Why are People Hoarding Toilet Paper?

Many supermarkets have begun limiting the number of toilet paper packs customers can buy in one trip. Toilet paper doesn’t provide extra protection against corona virus. It’s not typically a staple product to buy for an impending emergency. Yet only yesterday I saw someone in a supermarket filling a trolley with toilet paper. Why? Why are people hoarding toilet paper?

Psychologists explain that people resort to extremes in times of panic. Images of empty shelves cause us to think that we need to rush out and buy whatever is selling out. It’s also natural to want to over-prepare. Such preparations allow us to feel a sense of control over what feels like an uncontrollable crisis. It gives people the feeling that they have done something to rescue themselves.

But absent from the narrative of our secular culture is any call to trust in anyone but self. Self-reliance is an expression of the secularism of our day.

While there are wise health precautions which should be followed for our good, God’s word calls us to ultimately trust in and depend on the living God who has revealed Himself in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only Saviour of sinners.

The Book of Common Prayer contains this remarkable prayer in the section which deals with visiting people who are sick which challenges the godless self-reliance of our culture:

Dearly beloved, know this, that Almighty God is the Lord of life and death, and of all things pertaining to them; youth, strength, health, age, weakness, and sickness. Wherefore, whatever your sickness is, know certainly that it is God’s visitation. And whatever the cause this sickness is sent unto you; whether it is to try your patience for the example of others, and that your faith may be found in the day of the Lord laudable, glorious, and honourable, to the increase of glory and endless felicity or else it be sent to you to correct and amend whatever does offend the eyes of your heavenly Father; know certainly, that if you truly repent of your sins, and bear your sickness patiently, trusting in God’s mercy, for his dear Son Jesus Christ’s sake, and render to him humble thanks for his fatherly visitation, submitting yourself wholly unto his will, it shall turn to your profit, and help you forward in the right way that leads to everlasting life.