little children, guard yourselves from idols
/Before I begin, I will say first: I am writing this to me. I hope it encourages or rebukes you, too, if that’s what you need, but I’m writing it first to me.
Over the last few months, what little I have written has been my effort to process the enormous and sometimes all-consuming topic of the pandemic, and what it means to live at this moment in history as a follower of Christ. I’m hardly the only one. There are probably millions of memes and Twitter hot takes and longform articles on the Internet right now devoted to the same topic, and they all say something different.
Some say taking a mandated vaccine is akin to receiving the Mark of the Beast. Some say wearing a mask is the only way to love your neighbor. Some say we are shortsightedly throwing away the religious freedoms that the first colonists of this continent endured immense tribulation to establish for us.
In other words, there is no consensus. There is no unity. The voices of the Church are just as divided as the voices of government. Those of us who are trying to hear them all out are being pulled in a dozen different directions, and it’s no wonder that so many of us have given up on discourse, picked a thought bubble to occupy, and stayed there.
But as delightful as that sounds to me, I have too many questions, and they won’t let me rest.
I don’t think the vaccine is the Mark of the Beast, but the intense peer pressure, financial pressure, and governmental pressure currently being exerted on the unvaccinated has shown me how simple it would be to implement the Mark of the Best one day, and how difficult it would be to resist. When we choose whether or not to get the Covid-19 vaccine, most of us are not choosing between allegiance to God and allegiance to this world; however, the question is still worth pondering: What does it look like to live in absolute allegiance to the authority of the True King at this time? What does it mean for me and my house to serve the Lord?
Does it mean I wear a mask everywhere I go? Some would say yes—that the most loving thing I can do for those around me is to protect them from my breath, although the effectiveness of most masks is scientifically dubious. It’s true that I don’t know what kind of vulnerabilities others may have to the virus, or how they’d be affected if they caught it. I have no desire to be unknowingly responsible for someone else’s illness, let alone their hospitalization or death, however unlikely. But is it true that the primary way to love my neighbor is to protect their health? Sometimes we seem to think that Jesus Himself would go to any lengths necessary to protect the health and safety of others, but if that were the case, how could He ever have asked anyone to follow Him? To follow Christ was, for every single one of the apostles and many of their converts in some way, to follow Him through suffering, ostracism, and death.
It would be silly to equate not wearing a mask with calling others into Christ, of course. But I do think we need to examine ourselves for an ungodly aversion to pain, including the pain of others, if we want to be truly Christlike. When Paul set out to evangelize the known world, he could not afford to fear the fact that he was inviting people into persecution—the eternal state of their souls had to be more important than the temporal safety of their bodies. Christianity has never been a path to safety and comfort, as our brothers and sisters in so many other countries know too well.
At the same time, only from our couches of prosperity does being required to wear a mask in public places feel like persecution! What will our response be when real persecution arises? What should it be? It’s certainly not wrong to try to protect and preserve the freedoms that we enjoy; these freedoms in turn protect current and future generations of all faiths from oppression, and create a haven in the world for those who wish to practice their faith without repercussions. At the same time, we can completely neglect the real mission of Christ on earth while we are busy championing the mission of freedom. They do not always serve the same ends.
I’m asking these questions because I see too few questions being asked. I see many, many Christians unquestioningly toeing the party line on either the left or the right, failing to test the narrative they’re being fed against scientific facts and Scriptural truth. For some of them, mask-wearing and vaccine-touting have become like pagan rituals—things we do to cover our bases “just in case,” to look like we are doing our part to control the uncontrollable even when our actions don’t make sense, all to appease the unseen Covid-19 virus in hopes that it will pass over our house. For others, rebelling against the regulations has become its own kind of religion, whose sacred text is merely “whatever is opposite of what the government commands.” Both of these belief systems are anti-Christ.
What if we could all stop weaponizing Christianity against those who disagree with us, and instead choose fearless love that welcomes others into our hearts and homes, whether we feel “safe” or not?
What if we could all stop using Jesus to justify our misplaced need for control, and instead choose to walk with Him—even when His path winds through the Valley of the Shadow, whatever that may look like?
I don’t advocate for prideful science-ignoring recklessness that disregards the opportunities we have to protect ourselves and others, nor for history-ignoring idealism that disregards the importance of protecting our liberties. But I am pleading with the Church to lay down her idols, whether they take the form of a political party, individual rights, personal safety, fear of loss, or anything else.
We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
1 John 5:19-21
