Once Upon a Pandemic

There is no denying that we are living in a unique situation.  Even as pandemics have come and gone in the last few centuries, the level of preventative measures being put in place has rarely…if ever been seen.  By the time measures were put in place with the Spanish Flu in the early part of the twentieth century, it was too late.  The death toll from that pandemic was more than WWI and WW2 combined.

            So here we are faced with another pandemic.  How we respond or don’t respond will be measured and analyzed for centuries to come.  Did we do enough? Did we do too much? Do we need to worry so mu

ch about a virus?

            One of the most interesting testing grounds for all of this is the Church.  Many churches around the world are stopping physical meetings.  Church services, Bible Studies, youth groups are all stopping in the name of keeping people safe. ‘Social distancing’ has become the new rallying cry for many across the world.

            There are some who view this as fear.  If we close the church, we are saying to the world that we do not care.  Or worse we are saying that we have a ‘spirit of fear’ and not a ‘spirit of faith.’ Others fear that by not gathering in worship, we are breaking the injunction of the Bible to worship God.

            To others, if we gather in worship we are declaring our arrogance and indifference to other people in the world.  We need to practice social distancing in order to keep the most vulnerable at risk safe from the risk of disease.  By not practicing social distancing, we are actually displaying our unfaithful and unloving sides to a world that needs it right now.

            What is important: our need to gather as the body of Christ or our need to love our neighbor?

            But it is not actually that simple, is it? After all, we can make an argument that there is little need for Bible studies, but the hungry need to be fed, the naked still need to be clothed, and the elderly still need to be visited and loved. How can we do that and practice social distancing?

But yet…how do we maintain a right balance to not put people at risk.

            This becomes personal for me.  I have an immune deficient child who I want to protect at costs.  And yet, I believe that we should also gather as the church.

            But maybe this is a time when we can re-evaluate why we meet as a church.  How many church meetings where I have wondered about us frittering away our lives? How many Bible Studies have we been to where people have just muttered there way around the text, pretending to grow in knowledge….but in reality have just been excuses to talk about other people.

            What church gatherings would I risk my life to go to?

            What church gatherings would I risk the life of my neighbor to go to?

            Is there a different message sent that if we gather to sing praise songs or if we gather to put together food for the homeless? Is this even a correct dichotomy? Should we do both?

            Maybe this is pandemic is not really posing the question between whether we have a spirit or fear or a spirit of faith…maybe it’s pointing us to something new.  Maybe it’s helping us redefine what is truly important.  Maybe it’s helping us to define what we can and cannot live without.

            If every church gathering carries with it the possibility of leading to someone’s illness or death, Church leaders need to rethink the meeting.  What can we live with…what can’t we? What are we willing to risk?

            In the end, we come back…as to we have to in every situation.  What is Christ calling us to do? Is Christ calling us to come together or to remain social distant from others for a while? Maybe it’s both? Maybe he calls some to be together and others to be distant.  Does he call us to obey our commanding officer or to ignore that order?

            Whatever our answer is…one thing is for certain.  We have to lot to reevaluate.

The Problem According to Evangelicals

One could say that there is a lot wrong with the world today.  I mean…just look at the fact there are 9…9 Fast and Furious movies!!!!  We can point at the lack of economic prosperity in large parts of the world, diseases like the coronavirus and the threat of constant war as evidence that the world is in trouble.

As we continue our exploration of Evangelicals, we need to understand what they feel is wrong with the world. We spoke about this in the last columns, “Who do Evangelicals Think they are,” and “Where do Evangelicals live?”.  In those columns, we saw that Evangelicals think of themselves in a siege mentality.  They are the true Church and face attack from the Roman Catholic Church and the Liberal Church.  The United States is their sacred homeland and even this is under siege by the powers of liberalism and atheism, which threaten the very core of the country.

The problem, for Evangelicals is that the World is anti-God. It is not that the World is agnostic, undecided or indifferent to God, it is that at it’s core the World is at war with God. Drawing (often times unknowingly) on the theology of John Calvin, the Evangelical Church views the world as God’s enemy and everything that happens in the world is somehow related to this view.

If people promote the legalization of abortion or of gay marriage, it is that they are in opposition to the clear teachings of Scripture, and therefore to God. Politics, by its very nature becomes a battleground in which the forces of God are in opposition to the forces of Satan. Abortion and homosexuality are often the touchpoints that demark the boundary lines. If a person is anti-abortion, then they are on the good side, no matter what other positions they may hold.  Likewise, if they hold the line on homosexual marriage, then whatever else they say is fine. This goes a long way in explaining the 80% approval for Donald Trump.  He may have questionable morals and a great deal of what he has done is in opposition to the gospel, but he has appointed pro-life justices to the Supreme Court and therefore he is good.  Donald Trump, Evangelicals will say, is like a Cyrus, a flawed man who is on the side of God whether he knows it or not.

Science too becomes a means by which the gospel is attacked.  The scientific consensus in the world is that evolution is a thing.  In response to this, which Evangelicals believe is an attack on the literal interpretation of Scripture, and therefore in opposition to God, Evangelicals have had to counter the Theory of Evolution on every front.  In 1925, the Scopes Monkey Trial pitted a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 against the theory of Evolution. In many ways, that trial has never ended for the Evangelicals, even as most of the world has moved on.  Groups like Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research often argue that these scientists are deceived or blinded in their opposition to God.  Therefore, a Christian should not accept their teaching on these matters, relying instead on their interpretation of the Bible.

A similar phenomenon has happened in regard to Climate Change.  Evangelicals, deeply suspicious of the scientific community and models, resist Climate Change research as an another deception forced upon them by the ‘mainstream media’ and ‘scientists.’ The Word of God, they argue, says that God will never again destroy the world (Gen 9:11) and therefore there is nothing to fear.  Rather, if we believe the Climate Change science, we are in opposition to God because we demonstrate that we do not trust Him.

This siege mentality lead to the persecution mindset that affects many Evangelicals.  Every year we read about the “War on Christmas” and failed efforts to bring prayer back to public schools. We read about how Christians are persecuted because the Ten Commandments can’t be posted on court house property.  Evangelicals view themselves as a minority, powerless in the face of the corporate powers of Hollywood, the Media, and the Democratic party. 

At the end of the day, what is wrong with the world is that everybody is against God…except for the Evangelicals.  They are the only ones that are truly on God’s side.