There is a lot of talk these days about Christian COVID
“conspiracy theorists”, the spectrum of which ranges from anyone who does not
accept lock, stock and barrel the ever-evolving mainstream media narrative
about masks, vaccination and the efficacy of social distancing, all the way to
the full-blown “George Soros and Bill Gates set up the whole thing” crowd.
A not-insignificant
movement is underway to encourage these whispering saints to please curtail
their speculations before they manage to ruin the collective testimony of the
people of God by making us all look whack-a-doodle.
I am less concerned about the whole testimony bit than
some, not least because speculation about various possible “conspiracies” is
every bit as rampant in the unsaved world as in our churches, so that the same
opinions which might make a man a “bad testimony” to the COVID-narrative “true
believers” may also serve to make him a whole bunch of new unsaved friends among
the swelling numbers of anti-vaxxers. You never know, these folks might be just
as willing to hear what he has to say about Christ as they are to hear what he
has to say about the epic evil of coercive vaccination.
Hey, we all have our roles to play. (Or, as the apostle Paul
may (not) have put it, “To the whack-a-doodles I became as a
whack-a-doodle.”)
Pulling Strings and Contriving Things
One of the more reasonable people on the issue is a good
friend of mine who recently said this:
“We hear a lot these days about conspiracy ... I’m seeing a lot of believers that are, ‘Hey, wait a minute, you don’t understand what’s going on here. No, no, no. Behind the scenes there’s these wicked people’ — you know, whoever ... the Illuminati, Gates, Soros — ‘who are pulling strings and contriving things to create this wicked outcome.’“I get a little bit sad when I see believers who seem consumed with peeling back the lid on different kinds of wickedness that are going on behind the scenes, when we should’ve come to grips with that a long time ago, in my opinion.”
He suggests that “long time ago” was way back in Genesis 3.
And I quite agree. We always knew they were out to get us. The specifics of
who, how and why are in one sense rather unimportant.
It is irrelevant, for example, whether our Canadian Prime
Minister’s affection for the Great Reset concept, and his consequent desire to
see the pandemic drag out until the middle class is begging for government
assistance on the terms of the would-be-resetters, is a product of naivety or
malice. Time spent debating that question is time well wasted. Likewise, it is
unimportant whether the way the Ontario medical authorities have repeatedly
fumbled the ball for the last 12 months is the result of a covert
ideological agenda or simply plain old confusion, incompetence, and listening
to the wrong advisors at the wrong time.
It is also really, really
unimportant that all our Christian friends learn to see George Soros or Bill
Gates lurking behind every tree.
They are, but that’s quite beside the point.
Basic Pattern Recognition
But if there is one little thing at least some of the
so-called conspiracy theorists get right, and one way in which they may be
useful to our churches, it is this: they may not be correct on every detail,
and they may even be wrong about most, but unlike the rest of us eternal
optimists dozing in our basements, they can do basic pattern recognition.
For example, when the story was “Two
weeks to flatten the curve”, I absolutely supported every single
Christian who said, “The powers that be are ordained of God” and quietly
complied with the lockdown orders concerning church meetings. I was one of
them. When the
goalposts shifted, and shifted
again, I was easy-going enough to play along for a while, and
I had no negative impulses towards others who went along with a story that
was becoming increasingly inconsistent and suspicious.
But over a year into the “two weeks to flatten the curve”,
when the curve has entirely failed to flatten, and new excuses to extend the
lockdown are being advanced weekly, many of them mutually contradictory, it is that
much-maligned conspiracy crowd whom we can rely upon to point out that last
time we expected to be done with this thing, we weren’t, and the time before,
and the time before.
We may leave off speculating about the reasons for this entirely
if you like. We are probably wise to ... only so long as we are alert
enough to notice that our churches are not opening up, that the government’s
influence on our meetings is not lessening, and that the prospect of a speedy
resolution to the problem of not being able to gather to the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ with the full blessing of our government and peers and the liberty
to conduct ourselves as we once did is, well ... not great.
So maybe your “conspiracy theorist” brother or sister in
Christ who tells you he thinks the old ways of meeting are never coming back
should not be completely written off as a goofy paranoiac, even if his
speculations turn out in the end to be 90% wrong. He is at least paying
attention, and in that respect we would all do well to emulate him. If he is
adding up the evidence wrongly, at least he is genuinely concerned that we may
all be Zoom-worshiping well into 2022 and beyond, and he sees that as a problem
in need of a better solution than the one we have currently.
It is. No, really,
it is.
The Camel’s Back Waiting for a Straw
Okay. Work with me now. Moses’ parents: should they have
hidden their beautiful male child in violation of Pharaoh’s
edict to put him to death? That’s not a hard one. Hebrews gives us the answer:
their violation of the laws of Egypt was an
act of faith. God didn’t just let it pass. He was pleased with it and
recorded his opinion about it for our benefit.
Second witness, and I’m going to call at least three. The
apostle Peter has been arrested by Herod on
a whim, not in accord with any genuine legal principle. Herod is playing
politics, not doing the job God has given him. When the angel sent by God to
free Peter from his jail cell strikes the apostle on the side and says, “Get
up quickly”, would an appropriate Petrine response be, “There
is no authority except from God”, as he lays his head back down on his
stack of chains? Or should Peter get up as quickly as possible and run out that
door?
Just asking. The angel certainly had an opinion.
Third case. The great king David of Israel, pre-king status,
has been warned by his wife Michal that her father Saul is about to take her
husband’s life. Does David dutifully wait at the front door of their home for Saul’s
soldiers to take him to his summary execution, or does he allow his wife to let
him down through the window to escape certain death? And remember, David
doesn’t even have Peter’s angel to advise him.
Aw, why not. Just one more. Those 7,000
men and women in Israel during Ahab’s reign who had not bowed to Baal or
kissed him: Would they have been better bowing and kissing, or would they have
been better on the run like Elijah? Were they even up to being Elijahs if they
had wanted to be?
Or maybe, in their quiet but firm civil disobedience, they
were just fine where they were.
When Subjection is the Wrong Play
These are not complicated questions with multiple possible
answers. All Christians will readily agree there is some crucial point at which we
must obey God rather than men, even if we do it very quietly indeed. There
is some point of crisis for every Holy Spirit-informed conscience in which the
teaching of Romans 13, which we all agree holds generally, has to
admit an exception or three. The apostles found one. The Hebrew
midwives in Egypt found another.
In fact, there is a breaking point for every one of us to
the principle that “Therefore
one must be in subjection.” I bet I will not find a single
Christian dissenter on that issue. Certainly we will not find one in the
apostle Paul, who wrote the subjection-to-authority principle down for us. When
the
governor under King Aretas (most definitely a “power that be”) tried to
seize Paul at Damascus, the apostle was let down in a basket through a window
and escaped. Once in a blue moon, being “in subjection” is just the wrong play.
So the question is not “Is there a breaking point?” but
rather “Have we reached it yet?”
I say we have. Your mileage may vary, and
I am happy to respect and love you anyway.
Not Neglecting to Meet Together
There is a more important issue here, or maybe
two related issues. We had better face up to them. The first is this, that
Christians are commanded to come
together, and to keep
coming together on a regular basis:
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
That’s not just a human being’s opinion. It is the word of
God’s Holy Spirit. It’s phrased passively, but still that’s a command as
I read it, and I’m sure as you read it too.
Then there’s the “Do
this in remembrance of me” of 1 Corinthians 11. Do what? Break
bread and share it. Pass a common cup and drink from it.
Does a Zoom session in which we watch other people break
bread with only family members count? Hey, maybe for a week or three while we
are figuring out what’s happening. But are we really “meeting together” when we
do that? Not in any sense the church of the last two thousand years would
have recognized, and not in the sense that significant numbers of committed
believers in our own congregations are satisfied with. You can’t share a cup
over the internet, or pass a broken loaf from hand to hand. You can’t care for
a lonely senior who wants physical company, not just another phone call or
text.
Flirting with Neglect
Three weeks at home is not “neglecting”. One can make a
reasonable argument that it is being responsible. We didn’t know what was
happening and we needed time to process what was going on around us. But a year
and change in which some Christians have not attended a single physical
gathering of the saints while the vast, vast
majority of us are healthy and robust in the face of the “pandemic”, and have
been all along? I’m thinking I would have difficulty explaining
52 weeks of consecutive absences to the Lord. I am becoming concerned
that many of us are rationalizing disobedience of the grounds of safety, and
tacking Romans 13 on to our little self-justification package as cover for
our desire not to be perceived as rocking the boat with our unsaved neighbors, family
and friends. If we are not there already, we are definitely flirting with
neglect.
But, say the critics, surely you can’t mean we should all be
engaging in open defiance of our government? That doesn’t sound very Christian!
I agree, it doesn’t. As much as I applaud the spirit
and bravery of the congregations of LA’s Grace Community Church or Calgary’s
GraceLife Church, I am not sure opening up a traditional church building
in the face of federal, provincial, state or city ordinances is an useful way
to proceed in the present environment, not because it’s a “terrible testimony”,
but because it is ultimately a futile gesture. When any level of government
decides to put its foot down hard enough, that will be that. Sure, those
buildings are there, they were expensive, they are convenient, and it is really
tempting to man up and defend them. But they are almost completely irrelevant
to church life, and they are certainly not a major concern of the Lord in this
present moment.
So no, the buildings can burn. Or be sold. Or fall into
decrepitude. Or whatever happens to them. I don’t care. I’m advocating
something else entirely.
But you’ll have to wait until Tuesday to find out.
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