I hear the mantra often enough during these COVID days that it compels me to say something. If, the line goes, you are not going to wear a mask, then you are not loving your neighbor.

I am not writing here to debate the merits of mask-wearing itself, whether in public or in the pew. What I am concerned about is the claim—the charge, really—that you are essentially engaging in a sinful act if you are not wearing your mask.

Some in the media might say so, although they’re not inclined, being journalists or commentators, to speak of such things in terms of sin or piety. Sometimes, however, the discussion drifts into the churches, and even into the pulpit.

That’s bothersome to me, though not because of the politics and debate over mask wearing. Rather, because of what I see as some illegitimate and unfortunate logic there.

The reasoning goes something like this: First, a conviction that if you wear a mask, you are doing your part to curtail the spread of disease. Second, a deduction that you should wear a mask because you are thereby helping your neighbor who might otherwise get sick because of you. Third, another deduction that if I don’t wear a mask, I am failing to help my neighbor when I could, and therefore I have sinned against the Fifth Commandment.

The flaw in that logic is in the final deduction, since it rests on a presumed, though not stated, premise that I am convinced, as you are, that if one wears a mask, he is doing his part to curtail the spread of disease. But what if that is not so? What if, for the sake of argument, I am not convinced of this as you are? What if I should believe otherwise about the merits of wearing a mask, even, say, if everyone else in my company disagrees with me? Even if the CDC, and a host of scientists, and everyone in the world, for that matter, were to disagree with me. In that case, you might believe that I am wrong about it, and you could even believe that I am contributing to the spread of disease, however unknowingly, but it does not follow that I have sinned. Or is it your conviction about something a matter that I must be presumed also to believe? Must I love my neighbor according to your presumptions? I think not.

Moreover, it’s a pretty safe bet to suppose that someone not wearing a mask does not believe he is thereby endangering someone. So if you were to judge someone to have sinned if he is not wearing a mask, though you have not heard him say that he agrees with you about the merits of doing so, then it would be you, not he, who have sinned, for you have failed to explain everything in the kindest way; it would be you who shall have broken the Eighth Commandment.

So let the debates continue; but let’s not ascribe sin where we really have no business doing so.