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Sunday, December 27, 2020

Jesus Taught Love, Not Bravado


A number of churches held Christmas Eve service despite the urgings of the CDC and state and local public health authorities to not hold such gatherings due to the high COVID-19 transmission risk at a time when the pandemic is surging around the country. My own state Kentucky and neighboring Tennessee both have high infection rates. 

A number of pastors did not limit the size of the gathering or encourage the attendees of their services to wear face masks or social distance. Nor did they restrict or eliminate singing which has been implicated in the virus’ spread. When they were warned of the danger to the attendees of their services, a typical response that they had faith in God and trusted God to protect the attendees and themselves. The implication was that those churches which followed the recommended guidelines and adopted safety precautions such as limits on the size of gatherings, face masks, social distancing, and no singing were fearful and lacked faith.

While this attitude is not confined to Pentecostal and charismatic churches, it is fairly prevalent in churches in that tradition—in churches in which, when the church prays for healing for someone and they do not experience healing, the church’s typical explanation is that they lacked faith. If they had more faith, God would have healed them. This has led to those who were not healed questioning their faith. It has also been identified as a form of spiritual abuse.

God can miraculously heal people but his healing is not tied to their faith. God does not reward faith with healing, prosperity, a new house, an expensive car, or a fat wallet. God shows mercy on those whom he would show mercy. The notion that God rewards faith and money donations expressing that faith with blessings lies at the heart of the prosperity gospel and the “name it, claim it” movement. Both are distortions of what the Bible teaches.

We cannot earn God’s grace—his favor and good-will—or merit it. If we could earn it or merit it, it would not be grace. The prosperity gospel, however, see our relationship with God as a transaction in which we believe and he blesses. This view of our relationship with God has little to do with grace.

We believe, however, because God shows us grace. He enables us to believe and he invigorates, strengthens, and confirms our belief. He heeds our cry, “Lord, help my unbelief.” While God may do this through signs and wonders, he primarily does it through the reading and preaching of the Word, the sacraments, prayer, the fellowship of fellow believers, and the ordinary experiences of daily living. God does not always work through the extraordinary, the miraculous. He often works through the ordinary, the mundane. God could send his angels to proclaim the gospel to the corners of the earth. God, however, sends us.

God could protect us from the COVID-19 coronavirus with a miracle. At the same time he could choose to protect us with size limits on gatherings, face masks, social distancing, and other public health measures. He could also choose to protect us with vaccines. I believe that it may be presumptuous of us to expect God to do things a particular way. After all, God is sovereign. He is not a jinn in a lamp who is bound to obey our commands and to fulfill our every wish. He is not the servant. We are.

The pastors who insist that they do no need to follow the recommended guidance of the CDC and the state and local health authorities because they have divine protection remind me of the Corinthian pneumatics. They are puffed up with pride. What is unsaid but implied when they claim to have divine protection is that they are superior to other people. There is also the inference that other people do not matter. “Other people may not enjoy God’s protection but we do.” As the apostle Paul points to the attention of the church at Corinth, this attitude is not a loving one. Without love we are nothing.

Staying home, avoiding unnecessary trips, not mixing with other households, wearing face masks, social distancing, and otherwise following the recommended guidance does not mean we are fearful or lack faith. We are using the wisdom that God gave us. We are also putting into practice Jesus’s own teachings. He enjoined us to love others and our fellow believers and not to endanger them. Deriding one’s fellow believers as fearful and lacking faith is not covering oneself with love as the apostle Paul urged the members of the church at Colossae to do. Rather it is displaying a worldly attitude, one which dismisses as weak those who choose not to endanger themselves or others. It is an attitude that leads to insensitivity and indifference toward the suffering of others. It is an attitude that is inconsistent with Jesus’ teachings.

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