Much has been said about all the different Christian responses to the Coronavirus. Everything from pastors ignoring the social distancing directives to claiming that the Corona Virus is a judgment from God. The reason for all these different responses to the virus is the same reason we have so many different faith based reactions to any other event in culture. Cultural Christianity vs. Biblical Christianity.
Cultural Christianity is a faith based on culture, religious tradition and whatever our personal philosophy comes up with. Biblical Christianity is based on Biblical truth. Cultural Christianity has led to Pastors burning Korans, replacing faith with politics and handling snakes. Biblical Christianity has the answers for living in an ever-changing world.
Cultural Christianity is how our society is inoculated against Biblical truth. Just as a physician injects a patient with a small amount of a dead version of a virus our society is exposed to small portions of a dead Cultural Christianity. The result is a society that is largely rejecting Christian faith. This rejection is based on something done or said in the name of Christianity that is not Christian at all.
Unfortunately, Cultural Christianity is replacing Biblical Christianity at an alarming rate. This results in people expressing extreme behaviors because of the Coronavirus and blaming it on their Christian faith. The best way to illustrate how easy it is for scriptural truth to get replaced by a cultural faith is through the Christmas story.
The Christmas stories.
The facts understood in our culture about the birth of Christ are accepted everywhere. Three wise men sitting at the manger containing the newborn Jesus is what we see depicted on Christmas television shows, church nativity scenes and under our own Christmas trees. The only problem with these depictions is that it never happened.
The wise men were never at the manger. In Matthew the 2nd chapter we are told that these wise men fist went to Herod’s royal palace in Jerusalem to find the one who was born king of the Jews. It is a logical place to look for a king. When they didn’t find Jesus there, they followed the star to the house where he was staying. Jesus was now in the family house as a toddler because it was anywear from eighteen months to two years after his birth that the wise men arrived.
In Luke the 2nd chapter we read that no one was there with Joseph and Mary at the birth. Shepherds who had been tending their flock arrived shortly after the birth, having heard the announcement of the angel. This can be clearly understood on just a basic reading of the scriptures.
I won’t spend any more time on this except to make a point. If the culture can get completely wrong something so easy to verify and understand in scripture as the Christmas story, how much easier would it be to get the Biblical nature of faith, hope or a Christian reaction to the coronavirus wrong? Our only hope of living the Christian faith in culture is to have a correct Biblical understanding of what Christian faith is.
Biblical Christian Faith 1st Corinthians 13:13 and Hebrews 11:1
To have a correct understanding of faith we must understand the other terms that relate directly to it, like hope. In the above scripture in 1st Corinthians we are told that along with faith and love, hope will last forever. Biblical hope is not like cultural hope. Cultural hope is a wish that something might happen. Biblical hope is acceptance of a given promise. For instance, we are promised forgiveness, salvation and that Jesus will always be with us.
Believing these promises is not wishing; it is accepting the blessed hope attached to specific promises in scripture. Biblical hope relates directly to Biblical faith.
In the above scripture in Hebrews we read, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” A good way to understand the relation between faith and hope is the analogy of ordering a package online. An online company makes us a promise of being able to deliver a certain item by displaying it on their website. We act on that promise with our hope of receiving what we pay for.
“Now faith is the tracking number for things hoped for the evidence of things on the way.”
When we receive our tracking number from the company we still have not seen the item, we have not seen someone pull it off a distant shelf or load it on a distant truck, but our tracking number allows us to anticipate and plan around the items arrival.
Biblical faith allows us to anticipate, plan for and act on the promises of God revealed in scripture. If there is no correct Biblical understanding of God’s promises, then there can be no Christian faith.
Corona Virus and Christian Faith
This is why we see so much misguided faith in times of trouble. Much of it is not based on the promises of God but on the wishes of culture.
"We walk by faith and not by sight, but God still expects us to look both ways before we cross the street."
To look both ways in the current traffic of the Coronavirus is to follow the guidelines and recommendations of the medical professionals. Ignoring the medical professionals is not acting on a faith based Biblical teaching but is is only cultural wishing. Wishing to show that we are better than others, wishing that we are the only ones that hear and are protected by God, wishing that God follows our plan and not His own are just some of the cultural wishing that we have seen.
If we are to express Christian faith into culture than we should express Love to our neighbor, look out for one another, pray for one another and treat each other as we would want to be treated. We should be examples of what to do to keep each other safe and how to live in such a time as this.
Our faith tells us that no matter how bad it gets God is still good and we can believe His promises. This is the joy of our Christian faith.
Our next post: Is Covid 19 a judgment from God?