When the internet was invented, time started moving ten times faster. We could view the world through the screen of our computer, and the view was different than the view from our front porch. Suddenly we were confronted with a thousand perspectives that were not our own. Even when we could agree on the facts (which was rare), there were as many interpretations of the facts as there were observers. It was information overload, and it made some of us feel angry and irritated and overwhelmed. Reality was not so simple as what we had once thought. The internet helped us to come to realize that “spin” was much more real than we had ever imagined previously. Truth can be misrepresented. Lies can be made to look like the truth, and truth can be made to look like lies. We started to realize that the truth is filtered through the bias of the reporter, then through the bias of the editor or news agency, and then through our own personal bias. Some people grew up in this world, but I am old enough to have experienced the world both before and after the internet, so for me it was a force to be reckoned with. For many of us, it was like coming out of the Garden of Eden and suddenly finding ourselves living in a world that was no longer friendly or easily understandable. Paradise Lost.
Then COVID hit, and the problem became exponentially worse. Time started moving even faster. Social media became a series of knee-jerk reactions characterized by anger, resentment, frustration, name-calling, jumping to conclusions, taking sides. Opinions were being quickly formulated based on fear, anger, and misinformation. We began to lose the fine art of taking a breath, thinking things through, checking the facts, conversing with those of differing opinions, self-reflection, prayer, seeking the face of God. Time was moving too quickly for that. This is an over-simplification, of course, but when we used to sit on the front porch, we were like a gathering of chess players, carefully thinking before we made our move. Now that we sit in front of our computer screens, we are becoming more like a company of lawyers, more interested in quickly winning an argument than in embracing a slow and persistent pursuit of truth. By this time, most people had started to identify themselves so closely with their political positions that, in their eyes, to question their position was to attack their personhood. You were no longer a person who leaned to the left or to the right in your political views. You became “a liberal” or “a conservative”, reducing your personhood to your political allegiance. It’s easier to devalue each other’s personhood when we give each other labels and throw each other into categories. Increasingly, people were prone to define themselves by their labels, rather than by how they actually lived. For example, whether or not you were racist was defined by what you said on social media, not by how you actually lived and how you actually felt. As long as you could convince your Facebook friends that you were not a racist, it didn’t matter if you carried feelings of racial superiority in your heart. The real “you” was the person you presented on Facebook, not the person who really lived in your body. Image was the only thing that counted. The soul died, and the image replaced it. When the soul dies, all we have left of our personhood is the image of ourselves that we portray to the world. What’s on our tee-shirt or bumper sticker or Facebook post seemingly becomes more important than what is in our soul. Our souls can’t be saved or transformed if we barely acknowledge that our souls even exist. The “who I can convince you that I am” person becomes more important than the “who I really am when I am most honest with myself” person. This set the stage for what happened next: the rapid acceleration of political polarization. We were losing our souls, and we were losing our concept of truth, so there was nowhere else to go. For example, our response to the COVID pandemic became conditioned upon our opinions about the severity of the pandemic, and, in many cases, our opinions about the severity of the pandemic had become predetermined by our political ideology. What do we do about wearing masks, social distancing, limitations on indoor and outdoor gatherings? Most people responded predictably, according to their political allegiances. The “conservatives” and the “liberals” could see that about each other but they couldn’t see it about themselves. That’s the price we pay for giving ourselves and each other labels. The pursuit of truth was gradually becoming abandoned. Increasingly, many were settling for their pre-arranged political categories and letting their categories do their thinking for them. That was easier and less stressful than trying to look at the issues from as many perspectives as possible and sifting through all the facts and doing the necessary reflection and soul searching. It became more convenient to simply ignore the facts. Spin had taken its toll, and the effect was deadly. Spin became more important than truth. We had entered the post-truth era. Now we were miles from the Garden of Eden and quickly approaching the Tower of Babel. Somewhere along the line, we became less than who we are. Many people on both sides of the political fence became knee-jerk reactionaries. We forgot what it was like to be thinking, praying human beings who formulate wise and discerning responses that are not predetermined by our political allegiance. Collectively, we began to forget that we were human beings, made in the image of God, with the responsibility to think and act in a way that reflects the dignity of being God’s image-bearers. We began to act less like humans and more like Pavlov’s dogs. When we lose sight of God, we lose sight of the fact that we are made in the image of God. When we lose God, we lose humanity. (In his book, The Christian Mind, Henry Blamires tried to warn of these things back in 1963). The problem is that many Christians were caught unaware and were sucked into the polarization. Rather than taking the time to think, pray, discuss, and seek the mind of Christ, we drifted into our default political positions. We allowed ourselves to be taken hostage by our political ideologies because we jumped too quickly. Can we all take a deep breath so we can rethink all of this? We can’t continue in the trajectory of “Red Christians” and “Blue Christians” without doing major damage to the Body of Christ and, tragically, the name of Jesus. We need to determine what our response should be as followers of Jesus, not as “conservatives” or as “liberals”. Otherwise we don’t have a valid message to give to the world. The world already has plenty of think who think the way their political allegiances have programmed them to think. The world could use a few more people who are trying to figure out how to point to Jesus in all of this. By defaulting to our political positions, we fail to be the salt and light that Jesus called us to be. We have become the kind of salt that loses its saltiness and is good only to be thrown out and trampled upon. Jesus warned about these things in the Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5:13). How do we respond to the COVID pandemic in a way that is consistent with everything that Jesus taught us? I am proposing that we should formulate our response by asking ourselves three questions:
If we want to be more like Jesus, I think the Sermon on the Mount is a good starting point, for the Sermon describes the character of those who will inherit God’s kingdom. I believe that it also describes the character or Jesus himself. God wants to populate his kingdom with children who are just like his Son, so as we study the Sermon and work out its implications in our lives, I believe that we are becoming more like Jesus. Jesus taught: “You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow. You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy’. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike”. (Matthew 5:38-45) This passage describes the kind of people that followers of Jesus should be becoming. We need a word of explanation here. The Sermon on the Mount is not a self-improvement plan. If we see it as that, it will drive us bonkers and we will quickly give up and burn out. No one can live this way on our own efforts. We can’t become this kind of person without being a part of a community (a local church) that seeks to live out these teachings as a body, standing on the shoulders of the generations of Christians who have gone before us, and on the shoulders of the Jews who came before the Christians, with a vision toward extending the way of Christ to the next generation, with the expectation of the return of Jesus to set up his kingdom on the earth, the consummation of all things, and the assurance of eternal life. We can’t do it unless we have experienced the redemption and grace that are found in Christ. We need the second birth. We need the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. We need to abide in the vine. We need death to self. We need the fruit of the Spirit. We need worship and prayer and Bible study and fellowship and discipleship and accountability and spiritual warfare. There is a whole process of sanctification that we cannot discuss here, but Christians know what I am talking about. The kind of lifestyle that Jesus is calling us to embrace is unintelligible and impossible apart from larger context of the Christian history and experience and future and worldview. The point is that here Jesus is talking about the kind of people that we gradually become as we follow in his ways. We are all selfish people; even the most altruistic among us. When someone slaps us in the face, we don’t want to let him slap us again. We don’t want to give away our shirt when someone sues us for our coat. We don’t want an enemy soldier to order us to carry his pack for a mile, and we certainly don’t want to offer to carry it a second mile. We don’t want to love our enemies and pray that God will bless those who persecute us. This all goes against our selfish human nature. These are the very things that Jesus wants to address in the hearts of his followers. It’s not about legalistically following the rules. It’s about a radical transformation of the heart and soul. That’s a lifetime process. It’s learning to do the opposite of a knee-jerk reaction. How do we apply this to the COVID pandemic? We need to formulate Jesus-hearted responses to the issues of how we can help to prevent the spread of the virus, how we can care for those who are infected by the virus, what is the best way to pray during the pandemic, what we can say and do to help those who are struggling with the impact that the virus is having on our society (present and future) and on how it affects them personally (loss of loved ones, fear of illness and death, shattered plans for the future), how we can help others to deal with the financial impacts of the virus (loss of employment, loss of savings, homelessness), etc. As Christians, we need to respond to these issues in a way that would be impossible for anyone who is not a follower of Jesus, and always in a way that makes us more like Jesus. If we wade into the murky waters of politics at all, it should be for the common good, and ultimately, for the glory of God, not to advance our own interests, and only in a way that is consistent with our goal of becoming more like Jesus. We can start by taking a look at what our attitude should be toward the CDC guidelines. How do we respond to the guidelines in a way that makes us more like Jesus? We remember the words of the Sermon on the Mount and we apply them to the CDC guidelines. Let’s give this a shot: Jesus taught that if a soldier compels us to carry his gear for one mile, we carry it, and then we offer to carry a second mile. We carry it the first mile because we are required to do so by law. We carry it the second mile because that’s what Christians do. It shows that we love the soldier as a fellow human being, and it diffuses his anger toward us and our anger toward him (I’ve been reading about this in an amazingly insightful book, The Truth About Us by Brant Hansen). In the same way, if the government compels us to practice the CDC guidelines, then we exceed the guidelines; we embrace them more fervently than the government requires, because we are not motivated by fear of getting into trouble if we are caught breaking the rules. We are motivated by love of neighbor. If we truly love our neighbors, then we will not want them to catch the virus. We are motivated by a desire to be more like Jesus. We gladly and enthusiastically wear the masks and follow the rules and do what we need to do to stop the virus, beyond what is required, because we want that much to love our neighbor, and because we want that much to be like Jesus. We would do our part to stop the spread of the pandemic even if there were no Executive Orders, because that’s how love behaves, and because that’s what followers of Jesus do. Do we really have to have Executive Orders that force us to act in way that prevents our neighbor from getting the virus? We Christians shouldn’t need the Executive Orders. We are motivated by love of neighbor, not by fear of getting caught, so our attempts to stop the pandemic should be done enthusiastically, not begrudgingly— going the extra mile because we love our neighbor and because we want to be more like Jesus. Idealistic? Perhaps, but Jesus calls us to very high ideals. Why should we abandon his ideals, just because they are difficult? Of course there are judgment calls to be made; of course we may disagree with our politicians about what is reasonable and necessary and what is not, and it is appropriate for us to question their judgment if we have “done our homework”, but we don’t start there. We start with the motivation of wanting to be as much like Jesus as possible. When the attitude is right, then we can deal with the judgment calls. If we go straight to the judgment calls, then we are putting the cart before the horse, we are likely to default to our political positions, and loving our neighbor and becoming more like Jesus fade into the background. Christians need to keep them front and center. We need to be doing only what we think Jesus would be doing if he were in our circumstances, which means we need to take the time to stop and think and discuss and pray (not only as individuals but also as a community of believers) so we can properly discern what Jesus would do. 2) Does my response to the pandemic cause the name of the Lord to be magnified? Throughout Scripture we are constantly reminded that God does whatever He does “for the sake of the glory of His name”. If God is so concerned for the glory of his own name, which is the extension of His reputation as a God who is unspeakably good, wise, loving, just, powerful, compassionate, patient, beautiful, majestic and many other things (we use the word “glorious” as a way of catching all these characteristics of God and grouping them under one word), it should of utmost importance to us to see to it that His name or reputation is exalted in this way. So, how do we formulate responses to the pandemic that will advance the glory of the name of God? We need to ask ourselves whether our response to the pandemic gives people a better glimpse of the greatness of our God, or whether it obscures their view of the greatness of God. When people see our response to the masks, the social distancing, the restrictions on gatherings, are they compelled to say “What an unspeakably excellent God those Christians have!” or “What a pathetic god those Christians have!”? Here we must stand squarely on the shoulders of our Jewish spiritual ancestors, who were committed to this emphasis much more deeply than we are as American Christians in the twenty-first century. Forget the political squabbling. The glory of the name of God is the only question that matters, but we can’t bring glory to the name of God if we are devoting ourselves to advancing a political agenda. The answer to the question of whether or not the glory of God’s name is being exalted by as many people as possible is the only thing that will have repercussions throughout all of eternity. It’s the one thing we absolutely have to get right, even if we get everything else wrong. It’s the purpose of our lives, and it’s the purpose of the universe. We dare not take it lightly. Our response to the pandemic reflects upon the glory of God’s name. 3) Does my response to the pandemic give Jesus reason to rejoice over what his sufferings have accomplished? One of the great historic missionary movements of the Church, the Moravians (known not only for their intense missionary commitment but also for holding a prayer meeting that went for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for over a hundred years), is characterized by an incredibly meaningful and beautiful prayer: “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of his sufferings”. When Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb of God who died to pay the penalty for our sins, looks over all that is happening in his name, is he pleased with what he sees? I think it all depends on what he is looking at. Some of what has been done in the name of Jesus throughout the centuries has been magnificently beautiful, but some has been disgustingly ugly. We know from Isaiah 53:11 that ultimately he will be satisfied, but a lot needs to happen before this works itself out in human history. God will glorify Himself, but He wants us to be working with Him. When Jesus sees our response to the pandemic, does he say “This is breathtakingly beautiful. This is what I died for”, or does he say “This is a pathetic misrepresentation of all that I stand for. This is not what I came to accomplish”? Now let’s bring this down our response to the pandemic. Let’s bring it down to our attitude regarding the masks, the social distancing guidelines, the restrictions on indoor and outdoor gatherings. Are we responding in a way that causes Jesus to see the reward of his sufferings, to be glad, and to rejoice in all that he has accomplished? That’s the question we need to be asking. Forget the political bickering. There is something much bigger at stake here. The glory of God is at stake, but we are too busy taking sides. We are missing the heart of the matter.
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