As always happens, you’ll want to listen to this as I don’t stick to the following as a “script”
— except that I really mean in this time. How’s that for keeping it real? Use the content below for the promised links, but you’ll miss several things if you don’t listen.
***
You have seen them in a thousand forms…personality tests that promise everything from the sublime to the silly, from “know yourself and draw closer to God” to “what Star Wars character are you?”
And you’ve seen the responses…from “here’s the science and research upon which this is based” to “I don’t care if it was invented by some channeling a demon, the Holy Spirit used it to teach me about myself.”
In this cultural moment, of course, we cannot escape the deluge of news and noise regarding the impact of COVID-19, or the coronavirus. And perhaps we can learn something from observing reactions to it, both in others and in ourselves. Because, as has often been quipped, the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart.
What follows is a bit of thinking-out-loud. It takes a serious situation and uses it as a chance to reflect, but I’ll ask for a little grace, too. Using a bit of levity or analogy doesn’t mean we aren’t simultaneously giving this cultural moment the gravitas it deserves. Also note: the blog page for today’s program has a ton of links. This one you’ll want to check out. Just go to forthehope.org and search for the word personality.
On one axis of this personality test, I’ll propose, is one’s orientation to God and His revelation in nature, Jesus, and Word.
Broadly speaking, theological conservatives see revelation, and particularly “special revelation” in Jesus and the Bible, as God’s inerrant, infallible, inspired, and authoritative communication to us. The Bible is the very words of God and therefore should carry a rather weighty something to say. (Hear “What is Biblical inspiration and why should I care?” here).
At the opposite end of the spectrum are theological modernists or liberals (technically not the same thing, but we’ll use them synonymously for this thinking-out-loud exercise). Theological modernism may acknowledge there is a God, but he/she/it may be unknowable. Or if he/she/it is knowable, it’s scarcely through a Bible written in a paternalistic cultural setting, corrupted by both Greek influence and errors introduced over the years. Consequently, the real message is that God is love, and what we should do is love people, not judge them.
And that gets us to the second axis. If one relationship is an orientation to God, the second relationship is to others. And if this is starting to sound familiar, it should – it’s what the Bible describes in “the Shema,” or the commandment in Deuteronomy that Jesus himself affirmed – that we are to love God with all our hearts, soul, mind, and a strength, and our neighbors as ourselves.
In terms of a response to coronavirus, just this week we started somewhere around “it’s a real thing” and ended with, at least here in the United States, with a declaration of national emergency. It’s a big deal.
But when you observe how someone reacts, where and how does God fit into the narrative?
As we talked about on this podcast a couple months ago, again in broad terms, theological modernism or liberalism tends to view the Bible through the lens of culture – the opposite of theological conservatives who view culture through the lens of the Bible.
And one good question to ask as you observe is, “Where are the fingers pointing?”
Here’s a sampling:
One video that hit YouTube was an argument for how the government is going to use this situation to implement “medical martial law.”
A whole bunch of people used this as a reason to go watch or re-watch movies related to pandemics.
Politicians used it as a way to attack each other and/or score points for their respective parties for the election season.
One Christian podcaster and commentator’s whole schtick is “I help people give a damn.” His fingers are usually pointed at other Christians.
But it’s not just progressives…there’s also a Christian pastor in Dallas saying the coronavirus is God’s judgment on people for parents transgendering their children and another gal claiming that she’s been given a vision that the coronavirus is fulfilling end-times prophecy.
So far, all the finger pointing at other people.
Sadly, it doesn’t stop there. What about blaming God?
So far I’ve not seen one story blaming God for evil in the context of the coronavirus. But then I don’t think we need one. Broadly speaking, the top objection to Christianity is the problem of evil. This is true for both non-Christians and Christians – they lodge a moral complaint against God.
And given that this has been a complaint people make against God, we don’t need a coronavirus-based story to expect it to be.
So where does that leave us? Where’s the heart check in all of this?
My cards are on the table. I do trust that if there is a God who created something out of nothing that he could cause a virgin birth, send his Son in the form of a man to die on a cross, raise him from the dead and thereby conquer sin and death, and choose to communicate with us in a way that helps us know him, know ourselves, and know the answer to “What must I do to be saved?”
So with that as my stated bias, where do we go from here? What do we do with these observations
Jesus wasn’t a liberal or a conservative. Or rather, he was both. Love God and love people isn’t an either-or. We talked about the grace-and-truth paradox on this program before. Truth without grace leads to legalism, and grace at the expense of the only Truth that can eternally reconcile them to God leads to antinomianism, lawlessness, anything goes.
God is sovereign. He doesn’t create evil, or he wouldn’t be perfectly good. But he can and does use evil to his ends. And we won’t always understand or see his justice in our lifetimes (go read Habakkuk).
The problem of evil in the world isn’t just a Christian problem. Remember, you rarely hear such objectors also note that the problem of why evil exists is also problem for every other worldview. (Hear “If evil, why Christianity?” here.)
Remember that there are two kinds of evil…moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is like raping children. Natural evil is some kind of disaster, perhaps including coronavirus.
Now here’s a coronavirus personality test question for you: is the virus moral or natural? Is the person you’re talking to blaming it on some conspiracy or that it was manufactured for biological warfare? What kind of claim are they making? Or is it just some new strain of something?
Remember this: either way it’s evil. Either way God is still sovereign. But also remember that back in Genesis 3 that creation was subjected to futility.
This isn’t just a coronavirus thing, it touches down in the environmental movement, too. Are we to be good stewards of creation? You bet. Are humans the problem and therefore the solution? What do you think? Don’t we tend to hear that humans created the problem? That often is in the context of pointing fingers at others. Ok, Boomer, you did this.
But then who do we look to for salvation?
And there, my friends, is perhaps the ultimate test of the coronavirus personality test. Because every narrative has a conflict and some proposed solution.
Are humans the cause of environmental brokenness which would include the coronavirus? It might be direct, or it might be indirect, but Biblically speaking, the answer appears to be yes. As Paul writes in Romans 8, God allowed it.
Ironically, then, we might agree that the problem is anthropocentric.
So the question is then, how are we saved? What fixes humans? If humans broke it, can humans fix it?
Note that I’m not saying that, when it comes to coronavirus, we throw up our hands and do nothing. That’d be flat dumb.
But whether it’s the specific instance of the coronavirus, or it’s the generalized problem of evil, the question comes back to finger pointing. We ask the question, “What do we do with the evil that is ‘out there in the world?’”, when what we need to ask is “What do we do with the evil that is in our own hearts?
And someone’s answer to that question, however they express it, will tell you a lot.
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources: