Covid and Christians

I have long considered Evangelical Protestants as turning a blind eye to issues like climate change and the Covid plague as they believe Jesus will come save them. Reading Online Christian Martyrs, from which I garnered the following, shines a light on a similar blindspots by these people:

Some will take issue with the use of “we” here, not wanting to be counted among those with such callous disregard for life. Activists and survivors have been fighting for years for increased gun control and other policy solutions that might prevent school shootings, and most states have taken public health precautions seriously for the past twenty-some months. But the big picture of our collective resignation in the face of ongoing tragedy tells a different story. With both guns and Covid, many of our fellow citizens would trade a million lives for their need to do exactly what they want.

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For nearly a quarter century—since the modern mass shooting era began with the Columbine High School attack in April 1999—religious interpretations of gun violence have had an enduring impact, which now can be seen reaching well beyond their origins.

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In corners of the evangelical world, the question of Christian identity has become indistinguishable from the question of refusing the vaccine. As in the religious response to Columbine before it, a matter of the public good has been transformed into a venue for spiritual warfare. In this telling, Covid is not a tragedy, it’s an opportunity. Its spread ceases to be a real problem in this world, but is rather a potential passport to the world to come; the fight against it is not about finding ways to defeat the virus, it’s an ongoing battle with those who are doing so. 

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The thing peddlers of spiritual warfare will never tell you is that it’s easier to fight demons in a universe of your own making than to work together to fix the world we all share. Imagine if all the energy, resources, and marketing that have been used to inject ideas of martyrdom into issues of public health and safety had instead gone toward making real change. We might now look back in admiration on a movement of evangelical youths fighting for gun control in the wake of Columbine. We might be grateful today that so many Christians were embracing vaccination not merely as a matter of health, but of faith.

I find all this wrong in so many ways. They are unchristian.

Consider now an Orthodox Christian perspective, from Vaccinate or repent, Russian church says amid hundreds of daily COVID-19 deaths:

Russia's powerful Orthodox Church admonished people refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, calling them sinners who would have to atone for the rest of their lives, as the country reported another jump in new infections and deaths.

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He added: "I see situations every day where people visit a priest in order to confess that they had refused to vaccinate themselves or their close ones and unwillingly caused someone's death.

"...The sin is thinking of oneself but not of another person."

That is Christian thinking.

And as for Christian martyrs read this definition.

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1/22/22