Over the last couple of weeks I’ve heard a few times people making the comparison between vaccine passports and the Mark of the Beast. Is it appropriate to draw that comparison? In this video I look at the mark of the beast from the book of Revelation and how it relates to what’s happening with covid.
I quoted from Ian Paul’s commentary on Revelation, which is very helpful if you want to study Revelation (which is not the easiest of books to understand!).
In March 2020 the UK ditched its pandemic preparedness strategy and switched to lockdowns. Why? I suggest that, although there are many reasons, the roots go to a problem which has been around for a long time.
If you’d like to read the 2011 Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy, you can see it here.
Dominion by Tom Holland is available on lots of places e.g. Waterstones.
My other website is Understand the Bible.
Just for fun, here are a few quotes from the plan which we were operating under up until February 2020.
Face masks:
Although there is a perception that the wearing of facemasks by the public in the community and household setting may be beneficial, there is in fact very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use in this setting. Facemasks must be worn correctly, changed frequently, removed properly, disposed of safely and used in combination with good respiratory, hand, and home hygiene behaviour in order for them to achieve the intended benefit. Research also shows that compliance with these recommended behaviours when wearing facemasks for prolonged periods reduces over time.
Border restrictions:
There are no plans to attempt to close borders in the event of an influenza pandemic.
Closing events:
For these reasons, the working presumption will be that Government will not impose any such restrictions. The emphasis will instead be on encouraging all those who have symptoms to follow the advice to stay at home and avoid spreading their illness. However, local organisers may decide to cancel or postpone events in a pandemic fearing economic loss through poor attendances, and the public themselves may decide not to mix in crowds, or use public transport if other options are available.
School closures:
The impact of closure of schools and similar settings on all sectors would have substantial economic and social consequences, and have a disproportionately large effect on health and social care because of the demographic profile of those employed in these sectors. Such a step would therefore only be taken in an influenza pandemic with a very high impact and so, although school closures cannot be ruled out, it should not be the primary focus of schools’ planning.
Communication:
All communication should be high quality and cost effective, using the most efficient and reliable ways of delivering information in a range of scenarios to a variety of audiences so to maximise understanding and encourage appropriate behaviour without causing panic or appearing disproportionate.
To be fair, this is all based on an influenza pandemic, which is not the same as a coronavirus pandemic. But I think there would be a lot of common ground there, and I see no reason why this strategy would not have worked for covid-19. But I think the key points are the ethical considerations rather than the blunt fact of what works and what doesn’t.
One of the most striking things about the last 12 months is the way that churches have gone above and beyond what they have been required to do in lockdown restrictions. Why is it that churches have been so keen to proclaim the message of “hands, face, space”?
You could write a book about that (and one day someone probably will). But in this video I just focus on two reasons why I think the church has been so taken with lockdown.
As I mentioned before, this is a new foray into vlogging… if you’re into YouTube, pop on over and subscribe to my channel to get videos there.
Have you noticed that the way the government and media often talk about climate change and lockdowns is almost religious? Here I look at the similarities between Christianity, lockdowns, and climate change.
As I discussed in my previous post, this is a new foray into vlogging… if you’re into YouTube, pop on over and subscribe to my channel to get videos there.
A few days ago, the Irreverend Podcast discussed my previous article about lockdown and the end of “experts”. I enjoyed the episode and I thought the discussion was helpful. It’s nice to find like-minded clergy who don’t buy into the typical Guardian worldview! Anyway, the conversation did provoke me to think about what I wrote – in particular, whether I am being a little too optimistic in thinking that this could be the end of Experts.
On the podcast, they took a more pessimistic approach: I think the general mood was that it could take many years before the truth really comes out about lockdowns, and that it’s very unlikely we’ll see the end of Experts any time soon. I would like to explain why I wrote a more optimistic post.
The short version is, I’m optimistic because of what I believe about the wider political context. Lockdowns, as I said last time, are a manifestation of a bigger problem – hence the discussion about Brexit. You could also throw into the mix climate change, wokeness, and various other related issues such as transgender (some of which I talked about in my post about political truth). I also believe that God is at work amongst all this mess.
Let’s go back to the problem which has been developing over the last 30 years or so.
A few years ago I read David Goodhart’s excellent book, The Road to Somewhere. I thought it was a really helpful analysis of where we are and why, when the country voted to leave the EU in 2016, many of our politicians and media class simply couldn’t understand it. If you haven’t read the book, that link will introduce the main idea.
What really struck me then, which has only increased over the last few years, is that there is now a huge disconnect between the views of most politicians and the media and most working class people. It’s a problem which cuts across the whole political spectrum – left and right. Labour, the party which used to be known for advocating for workers rights, has moved onto a more ‘progressive’ ideology. Paul Embery recently wrote about this in his book Despised (subtitle: “Why the modern left loathes the work class”).
It does seem to me that the ordinary, working-class British people do not have a voice advocating for them in politics at the moment. They are simply seen as a problem to be solved (by re-educating them to be less racist, for example). They are only convenient when politicians want to score votes in traditional working-class areas.
Sadly, that distinction even applies in the church: I think the church has failed the working-class community. The church has become too middle-class and out of touch, and it tends to only reflect middle-class concerns and not God’s. I’ve been in meetings of clergy where it was virtually assumed that everyone shared the same Guardian-reading worldview. A few years ago, in one of my final curacy meetings, a curate colleague of mine said to someone who was moving overseas: “Remember us on this island… with the Tories.” She said it without any embarrassment or irony whatsoever. That strikes me as perfectly summing up the attitude of a majority of the CofE.
One of the points which I’ve seen several people make about lockdowns is the way that it’s a very middle-class concern. The people who can work from home are generally middle-class professionals. Most working-class people have been out working through most of the last year. J.J. Charlesworth said on Twitter:
Now obviously there are problems when trying to define ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’. The boundaries are very blurred. But I think there’s more than a grain of truth in this.
The people running the country tend to be people who are in comfortable jobs. They tend to be living in nice houses with gardens. In general they don’t have to deal with living in a one-bedroom flat with four children who are trying to share one laptop for home schooling.
Most of the people I know who are most pro-lockdown are fairly comfortably off. By contrast, the people I know who have been working through the lockdown tend to be a bit more blase about it. (I guess you’d have to be!). Before Christmas we had an electrician come round. We chatted a bit, and he said something like “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but…” This isn’t an isolated occurrence by any means. I’ve spoken to several people, e.g. at the school gates, who have many reservations about the lockdowns.
I’ve mentioned Brexit a few times now. I think Brexit is fascinating because it exposed the divide that was there in society (e.g. somewheres / anywheres). It had been there for a long time, but didn’t really come to the fore until 2016.
But here’s the thing: Brexit happened. It happened against all the odds – despite the fact that the establishment thought it was a stupid idea. Despite the fact that powerful people sought to use just about every trick in the book to undermine it. The Conservatives won a huge majority in the last election, largely on the promise that they would “get Brexit done”. Labour’s second-referendum idea turned out not to be a vote winner, neither was the Lib Dems “bollocks to Brexit” slogan.
When the people of this country were given a choice, they voted for Brexit.
I think that this fact alone should give us hope that people can and will turn against the lockdowns. But there are a few other reasons for confidence.
Finally, I think there is a theological angle to all this, which I will finish with.
Over the last few years I’ve really got stuck into the Psalms. I try to recommend everyone to read a Psalm every day (I did a video about this a while back). Last year I went through the Psalms from the start, and Psalm 12 really jumped out at me:
1 Help, Lord, for no one is faithful any more; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race. 2 Everyone lies to their neighbour; they flatter with their lips but harbour deception in their hearts. 3 May the Lord silence all flattering lips and every boastful tongue – 4 those who say, ‘By our tongues we will prevail; our own lips will defend us – who is lord over us?’ 5 ‘Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan, I will now arise,’ says the Lord. ‘I will protect them from those who malign them.’ 6 And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver purified in a crucible, like gold refined seven times. 7 You, Lord, will keep the needy safe and will protect us for ever from the wicked, 8 who freely strut about when what is vile is honoured by the human race.
My own feeling is that we are living in a Psalm 12 moment. We are living in days when ‘everyone lies’ – lies are the stock-in-trade of our media and political class. (I’ve talked about this in my post about truth). They have no fear of God, they don’t believe in any absolutes – exactly as Francis Schaeffer foretold.
And what we are seeing is the poor plundered and the needy groan: I think the government are actually inflicting great harm upon our society, especially the poorest and most needy. People who are living in one-bedroom flats with four children, people living in care homes who are unable to see visitors, people who have lost jobs and livelihoods. This was happening to an extent before the lockdown, but the lockdown has exposed it for what it is.
For a while now I’ve been thinking and praying for a new reformation – we need root and branch reform of the church, politics, and society in general. (Interestingly, the late principal of my theological college was praying towards a new reformation of the church). I think the Lord may be answering that prayer with these lockdowns.
I think the technocrats have stepped over a red line, they have inflicted great harm upon people they have been entrusted with. But the Lord sees and he is not silent. We have been governed by fools for long enough (a fool in the Biblical sense – that is, someone who rejects the Lord and his ways). I believe the Lord is coming to raise up a government and a society which does honour him.
I’ll finish with some words from Ezekiel 34, where the Lord speaks against shepherds who have not cared for the sheep:
‘“Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.
A few years ago Michael Gove made his infamous statement: “people in this country have had enough of experts”. At the time I think I found it vaguely amusing – at the time, there were a lot of experts who had been weighing in about the EU. But over the last few months it’s come back to me more and more. It does seem like the last year of our lives has been government by experts. The proper word for it is technocracy.
What is technocracy? This is how Wikipedia puts it:
Technocracy is a system of government in which a decision-maker or makers are elected by the population or appointed on the basis of their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge.
So a technocracy is government by scientific or technical experts, rather than democratic representatives. Perhaps over the last few months, the thought has popped into your mind (as it has mine): “When did we elect SAGE to govern us?”
But this is not a new problem. We’ve been living in a kind of technocracy for a while now. The roots of it go back decades. But, for people of my generation, the EU is maybe the biggest symbol of technocracy.
Michael Gove’s original comments about “experts” were made in the context of Brexit. Looking back now, it’s fascinating how almost the whole of the establishment were against Brexit. Politicians, the media, even the Archbishop of Canterbury, all spoke out against Brexit. They said that leaving the EU would be bad for us as a country, that there would be terrible consequences.
Brexit was generally considered a Bad Idea by the movers and shakers in the world. The people who know things. You know… the Experts. The economists were telling us how terrible things would happen. Terrifying predictions were made about job losses, about how companies would simply up and leave the UK. World War Three would break out. (Not exaggerating – I seem to remember David Cameron saying something to that effect).
The experts were united: leaving the European Union was a Bad Idea, and how DARE the silly little people vote the wrong way. How dare the people disregard the wisdom of the Experts! Some of the papers hardly even bothered to disguise their contempt for Brexit voters (something I’ve written about before). “Did these people not know what would happen if we voted to leave? Didn’t they hear all the terrible doom-laden predictions of the Experts?”
Every time there was some Brexit-related bad news, many of the media class would roll their eyes and say “I told you so! I told you it would be a catastrophe!” Almost as if they wanted it to fail simply so they could be proved right.
These predictions of doom seem not to have come to pass, not yet anyway. In fact, yesterday I read an astonishing article in the Guardian (the same Guardian which has been pretty much anti-Brexit since the beginning): “I hate to say it, but Britain’s doing OK. Even Germany envies us…” Things seem to be going far better than even most Brexiteers could have hoped for. How could that be, when the Experts told us the opposite would be the case?
It does seem to me there are a lot of parallels between what happened around Brexit and what has happened over the last year about lockdown:
Of course there are some differences. A lot of people who were pro-Brexit are also pro-lockdown, in my opinion largely because they’ve been terrified by the government’s fear campaign. But I think the similarities are striking. We in the UK now live in a technocracy.
So, what’s wrong with that? Surely it’s best to let the people with particular expertise make the decisions? They may get it wrong sometimes, but isn’t it best to listen to them? To answer that question, let’s think about technocracy from a Christian perspective.
One of the problems with technocracy from a Christian perspective is that the Experts are as flawed as the rest of us. In my previous post I talked about Francis Schaeffer’s book The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century. This is exactly the point that Schaeffer makes – a man may wear a white coat, but he is still a fallen man. Science may make claims to objectivity but, sadly, in the real world it is still subject to social pressure and bias.
I think this is what we’ve seen over the past few months. For example, Neil Ferguson (who became known as ‘professor lockdown’ because his modelling team at Imperial College was instrumental in the government’s decision to lockdown) was unable to keep lockdown rules himself. He resigned from Sage after breaking quarantine rules to have an affair. (Although he appears to be back on Sage, let’s leave that for the moment).
We’ve seen numerous examples of this: experts who call for tough measures have themselves not been able to keep to those measures. But I think there is an even deeper issues with technocracy.
C.S. Lewis was, in my opinion, one of the most insightful men of the twentieth century. He, along with Francis Schaeffer, have predicted much of what has gone on to happen. Let me quote you some of his 1958 essay Is Progress Possible?
On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in’. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science.
Lewis says that government in the name of science is tyranny. Why? Let’s think about it: one of our society’s greatest fears is death. It’s got to the point where we just try to brush it under the carpet as much as possible. We all know that everybody dies, yet we pretend that it’s not the case. In a society like that, what happens when a scientist comes along who tells you you can save thousands of lives simply by following a particular course of action? If people are genuinely scared of death, the power of the scientists will be almost unlimited. There will be nothing people won’t do in the name of the science, as long as it saves them from death.
And, as the old maxim goes, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. A scientist who starts out with the best possible intentions can be corrupted by the power. Imagine them thinking “just how many lives could be saved if we just did…?” If the only goal is extending the duration of our lives, this is probably scientifically possible in ways which are highly dubious and unethical. This is what happens when you hand over control to science.
Science is a great tool but a terrible master.
And this brings me to the final point. Let me quote once again from C.S. Lewis’ essay:
Again, the new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man. [My emphasis]
That last sentence I think is the clincher.
Let’s say a special life support machine was designed. It could keep a human being alive for 200 years. The only snag is, it could only keep you that long in a comatose state. You’d be technically alive, but unable to actually live. Would that be the kind of life worth living?
As C.S. Lewis says, that’s not a question for science. It’s a quality of life question, which can’t be answered by purely scientific means. Scientists can tell us what may lengthen or shorten our lives, but whether it’s worth doing on those terms is simply not a question they can (or should) answer.
Over the last twelve months, in order to keep us safe, we as a country have been under various legal restrictions as to who we can see. At the time of writing, it’s still illegal to meet someone – even outside (unless you’re going for a walk). Parents and grandparents have been forbidden from seeing their children and grandchildren. People have been unable to see elderly relatives in care homes. Young children and babies have been unable to enjoy cuddles with their families and all the social interaction they need at that age.
The government have effectively decided, following the science (as they always make clear) that our safety from a particular virus is of more value than our mental health and wellbeing, than businesses, than our normal lives. Is that the correct decision? Well, it’s certainly not one that scientists can answer. I for one am angry that the decision was made on our behalf to keep us safe, when in many ways it has done anything but.
All this is rather depressing. But I think there are signs of hope. As lockdown goes on, I think people are beginning to ask more questions. People are beginning to ask whether the lockdowns are really worth it. For example, a lot of people are looking over to other countries who have had less restrictive lockdowns and seeing that they haven’t fared any worse:
There is a growing body of scientific evidence (see also here and here) that lockdowns do very little except cause unconscionable harms.
People are also beginning to ask questions about the number of deaths. Slowly but surely, people are waking up to the fact that maybe the Experts are not infallible.
As I said before:
My suspicion is, when all is said and done, that the government (aided and abetted by the media) will have done nothing but make things worse. Lockdowns, masks, closing down businesses, everything. Of course, at the moment we can’t know for sure.
My hunch is that the next few months and years will see the whole government strategy over the past 12 months taken apart, piece by piece. I suspect we will see at every point how the measures taken were not made on a sound scientific basis but from panic and a desire to be seen to be doing something.
I sincerely hope and pray that the Experts will be shown up for what they are. I also hope those people who gave the Experts unquestioning loyalty will do some serious soul searching.
The government we need is a government who knows what is truly important. A government with principles – not just Experts. I believe a government with principles would have stood up against the lockdown and gone with something more like the UK’s previous pandemic plan (which was ditched in March 2020. The previous plan didn’t include lockdowns). Perhaps a government with principles might have been more loath to trust a strategy from the Chinese Communist Party – not known for its good record of human rights.
At the end of the day, as Francis Schaeffer says, there has to be some absolute. If you don’t have an absolute, there can be no true knowledge. The Bible says:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
Proverbs 1:7
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
The fount of all expertise is the fear of the Lord. That’s the primary kind of expertise that the government needs: not an expertise in science, or technology, or politics – but an expertise in the fear of the Lord. If we get that right, everything else will follow.
“How could a book written 50 years ago so accurately make sense of what’s happening today?” Those were my thoughts as I read Francis Schaeffer’s book The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century. I’ve mentioned Francis Schaeffer a few times lately – I’ve discovered his writings over the last couple of years, and they have been immensely helpful to me. (I wrote a post on Understand the Bible about why you should read True Spirituality which you might also like.)
A few weeks ago, I read a post over on the Gospel Coalition, Francis Schaeffer Warned Us About 2020. I decided to read the book on the strength of that review, and it was well worth it. I’d like to add my own thoughts here, because I think Schaeffer really hits the nail on the head when it comes to our current cultural moment. Even though he was writing 50 years ago, I think he saw things happening in society which have grown and come to fruition.
The first step is to diagnose the problem. Schaeffer saw that the problem lies ultimately in a society rejecting God. Everything wrong about society flows from that one single thing. In the first chapter of the book, he outlines briefly his thesis (which is developed in more detail in The God Who is There and Escape From Reason, both of which are part of the Trilogy).
This is what he says:
If we do not begin with a personal Creator, eventually we are left (no matter how we string it out semantically) with the impersonal plus time plus chance. We must explain everything in the mannishness of man and we must understand all of the complexity of the universe on the basis of time plus chance.
What he means by “the mannishness of man” is man made in the Image of God. That is, Christians believe that human beings are not random products of evolution, but made in God’s image to love and worship him. We are more than simply biological machines! But, if a society removes a personal Creator, you end up with having to explain everything in terms of biology or physics (etc). It is all, as he says, “time plus chance”. If you remove God, there can be no other explanation.
But why do we still hold onto some Christian values?
They keep thinking in the old way as a memory of the time before the Christian base was lost in this post-Christian world. However, the majority in the middle class have no real basis whatsoever for their values since they have given up on the Christian viewpoint. They just function on the ‘memory’.
Christian values still hang around – but we’ve ditched the thing that gave then any basis. Once you ditch Christianity, there’s no real reason that Christian values should stick around. The key point for Schaeffer is that Western society has abandoned God, and whatever still remains of Christianity is a simply a memory.
Western society has abandoned God, and whatever still remains of Christianity is a simply a memory
So what happens to a society when you abandon God? Here’s where it starts to get interesting with respect to what’s happening at the moment. Here Schaeffer refers to John Kenneth Galbraith’s book The New Industrial State:
Culture has lost its way and we should now have somebody new to direct it. Who should direct it? Galbraith’s answer was and is: the academic and especially the scientific elite, plus the state. To those who know Plato, it all sounds very familiar. The philosopher kings are to be reinstated.
Once God is taken out of the picture, society needs roots – it needs direction. Schaeffer senses that the direction is going to come from a new elite made up of experts. The scientists and the academics are going to be in charge, with the power of the state. And it will need to be the power of the state:
If we have an academic, scientific, state elite without any controls upon them, without any outside universal to guide them, it will undoubtedly lead in the direction of an Establishment totalitarianism.
If an elite are in charge without any controls – an ‘outside universal’ (i.e. God), then there can be no moral absolutes. They will do whatever they think is best, even if that means imposing restrictions on a whole population under the threat of prison.
So, if a group of scientists decide that the best way of saving lives is to lock 67 million people in their homes for a year, then that is what they will do.
Another man who understood this and saw this coming was C.S. Lewis – see this post by Graham Shearer.
Schaeffer also saw the rise of the New Left. He doesn’t really go into detail about the values of the New Left, but he does say “Here is the complete opposite to the Free Speech movement – a few hundred tell many thousands they must be still”. It’s a movement which is opposed to the free expression of ideas – certain ideas are ‘correct’, and others are forbidden.
This, too, is a totalitarianism:
Some have quit the New Left because it has dawned on them that they are building a new fascist regime, a new fascism in the sense that an elite without any controls upon it, with no universals to impose upon it, is telling everyone else to shut up and listen to them alone.
I find this absolutely fascinating looking at what has happened over the last few years with ‘woke’ ideology, which I’ve talked about before e.g. about Cancel Culture. The ‘woke’ like to call other people fascists, but the reality is they behave like fascists themselves: they do not tolerate any other opinions, they want to prevent people being able to express their ideas in the public square. This has happened because – again – they have “no universals” (i.e. God). There is no absolute right and wrong.
We are left with a choice between which kind of totalitarianism we want: the New Left or an Establishment elite:
This, then, is the situation. Whether it is a Left Wing elite or an Establishment elite, the result is exactly the same. There are no real absolutes controlling either. In both cases one is left with only arbitrary absolutes set by a totalitarian society or state with all the modern means of manipulation under its control.
When you free yourself from the control of a universal – i.e. God – Schaeffer foresaw exactly what would happen. You end up with a small group of people trying to demand ideological conformity (the New Left), or you end up with rule by experts.
Most of us are not part of the Establishment Elite or the New Left. So what happens to everyone else – the Silent Majority? Unfortunately, the Silent Majority – unless they are Christians “standing in the stream of historic Christianity”, who have absolutes – do not fair well:
the Silent Majority are living on the memory of the practical advantages that Christian culture gave but who themselves have no base for these advantages. Their values are affluence (they are practical materialists) and personal peace at any price. Having no base, no absolutes, most of them will compromise liberty any time that they are finally forced to choose between their affluence and personal peace on the one hand and the giving up of a piece of liberty on the other.
So the Silent Majority, at least those who do not hold to any absolutes, only have the values of affluence and personal peace. When these things are threatened they will give up their liberties. This is how totalitarianism comes in: when people’s core values are threatened, they will accept the state taking power upon itself to resolve it. Totalitarianism always comes in on the back of rapturous applause, because people believe it is going to sort out the issues which need to be sorted out. Unfortunately, it never ends well.
So if the silent majority opt for totalitarianism, what about evangelicals?
The danger is that the evangelical, being so committed to middle-class norms and often even elevating these norms to an equal place with God’s absolutes, will slide without thought into accepting the Establishment elite.
Schaeffer saw that the church 50 years ago had become very middle-class. If that was the case then, how much more so today? I think part of the problem over the last twelve months has been the connection of the church with the establishment. Going along with lockdowns has been seen to be the ‘correct’ thing to do which all right-thinking people agree with. (You could say something similar about other ideas, such as “Brexit is a terrible thing”). Challenging lockdowns is a costly business, personally and professionally.
Why is it that the church – nationally at least – has done little over the last twelve months apart from repeating government mantras about keeping everybody safe? One could be forgiven for thinking that the church doesn’t really believe in the resurrection, or that God is sovereign over all things and protects his people. Is it because the church has simply become another arm of the establishment? Perhaps the church wishes to keep its middle-class respectability and status rather than be obedient to Christ.
The final thing which I want to touch on is how everything, including science, is about manipulation rather than truth. This flows directly from taking God out of the equation: once there is no absolute, there is no absolute truth. Schaeffer gives the example of a scientist who did not believe in a particular theory of evolution, not because of evidence but because he wanted not to be racist. He goes on:
This is a non-objective, sociological science. Conclusions are determined by the way a scientist wants the results to turn out sociologically. It is a science which will manipulate society by the manipulation of scientific ‘fact’ … Beware, therefore, of the movement to give the scientific community the right to rule. They are not neutral in the old concept of scientific objectivity. Objectivity is a myth that will not hold, simply because these men have no basis for it.
This is exactly where we’ve come to in society now. The whole notion of truth, even scientific truth, is out of date. I have talked about this a couple of times recently – about political truth and covid.
It’s no surprise that science should be wielded as a political tool. At every point over the last twelve months, our government have said they are “following the science”. But so much of the time, as I have tried to make clear in other posts, science has been given as a pretext to justify a particular political course of action.
Science has been co-opted to serve a political agenda, because we are not dealing with absolute truth any more. This flows directly from our society’s rejection of God.
Schaeffer outlines three ways that Christians need to respond:
Firstly, recognise that co-belligerents are not allies. Too often I think Christians equate a particular political perspective with the Kingdom of Heaven. Schaeffer cautions us that, even if we may have the same aims as a political movement, there is a difference between being co-belligerents and allies. We must stand up for what is right wherever that may be – e.g. on the political right or left. We are not of this world. Schaeffer says we should think like this:
I stand alone with God, the God who has spoken in the Scripture, the God who is the infinite personal God, and neither of your two sides are my side. And if I seem to be saying the same thing at some one point, understand that I am a co-belligerent at this particular place, but I am not an ally.
Secondly, we need to take truth seriously. In a generation where there are no absolutes, where even science has become manipulative, we need to take our stand on the truth. Schaeffer says:
We must practise the truth even when it is costly… this is a time to show to a generation who think that the concept of truth is unthinkable that we do take truth seriously.
I have talked about this before in my post on truth, so I will direct you to there for a more detailed discussion.
Thirdly and finally, we need to practise true Christian community. Schaeffer says:
With an orthodoxy of doctrine there must equally be an orthodoxy of community. Our Christian organisations must be communities in which others see what God has revealed in the teaching of his Word.
In other words, we need to practice what we preach. We need to be a community where the truth is not only honoured, but shown in the relationships we have with each other. We need to live by the truth, not just profess it with our mouths.
Ultimately, this is the way to win back a generation that has wandered away from God: showing the world – not just proclaiming – what it means to walk with God. If we only talk about God but don’t walk with him, nothing will change. But real change can happen when we actually show to the world what kind of a difference God makes.
Can you remember LBL – Life Before Lockdown? (It’s a new acronym, I hope it’ll catch on). It feels like life has changed so much in the past year, it’s hard to remember what it was like before. My days were full of activities and meetings – taking a look back in my diary brings back memories of having activities most days: groups, meetings, services, there was at least something on every day.
My life was in many ways centred around the church. The beating heart of this was the services, especially on a Sunday: in the morning I would go to two services (in our parish there are two church buildings, with a service at each one). Then there would be a service in the afternoon which I was at most weeks. Sometimes there would be an evening service. So each Sunday I was usually at church three times – even four, on occasion. That’s a whole lot of church!
So – what’s the problem with that? The problem is that I spent so long AT church that I forgot to BE church. Let me explain what I mean by that.
One of the things that we sometimes explain to schoolchildren (expecting them to be surprised!) is that church is not a building. A building can be ‘a church’ – but all that means is, a building which is dedicated to God for the purpose of the church. The church is really the people.
In the New Testament, the word ‘church’ never refers to a building. (In the early days there wouldn’t have been church buildings anyway – they weren’t built until Christianity became more established). Christians used to meet in private houses or public meeting rooms.
In fact, the New Testament uses various metaphors to describe the church, for example as Christ’s “body” (Ephesians 1:22-3), or as a family (Mark 3:34-35). Those are not cold and impersonal – actually it’s the most warm and personal thing you can get! You belong to it simply by repenting of sin and believing in Jesus Christ for salvation. The New Testament sees church as being highly important – but it’s nothing to do with the building.
In the days of the New Testament, the church would meet together because they were Christians who loved each other and wanted to meet. It wasn’t their act of meeting together which made them the church: their love for God and each other gave them a desire to meet.
This is what it says about the church in the very early days:
All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts
Acts 2:44-46
So the believers had everything in common; they put each others’ needs before their own; they met together “every day”. Meeting together wasn’t something they did because they wanted to do church – they met together because they were church! As we saw just now, the church is a body or a family – and Acts shows us what that might look like in practice.
It’s so important to understand this. A lot of Christians know that ‘church’ is not about the building. But I think we still too often conceive of church as something that we go to to participate in, rather than something that we are.
Early on I was playing this song by Graham Kendrick:
It’s based on Jesus’ words in John 13:
‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’
John 13:34-35
Notice what Jesus didn’t say: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you go to a service once a week.” Worshipping God together is important, but it’s only a part of being the church. I think we in much of the Western world have forgotten that we go to church because we are commanded to love one another.
Sometimes people say, “you can be a Christian without going to church”. Technically this is true, of course. I’ve spent hours visiting people who would love to come to church, but ill health has made it impossible. But – you can’t be a Christian without being part of the church. If someone claims to be a Christian but has no desire to meet with fellow Christians (let alone love them), then I’d suggest they haven’t understood what it means to be Christian.
Christians meet together because we love God and each other. That’s how it should be, at least. The word often used is “fellowship” – fellowship is really about Christians meeting together out of love for him and each other. I think we have become far too ‘event-focussed’ – so church is not about being a building, but an event that we go to.
A few weeks ago I said that the lockdowns had given us what we (thought we) wanted. I think the lockdowns have actually been helpful, because they have exposed the truth. This is what I believe has happened in this case. If we see church as an event, then it doesn’t really matter too much if it moves online. You can have songs, Bible reading, sermon, etc – all of those things can be online. The one thing you can’t really have online is fellowship.
If we’ve learned anything over the last year, it’s that meeting online (whatever technology you use – YouTube, Zoom, Facebook, etc) – isn’t really meeting. Not in the full sense of the word. It’s a very poor substitute for physical meeting. Technology of course has its uses and I have been immensely grateful for it over the last year – but it’s not a substitute for meeting face-to-face.
Now, here’s a confession. The thing I really missed at the beginning of lockdowns was all the services. Not necessarily all the people. I did miss them as well, I missed them a lot! But, if I’m totally honest, I didn’t miss the people so much as I actually missed the services.
Part of the reason for that is that church has always been about services. In my time in the church, it felt like the our purpose was to put on more events. We want to worship God – we hold an event and we all come to it. We want to evangelise – we hold an event and invite people to it. I’ve always been busy running around setting up equipment, or putting chairs out, or the like – so much so that I just haven’t had time to build deep relationships with people.
I said before in my post about being human that we were designed for relationships. We serve a Trinitarian God who is, and has always been, a community of other-person centred love. We are made in the image of God, to reflect that other-person centred love. Our human societies – and especially the church – should be a reflection of our triune God.
Unfortunately, in my experience at least, a lot of churches spend so much time putting on events that there just isn’t time to build meaningful relationships. Taking 30 minutes after a service to have a coffee is great, but it’s not time when you can build deep friendships with people. Home groups are great, and you can go deeper with people, but I’ve found that they don’t often lead to deep relationships either. I suppose that’s not surprising given that in a typical home group, you’ll spend a couple of hours per week together – and a lot of that time will be Bible study. It’s a far cry from holding everything in common and meeting together every day!
Thinking back over the past year, the people I’ve most naturally kept in touch with have been the people I have the strongest relationships with. It just happened organically, without feeling forced in any way. Some of them have been parents from the toddler group we run at the church. There are one or two people I used to spend a decent amount of time with chatting to each week. That’s the nice thing about those groups – it was a bit of time without pressure where you could just sit down and get to know someone. Unfortunately, it’s that exact kind of spending time together which I think doesn’t happen so much in “ordinary” church.
I think the big lesson for me from all this is to remember how important relationships are in a church. Church is not found in a building or an event, but in relationships with other Christians. It’s so important to work at those.
We in the church often don’t help ourselves because we try to busy ourselves with running lots of events all the time. I’m more guilty of this than most – I love events! I love being busy, I love rushing around doing stuff – especially doing stuff for God. So often, just sitting down and talking to someone feels like I’m not doing stuff.
And, to be completely honest, I think this feeling comes from a wrong view of God: sitting down and having a chat with someone is (usually) an enjoyable experience. Rushing around setting up for things might give a superficial sense of achievement, but it’s not really enjoyable in the same way. Yet I sometimes think that God wants me avoid what I find enjoyable and focus on my view of doing stuff, because I have to lay aside my desires for Christ. Well, it’s true that Christ calls us to take up our cross to follow him, but it’s completely wrong to say that means God doesn’t want us to enjoy ourselves. Rather, we should delight ourselves in him.
Take delight in the Lord,
Psalm 37:4
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
So, in a nutshell, what would I like a post-lockdown church to look like? Ultimately, one where time and space are given to relationships. Where we don’t have to feel like we have to run round and put on events all the time. Where we can get to know each other, and get to know others, properly.
We are living in a world of social distancing, a world where people are literally told to stay away from other people. I think we will emerge from this pandemic to a world where people are desperate for real, meaningful relationships. Not more Zoom or YouTube events. We the church have something distinct and important to offer the world. We are meant to show the world what it’s like to live without fear in a community of love. Let’s stop rushing around to put on church events, and start being the church.
This is just a bit of fun… I felt a bit depressed last night about Lockdown II. I had a bit of an idea and decided to relieve some of the tension by making a random lockdown generator. You can find it here.
You just click the button and it will generate ten random restrictions for you. If you don’t like it, just click again, and you’ll get ten more.
Please please please don’t take it too seriously – it’s just a bit of fun, not meant to make a political point!
What I want to look at in this piece is the way politicians and the media are talking about risk in relation to the lockdown. We are constantly being told of the risk that covid poses and the need for more lockdown. What is often sidelined or ignored completely is the risk that a lockdown poses in itself.
Let’s start with Keir Starmer’s press conference yesterday:
The number of Covid cases has quadrupled in the last three weeks. Cases may be doubling as quickly as every seven to eight days. There are now more people in hospital with Covid than on 23 March when we went into national lockdown. And while the number of cases is rising more sharply in some areas it is increasing across all regions of the UK and in all age groups.
We know from bitter experience and great personal loss where all this leads. Three things are now clear: the Government has not got a credible plan to slow infections. It has lost control of the virus. And it’s no longer following the scientific advice.
The SAGE minutes from 21 September – published yesterday – underline this. They warn that: ‘A package’ of ‘stringent interventions’ is now urgently needed. SAGE also says that: ‘not acting now… will result in a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences.’
The first thing I notice is that the focus is based on predictions of what is going to happen in the future. He says “we know … where all this leads”. If we don’t act now, according to SAGE, it will result in a “very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences”. It’s as if his prediction of the future is a foregone conclusion.
This is the kind of language I see all the time. It’s the primary reason why many people are against a herd immunity strategy. For example, as this New Scientist blog published today says, “We don’t yet know whether natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (or the experimental vaccines) will halt transmission. Until we do, assuming that herd immunity will automatically appear is unscientific and, frankly, irresponsible.”
So a herd immunity strategy is “irresponsible”, because we don’t know if it will happen or not. We don’t know – so let’s play it on the safe side. Let’s be safe and not take the risk. This is the message which we are hearing all the time from the government, from scientists, from the media. “Better safe than sorry”.
I think “better safe than sorry” is generally good advice. But, like a lot of good advice, you can go too far with it. There’s a funny scene at the start of the film Ratatouille.
An old lady spots a rat, and so she decides to deal with it in a perfectly proportionate way… with a shotgun. She ends up basically destroying her house! The action she took ended up doing far more damage than the danger.
You could think of many other examples. If you take the principle to its logical conclusion, you’d never do anything risky. In fact, you’d probably never leave the house – but wait, staying in the house carries an element of risk! And that’s the point: being alive carries an element of risk with it. We can mitigate against some risks, but there has to come a point at which we say “well, that’s a risk we’re just going to have to take”.
I know that driving is risky, for example. But I weigh up the risks and, in general, decide that the risks are pretty low and that it’s of more value to me personally to get somewhere quickly. Everyone has to accept a measure of risk in everything, but in general most of us don’t think about the risks too much. And we survive!
Add to that the fact that risk applies in more than one way. Let’s go back to the example of driving. Driving a car carries a risk. But then, what if I decide to walk? Walking carries a risk too – in fact there might be a greater risk of being run over. If I decide to cycle, again – there are risks involved. But think about it more deeply: if I drive everywhere, maybe I’ll become obese. Maybe I’ll die early of heart disease. Cycling or walking may be a bit more risky, but I’ll get more healthy.
The point is that there are risks in every area of life – no matter which course of action we take. We have to balance those risks every day. Most of us are pretty good at it – we decide what level of risk is appropriate for us, and we act accordingly. But the point is that we all have to balance risk no matter what we do.
So this brings us onto the question of the lockdown. In the speech I quoted at the start, Keir Starmer said a ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown would avert one risk – of people dying from covid. However, what he didn’t say is that there will be risks of another lockdown. I think we should consider those risks.
Also – just to re-iterate: the risks of not locking down are a “maybe”. We’ll think a little about the actual chances of that happening below. But we can see the risks of lockdowns right now.
The UK has plunged into the largest recession on record since the start of the lockdown. There could be over 700,000 redundancies in the autumn alone – bringing the total for 2020 to over one million. I don’t know anyone personally who has died of covid – I do know several people who have either lost jobs or face extreme uncertainty about whether they’ll be going back to jobs.
And we should say that a strong economy has health benefits: where does the money for the NHS come from? From the taxpayer. If the government are spending more money for people who are unemployed, and collecting less tax, the NHS is going to suffer. A recession is not going to help public health.
The lockdown has meant that many people who would (and should) have been treated for other conditions have been staying away from hospital. For example, Prof Karol Sikora warned that cancer was the next big crisis facing the NHS, because of the number of people who had not received a diagnosis. The Sun reported that hundreds of stroke and heart attacks have gone untreated.
This is what a registered nurse had to say:
The hospital had speciality wards for medical emergencies such as strokes, which were always full (before Covid). An emergency episode like a stroke can be easily diagnosed and treated with thrombolytic therapy, a hugely vital service preventing death and worsening brain injuries. The stroke ward was virtually empty. … It makes me shudder to think that these people, mainly the elderly again, collapsed and likely died at home as coming into hospital for treatment no longer seemed an option for them.
I nursed a 50-year-old lady last week who was diagnosed in January with aggressive breast cancer. Her mastectomy was planned for early March but was then cancelled. She had no contact with the Oncology Team and only just had her mastectomy 3 weeks ago. When I met her, she was waiting on the results of her recent MRI to see if her cancer had spread anywhere else. She has really experienced a lot of fear this year.
I have heard anecdotally from people I’ve spoken to that these experiences are not uncommon. Someone I know from the school gate says a friend has been delayed treatment due to covid. People are being discouraged from visiting GPs. I’ve read reports of nearly-empty GP surgeries. Where are all the people who would normally be there? Surely illnesses are not simply going away?
I think mental health is quite possibly the biggest risk which is not being talked about. I think there is a massive issue bubbling away under the surface. The ONS, for example, reported on 9th October:
Average anxiety scores for adults have increased to their highest level since April at 4.3 this week, according to the latest Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).
Of those who reported that their wellbeing has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, 63% said they felt stressed or anxious, while 64% said they felt worried about the future.
Over 60% of people are feeling stressed and anxious. Now that’s an epidemic – a mental health epidemic. Similarly, ONS data from June says:
Almost one in five adults (19.2%) were likely to be experiencing some form of depression during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in June 2020; this had almost doubled from around 1 in 10 (9.7%) before the pandemic (July 2019 to March 2020).
One in eight adults (12.9%) developed moderate to severe depressive symptoms during the pandemic, while a further 6.2% of the population continued to experience this level of depressive symptoms; around 1 in 25 adults (3.5%) saw an improvement over this period.
Many British people right now are feeling anxious and depressed. I can testify to this from my own experience! But I’m particularly worried about the effect this is having on a younger generation. For example, one of my wife’s co-workers said her daughter’s class (primary school age) are all really anxious at the moment. Someone at church said before the summer, her granddaughter refused to go back to school when she had the opportunity (she was in year six) because she was so terrified.
The lockdown directly impacts our mental health. I know of several people who are really struggling at the moment. Another lockdown would compound the mental health problem. We shouldn’t be surprised about this given that a lockdown essentially prevents us from doing what human beings are supposed to do.
This is the million dollar question, so to speak. I wouldn’t like to be a politician at the moment, to have to balance these kind of things. Personally, I don’t think the risk of another lockdown is worth the benefit of maybe saving lives. I say maybe because, as I said at the start, the ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown is based on a prediction of the future. This is a complicated subject, and it’s one I’m not a specialist in. But I think there are a few reasons to be optimistic.
This graph shows the number of weekly deaths which name covid on the death certificate. As you can see, it climbs very sharply at the beginning of April, and then in the middle of April things begin to fall off again. As you can see on the graph, deaths are beginning to climb a little but it’s nothing like what we saw in April. There’s a similar picture in other countries, too, such as France and Spain.
In fact, some people say that the peak actually happened before the full lockdown restrictions were introduced (if you take into account the typical time between infection and death).
Recently the WHO Covid-19 envoy David Nabarro said they did not recommend lockdowns apart from a short measure to ease pressure on health services. Some scientists are now saying that there is little to no evidence that lockdowns actually work:
In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper published last month, UCLA economist Andrew Atkeson and two other researchers, after looking at COVID-19 trends in 23 countries and 25 U.S. states that had seen more than 1,000 deaths from the disease by late July, found little evidence that variations in policy explain the course of the epidemic in different places.
There are other voices saying the same thing. There’s very little correlation between the way a country has responded to the virus and the number of deaths.
Even in the UK, there is some doubt as to whether local lockdowns have done anything to actually slow the spread of the virus.
There are many other angles we could talk about here, such as the fact that the average age of death from covid is about 82 (average life expectancy in the UK is about 82). We could go on – but let’s leave it there.
One of the problems with a lockdown is that it’s a blunt instrument. It’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut: you might crack the nut, but you might break a few other things in the process. My feeling is that many of our politicians and the media are keen to use the sledgehammer of lockdown without considering the risks of that strategy. I think this is doubly the case given that it’s unclear how much benefit lockdowns actually bring. Is it actually possible to control the virus?
Would a better strategy be something such as what the Great Barrington Declaration says? I’ll leave you to make your own mind up.