I came across this post while browsing the Facebooks, and I was already thinking about how often anyone who doesn’t agree with the Right on my friends list gets called a sheep or treated as though their one and only motivation for everything they do is fear.
Mario Murillo has this post about responding to the government response to the pandemic. While I can get behind a little bit of it, most of it feels like skepticism and fear peddled as “the true faithful’s viewpoint.”
He does say fairly that, whether you feel like you should re-open your church or keep your church closed, the important thing is that you are doing what you feel led by God to do, and not just trying to appease some government or politicians. The person keeping their church closed should be seeking to please God, and the person opening their church should be honoring God and following His lead, NOT thumbing their nose at politicians or trying to rebel against authority.
I can appreciate that as a sort of reasonable olive branch extended to people on both sides. He even implies that pastors who seek to follow God might keep their church closed as an act of obedient faith.
But then he descends into all his reasons why we should re-open, making arguments that I feel work just as effectively against his case as they provide support.
First, anything less than “re-open everything now” is falling into the evil plans of the Left.
The funny thing to me is that while everyone on the “re-open now” side is accusing the other side of fear, they’re operating out of fear just as much. Oh, they call it wisdom. “Never trust the government! Or Big Pharma! Or science!” But it looks and feels like paranoia.
It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you! I saw a YouTube video about this. (/sarcasm)
Murillo claims that the goal post was moved, that we all were lied to, that the new end state requirement is “having a cure.”
No one is anticipating having a cure, but they do want to try to develop an effective vaccine. Those are different things. Vaccines don’t always work for everything; Dr. Fauci even warned Congress about this just recently, though I feel like the headline is misleading.
Developing the right vaccine is a process, and they’re trying to end up with something that can help counter the spread and the danger of the disease. But no, it’s not a cure, so maybe be more careful with your choice of words.
Murillo also says, “What about the flu?” as if that’s not the most tired argument. “The flu kills about 40K a year and we aren’t shutting down for that…”
But we’re already at 90K dead in about 4 months at most since corona came to the US. So, since we’re already more than double the number of deaths in less than half the time all while taking the most drastic preventative measures to stop the spread that any of us can probably remember within our lifetimes, can we shut up about comparisons to the flu?
But yes, it’s the Left that’s exaggerating everything. You know, as they do. Thankfully the Right is ever the bastion of truth. (sarcasm again. They should make a font for it.)
No, actually, most of what I hear from the panic-stricken Right is an exaggeration as well. “Our coronavirus response? It’s so good. We’re doing really well. Everything is great. We’re the best. We’re the reasonable side.”
When facing an unknown and dangerous situation, most people aim to err on the side of caution, because you can regret overreacting to a thing, but can’t really take back under-reacting to a global pandemic. There isn’t a reset button on this game we’re playing.
Murillo says that our witness will be ruined because so many people feel as though government tyranny is upon us, and some churches will have gone right along with it. “How do you think people will view us when they realize that their freedoms are being taken away?” (Sure, no fear on this side of the debate, just wisdom.)
I’ve seen plenty of witness ruined when people look on dumbfounded as church-goers flout the restrictions and demand to meet in large groups. We look bad to a large portion of the population when we can’t comply with restrictions for safety; to them, it seems like we’re content to put our neighbors and friends at risk, which is generally considered “not loving” behavior.
Some don’t get upset at us, however. They laugh and eagerly anticipate the faithful catching the virus, something they then use as an emotional appeal to “Where was your god when you were meeting to worship him?” It’s a weak logical or philosophical argument, but it plays well in the soundbites and memes of social media.
Murillo says the courts are striking down some elements of these lockdown orders.
Great news! Isn’t it?
It’s like the system of checks and balances in government still functions just fine. I was assured this was tyranny on the rise in the previous paragraph but now you’re telling me that tyranny is being stopped by the tyrannical government. Well, thank goodness!
Oh, but the clincher is “the litmus test” for reopening or not. “Find me one single avid fan of America remaining closed who does not also hate Trump.” These people would rather see thousands die than see Trump reelected! (In other words, here’s a dose of fear of the other side, mixed with politics, because we know that politics is the most important thing when we’re talking about your faith.)
“There’s no way God is in that—and you are going to get burned.”
But what about the stories of churches suffering losses of members or even pastors who got coronavirus after pushing back on the restrictions? A quick Google search brings up dozens of results of pastors dealing with the physical, immediate consequences of their stance.
(I tried re-finding the stories I read, which are described below, but I couldn’t pull them out of the wide range of similar stories with pastors who are more blatant or belligerent in their insistence that yes they must hold church and no little virus is going to stop them.)
Many churches are experiencing needless pain and regret. There’s a pastor in Canada now saying, “I wish I could go back and do it different” after two members of the congregation are dead and a few dozen got covid. Their group actually practiced some level of precaution and social distancing. There’s a choir of over a hundred members that went on meeting in the Pacific Northwest, and (if memory serves) 81 of the 120 or so got covid.
You’re telling me God is in that? You’re telling me those people didn’t get burned by a willful insistence to keep on doing normal things in the face of a pandemic?
Murillo throws in that the courts consider some of these governors and politicians “criminals.” Again, his word choice is incendiary and meant to elicit a reaction from the base. These politicians are not being charged with crimes. The judicial branch is exercising its authority to put a check on the executive branch by saying, “No, you don’t have the right to do that.” That’s how our system of government is designed to work. But ok, the Left are the ones always exaggerating everything.
All that aside, let me get back to this idea that anyone who disagrees with or opposes re-opening does so out of hatred for President Trump.
I have better things to do than to hate him, although I have a lot of issues with how he has handled the job. I also don’t consider myself an “avid fan” of America remaining closed.
See, that’s the problem with all of this. It’s all described in extremes, either because they know a highly polarized audience will rabidly consume fresh meat and keep the support going strong, or because they will then have the wiggle room to say, “Oh, I wasn’t talking about anyone who is being rational about this… I was merely talking about the vocal fringe on the other side of the American political spectrum.”
In so many of the posts and views shared on socials, it’s all-or-nothing, acting like only two options exist. Either you support opening everything and returning to normal with no restrictions or changes… or you’re a fear-mongering sheep trying to destroy the economy! Either you support closing everything and staying indoors until the end of forever, or you are literally trying to kill everyone’s grandma!
A rational person might conclude, “These are complex issues, with a lot of factors, some of which we may not even be aware of at the moment. We have to make careful decisions that try to take all these considerations into account.” That usually leads to some middle-of-the-road, common ground, “I respect your stance but I hope you also respect mine, and together we should respect these facts.”
Not with the current state of the Republichurch party.
It all feels like a big game–maybe a little too much like a televangelist’s pitch. “Don’t trust THEM, they’re out to getcha! Trust me, and pray about sending me support money. They’re trying to make you afraid! I, however, am merely a humble servant sharing truth as I know it.”
Yeah, no thanks.
Yes, I see fear from the Left in the media and on socials. But I see so much more fear from the Christian Right – the very ones who in the same posts proclaim how much everyone else is motivated by fear.
“Do you know what George Soros said? Do you know what Bill Gates did? Do you know about the shadow conspiracy that’s working to take over the world and strip us all of our freedoms? YOU’RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THEIR HANDS BY GIVING IN TO FEAR! Whereas I am sane and calm and Aware of Things.”
I like Murillo’s point that the church should be a beacon of hope for America. Would that we had more Christians in America and less political pundits—people sharing a Gospel that transforms lives instead of a diatribe that secures votes, showing the love of a transcendent God instead of blind devotion to a party or movement, souls sold out to Jesus instead of selling out to win another election.
I’m not feeling burned; I look at the Right, and I feel burned out.