Before reading my thoughts, check out this article from the Toronto Star.
I have been a Christian for more than 43 years now. I spent 35 plus years working in the full-time ministry. My life and career has been about meeting together with other Christians face to face, individually and in groups, small and large. We would greet one another with hugs. We would have conversations together, pray together, sing to one another, instruct and encourage one another. None of these things have we been able to do for more than five months now. I am starving for human connection that is real life, not virtual. Virtual meeting together is like being incredibly thirsty and yet all I can do is see a glass of cold, pure water, but can not touch it.
But I, and a number of my closest friends have underlying, chronic health conditions. So meeting together is out of the question, for now and the foreseeable future.
Yet I see video after video of groups of Christians meeting together without any regard for physical distancing, not wearing masks, singing, etc. Now, that is their personal choice...I get that, even if they are choosing to disregard their health officials’ regulations and guidelines. But what about their family and friends who are physically compromised? Are they choosing to stay away from those people or, at the very least, staying physically distant and/or masking when they are together?
I get that some believe the pandemic is a hoax/conspiracy, that it doesn’t exist, or that it is no worse than the flu and that the health authorities and governments have either overreacted or are purposely trying to misrepresent the reality of this ‘minor’ virus. Others believe that even if the virus is real, they have the right to live as they choose and run the risk of contracting the virus and thus passing it on to others. Or maybe they believe that the COVID virus is part of God’s plan to test us and see whether we will "obey God rather than man" (Acts 5:29). Since God is in control, and thus he has either caused or allowed this virus to impact the lives of billions, there is no sense trying to resist him (Acts 5:39). And anyway, as Christians, true believers on the only narrow path, God will protect us as we stand for our democratic right to meet together (Psalm 91). So it should be “church” as normal. And those who call themselves Christians but choose to live in self-protective separation, they are living in fear and not by faith.
But I don’t accept any of that. However, according to the COVID conspiracy theorists and the COVID minimalists, the millions who are like me are simply weak-minded, weak-willed, weak of faith, and/or intellectually challenged and thus we are being deceived into believing the far-left socialist propaganda. As one of the world’s most prominent conspiracy theorists recently said, the far left is trying to, “Take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything. Hurt the Bible. Hurt God.” And after all, there are those who regard this person as a true believer and follower of Jesus. So he, and others like him, must be speaking the truth.
Maybe those who say they care about the Bible should listen more closely to what the Bible says about those who claim to speak for God.
“But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.” You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.” (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)
Nice essay for the Star!
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