I’ve just published a post to christen my new substack. It’s all about Mike Pilavachi and the lessons the church is (or isn’t) learning.
Two weeks ago, Matt and Beth Redman released a documentary called “Let There Be Light”. It’s all about what happened with Mike Pilavachi – how Mike was able to continue his pattern of coercive, manipulative and abusive behaviour towards young people over many years.
It’s worth watching because it helps to explain the way that abuse works in churches.
At the end of the video, they share some thoughts about what the church needs to do differently in order to help combat abuse. This essentially boils down to, “listen to people, even if they’re not important. Take allegations seriously, consider the possibility that they might be true.”
All of this is absolutely true, to the point of being ‘motherhood-and-apple-pie’. I suspect that no-one on the Soul Survivor team would have disagreed with it at the time allegations against Mike were first raised. No-one seems to question why we actually need to say these things in the first place – this is not rocket science (or whatever the theological equivalent is)!
One of the things I find most difficult about modern politics is the question of Israel. Should I, as a Christian, support Israel or not? Should I support Palestine or not? I think a lot of Christians have the idea that all Christians should support Israel unconditionally – or at least, should mostly support Israel. This stems from a belief that the Jews are still important to God’s plans – they are still God’s people, even if they have mostly rejected the Messiah up until now.
The events of October 7th have, once again, brought questions about Israel to the fore. I have been finding it extremely difficult to know what to say: it seems to be highly divided among political lines, with most of the people on the right supporting Israel, and most of the people on the left supporting Palestine. It all seems very tribal.
Part of the problem with a topic like this is that it’s enormously complex, not to mention the fact that people have strong feelings on the matter, plus the matter of people being killed in the Middle East as we speak. It’s difficult to think of an issue right now where the stakes are higher.
I am not capable of unpicking all the complexity and nor would a single blog post be the right way of doing it. However, I do know something about the Bible, and I do think there are real problems with the way some Christians approach the Bible when it comes to the Jews. What I’d like to do in this post is, firstly, explore why I am not a Christian Zionist, and then (tentatively) suggest how this might affect our position on Israel today.
Why I am not a Christian Zionist
For most of my Christian life, up until a few years ago, I never heard the phrase ‘Christian Zionism’. I think it’s a bigger thing in the USA than it is in the UK. In fact, a big part of the problem is that the Christian Zionists in the USA have got real political clout. (There is a large block of Zionist evangelicals in America who will vote for who will best support Israel, and they have a strong lobby at the White House).
However, when I was a child I do remember coming across the idea that the Jewish people were still part of God’s plans and they would be needed before Jesus returned. I didn’t realise at the time that this was a part of Christian Zionism. Other conversations I’ve had since then have made me think that this is common amongst UK Christians, even if they wouldn’t call themselves “Christian Zionists”.
My problem with Christian Zionism is that I think it is based on a simplistic and ultimately flawed reading of the Bible. It’s easy to read the Bible and pull out a few proof texts to show that we should support Israel. At the same time, as Christians we should do better: I believe it was C.S. Lewis who once remarked that the Bible is a book for grown-ups. It will not do to simply take a few texts out of context. This becomes doubly important when people are losing their lives – both Israelis and Palestinians. The stakes are too high for poor theology.
The organisation Christians United for Israel has a page on their website, “Why support Israel?” I thought the best way to begin was to go through these reasons and explain why I disagree. After looking at the Biblical angle, I want to outline a few points for how this might relate to the current situation.
1. Israel was created by God
I, of course, have no argument with the fact that Israel was created by God. However, for this exact reason, I think we need to be careful: because Israel belongs to God, his rules apply. So, are there any rules we need to be aware of?
They support their point by quoting Genesis 17, but I think Exodus 19:5 might be even more appropriate:
Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.
Exodus 19:5
This verse demonstrates exactly what I mean. God does promise that Israel would be his “treasured possession” out of all nations. However, the promise is conditional – there’s an “if” attached to it. God says IF you obey me fully and IF you keep my covenant. Which leads to the question, what if Israel have not obeyed God and kept his covenant?
I want to raise here at the outset that obedience to God has always been required of his people. Disobedience to God leads to separation from him, and consequently his judgement. This is what Isaiah said:
But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken falsely, and your tongue mutters wicked things.
Isaiah 59:2-3
2. God promises a blessing to those that bless Israel
God did indeed promise Abraham that he would bless those who blessed him. However, let’s think about that word blessing. What is blessing? We know from the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) that blessing is not simply a material thing.
Sometimes blessing involves material things, but I would argue that the supreme blessing is to know God and walk in obedience to him. That is the most good that it’s possible to want for someone. Blessing someone is helping them to know the Lord and to walk in his ways – which sometimes means pointing out where they are going wrong (i.e. their sins) and calling them to repent. In fact, Jesus summarises the gospel message as “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47).
The idea of blessing as largely being a material thing (i.e. supplying money, goods, weapons and so on) is something which could only have happened in a materialistic world, like the Western world we live in. If we really want to bless Israel, we should pray for them to seek the Lord first and foremost.
We should remember that God fulfilled his promise to bless the Israelites throughout the Old Testament – and yet that often involved rebuking his people when they sinned. They were eventually taken into exile by Assyria and Babylon because of their stubborn sinfulness. This was, in a sense, all part of God’s blessing. If we are to take blessing seriously, we need to remember that God is the one who defines what blessing is – not Western materialism.
3. Jesus considered Jews ‘his family’
This is the only point where I disagree outright. Jesus told us explicitly who he considered his family:
“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Mark 3:33-35
Jesus said that “whoever does God’s will” is a member of his family. As we know from elsewhere, this includes anyone who repents and believes the good news. This fits with what we read elsewhere in the New Testament, for example Hebrews 2:11 says, “Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters” (speaking of all those who have been saved).
I believe the church is Jesus’ family – the church being comprised of both Gentile and Jewish believers. The apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians: “His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two [Jew and Gentile], thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” In Christ, Jew and Gentile become “one new humanity”, reconciled to God by the cross, which enables them to put away their hostility. There is only onefamily of Jesus’, and that is the church.
This has a direct bearing on how Christians should relate to the modern state of Israel. Loyalty between fellow Christians is greater than any other kind of loyalty. If the state of Israel today are doing things which oppress Christians, then Christians should stand against it. I find it baffling how Christians could side with the Jews over against their own brothers and sisters in Christ.
Think about how the apostles reacted when the early church was being persecuted by the Jews. They didn’t think “well, the Jews are God’s special people, so we have to help them persecute us…”
4. Christians are called to be ‘watchmen’
I’m not sure I even know what this means. They quote Isaiah 62:6-7, which mentions watchmen, but I’m can’t understand exactly what action we should be taking on the basis of it.
This does, however, lead to a serious point about their usage of the Bible. They say that Christians are called to be ‘watchmen’, and then go on to quote from Isaiah – which is part of the Old Testament (addressed to the Israelites). This raises the question of how the Old Testament relates to the New. How DO commands which were given to the Israelites relate to Christians – if they still apply to the Jews?
Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that Christian Zionists do not think deeply enough about how the two testaments relate – especially, how the New Testament fulfils the old. (This is the strength of Rob Dalrymple’s book). We need to reckon seriously with verses like 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.” Every promise God has made is fulfilled in Christ. At the very least, that should stop us from giving simplistic interpretations of Old Testament prophecy.
5. Christians have a duty to bless Israel
The verse they quote is Romans 15:27, “if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews’ spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings.” I’ll come back to Romans in a moment, because I want to address it separately. I already addressed the question of ‘blessing’ back in point #2.
6. Christians should pray for Jerusalem
Once again – as in point #4 – we have the problem of how the Old Testament relates to the new. Psalm 122:6 does indeed say to pray for the peace of Jerusalem – and, in fact, I have no problem praying for the peace of Jerusalem. (As I would pray for the peace of any earthly city!)
However, for Christians, we need to think a bit more deeply about this. Jerusalem is not just a physical place – it’s a symbolic place. God put the temple in Jerusalem as the symbol of dwelling with his people. That’s why it was such a significant place for the people of Israel. The temple was central to the Old Testament understanding of the people relating to God.
However, where is the temple now? The physical temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70AD – as Jesus predicted. However, Jesus himself is now our temple (John 2:21). Those who are united to Christ by faith have access to God in a way which was never enjoyed by the Israelites. This was symbolised by the curtain temple being torn in two when Jesus died (Matthew 27:51). Now we can enter into the Most Holy Place through the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:20).
Although there is still an earthly Jerusalem, this is no longer how we have access to God. Instead, there is a heavenly Jerusalem which all Christians come to (Hebrews 12:22). This new Jerusalem represents God dwelling with his people, and one day it will be complete – John sees a vision of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven in Revelation 21.
The point of all of this is to say that, for me as a Christian, ‘Jerusalem’ in the Bible doesn’t represent a city on earth, so much as where God dwells with his people – in the hearts of every believer. Again, this is not to say that we shouldn’t pray for the peace of earthly Jerusalem – but rather that the earthly city of Jerusalem doesn’t have the same theological significance it once did.
7. God has not forsaken his people
Once again the quotation is from Romans, which I will come on to. In general, I think this is a good point, which is that God does not neglect or go back on his promises. I would say though, as in point #1, that these promises came with the condition of obedience.
God’s faithfulness to his promises means that he will always save those who are trusting in him – but he will punish those who are disobedient. He punished the Israelites many times throughout the Old Testament for turning away from him – and in fact, this is Paul’s point in Romans 11:5 when he talks about a “remnant chosen by grace”. On that note, let’s move on to think about Romans.
What about Romans?
I have just finished preaching through the whole book of Romans, and I feel that I’ve learned a lot along the way. A lot of the debate about the place of the Jews in God’s plans centres around passages in Romans, none more so than 11:26: “all Israel will be saved.” What does this mean?
I’d like to offer up a few thoughts.
Firstly, the church in Rome was made up of both Jewish and Gentile Christians, and they seemed to have real problems with unity. The Jewish Christians looked down on the Gentile Christians (as was customary for Jews of the day), and the Gentile Christians could be contemptuous of the Jews (Romans 14:3, 10). Paul’s response to this is to focus both groups on Jesus. His point is that the gospel requires everyone to repent and believe – it humbles us all. The problem with the Jews is that they were too proud of their law-keeping abilities. They didn’t think they needed Jesus. The Gentiles, on the other hand, became proud because they thought God had chosen them over his own people.
The point that Paul emphasises over and again is that of unity. Jewish Christians are part of the same body as Gentile Christians – and they should worship together and support one another. He makes the point in Romans and Galatians that those who have the faith of Abraham are his descendants (Romans 9:8; Galatians 3:7) – i.e. both Jews and Gentiles alike who have faith in Christ share in God’s promises. In the gospel, God does not distinguish between Jew and Gentile (Galatians 3:28).
Secondly, Paul’s expression “all Israel will be saved” is a puzzling one. He also says in the same letter, “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (Romans 9:6). In another letter, he describes the church as the “Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16). Whether this is what Paul means here is unclear. I think on balance that Paul is talking about the full number of Israel who are appointed to salvation – the elect – rather than all Israel without distinction. But it’s hard to say exactly and I wouldn’t like to be dogmatic about it. Paul’s overall point is to hammer home the message of unity in Christ, that was his overriding concern and it should be ours too. I should also add that, whatever one thinks about the verse, it does not entail any specific political or military action in the 21st century.
Thirdly, and perhaps most controversially, I am not convinced that the group Paul refers to as “the Jews” still exists. Romans was almost certainly written before the destruction of the temple in 70AD. Christianity at that time had not really emerged as something separate – it was still seen as a movement within Judaism. In other words, there were still faithful Jews who could keep all the Old Testament laws including sacrifices. This is no longer the case. You actually can’t be Jewish today in the way that Old Testament Israelites could be. As I said, Old Testament Israelite religion was centred around the temple – you can’t just take the temple out and everything else remain the same.
Modern day Judaism is very different to what Paul would have been familiar with, and it’s hard to imagine what he would have made of it. I don’t think that, when Paul referred to the Jews, he would have intended a group of people who only saw themselves as Jewish “culturally”, by physical descent, and not religiously. I’m sure he would have thought it anathema to say that a Jewish person could be a secular, atheistic Jew.
The main point I’m trying to make here is that, when it comes to the Jews in the book of Romans, “it’s complicated”. In particular, I don’t think it’s possible to draw a straight line from anything Paul says in Romans to political action today related to the state of Israel.
Other Biblical prophecies
One of the things which Christian Zionists sometimes refer to is prophecies which they believe have been fulfilled by events of the last hundred years. You could obviously write a book about this, and some people indeed have (see e.g. Rob Dalrymple’s book which I mentioned above). I’d just like to add that, in God’s world, prophecy does not need human beings to decide what that prophecy is and act upon it for it to be fulfilled. God’s words will be fulfilled, regardless. He knows the end from the beginning.
Furthermore, I do not believe it is appropriate to take some contentious (and that’s being charitable) interpretations of prophecy from the Old Testament and the book of Revelation, and then say they are being fulfilled in the creation of the modern state of Israel. Some Christian Zionists have the idea that Israel needs to be supported, to trigger the battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ.
All I will say is – as many Jewish people have pointed out – is this really fair to Jews, to use them as bait in the return of Christ? Is it really loving to them? Much more on this could be said but I don’t have time right now. Suffice it to say that I encourage interested readers to look into the topics involved and study the Bible for themselves with a decent commentary.
What did Jesus say?
I appreciate I’ve gone on for long enough, so I just want to close this section with one more point. What did Jesus have to say? Look at this exchange from John’s Gospel:
“Abraham is our father,” they answered.
“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”
“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
John 8:39-47
Jesus could not be clearer here. “You belong to your father, the devil”, “the reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God”. Jesus puts these Jews, children of Abraham, squarely in the same camp as the rest of humanity. Physical descent from Abraham counts for nothing. Spiritually, they are as blind as anyone.
I believe this is how Jesus treated those Jews who rejected him – and we are not above our master.
So, what about Israel today?
I appreciate that this has been a long post already, and I haven’t said half of it! I will be much briefer in this section. What I’d like to do in conclusion is draw a few principles together.
#1:Everyone – including Jews – have the right to live in peace and safety. Not specifically because they are Jews, but because of our common humanity. Nobody – Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian – should live in fear. I know that many Jews do not feel safe after the events of October 7th. The police can and should clamp down on any antisemitic violence.
#2: It’s not my place to say whether Israel has a right to exist. I think there are some questions which are, as they say, ‘above my pay grade’. The question for me is not whether Israel has a right to exist, it does exist. There’s a joke about someone stopping to ask for directions, and the man replies “well, I wouldn’t start from here”. The fact is, I can’t change the events of the last hundred years or so. Those in this country who have a problem with Israel have the right to campaign peacefully and seek to change things via democratic means. But, regardless of the history of the British and Americans in the creation of Israel and other countries in the Middle East, what happens there is now their business.
#3: Israel should be held to the same standards as any other country. This is the part where I think a lot of people who are pro-Israel need to listen to people are pro-Palestine. Sometimes when I listen to pro-Israel people talking, you could be forgiven for thinking that Israel is the only country which cannot do any wrong. As a Christian, I believe there is one set of moral standards which governs us all. If any country – whether ourselves, allies, or enemies – violates those standards, it’s important to speak out about it. If Israel are doing what is wrong, then they should be held to the same standards as any other country.
The fact that what Hamas have done is evil does not excuse Israel. The fact that Jewish people experienced the terrible evil of the holocaust does not give them a license to commit evil acts. This is in no way to excuse Hamas or to say we should do nothing. But, in the pithy aphorism I learned when I was a child, “two wrongs don’t make a right”.
I do appreciate that many Western folks, myself included, are concerned about Islamist groups such as Hamas (and, indeed, I have written about Islamism before). I am not at all trying to give Hamas a free pass. However, I believe that we will only make headway against groups like this when we hold ourselves and our allies to an impeccable moral standard. If Israel are not acting rightly, then they should be called out. This does not exclude responding to Hamas or Islamists either, but we cannot have one moral standard for ourselves / our allies, and another for our enemies. One of the problems with the situation in the Middle East is the West (especially America’s) unstinting support of Israel (“The United States has given Israel more aid than any other nation since World War II”), driven in large part by the Christian Zionist lobby.
I do not wish to go into the rights and wrongs of Israel here, but I recently read Ben White’s book Israeli Apartheid and interested readers may wish to read it to see what all the fuss is about. I also found this Al-Jazeera documentary (two parts) helpful. (I know Al-Jazeera will not naturally be pro-Israel, but it’s helpful to hear from Christians in the region). There’s also an article about terrorism in Israel’s history by Tom Suarez, from a speech delivered in the House of Lords.
There are real problems with Israel which are simply overlooked. One of the biggest problems is the Israeli state’s definition of being Jewish. That is, you can become an Israeli citizen if you are Jewish (by physical descent) – unless you’ve converted to another religion. You can remain a Jew if you are an atheist, however. So you can be an atheist Jew, but not a Christian Jew. Explain that one to me?! … And those who are not Jewish cannot become Israeli citizens. There are many more examples.
#4: The only hope for peace is the Prince of Peace. I believe Jesus, the Prince of Peace, is the only hope for peace across the world – especially in the Middle East. My hope is that all Christians everywhere would seek and pray for all people to turn to the Lord Jesus, rather than trying to play political and military games in the Middle East and aiming to trigger Jesus’ return somehow.
Postscript, updated July 2025: for anyone interested, I have recorded a follow-up piece on Understand the Bible looking at who the inheritors are of the promise in Genesis 12:
I’ve done a few interviews over the last couple of years with Julian from The Mind Renewed podcast. I did an interview last week, which is now available to listen to here. This is the blurb:
Strange as it might seem—given that Phill’s ordained, and I’m a Methodist lay preacher—this time we centre our conversation in the character of “Satan”, or “The Satan” (to be more precise). Reflecting upon the clear manifestation of Evil in the world (particularly over the last three years)—and trying to make sense of the strange, seemingly ubiquitous eruption of (what one might call) “woke” sensibilities in recent times—we discuss questions such as: Who, or what, is “The Satan”? What does “he” do? What sort of influence does “he” have in the world? Where did “he” come from? Has “he” always been this way? What is that “serpent” in the Garden of Eden narrative anyway? Just a snake? Or have we been missing something deeper—that perhaps the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah hint at—that might tell us something about “his” origins?
Available here or from your favourite podcast provider.
Some years ago, when forums were all the rage on the internet, I used to spend hours online debating atheists. To be honest, debating things on the internet was always a frustrating experience. Firstly, all the participants (including myself) did it not because we really cared about the other person, but because we wanted to be right. We wanted to win an argument! That’s never a healthy position to debate anything meaningful.
The other problem with the Christian-atheist debates I used to participate in was the distinct impression that, whatever I said, it would never be good enough. I could never produce enough evidence, or make a good enough argument. In fact, I often felt that I had been judged as ‘wrong’ before I even opened my mouth. The atheist in question had an ideological commitment to me being wrong which could not be changed with facts or argument.
Of course, this shouldn’t have come as a surprise me, or to anyone who’s read Romans 1:21-23 (in short: mankind substitutes God for a god of his own choosing – unbelief is a spiritual thing. We actively want to find reasons to reject God). Unfortunately, we tend to think most people are rational and can be persuaded if you give better arguments – it’s an easy trap to fall into.
These days I tend not to participate in online debates – too often I think debate on the internet reveals more about someone’s prior ideological commitments than it does about their desire to engage. Whether it comes to religion or politics, or any contentious issue these days, people tend to go with what feels right rather than what the evidence actually says.
There are all sorts of reasons this could be the case – I’m sure it’s always been like this to some extent. But I think it’s very much in evidence with the covid vaccines.
Tweeting about VAERS
The other day I posted up a tweet about VAERS statistics. VAERS is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System for the USA (Britain has its own system called Yellow Card), and the idea is that if there is a problem with any particular vaccine it should be picked up. For example, if a new vaccine was introduced which caused a nasty (perhaps lethal) side-effect, even for a small number of people, this could be picked up and the vaccine withdrawn.
Anyway, a few days ago I read an interesting blog piece by Prof Norman Fenton, which contained a piece of information I found hardly believable:
"In all 32 years of VAERS reporting a total of only 9,754 deaths (and 878,053 adverse events) were recorded for ALL OTHER vaccines combined. So, in just 18 months, 3 times as many deaths for covid vaccines have been recorded than in 32 years combined for all other vaccines."
When I read this, I just had one of those moments of clarity. I mean, three times as many deaths for covid vaccines in 18 months than in 32 years combined for ALL OTHER vaccines! It might help to see it on a graph – courtesy of someone who replied:
Do you get that impression when you listen to the media? Do they even mention this kind of information?!
What was most interesting to me, however, was the response the tweet got. This is one of the few tweets I’ve ever posted which has gone a little bit ‘viral’ – it’s been retweeted over 100 times at the time of writing. I got some pushback from a couple of people.
The pushback
A couple of people took me to task for being misleading. The main criticisms were that (1) people are encouraged to report anything to VAERS; (2) it’s easier to report now due to the internet than it used to be; (3) VAERS contains an unspecified number of obviously spurious claims about vaccine deaths – i.e. just because it’s reported doesn’t mean it’s a confirmed vaccine death. (One person in particular provided a number of examples).
Frankly, I found it pretty astonishing that people would argue in this way. I appreciate that just because something is logged on VAERS doesn’t mean that it’s a confirmed vaccine injury. At the same time, the system didn’t massively change in 2020. I don’t think all of a sudden a bunch of “anti-vaxxers” have been staging a co-ordinated campaign to try and game the system! And even if only, let’s say, 10% of the reports of vaccine deaths are legitimate, it would still be far higher than for any previous year. (And many people estimate that VAERS and other systems actually under-report vaccine injuries by up to a factor of 10).
Additionally, we do know that there are many legitimate reports – for example, the HART group recently published reports of child deaths in VAERS. We know that some people have been killed by the vaccines, for example Vikki Spit’s fiance. We also know that there have been many injuries from the vaccine – there are many testimonies of the vaccine injured on the Real Not Rare website. There are also worrying statistics about non-covid excess deaths in the UK, which might coincide with the vaccine rollout.
It just seems completely logical to me that a new vaccine (not just a new vaccine, but a new type of vaccine using technology which hadn’t been deployed like this before), which is licensed only under emergency usage, which hasn’t gone through its full safety trials, could cause problems. This has happened before – vaccines have had to be withdrawn. It’s not unprecedented. Big Pharma get it wrong – in fact the biggest two criminal fines in history have been against vaccine companies.
So, why is it that many people seem so unwilling to even countenance the possibility that the vaccine might be to blame? Every time a sports start drops dead, or a presenter collapses on TV, or an adult suffers “sudden adult death syndrome” – people are falling over themselves to say they don’t know what the problem is, only that it’s definitely NOT the vaccine because they are “safe and effective”. Any time anything negative happens, it’s explained away as a mysterious coincidence. This doesn’t seem to be looking at the data fairly or with an open mind.
What’s the problem here?
A religious commitment
All of this reminds me of my discussions with atheists back in the day. The experience is very similar. I’ve had the same feeling many times over the last couple of years when it comes to covid: people are willing to give anything the government / ‘experts’ say a free pass, but if you try to quote a scientist about covid it is treated with suspicion. It’s like I am disturbing a religious commitment: you’re not allowed to question the lockdowns, because that’s ‘dangerous’. You’re not allowed to question the vaccines, because that’s ‘anti-vaxx’.
The arguments in question, or even the authority of the sources quoted, don’t matter: all that matters is that people who believe in the official line need to find a way of justifying what they already believe – that the official line is correct.
It seems to me the evidence is insurmountable now that covid vaccines are dangerous. At the very least, the government should be urgently investigating. The media should be looking into it – it should be front page news. But that’s not happening – almost all you hear is “safe and effective”.
Why is it like this? Many people, myself included, have observed that the way covid has been dealt with by the government and media has been very religious in nature (I talked about this here and here, for example). When people don’t have a religion, it’s easy to fool people into accepting a secular religion so long as you don’t actually talk about “god”.
It’s complicated. But it seems to me that the reason we can’t have an honest conversation about the covid vaccines is because people believe in them with a kind of religious fervour. In my experience, this is something which can’t be defeated with mere facts and logic. But I do believe and trust in a God who is able to raise the dead, so I am confident that this period of madness will not last forever.
The other day I was watching a Triggernometry interview with Arielle Scarcella – it was called “Trans ideology is the new homophobia”. One of the things I found fascinating about it was the way that a lesbian woman could be called transphobic, simply because she prefers a “real” woman to a transwoman.
Everyone in the interview agreed that gay rights were a good thing – e.g. the fact that same-sex marriage is a good thing was taken as axiomatic. But there was also a general idea that things had gone ‘too far’, in particular the erasure of biological sex.
What I want to do in this piece is argue that the problems we see today with transgender and the erasure of biological sex actually originate with the gay rights movement. In particular, I think the gay rights movement has a very uncomfortable decision to make over the coming months.
Let me explain.
What is real? Pt 1 – Homosexuality
First things first, let’s think about what constitutes reality. (You may think that’s a silly question, but I like silly questions, and the point of this will become clear in a moment).
A key tenet of the gay rights movement is that reality is defined by our inward desires, not our physical bodies. Scientists have not managed to find a ‘gay gene’, for example – and it’s not because they haven’t been looking! We are complex beings, and there are probably many things which contribute to our sexual preferences. This may explain why, according to some surveys, over half of LGB people identity as bisexual.
The point is that our sexuality is not something which is binary (as in our biological sex); it is often complex, fluid, and depends on one’s own preferences. It may even change day-by-day. Many people experience their sexual attraction as something fixed (e.g. being attracted persistently only to members of the same sex); many people do not.
Why is this significant? When it comes to homosexuality, the key thing is that one’s desires are primary. Your body, in essence, is simply a vehicle for fulfilling your own desires. It doesn’t matter that our bodies are designed for male-female sexual intimacy. That is irrelevant: all that matters is that one’s desire for sexual intimacy with a particular kind of person.
So, inner desire wins out over biological function – you could say, inner desire is constitutive of reality.
You may be able to see where we are going here.
What is real? Pt 2 – Transgender
One of the axioms of the transgender movement has become the quote “gender is between your ears and not between your legs”. This is a product of thinking whereby gender is a social construct: being biologically male or female has very little to do with being a gendered man or woman.
Gender is now essentially how you decide that you want to be. In fact, given the proliferation of gender identities (according to one website there are 68 gender identities including “feminine-of-center”, “third gender”, and “two-spirit”), one could say that gender identity has turned into personal preference on steroids!
But the key thing, once again, is that inner desire is constitutive of reality. One’s desire to be a man or woman (or two-spirit, or whatever it may be) overrides the biological fact of being male or female. Your body is simply a conduit to express whatever you feel inside.
A conflict was inevitable
A conflict was therefore inevitable between gay rights and trans rights. Fundamentally, they both argue that personal preference or desire should take priority over biological reality in some sense. The only difference between them is that gay rights stop with sexual preference, whereas transgender rights cross over into gender identity. But both of them take you away from biological reality. Unfortunately, the way they take you away from biology brings them into conflict: the only question was when, not if, they would conflict.
Answering an objection
One objection which could be raised at this point is that gay rights don’t actually deny the reality of biological sex. This is a point that Arielle Scarcella makes in the interview above – she basically said she wanted a woman, not a transwoman.
I agree that gay rights activists are not denying biology in this respect: they do not deny the reality of biological sex. However, they are denying the reality of biological function at some level – the fact that male and female bodies are obviously designed for sexual intimacy together. Only a man and woman are capable of reproducing – that’s simply a basic biological fact.
All transgender activists are doing is taking their argument one step further. The transgender activists of today would not have been able to get their foot in the door if it hadn’t started with gay rights.
Is there a solution?
Is there a way to square the circle? It looks like the LGBT movement is eating itself, and I can’t see it getting better anytime soon.
I think gay rights activists would like to simply roll back the clock a few years to when we believed in both gay marriage and biological sex. But I believe this is chasing a unicorn: it was always going to be an unstable arrangement which wouldn’t last.
In my opinion, the only way this is going to be resolved is by acknowledging biological reality – it’s the only solid thing which we have to go on. However, that will cut across both transgender and gay rights.
As I said in a previous post, gay marriage ended up effectively denying the biological reality that only a man and a woman can conceive a child together. There is something unique about the relationship between a man and a woman which is written into the fabric of biology, and it is a truth which societies throughout history have acknowledged.
Perhaps the solution is one which is going to be deeply unpopular and unpalatable to our society – to acknowledge that there is something fundamental about biological sex, and that this is applicable to relationships as well as gender.
If you’d like to read a good book about the importance of our bodies from a Christian perspective, check out Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey.
“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
If this is true, then we must live in a barbaric society: it struck me forcefully yesterday that our society routinely throws children under a bus.
Consider:
Young people and especially children have suffered the most from the covid-19 lockdowns, despite the fact that they were the least at-risk group. They have been sacrificed to protect adults. (See the UsForThem campaign, especially the book The Children’s Inquiry which is due to be published next month).
In addition, children have been given the vaccine (this last few weeks for children aged 5-11), despite the fact that there are serious concerns about the vaccine rollout.
Children are being increasingly exposed to transgender ideology in schools and elsewhere – I just watched an interview with James Esses where he talks about his concerns. You could add to this the way that children are being used as pawns in the culture wars – where children are being taught Critical Race Theory and the like.
As more and more families break down and people are not getting married, children are often the worst hit – “Family breakdown is the single biggest predictor of internalised and externalised problems for boys and girls.”
The most egregious of all, abortion – more and more babies are being killed in the womb before they even have a chance at life. 2020 saw the highest number of abortions ever – 209,917. It’s almost beyond belief.
I’ve been wondering whether that final point – abortion – is the one which underpins the rest.
Abortion and our self-obsessed society
What I simply can’t work out about the “pro-choice” party is the way that people treat it with an almost religious zeal. When section 8 was repealed in Ireland back in 2018, there was literally dancing in the streets.
To my mind it looked like a scene from the end of World War II!
Why? Why the unfettered joy that a woman might have the ‘right’ to remove some unwanted “pregnancy tissue”?
Earlier on today I was watching some of the reactions to the news that Roe vs Wade might be overturned (more on that in a minute). One of the things that was striking to me was how many people saw it as simply a matter of rights.
There’s no complex ethical debate about what’s best. There’s no dilemma about whether a foetus is a unique human being which has its own rights. I’m not trying to paper over the fact that there are complexities and shades of grey. Some dear friends had to go through an ectopic pregnancy a few years ago – I understand some of the nuances involved. But this is exactly my point: for the “pro-choice” side, there is no need for nuance or debate.
All they care about – or at least, the ones who are making the most noise on Twitter – is rights. The right to decide what to do with our own bodies; the right to have sex with whoever we want without consequences; the right to choose; the right to live according to our own rules. Who cares about the complexes of ethical debate when there are rights at stake?
And that seems to be symbolic of the kind of society we have become: we demand our own rights, in the process stamping all over the weakest and most vulnerable in our society – the unborn. We sacrifice children to our gods. Of course, we don’t call them “gods”, but effectively I think that’s what these rights have become. Particularly the “right” to have sex without fear of the consequences – the fruits of the sexual revolution.
This is in complete contrast to the way that God has given for us to live. The Bible often uses looking after “orphans and widows” as a shorthand for doing the morally right thing: protecting the weak and vulnerable is close to God’s heart.
Abortion is a symbol of our society now: self-obsessed, narcissistic, willing to kill even the weakest and most vulnerable to preserve our own autonomy.
Abortion and God’s judgement
Our society is not the first to sacrifice children to its gods. A brief glance down at the Child Sacrifice entry on Wikipedia shows several times in the past where civilisations have practiced it.
The Bible condemns child sacrifice in strong terms. Let me quote just one example, from Psalm 106:
They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to false gods. They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood.
Therefore the Lord was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance. He gave them into the hands of the nations, and their foes ruled over them. Their enemies oppressed them and subjected them to their power.
Psalm 106:37-38; 40-42
This Psalm is a sort of retrospective, looking back at the sins of Israel to lead them where they were. The sacrifice of children to false gods comes as a climax. It’s interesting that it says “the land was desecrated by their blood”. Shedding innocent blood, and particularly children’s blood, has an effect wider than simply the individual concerned. It has an effect on the whole land.
And then we come to the second paragraph I quoted – starting with that key word: “Therefore”. Because of what precedes, “The Lord was angry with his people”. The Lord did not take kindly to a society which shed innocent blood – in fact, it invoked his wrath and judgement.
I believe this is what we are seeing today: a narcissistic society, where people put themselves first over the rights of children, is a society that is under God’s curse. I believe that the problems we see in society today – the way that as a society we seem to be disintegrating – are a judgement from God for abandoning him.
This is not to say that I think you can draw a straight line from one thing to the other, but rather a society which habitually sacrifices children for its gods is a society that is destined for judgement. It was inevitable that a land which killed children would invite God’s judgement. We have sown the wind, and reaped the whirlwind.
The only way back
There is a way back, but it’s not a way which we are keen to consider. This is what it says in 2 Chronicles 7:13-14:
‘When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
If we humble ourselves, seek the Lord, and repent – he will hear, and will bring healing to our land. This is the way; this has always been the way. This is the heart of the message that Jesus came to proclaim – “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47).
This is why I think the Roe vs Wade news is fascinating: I think covid has brought things to a head – children have been treated so badly over the last couple of years, people have really started to notice. At the same time, there is now a glimmer of hope that things could change. Just because abortion has been legal for years doesn’t mean it always has to be the case. Things can change for the better as well as for worse.
I believe that we stand now at a crossroads as a society – will we choose the road of protecting our own rights at the expense of the most vulnerable, and stand to be wiped out, or will we return to God and his ways?
Recently, someone wrote to me responding to some of the points made in my videos (on Sacred Musings). In particular, the point was made that it could potentially be damaging to my Christian witness and the mission of the church. I thought it was appropriate to write a letter in response, and I thought it would be good to publish here in edited form as an open letter about why I have spoken out (and continue to speak out) against lockdowns and the things I generally try to deal with in my videos.
I begin by outlining why it is that I came to my position on lockdown, then explore the Christian angle of what’s happening before dealing more specifically with the question of damaging the church’s mission.
Why I came to my position on lockdowns
As, I expect, happened to all of us, in March 2020 I was caught completely by surprise. I didn’t know what to make of the lockdowns. It ‘felt’ wrong to me, and it certainly struck me that people’s attitude to death was unhealthy, but I had plenty of other things to occupy me e.g. learning to do online services, coping with having my daughter at home, and generally surviving! Plus I thought it would be over in three weeks, so I didn’t really give much thought to it.
However, as the lockdown went on, I began to ‘smell a rat’ and sought for answers. One of the good things about the internet is the ability to find alternative perspectives which you can’t always find in the mainstream media, so I began reading Toby Young’s Lockdown Sceptics website (now renamed Daily Sceptic), as well as lots of other online publications who published a range of views which differed from the official UK Government position.
One of the things which was immediately apparent is that there were people with far more knowledge than myself (people with relevant credentials in medicine, for example) who were concerned about the lockdowns in all sorts of ways – not just in terms of public health but other things such as civil rights and the way parliament introduced the measures without scrutiny. The reason I had to turn to the internet to counterbalance the opinions of those on the mainstream news channels was simply because these people – despite being eminently qualified and respectable doctors, clinicians, academics, etc – were being ignored.
As I read, I found myself with more and more serious problems with the official position:
Why was our response to covid so drastically different to any other pandemic, even those within living memory?
Why had the government pursued the strategy as outlined in the 2011 Influenza Pandemic Preparedness plan right up until March 2020, and then ditched it? What was wrong with the old plan? Why was it done without historical precedent and sound scientific basis?
Why did most Western governments copy the Chinese Communist Party, who are not known for having a good track record on human rights – and, indeed, telling the truth? (e.g. we now know there were hundreds of thousands of Chinese-controlled bots on Twitter who bombarded UK politicians with pro-lockdown messages, and much of the data that came out of China in the early days is highly questionable)
Not only did I begin to realise that many highly-respected scientists, doctors and medical professionals disagreed with the lockdown policy, but almost everything that the Government and the Media take as fact is – at the very least – open to alternative explanations.
For example:
Why were PCR tests being used to diagnose asymptomatic ‘cases’ when they had never been used that way before? How do you tell the difference between a ‘case’ and a false positive test result?
Why were we defining an asymptomatic individual as a ‘case’ anyway, when prior to 2020 we would have simply called them a healthy person?
Why did the government not distinguish between a death ‘of’ and ‘with’ covid?
Why was so much of the response to covid based on inaccurate modelling rather than real-world data?
Why did the government initially say face masks were not worth wearing, then only change once the pandemic had died down? Was there really strong new evidence, or were they actually being used as a psychological ‘nudge’?
Why did no-one care about the intentional elevation of fear (see Laura Dodsworth’s excellent book A State of Fear)?
Why did the government messaging assume that everyone was equally vulnerable when it was clear from the early days of the pandemic that it mainly affected the elderly and people with serious underlying health conditions (e.g. average age of covid death = 80.3)
Why was the government focussing on community transmission when it seems like the bulk of covid transmission and deaths happened in care homes and hospitals?
Why did no-one seem to notice that every year prior to 2008 had a worse mortality rate than 2020? (Age-standardised mortality of 2020: 1043.5 deaths per 100,000 population; 2008 was 1091.9)
Why did no-one seem to care about building up our immune systems – e.g. it is well-known that people who are stressed get worse colds?
Why does the government / media seem singularly uninterested in determining if lockdowns are effective? Why has no cost-benefit analysis been published?
Why is it that the only question the opposition / mainstream media have asked over the last 18 months has been “Why didn’t you lock down sooner / longer / harder”?
I could go on and on and on here. It seems to me that virtually nothing of what we have been told over the last 18 months is the unvarnished truth, or is open to alternative perspectives.
To give two examples out of thousands that could be included:
Norman Fenton, Professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University London, said in an interview that we can know virtually nothing for sure about covid because of the way the statistics have been managed and mismanaged.
Jay Battacharya, one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, said in a recent interview that the lockdowns protected the most well-off while throwing the working-class under a bus. For example, why were healthy 25-year-olds with white collar jobs able to stay home, while 60-year-old delivery drivers were classed as ‘key workers’ and had to be out working?
(I think there are also serious problems within government and more generally within the field of science – just this week a journalist for the Daily Mail wrote about a plague of fake medical trials, and a whisteblower has raised concerns about the Pfizer vaccine trials.)
In short, EVERY aspect of our response to covid has been questioned by people who are considered experts in the field – and yet you would never believe this from what you hear reported on the mainstream media.
At the same time… I began to realise that, not only were there immense problems with the lockdowns, but the lockdowns were in turn causing immense damage. Here are just a few of the recent headlines from the Collateral Global website:
Lockdowns left 12,000 women with undiagnosed breast cancer
GPs miss more than half of ‘red flag’ cancer symptoms – due to pressure not to refer because of limited resources
“45 million African children were dealing with wasting before the pandemic, but another 9 million have been affected due to COVID, Nanama says.”
1 in 5 Australians report high levels of mental distress
Eating disorders: The terrible impact of the pandemic on the young
23 million children [worldwide] missed out on basic childhood vaccines through routine health services in 2020, the highest number since 2009 and 3.7 million more than in 2019
CDC Reports 51% Increase in Suicide Attempts Among Teenage Girls
About 400 secondary pupils waiting for counselling (in Northern Ireland)
Covid pandemic has pushed poor countries to record debt levels – World Bank
A backlog of more than 1,100 crown court cases due to the pandemic is seeing “life put on hold and lives ruined” the West Mercia Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) has warned.
Pandemic pain: Young people experiencing greater mental health distress and job losses during Covid-19
More than 25,000 tonnes of Covid-related PPE and plastic waste has already entered Earth’s oceans and almost 75% of it is likely to wash up on beaches by the end of the year, new model shows
And you could go on and on – NHS waiting lists, mental health services, children with anxiety, more children than ever on antidepressants, etc. This, of course, does not even begin to look at the ethical problems with lockdowns as I have been talking about in my videos (e.g. Why Lockdowns are Immoral part one and part two).
I do appreciate that some of this could be ascribed to covid – i.e. it’s because of the pandemic. It’s certainly true that you can’t just go through a pandemic without negative consequences. However, I think we would have done far better overall (looking at the total picture) by carrying on with the previous plan rather than imposing a lockdown. School closures had a terrible impact on children, for example, yet we know now it was almost entirely unnecessary.
In addition, there’s a difference between someone dying of a heart attack because the hospital is full of covid patients, vs someone dying of a heart attack at home because they are too terrified of covid to call an ambulance (or because all the wards have been cleared because of the expected wave of covid patients who never arrive).
It seems to me the effect of lockdown has been absolutely devastating in every single area. It’s almost impossible to comprehend how much damage it has done, and I suspect we won’t see the full extent of it for a generation – when the children who missed nearly two years of school reach maturity.
I appreciate that some people see all these things as tragic but necessary consequences to keep covid contained. I have argued that lockdowns were immoral even if that were the case; however as the bad news keeps mounting up it’s increasingly difficult to say it’s better than if we had just stuck with the plan from prior to March 2020. In particular, I think the example of Sweden is hugely important – I’m sure in subsequent years they will be publicly vindicated once the cost of lockdown becomes more apparent. (See for example Anders Tegnell – Sweden won the argument on covid, and another article How Sweden swerved covid disaster).
A note on vaccines
I think it’s important to devote a whole section to the vaccines, because I have serious and growing concerns about what is happening.
Places which have high rates of vaccination also tend to have high rates of covid. For example, County Waterford in Ireland has the highest vaccine uptake in Ireland, but has the highest rate of infection in the country.
The UKHSA data has been consistently showing for some time a higher rate of infection (per 100,000) in the vaccinated. There has been a lot of debate about whether this shows the vaccines are ineffective or not – a lot of it is to do with getting accurate numbers of unvaccinated people. However, even if the figures are somewhat inaccurate, they do not demonstrate the vaccines are in any way protective against infection.
There are possible reasons why this might be the case, including a theory about “Original Antigenic Sin”, which seriously needs to be investigated – if it is the case, the vaccines might actually cripple the body’s natural immune system response against covid.
I have also been growing increasingly worried about the “Very rare” side effects – e.g. a German newspaper recently compiled a list of 75 elite athletes who have died in the last 5 months after being fully vaccinated (commonly, events such as cardiac arrest or heart attack).
There’s a website which is dedicated to stories of people who have been injured by the vaccine, for example this one: “Six and a half months later, these symptoms (and more) are still here, with some days “only” difficult and other days extremely painful. The pain interferes with sleep, and I find it hard to stay active at all. My right leg is weaker than my left leg. I have dizziness, tinnitus, and neuropathy in my hands and feet. I’ve lost a lot of weight … I am losing hope of a medical cure.” Recently I read another story of a 22 year old man who now has myocarditis.
There has been a 47% rise in all-cause deaths among teenagers between the ages of 15-19 since the vaccine rollout started in this age group.
There are also ethical problems with the use of cell lines used in the development of some of the vaccines from aborted foetuses.
It’s important to say that many doctors and academics have started raising serious questions about the vaccine, including Peter Doshi (editor of the BMJ – British Medical Journal) and Tess Lawrie, founder of Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd.
Additionally – why is everyone asked to have the vaccine, despite it now being well-established that natural immunity is at least as good if not better than vaccine induced immunity?
Covid Theatre
I also wanted to briefly mention one thing, which I have heard described as ‘covid theatre’: this is the ongoing attempt by organisations to help people feel safe by introducing measures which have the appearance of safety but actually do little to help stop the spread of covid. Examples include one-way systems, maintaining social distancing, face coverings, etc.
I am very concerned, as Dr Gary Sidley (a retired NHS consultant clinical psychologist) wrote about masks, that these safety behaviours will become entrenched because people do not feel safe without them. Regardless of the evidence as to how effective they are! For example, does putting chairs 1m apart in a big church really help with covid? Is there any evidence that the main way covid spreads is between people close together? Or is there any evidence that it’s safer to sit in the same room slightly further apart? Most of the evidence (such as it is) for social distancing concerns larger droplets, but we now know that covid is airborne and can transmit via aerosol. This spreads in the air. So I fear that spacing the chairs out gives the illusion of security but not much else. Staying 1-2m away from healthy people religiously starts to look like a superstition rather than a sensible precaution.
This covid theatre seems to me to be playing into people’s fears, rather than trying to allay them. If we did this in other areas it would be about confirm someone’s delusional beliefs rather than trying to help them to live in line with the truth. You could liken it to giving an anorexic liposuction rather than trying to help them overcome their anorexia. If the covid theatre is not helping with covid but only making people “feel” safer, then it is going along with a falsehood and should therefore be rejected.
In Summary
I am not trying to deny the severity of covid for a small minority of people (mainly elderly and with co-morbidities). I am also not saying we should have done nothing, nor denying that the NHS was under huge pressure last winter. I’m not trying to say the existence of alternative viewpoints means they are necessarily correct. However, I think we have to honestly entertain the possibility: what if all the measures that were introduced actually served to make things worse?
Since March 2020, many scientific studies have been conducted to determine whether lockdowns work. A summary of 35 studies by the AIER shows that scientists struggle to find any obvious way that lockdowns actually move the needle when it comes to mortality. Plus the example of Sweden (as mentioned above) should put the lie to the idea that lockdowns were necessary to keep covid contained.
While lockdowns do little to contain covid, they have had a humongousdamaging effect on just about every area of life: health – mental and physical; children’s development; the economy; democracy and freedom; impact on the developing world, and so on. When all is said and done I believe it will be seen that everything the government did to contain covid actually made things worse by an order of magnitude.
Additionally, I believe there are serious issues with the vaccine which need to be investigated. I think real problems are being swept under the carpet, while people are continually coerced and browbeaten into taking the vaccine. The vaccine is being treated as some kind of Messiah, which is most certainly not the case. While I agree that it does seem to protect against serious illness and death (although there are serious questions to be answered about this), it could potentially cause more infections, and it has side effects which are worryingly common in younger people – especially males. (There are also worrying problems with women and menstruation / fertility). It should be left up to everyone’s own conscience to take the vaccine or not, as long as they are given accurate information.
The reason I wanted to start this way is simply this: I hope it is possible to see that I am trying to seek out what is caring and compassionate for everyone. I genuinely want to do what is best for all, and I want to explore what that might be freely. I have no interest in pursuing a political line, but simply pursuing the truth.
More Information
I appreciate that I haven’t been able to back up everything I say with links and data – there is simply far too much. I would recommend spending some time getting to grips with some of these:
People’s Lockdown Inquiry – https://peopleslockdowninquiry.co.uk/ (published June 2021) – includes a downloadable PDF. Has input from many people from a wide range of disciplines about many of the things I have mentioned, but in much more detail. Has also been rigorously fact-checked.
Evidence not Fear – https://evidencenotfear.com/ – a look at a wide range of evidence on all aspects of the covid lockdowns.
HART Group (Health Advisory Recovery Team) – https://www.hartgroup.org/ – a group of medical and academic experts with an alternative perspective on lockdowns.
On the vaccines, I would suggest watching Dr Peter McCullough (a very senior and highly-qualified doctor). – if you would prefer, it has been written up in five parts on TCW Defending Freedom (link to the first part).
The Christian Angle
Let’s consider the Christian angle(s) on all this. I’ll start by asking the question: why is it that people think anti-lockdown views are ‘beyond the pale’? I would suggest two reasons: (1) it disagrees with the mainstream view (the consensus); (2) it suggests that many of our trusted institutions are wrong and maybe even lying to us – which seems very ‘conspiracy theorist’.
On the first point, I have already tried to explain that the people I have been listening to are not some random blogger or YouTuber with no medical qualifications, but people who are highly qualified and experts in the field. It is true that they do not get much, if any, airtime on mainstream media channels – but this is not because of their lack of experience or qualifications but because of their message.
On the second point, I have always been reluctant to think so ill of the government and other trusted institutions. I have never believed in any ‘conspiracy theories’! However, I have come to believe that there is something going on whether it is conscious or not. ‘Groupthink’ is a real phenomenon, and I believe that many of our political and media class are suffering from it. It seems like almost every issue today is politicised into the ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’.
I don’t think that the government is necessarily being intentionally manipulative or deceptive (although perhaps some individual politicians are taking advantage). However, I do believe that as Christians we should have our eyes open to what is happening.
What I simply can’t understand is why many in the church can see so many of the problems with the State and the media (deeply secular and hostile to Christianity, and cheerleading gender transition and same-sex marriage for example), while at the same time think that they are largely trustworthy when it comes to other matters such as public health. The Christian Institute, for example, have done so much good work when it comes to defending Christianity in the public square, and yet have been almost silent when it has come to the lockdowns and State overreach.
I think the behaviour of the State and media should not surprise us. As Christians we believe:
All people are sinful and flawed. This means that no human being should be given our complete trust or complete power – which is the Christian idea behind our democracy (politicians should be held to account). In other words, we should never be surprised when politicians, governments, or the media behave badly;
The nations do “conspire” against the Lord’s anointed (Psalm 2) – consciously or unconsciously. This includes a rebellion against truth, because God cannot lie – Satan is the Father of lies. This leads onto the third point:
The Bible leads us to expect some kind of delusion in the world which leads many away from the truth.
I think this passage from 2 Thessalonians is very appropriate for our times:
For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendour of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
I find this a fascinating passage. Satan works consistently through the ages – that’s what we’ve seen through the last 2000 years. As the passage says, lies are “in accordance with how Satan works”. God’s response is that he “sends them a powerful delusion”. (You can see this elsewhere e.g. Revelation talks about the beast and deception). I believe we could well be living in such a moment.
It strikes me that everything about covid is so ‘religious’. There are priests (“scientists”), secret knowledge (“the science”), rituals (social distancing, masks), heretics (anyone who questions publicly), a saviour (the vaccine), and so on. People have been more interested in political point scoring than finding out the truth. Fact-checkers have been checking the consensus rather than the actual evidence. And it goes on and on. Rev Dr Joe Boot (who runs something called the Ezra Institute) has written an excellent article for Christian Concern about the way covid has been handled in a very ‘religious’ way. As he puts it:
Too often we overlook the reality that we are in a spiritual struggle, a cosmic conflict for cultural formation in terms of the kingdom of God against the kingdom of darkness – and have been since Cain slew Abel. Any believer who thinks Satan and his hoard sit on the sidelines of history during times of panic, disease, and political upheaval need to familiarise themselves with their Bible.
This is why I started by saying that I think churches which enforce the whole covid narrative are actually doing a disservice to the gospel: although there are elements of truth in it, put together I believe it is a Satanic deception. Deception can equally be a distortion of the truth as well as a complete falsehood. The battle between good and evil is not simply about moral matters such as same-sex marriage or gender transition, but about the truth itself.
One other important angle to consider is that many Christians are woefully under thought through in the way that we think about government. I suppose we in the Western world have had “Christian” governments for such a long time that we’re not used to dealing with governments which have gone astray. Perhaps because we haven’t been expecting a Satanic deception, we haven’t recognised it when it has come.
But I think we also need to urgently think through issues brought up by Romans 13. Joe Boot (who wrote the article for Christian Concern) was interviewed on the Irreverend podcast recently, and I think his interview laid bare many of the ways the church has thought insufficiently about the relationship of the church and state. The interview certainly opened my eyes to new ways of thinking.
I think there are huge Biblical issues about what is happening we as Christians are simply not talking about!
Am I damaging the church’s mission?
Let me return to the question of whether I am impeding the church’s mission. I am reminded of the exchange between Ahab and Elijah:
When he saw Elijah, he said to him, ‘Is that you, you troubler of Israel?’
‘I have not made trouble for Israel,’ Elijah replied. ‘But you and your father’s family have. You have abandoned the Lord’s commands and have followed the Baals.
I think what will harm the church’s mission far more than anything else is turning away from the Lord and his commands. As Christians we should (1) not fear death (or anything else); (2) live in the light of the resurrection; (3) not give up meeting together; (4) sing praises to our God; (5) live in the light of the truth – not just ‘spiritual’ truth, but truth in the world – all truth is God’s truth.
I believe in all of these areas the church across the country has failed in various ways. The truth of this really came home to me when I read a beautiful piece by the headteacher at Christian school in Oxford. I will just quote one paragraph:
I am often asked how we’ve coped with COVID-19 over the last year and people are surprised when I tell them that, since March 2020, no child or teacher in our school has fallen sick with COVID-19. In addition, no child or teacher has missed school because of needing to isolate because of a close contact testing positive for COVID-19. A friend I shared this with recently commented, ‘Wow, it sounds like you really got all your measures right. What do you think really made the difference?’. I shared that our principle from February 2020 was ‘sanity, sanitation and no fear’. Our commitment has been simple: to care for the children we’ve been given to serve, and live courageously under God’s promises. As I reflect on the last year, I’m aware that our experience as a school has been one of God’s mercy. It’s not because we’ve done things ‘right’ that we’ve been spared troubles. God’s grace is Sovereign: He owes us nothing, but we can trust Him with everything. Hudson Taylor once said that ‘God justifies the confidence He enables us to place in Him’. In some way, God enjoys showing that, in all that we trust Him to be, He is sufficient to deliver. As the Almighty, King of creation, the one who holds all things together, our ultimate health and salvation is found in Him.
I just thought it was such a wonderful example of a Christian organisation facing the situation with faith. The Lord will honour those who honour him.
Would an outsider who came into a service and found it full of people standing rigidly 2m apart, not singing, all wearing masks, think it was full of faith in the power of God and in the resurrection? This is not to say I think sensible safety measures e.g. seatbelts are faithless – just that the things I mentioned are not sensible safety measures.
I also believe that there are many people across the country who are disillusioned with what is happening and would be open to coming to church if we could present them with something better than all the covid restrictions. I know for sure that there are people who have made the journey from Sacred Musings to Understand the Bible. I don’t know of anyone who has been put off Understand the Bible because of my views about the lockdown (although of course there might be).
By contrast, many people have written to me over the last few months expressing their appreciation for what I am doing. Let me quote one person who emailed me this morning:
This is where your site has been so very helpful. I have sometimes gone to bed, musing over some points made, with comfort. A recent example being the comparison between Babylon and our Heavenly Home and God’s sovereignty over the world rather than man’s plans. The ‘cursing’ of these men and your reference to how the Bible speaks on this is another example.
… I trust you will be able to continue with this vital work of speaking out. It is so very rare and such a shock to see how little witness to God’s Truth has been exercised in the ‘public square.’
I believe that it is my duty as a Christian and as a minister to seek the truth and live in the light of it. This is simply what I have been trying to do on YouTube and elsewhere – even if that’s been inconvenient or gone against the ‘consensus’. We stand on the shoulders of many Christians through the ages who have stood against the worldly consensus, even at the cost of their lives (e.g. the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany – not that our situation is close to theirs, not yet anyway!)
Where we go from here
One of the biggest problems over the last 18 months or so is that people who have been critical of lockdown policy have been seen as ‘conspiracy theorists’, or dangerous, or – just having unacceptable opinions.
I have written this letter to try and explain why I believe what I do, why I have spoken out. I hope that everything I have written is clear and evidence-based – but I am open to dialogue.
Ultimately, the point I am making here is that we desperately need to open up the conversation about what has happened. Whether I’m right or wrong (and obviously I believe I am right), this issue is not going to go away any time soon. The church desperately needs to speak into the situation Biblically and prophetically.
If I am wrong, please engage and show me. But please prayerfully consider whether I might be right, because it seems to me the future health of the church is at stake.
A couple of days ago I watched “The Magnificent Seven” again and it struck me how it contains a parable of freedom and security. How do we trade one for the other? Do we need to do so?
One of the strange things about the last 18 months is how safety has become the clinching argument for just about any course of action relating to covid. It’s all in the name of safety… but is there something deeper going on?
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