Formerly known as Faith Beyond Belief
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The quarantine of the Diamond Princess cruise ship in early 2020 provided an almost perfect epidemiological database for understanding the transmissibility and lethality of the SARS-COVID-19 virus. Based on this data, it was clear from the beginning of the pandemic that the virus was not substantially worse than last year's flu and that only the aged and infirm and people with serious comorbidities were at risk. More importantly it demonstrated that most people, even when surrounded by the virus, did not get infected. Instead, the messaging from the medical-industrial complex was, “We are all going to die so be very afraid.”
I never got the virus. Most of my family did and suffered symptoms ranging from a bad headache to the sniffles and loss of smell. I have friends who were incapacitated for over two years so I understood that the infection could be very serious for a few unfortunate people. But then again, I also lost friends, not to the virus, but to our societal response to the virus - a fact that is all too often glossed over. All lives matter and all that.
I am one of the aggravating people who ignored the government guidance on mask wearing, social distancing, and family event avoidance. I am well read on the history of pre-war Germany and the tactics of totalitarianism and considered that we were being subjected to the classical and incremental steps of the “noble lie”, shaming and othering, and finally dehumanization. Remember when many suggested that the unvaccinated should be forbidden to buy groceries? That is the same as "Jews are pigs." That is dehumanization.
I did, however, succumb to the double injection. When Pfizer was court ordered to release its mRNA study reports I did a deep dive into the data and determined that the risk of a life-threatening adverse reaction was just under one percent. The government had mandated that I must take the injection to visit my grandchildren in another country and so, weighing the odds, I opted for the grandchildren. A relative who similarly weighed the odds died of a fast-acting cancer that I believe, due to its temporal proximity to the injection, was an adverse consequence.
When the early church was confronted with the government edict to burn the incense or die in the colosseum, some burned the incense and others went to the colosseum. Others just hid until things blew over. When the persecutions passed and the authoritarianism of the vainglorious emperor burned out, the church had a problem. What to do with those who had burned the incense? The church authorities had not bowed to the government, thus it became a problem when the majority of congregants who had burned incense wanted to be restored to fellowship. What to do with these people?
Today we have the opposite situation since many church authorities joined the majority and rolled over for the government ("burned the incense") meaning that to this day there is no issue between church authorities and the incense burners. Instead, it is we, the lay men and women who didn't burn the incense by obeying government diktats, who are finding the return to fellowship to be a problem.
I recognize that many, many people will disagree with me, given that they rolled over for the government—Romans 13 and all that. Others will argue that by taking the injections, I too rolled over for the government. I prefer to think that by doing my homework my consent to the injections was informed and made without coercion—with no thanks to the government or the medical profession. I was certainly under no illusion that the injections had much efficacy because Pfizer never claimed such in their reports. And they never tested the ability of the injections to prevent viral spread. Instead, they listed more than six pages of adverse effects. I don't think "safe and effective" was a Pfizer marketing slogan. But I do recognize that my argument can be debated.
What I want to acknowledge is that it was a difficult time for pastors whose congregations were split on the issue of government compliance. It was, and I suppose still is, a highly vexed issue.
I disagreed with the approach to government authoritarianism taken by my church and, after thirty years of attendance, left to join a house church which used heavy curtains and “low density parking protocols” to get around the inevitable snoops and snitches. And no, granny didn’t die because of our faithful belligerence.
Now that we are a year past the government’s silliness, I find a need to rationalize my relationship with the larger Church. I am happy to continue with the home church as it has more than met my needs for good teaching and happy fellowship. But Paul, in Ephesians, is direct in his admonition that Christ has united the church and any division is owing to an impoverished understanding of the gospel and what Christ has done for us/me. Is it possible then, that my pique with the church’s approach to COVID reveals my pride as much as the church’s error?
I was raised in a mainline denomination that, in retrospect, was probably not Christian. In a first-year university English class, taught by a self-professed Marxist, I learned that Jesus is coming again. It took decades for me to get over my anger at the church for not passing this news along. I find myself in a similar position today vis-a-vis the Church’s COVID response, but I don’t have decades to find a rapprochement.
As I struggle to find the truth about the COVID experience, I am increasingly convinced that my response was the correct one, at least for me. Interestingly, I am similarly convinced that this conviction hides some ugly pride that is perhaps more dangerous than an incorrect response to COVID. I’m.right in the middle, with a rock on one side, and a hard place on the other.
All this to say that I will be working hard on the rapprochement while clinging tightly to my Plan B because I don’t think the authoritarians are through with us yet. The world doesn’t get as weird as it currently is without tearing great rents in the church. I think we need to start figuring out how to prevent future tears and how to patch those that exist. Pretending they aren’t there will just make future episodes of authoritarian lying more difficult to deflect.
