What a catastrophe. What a shame and disgrace. Covid cases are increasing and even our small town newspaper is reflecting this – the obituary section keeps growing and inordinately so. But identity confusion reigns. Confusion over questions of 'Christian Citizenship' and the like have led to bifurcated ethics – a split between New Testament values and the Enlightenment rooted thought of the American system. Throw in the cultural mythology, decades of brainwashing, and conditioned consumerist individualism and we have a recipe for both heresy and disaster.
Then there's the money factor and the way it works within the
political system. Christian leaders are increasingly corrupted by this and in
many cases have turned into sometimes paid, sometimes voluntary mouthpieces for
the political and economic think-tanks representing Right-wing politics and
Wall Street finance capital.
And yet the Church can't seem to figure this out. It should
be easy but confusion reigns due to institutionalisation and the way the Church
has wed itself to the financial and legal system. So when shut-down orders came,
no one even knew what questions to ask. Everything became bogged down in
questions of rights and law – no one turned to the Bible to see how the entire
question needed to be re-framed.
Some have capitulated on the basis of state authority – this
is (I hope) self-evidently wrong.
Others are defiant but have cast their defiance in Right-wing
political terms and rooted their thinking in questions of power and economics.
This too is (I hope) self-evidently wrong.
Listening to a recent episode of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron I was struck by the
moral blindness exhibited by James White and his somewhat deranged and
certainly deluded commentary regarding Covid. Always proceeding from a Right-wing
bias (as opposed to conservative) and its assumptions he did little more than embarrass
himself.
He fell into the oft repeated split narrative – sometimes the
virus is real, sometimes it's (more or less) fake. Like all the others of his
ilk he consistently ignores the questions surrounding mass graves, mobile
morgues, and the stress on the health care system.
I was thinking of a relative of mine who is a nurse – who
also happens to be a Right-wing fundamentalist type – and yet I can also say she's
ready to throw something at the next person who says it's all fake. She knows
better. In her long career it's one of the strangest things she's ever seen,
with bizarre peaks and valleys, twists and turns, and she is quite candid – it's
a very ugly death.
For White and those like him if there is judgment at work
here, it's not because the American empire is evil but is due to the liberals
(whom he laughably and erroneously equates with Marxists) – not to the
warmongers and thieves, the mammon worshippers and idolaters like White who
masquerade as Biblically minded Christians – and yet are revealed as wolves in
sheep's clothing.
It was hard not to be struck by his blindness. He
consistently touts his past and present acumen which in many cases is
demonstrably wrong. His past predictions have proven false and it's hardly a
stretch to say his current predictions about the incoming Biden administration
will also prove wrong. He must have a poor memory because I remember the things
he said in 2008 and 2016, let alone his rhetoric from the Bush era and before.
He was wrong and in touting his near-prophetic brilliance he's making an utter
fool of himself.
In a manner reminiscent of Munchhausen, his 'brilliance' and
scientific acumen can be debunked in a matter of minutes. The articles and
studies he cites are not what he thinks they are. About ten minutes of online
research demonstrates this. Look them up. His mastery of statistics is shown to
be wanting. He doesn't understand what he's talking about and I can't help but
be a bit embarrassed for him – until I remember how many thousands follow him.
And then I start to feel sick.
Yes, it's mostly older people that die from Covid. That's
right, let them die. This is a pro-life position? Even with a less than 1%
death rate, the herd immunity strategy will result in at least 1-2 million
deaths. Is that pro-life? Is that good for the economy? I guess these champions
of American wars and bombing have become indifferent to mass death. They're
used to it – and used to providing moral justification for it.
Has the government handled it well? Are their actions
consistent? Are their statements consistent? Of course not. But unless putting
a piece of cloth over your face is sin, I fail to understand his attitude – his
wanting to rip the mask from your face.
Only someone who has confused Enlightenment concepts of liberty and
Libertarian-style values with Christian ethics would react that way.
These people are bringing shame and disgrace on the Christian
community. A local business owner who is known to be an Evangelical refuses to
wear a mask – and drove to a nearby city to attend a Trump rally. A local pagan
asked my son (who works for this Christian business owner) why his boss refuses
to wear a mask? He said he knows he's religious and all and probably thinks God
will protect him – but shouldn't he at least think about other people?
It's judgment when lost people have more moral sense than
professing Christians. This Christian business owner is far more concerned with
stockpiling ammunition (I'm not kidding) and we can safely say that he (along
with Christian leaders like James White) have lost their way.
Returning to White, even his latest obsession 'The Great
Reset' is mostly nonsense with a hint of truth – but White (and many like him)
is like Joseph McCarthy looking for communism. He's about the last person to
see it and understand it even if it's staring him in the face. Blinded by his
own sub-Christian ideology, he's turned into a McCarthyite crusading fool.
A basic problem exhibited by White, my son's boss, and many
like them is the assumption that DNC leaders want to destroy America and bring
down the whole system. They think that these people wake up in the morning and while
rubbing their hands together and laughing wickedly, they spit on the flag, and
conspire to see the National Mall in flames. This is both utterly false and
ridiculous. You may not like these people or agree with them but you can be
sure they believe (with all their being) in the American system and they are
deeply invested in it.
In the case of Trump, their alarm is rooted in the fact that
in just a few years he has risked smashing the entire American dominated
post-WWII order and has certainly harmed America's standing and respect on the
world stage. Again, I may not agree with them about America or much else, but I
don't think they're trying to take the country down.
If you think they're Marxists, then you need to go back and
start over. Your thinking has gone off the rails. You literally do not know
what you're talking about. The people that believe this is the case are but
children – small minds that have not even grasped the basics of history or the
larger social and political system.
When I was small child we visited a dam and I looked down and
saw some dump trucks and excavators. From our great height they looked very
small, like Matchbox cars. I said to my father, "Uh-oh, somebody's little
boy forgot to put away his toys!" He rightly laughed. I had not grasped
the scale of what I was looking at. I did not understand that I was looking at
large equipment dwarfed by the distance. A child, I had made a grave perceptual
error. So it is with the likes of those Evangelicals who think the DNC is a
communistic organisation that seeks to destroy America. They are children in
their perceptions and understanding but the implications of the error are grave
– not the errors of a child giving his father occasion to chuckle.
To no one's surprise the aforementioned business owner attends
a Trumpite church (a PCA in fact) that has now experienced a Covid outbreak.
For the first time some (but not him) are starting to take it seriously. What
will it take? Will one of their elderly members have to die? For some reason I
don't think that will even do it.
I quit attending that particular PCA congregation years ago.
But what's happening at our independent New Calvinist-style congregation? The
anti-Covid measures have been more or less abandoned and now that the winter cold
has come the windows are closed and the heat is once more turned up almost
beyond the point of toleration. It's winter but we notice that even the older
people are wearing short sleeves because the heat is turned up so high.
And while the people who take Covid seriously seem to have
quit coming, there are many more who are ambivalent about it or in some cases
think they're taking it seriously but clearly don't understand what they're
doing. They remind me of the cashier at the hardware store. She wears a face visor
but then constantly licks her fingers to count money and get a grip on the
plastic bags. She's complying with the PPE requirements (sort of) but clearly
does not grasp the basics of hygiene. There are a lot of people like this – they
mean well but they just literally do not understand.
But then there are the others – the Trump people, the people
that post Facebook pictures of themselves at Trump rallies, that think cartoons
of Santa sitting toilet-fashion on a chimney marked 'Nancy Pelosi's House' is
something funny or worthy of a Christian. I guess the fellow congregant who
posted this ought to know. He's in full-time para-church 'ministry' and
enrolled in Liberty University's Christian Leadership Program. These same
people are defiant, mocking of those who take the virus even half-seriously.
They're rude, they show up to the church meeting late, shove their way into the
pews and in other cases tear down tape which is meant to keep people spaced
out.
In total defiance of Galatians 5, these people despise their
fellow congregants and care far more about Trumpism and Libertarianism than
Christ or Christian ethics. They act more like Sons of Belial than Sons of
Christ. I was thinking of them while I listened to James White on Iron Sharpens
Iron.
They should be disciplined but our church leadership is weak
almost to the point of non-existence.
Our 'interim' pulpit is filled by a fool with a Trump sticker
on his car, whose Facebook page is filled with clips from Fox, Newsmax, and
OneNewsNow.
These people think they're standing for some kind of
principle or issue of legality. It has nothing to do with that or the
application of Christian ethics. It's raw and ugly – an expression of power.
All their questions are motivated by right-wing politics and sacralist
assumptions.
They're bringing shame on the Church and I don't want to
associate with them. I'm not sure how I really could take communion with them.
It would be a mockery.
I would go somewhere else but it's not so easy to do right
now. Finding a half-decent or even tolerable congregation is hard enough, but
more likely than not I'm just going to find more of the same. Or even better if
the right kind of someone observes me wearing a mask, I'll get accused of being
a gay-loving, baby killing, communist. This is how things stand in rural
Trump-land.
As I've repeatedly said, the Church should ignore government
orders but as also mentioned congregations can't do that very easily as the
Church has wed itself to the system by means of finances and
institutionalisation. A faithful church would have no problem right now.
Bans on gathering and in particular on outdoor gatherings
should be ignored but at the same time reasonable safety-oriented measures
should be taken. Once again the Church met historically in times of plague but
decadent spoiled and selfish Middle Class American Christians won't suffer
discomfort and endure the cold or the elements and pampered lazy 'pastors'
can't be bothered to lead multiple services.
So basically we're reaching a point that I don't want to
attend my church. Increasingly I can't attend my church in terms of conscience
and due to the social climate it's not easy to find any place else to go. The
Church has been polarised to the breaking point but not because of the gospel,
but because of foolish politics and the heresy of Dominionism. Once again the
sacralist cancer destroys the gospel witness and then begins to destroy itself
from within.
And as Trump's defeat is finally starting to register with
his followers I cannot imagine what 2021 might hold for us – what sort of filth
will be emanating from pulpits.
On the one hand I lament the fact that congregations are
splitting over Covid – and yes, it is happening.
On the other hand we can rejoice that we're finally seeing
people's true colours, what they're really made of. They would say that Covid
believers and conformists are cowards and even apostates. On the contrary we
see that they've traded their Christianity and its ethical imperatives for a
political dream and a batch of lies. Their god is mammon and they're more than
willing to put their own freedoms over the lives of others. They will brook no
discomfort or inconvenience and are willing for people to die as a result. They
will hear no argument to the contrary because it challenges their
myth-narrative as to what America is, and the way it is intertwined with the
Church and its destiny. They have their messiah in Donald J Trump and they can
have him.
2020 has been a year of tragedy – the spiritual conflagration
and collapse far more tragic than the sickness and death. But rejoice, the
lines are becoming very clear and as I've long suspected, the bulk of
Evangelicalism is in reality a counterfeit form of Christianity. If the ethical
collapse has been this profound with something as relatively minor as Covid –
just wait until something really serious arises as it undoubtedly will.
I'm not sure what we're going to do but Trump-Church is not
an option. That's not Church. That's a travesty.