
Covid Arrogance
12 And Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'" [Luk 4:12 ESV]
I often think of this passage about not tempting God in the context of our Covid 19 pandemic. This verse was Jesus' response when Satan prodded him to prove he was the son of God by surviving an obviously deadly stunt. Jesus refused because doing so would show a sinful arrogance toward God. It seems to me that if there's a deadly disease out there, and you go out there anyway, it's the same kind of arrogance. Where in the NT did the newly formed churches take fried chicken lunches out to the local leper colony for a sit down picnic, or invite lepers to attend their church? Wouldn't God have protected them from that disease, and given us a dramatic example of how to conduct ourselves as Christians by defying dangerous diseases? I have heard many argue that Christians should have ignored the lock downs at least to attend church. Those who advocated for this insisted that God would protect those who attended, and if He didn't, it was because their time was up anyway. Sort of a win win for the zealous.
I suspect that the people who were urging defiance of the quarantine, who weren't thinking about the verse above, were big believers in these verses: 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover." [Mar 16:17-18 ESV] According to these verses, I guess I'm a non-believer because I would never use this verse to protect me while I picked up a rattlesnake in each hand or drank a big tall glass of Drano. I really don't think many of those urging church attendance in the early days of Covid-19 would either. Not many.
But I will also say that there are some people out there who do some truly dangerous things in the name of spreading the gospel and who survive it time after time. How can that demonstrable fact be reconciled with Jesus' reply to Satan? I believe the key is the calling. If God calls you to preach to the lepers, then He will protect you while you do His work, or He will use your death from leprosy as a witness to bring many lost to Him by your example. I think many called to be missionaries are protected by God's own hand as they penetrate horribly dangerous places and face horribly hostile peoples. But if you are not called for such a mission, and go to prove your great faith, you're going to get leprosy, or collect some pointy sticks. And it won't be any lack of faith that caused your death. It will be the disdainful arrogance of ignoring a contagious disease to pridefully broadcast your piety.
I will add one more thought. Some of those in the prideful arrogance category guilted a lot of justifiably fearful people into doing things that were dangerous for them, and in my opinion, not part of God's will for them. Odds are that some of these guilted people died of Covid-19 because of it. I don't think God will forget about all that.