I've had a rotten feeling in my gut since the beginning of this COVID-19 crisis. But I've been afraid to say it out loud. I've been afraid of criticism and hostility. But I'm just going to say it. I'm going to tell you what I really think. We let the government shut down our churches, based on projections. And meanwhile department stores, Wal Marts, liquor stores, abortion mills, and so many other businesses remained open. In a time of crisis, instead of standing firm, we cowered behind the skirt of government, putting our faith not in God, but in the cult of 'the experts.' We trusted in experts, numbers, and government, and now only after do we realize that the numbers were terribly inflated. Two million projected deaths, became seventy thousand. A supposed 5% death rate became a reality of 0.2%.
We let the news media influence us more than God's word. We let them stir us into an all out panic. And it turns out the risk was actually no greater than a severe flu season.
We failed, as the church. I failed. And I can only hope and pray that God will have mercy on us, as the ministers of our time, for so easily being led to shut our doors, and run about with hands raised in terror, over a largely manufactured crisis. If this was a test of our leadership, as pastors, oh, how we terribly failed.
We put our faith in experts, in scientism, in the projections of secular organizations. These are the same experts who tell us every five to ten years that the world is going to end because of global warming, global cooling, and/or climate change. These are the same experts that tell us unborn babies aren't really people. These are the same experts that extol the virtues of socialism. These are the same experts who tell us marriage must be redefined. These are the same experts who always have some new scenario as to why we need them.
It's not wrong to look for wisdom and guidance from those who have expertise in areas like medicine, technology, science, and psychology. But when we allow them to take over, and set policy outside their areas of expertise, we invite problems. We must look for wisdom and knowledge from those of the world. And in many cases they have great knowledge to share, and excellent ideas to set across. Of course we always test their ideas against the scriptures, our Christian worldview.
I could be wrong. I really do hope I'm wrong about this. But I sense that we've failed a great test. We've scrambled, and shut down, and embraced the experts and their ideas, when we should've been the church in a time of a crisis, standing firm, taking precautions, but standing firm. And I hope God can forgive me, for letting this happen in such a time as this.
In the wake of COVID-19 we see that church attendance has dropped something like 30%-50% in the country. Some of this could be related to people's fears of COVID exposure, however, we don't see grocery stores or restaurants empty anymore. No, just churches. If this isn't evidence that we failed, I don't know what is.
We've failed our people. We've shown ourselves to be cowards, scrambling in fear, slamming the doors with a bang at the first sign of a problem. We've allowed the world to so completely influence us that we lost sight of our God, our Word, and our courage. How very sad. We ought all to search our hearts, and search for God in this failure, and repent before Him in ashes and tears.
