandatory vaccines.
I respectfully suggest that you live your Christian witness by volunteering to serve in the COVID unit of your local hospital. I’m sure they could use the help and will gladly accept your offer. Then you will be in a better position to judge whether or not there is really a pandemic. I will be interested to hear how it does, or does not inform your views.
The de-facing and de-humanization of Man must stop. It is absolutely evil. Nothing but elaborate virtue signalling theatre masquerading as “caring.” It is beyond ridiculous at this point. Mask mandates were instituted in some places and made stiffer as the virus declined, and past the point at which they could have had even the slightest beneficial effect (and the virus threat was always exaggerated to begin with. Nothing but an overblown scare and the willed destruction of society in the name of a virus with an IFR in the same range as flu).
I simply refuse to go anywhere or do anything that requires a face muzzle. The only place I go now is the park. From March -June during the height of the “pandemic” I at least was able to go to the grocery and Target. Then mask mandates were instituted, so now I get all groceries by delivery or curbside pickup. For the first time I can remember since I was a kid, I haven’t been to a bookstore in 6 months (I used to go at least once, sometimes twice, a week); the local Half-Price re-opened in June but requires a mask, so forget it.
Life can’t continue like this. The whole country has turned into mindless, brainwashed sheep following illegal and unjust “mandates” based on pseudo-science claiming to be “the science”…. People need to wake up. Throw off your masks – burn them, and regain your lives and sanity people!!! “Land of the free and home of the brave” – yeah right. More like land of the abject and muzzled, the paranoid and fearful.
Yes. Deep and awesome! I do not wear a mask unless asked to and then quickly slide it to my chin. There is no proof germs cause this. And germs are everywhere. No one can technically spread them. They are there. Masks do not protect anyone. They are dehumanizing. Masks cause you to become vulnerable because the blood oxygen level in your heart and brain are affected……. Trust Jesus! Smile uncovered and breathe fresh air. He touched a leper.
Well said Dennis. I despise talking with people and getting that muffled, smothered speach and talking feels like I’m being smothered myself. Walking around in the town and seeing people moping around, heads down, muzzled is such a depressing sight. Having restaurants at 1/2 capacity and 1 in 5 going out of business entirely is depressing. Seeing my neighbors and friends close their business permanently because of lack of patronage is depressing.
What we are living in with masks and social distancing is a post-apocalyptic nightmare. If Covid doesn’t kill me, suicide will and I’m not alone in this.
If all the governing “elite” (aka POTUS) would wear a mask as a gesture of good will, compassion and caring for those around them, we wouldn’t have as wide a political divide we are now seeing between mask wearers and mask-refusers. Putting on a mask is such a simple thing; it necessitates showing our emotions through our eyes and voices, something we were created to do. No humanity is stripped by a mask. Instead we are called to be even more creative in our communication efforts.
God has shown Himself through His Word, both in book-form and human-form. He tells us who He is without currently being face-to-face. During this pandemic time, He has equipped us with a tool to protect others. Your argument against mask-wearing is less than compelling when compared to the gospel call to Christians to consider others before ourselves.
Then why do Pelosi, Fauci, and the other Democrat “experts” remove theirs whenever they think they’re off-camera? Pelosi just got caught getting her hair done with no mask on. It’s almost as though they know something you don’t….
Amen! God is bigger than a mask. And we should be grateful that such a simple thing can prevent so much suffering.
If you don’t see the smile in the eyes it’s fake anyway.
“There are many instances where the elites have been caught showing what they really believe.”
They consider themselves elite among men. Why, then, is it so hard to believe that they consider passage to eternal paradise reserved for them as well?
Thanks so much for your work.
The author of this article has done us an important service. The mask-enforcement mandates have kept me in such a conflicted state-of-mind.
This article helps me clarify the conflict and it gives words to help me navigate forward.
Thank you
If the government had required us to wear masks before the pandemic, I could see that the above article is possibly making a point. The same would apply if the government would require us to wear masks after the pandemic is over with. But now, when the number of Covid-19 infections fluctuate based on our social activities, the above article seems to be trying to hard to find a fault and make a point where other more significant flaws are obvious and other more important points need to be made.
We don’t have any idea how Covid infections fluctuate because the CDC commingled the test data. Garbage in, garbage out.
The word you define as “Mask” in Greek is actually “face” in Greek. See “Greek-English Lexicon of New Testament and Early Christian Literature”, Danker, Frederick William.
Masks are so isolating. I’m a freshman at college, and during orientation we all had to wear masks and our seats were six feet apart. It was as if we were all on our own individual planets. It is so hard to make friends in my classes because we can’t connect through seeing each other’s faces. I was so dizzy and out of breath trying to answer a question in class, I had to stop in the middle and wasn’t even able to make an intelligent point because I wan’t able to think from lack of oxygen. I have been in a lot of respiratory pain from the masks, and can only really study outside because my reading glasses fog up.
You can’t ignore the fact that 1/4 of youth between the ages of 18-24 have seriously considered suicide in this time of quarantine. People may say that it just means we have to try harder to connect. Fine–but we were not created to be this separated. Where can you see this in nature? What group of animals totally isolates each member of the pack so that they can’t see each other, or touch each other? You may argue that in nature, you see animals put themselves in a defense position, to prevent threats to their life. This is not that much of a threat. Especially for young people, it’s maybe a little worse that the flu.
I read a comment that said this article would more apply if the government were trying to mandate masks without the corona-virus. We are going toward this end. What if, every time we had a flu season that was slightly worse than normal, we mandated masks across the country? This is what is happening.
In his Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe introduces angel-like aliens who wear multiple masks in dealing with fallen humanity. The first resemble the humans of the day and allow them to avoid unwelcome attention. Under that they wear a terrifying mask designed to frighten superstitious humans. Their real faces—-shown to the hero once—-are like human faces only perfect. This mirrors our experience with the divine—-the first in our own image according to our preferences, the second nightmare visages, the true faces to humble and awe. The masks we now wear, like those his hero Severian the Torturer wears, are to dehumanize, and like his, to enable the commission of great evil.
I also miss being able to let a smile speak for me. However, let’s just face that, as we learn more about the virus, masks are a prudent public health practice. Just because the efficacy of masks is debatable, does not mean they aren’t effective. Until the data indicate otherwise, wear a mask.
What a fabulous piece to read with scripture attached. I will not wear a mask and let God’s light and work be seen in me.
Thank you so much. This has been shared on my Facebook page and in emails.
Hello Mr. Woltering, thank you so much for this post. I read it with a deep sadness in my heart for what is happening to humanity at this moment. I am a woman of God, but admittedly never made the connection of the face in God’s image, but I have known and felt something was divinely wrong with everyone covering their faces and it has and continues to trouble be deeply. I am a person that knows no stranger and these last months with everyone with their faces covered has really troubled me. I am praying and I know in the end good will prevail, but at the moment, we are surrounded by such evilness, it’s so hard to get discouraged. I have been reading the bible everyday, but it’s still hard to stay focused. Again thank you for your post and God Bless you.
You are exactly correct. This mask-wearing is a deeper spiritual battle than most realize. We are the Imago Dei! Made in God’s image. I have been saying exactly what your article is saying from the beginning of all this craziness! If eyes are windows to the soul, then our smile brings joy, happiness and Christ’s peace to the world. The devil does not wish us to share that joy with the world, because that means we are happy, and true happiness gives hope to others. The devil would rather us hide our faces, and our smiles, so that the world remains in fear. It is time we stop giving in to the devil, unmask our smiles, and spread the joy. Live fearlessly! Give it all to God!