A Note from Faith Beyond Belief:

Debate regarding COVID-19 has been swirling in Canada since mid-March 2020. There are thoughtful and biblical Christians on both sides of the debates around lock-downs, masks, vaccines, restrictions, science, conspiracy theories and immunization records or passports etc. In fact, even among our staff, we have a variety of views. Faith Beyond Belief agrees that this is an important issue to discuss but our official focus is on equipping Christians to share their faith in everyday conversations while respecting the right of Christians to disagree "with gentleness and respect" on any COVID-19-related debates. 

The following is an article by Ian on the COVID-19 debates and how a Christian should respond to them. We hope that no matter what side of the debate you are on, you find it thoughtful and humorous. Ian hopes it will help UNITE us as Christians, and not divide us. 

Now for the legal statement: Ian’s opinions are his own and may not, necessarily, represent the opinions of Faith Beyond Belief.

By: Ian McKerracher

There is a great war going on in our culture, as we speak, and it seems to be unsolvable. The sides are quite polarized and unflinching. It is a cultural conflagration that is worming its way through our communities with a risk of affecting us all, regardless of our opinions about it. It was initialized by the arrival of a virus called Covid-19 and has created vast tracts of social No-Man’s-Land of disagreement in families, friends, and organizations. It threatens to tear the very fabric of society apart; the same fabric that is supposed to keep us all warm. What are we to do with this enormous behemoth of an issue that causes people to shout at perfect strangers, almost innocent in their by-standing, who may have a slight deviance of opinion?

I have to take my heart out of where my throat is constricted with fear at broaching this subject and set out to bravely sail into the parts of the map that declare, for everyone’s warning, “There be dragons here!” Everybody needs to have an airing of the issues and it has to start somewhere. I don’t assume that my little blog will somehow catch fire and set all things to rightness. I just hope that some of the things I may say here will cause some to withdraw their fangs from the throats of their ideological opponents and let their claws return to their sheath.

I say that as if there are only two sides to the serious debate and only one question being debated. One of the bigger reasons why the conflicts are so numerous is that there is not a single debate going on. I count three so far. Regardless of what side you may be on with one of the debates, there will be people who will pillory you with blood in their eyes over some aspect of one of the other debates raging around us. You can innocently mention a concern over one small issue with one side of one debate and your conversation partner will seamlessly slip into some other debate that was not in your mind when you made the comment. That debate is such that, if you are not fully on board to their point of view about it, you are the devil himself!

The three debates, as far as I can see from my chair, are the Political Debate, the Scientific Debate, and the Theological Debate. You will find all three raging on the pages of social media, with all the verbal vitriol of a dust up to a WWE wrestling match with none of the entertainment. You will also find the fight taken to absurd limits at the doorways of stores and restaurants, as some poor employee, just trying to do their humble job, is subjected to a firestorm of abuse because they asked the questions told to them to ask by their boss. I know of a church in Edmonton that has used the centre aisle of the sanctuary as the demilitarized zone between pro-maskers on one side and anti-maskers on the other. I wonder if the congregation actually hears anything the pastor has to say as they glare at their opponents across the Great Ideological Divide? I know of a woman, living alone in her utter terror, who has slowly become unhinged - leaving her sanity somewhere and forgetting where she put it. The social costs are mounting as we are encouraged to only look at the economic and health ones, with non-death as the only goal.

The Political Debate is easily understood. You see, there is the side that says that the State is doing the right thing and there is the other side that says that the State is doing the wrong thing. On the side that believes that the State is correct, there are those who think that Covid is the Devil’s breath that will kill us all and the benevolent government is looking after us through much-needed lockdowns. There is another group (hopefully rather small) that believes that the government is doing the right thing but is also working towards an inevitable “reset” of the political systems to create a world where social problems are no more. (Good luck with that utopia…)

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The timing of this pandemic makes this the perfect opportunity to pursue those political changes. On the other side of the equation, there are those who believe that the State is using the presence of Covid to push the agenda of that reset mentioned earlier but they see the reset as a bad thing. I get that…resets in the past have all crashed and burned. In this case, the Big Bad State is making a grab for all the power in the absence of any opposition worthy of the name and will not stop until the ugly totalitarian tyranny is established. Or some such vision of the future…

There is another group on the side of the debate that also believes that the State is wrong in their applications of the measures imposed to fight the virus but it isn’t because they are blood-thirsty pirates wanting to take over and loot everything. The State is actually doing what they are doing because they have no idea what they are doing. The idea is that the level of incompetence in the ranks of the bureaucracy has reached a level of such gross mismanagement that they are proverbial headless chickens. Having decided on a particular pathway based on some bad intel at the start, they are continuing to double down on those bad decisions so that they will not be forced to confess to their earlier error. The Alberta Government is STILL refusing to make public, the justifications for the measures, adding numbers and strength to this group significantly. Extraordinary measures by a democratically chosen government need extraordinary justifications. (just sayin’)

The Scientific Debate is a strange one where scientists and health professionals can be quoted from both sides. Without any consideration about who is right and who is wrong, we could have a continual duelling-meme fight online and neither one would come away changed in their opinion in the least. The Science may be seen as settled but only from the side with which you agree. The deep furrows caused by the firmly set heels of the debaters litters the social media landscape.

If one thinks that the Theological Debate is confined to the ecumenical world of Churches and Christians, that thinker would be wrong. Rank atheists are happy to wade into this one to make their opinions heard. Most of the time the debate focuses on the demising wall between Church and State. How much influence should the Church have in governmental matters? How much influence should the State have over churches? Does the presence of this biological agent from Hell change the dance steps between the two? These are important questions and need to be answered. However, circumstances which are not even close to normal, are not the time to have those discussions. They should have been done decades ago, perhaps when we were creating a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (Oh yeah…they were but extraordinary circumstances are not covered in enough detail and so…please refer to the Political Debate…)

And so, we get to the part of this blog where the pathway forward is discussed; where I offer my opinion about what we need to do about this mess we are in. 

This conversational mess is much of our own making. Do you want to know what to do with this mess, whether it is needed or not, whether the government did what they had to do or what they wanted to do or whatever…? Do you want to know what a Christian is supposed to do?

If we have enough of our worldview based on the Bible, it becomes easy to discern what we are supposed to do. Love God with all we got and love our neighbour as ourselves. We could even stretch that second one to loving our enemies too. Paul told us to “walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Eph 4:1-3) What does THAT look like when we are beset with such strong conflicts all around us? What does that look like when we are pressing against a government official who is doing his best with the cards he was dealt with?

Since we know that there is “a time for every purpose under heaven” (Ecc 3:1), we better ensure that we are doing the right thing at the right time, and in the right way. Covid is not the one that has the last word on this. God is. Let’s commit to being Christian through the mess, even when others are not. Let’s show people, especially outsiders, what a Christian under pressure looks like. Come on…We can do this! We can love…