COVID Chaos: Back to the Cross
Personal Matters
Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8:28), should not be read individualistically. When read as a word to the Church, it holds a promise that through faith even the most painful experiences can “conform us to the image of God’s Son” (Rom 8:29). This conviction is foundational to my writing and why I believe that my own disturbed history can, via the Spirit, throw some light on how the Lord is working to mature his Bride (Eph 5:29) through reactions to the current COVID crisis. Some events leave permanent scars (John 20:27). The belting my father unjustly gave me as a pre-schooler is unforgettable, and the enforced starvation meted out by grandma has warped my attitude to food up to today. More potently perhaps, was the local church family “riot” gave me PTSD so every night for about the last 30 years I have had mentally disordering dreams. Praise God, his promise abides, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9).
Introduction
Given that the risen Lamb of God is the Person ultimately responsible for the earth’s plagues (Rev 6:8), it must be the case that his death-and-resurrection are the lens through which his own testimony (Rev 19:10) about COVID, in all dimensions, can be heard and received. This is particularly true for the reactions and responses to vaccination mandates presently polarising the Western Church. There are both external/visible dimensions and internal/invisible dimensions to this separation. (As a disclaimer, I think these mandates are mere “triggers” for deeper issues, and the hypothesis outlined below should not be read as an argument stipulating trauma as a necessary or sufficient condition for an “anti” position.)
A World in Trauma
When I started writing this article a “freedom” truck convoy in Ottawa had plunged that nation’s capital into a state of emergency. More subdued, but no less peaceless, the “Occupy Canberra” movement, a fusion of anti-vax/anti-government groups were doing similar here in fun-loving Australia. I have recently been praying into a thesis that at the core of unruly passions over vaccination, for and against, is underlying trauma. This is a spiritual and theological conviction. (Someone recently forwarded medical support for this https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20220202/trauma-may-influence-hesitancy ).
As humans were made for glory (Isa 43:6-7), “the loss of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23) is a universally traumatising event. Plus, as glory is something which naturally radiates (Heb 1:3), trauma essentially spreads itself. “Hurt people, hurt people.” The real contagion of our time, and every other, is the ravage of sin. Let me list the traumas endured by the anti-vax mandate people known to me. First, political traumas. People who grew up in communist (Romania) or fascist (apartheid S. Africa) states, someone who was deeply shocked as a new Christian by the behaviour of “mature” Christians at a church business meeting, so much so that he could not return to church for years, many Indigenous groups who can remember being used for medical experimentation. More personally, I could name those who in early childhood experienced parental loss, needle stick injury, and one who had a vivid dream about the end of the world whose traumatic images are still real in his memory. Trauma is huge because it is far bigger than the individual.
I keenly recall visiting the site of the Barlonyo massacre in northern Uganda, where in 2004 the “Lord’s Resistance Army” slaughtered 100’s. The local population are still traumatised. Multi-generational trauma is a reality in nations like The Democratic Republic of Congo, and vicarious trauma a hazard for all who provide long term care for the hurting. We are all daily surrounded by traumatised people, most of whom however are generally high functioning so few notice. COVID and its mandates have stripped some of this hiddenness away. PTL.
Surely the anger in the driver of the car plastered with, Coersion Is Not Consent End The Mandates, is a trauma response. When Donna went to the hairdresser the other day the lady shared that after innocently posting on Facebook Roll Up for WA, she was targeted by an anti-vax person so menacingly she had to close her page. Trauma perpetuates itself, as the deeper someone has been hurt the more aggressively determined they are never to be hurt again.
Offense
I do not believe trauma in itself releases aggression, but when trauma leads to offense, sin is unavoidable. Whilst submitting to or refusing vaccination may not be a sin/righteousness issue, taking offense is a sinful choice that wilfully breaks the “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3). In a good conscience, Paul commands “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, 33 just as I try to please everyone in everything I do” (1 Cor 10:32-33). Several elderly and disabled parishioners of mine have become scared of catching COVID and dying because of the public non-vax stand of others in the church. This cannot please God. A mentor wrote a booklet called, “The Justice-Men and the Great Rage”. The righteous in heaven are totally persuaded that God is always judging justly (Rev 15:4; 16:5-7), but the majority on earth think God is too slow in putting things right (Ezek 18:25-32; 2 Pet 3:4). They are stirred up to take action, and as soon as possible. Their anger reveals their heart condition away (Ps 2). Trauma plus offense turns secondary into primary issues, making people keener to read, think and argue about COVID than to read the Bible, pray and share the unsearchable riches of Christ (Eph 3:8). Whoever cannot see such passions in themself is not fully honest. Brothers and sisters, such things should not be.
Compassion in prayer and life
In a day of turmoil and division Cacophony of voices of offense drowning out the one true offense, the crucified Lord of all whose blood alone (John 6:53, 61; Gal 5:11; 1 Pet 2:8) can reconcile us and the whole world (Col 1:20). The path of reconciliation involves seeing all our wounded brothers and sisters in and through the wounds of Christ (Gal 6:17), so that we respond, not react, to them with grace and compassion. Remember, the emotion most characteristic of Jesus in the Gospels (Matt 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; Luke 7:13) and promised in the last days, is compassion. “I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Zech 12:10). Whilst contextually, this is about and end times mourning for the crucified Lord (John 19:37; Rev 1:7), prophetically, it means that the vaccinated can grieve for the state of the unvaccinated. Grieve, for their feelings of intensifying exclusion from Church and society and for their unresolved traumas, “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (Rom 12:15; 1 Cor 12:26).
Self-Protection
Praying online with a brother who was recently hurt by a mutual anti-vax mandate friend, it suddenly became transparent to me that the one who did the hurt is not intentionally malevolent but having been hurt himself in the past was acting recklessly simply because not only do hurt people hurt people, but hurt people never want to be hurt again. Whilst self-protection is the most natural of all human responses, it is the least Christlike. “When he (Jesus) was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed.” (1 Pet 2:23-24). What the Spirit is calling for from the deeply hurt amongst us is a peaceful spirit of reconciliation.
We’ve Seen This Before
I am old enough to recall virulent non-rational trauma-induced responses amongst Christians form decades ago. In this case very godly conservative Evangelicals thought the Charismatic movement was sent by the devil to divide the Church. (Their own rabid responses, like casting out the “spirit of tongues” from people, proved to be self-fulfilling prophecies.) or, more personally, the similar affections of a highly intelligent Christian psychologist who let loose on me because my teaching reminded her of the dangerous and damaging “revivalist” preaching that abused her as a child. These folk, deep down, were still hurting children. Who isn’t in some place inside? Praise God, Jesus can heal anything when his Body grows up.
Healing
It could be that this teaching will provoke angry responses form some of the no-vax people close to me. And some of the pro-vax majority will think I haven’t gone far enough. I no one is pleased with this message, I will “cop that”, because I sense in the Spirit it would be a God-given opportunity to absorb the effects of trauma in others because of our shared loss of the glory of God. In other words, such responses would be a gift designed in God’s final purpose to make me more like JESUS (Rom 8:28-29). Christ’s love is not a “fluffy bunny” love but a real unconditional love in the world that “bears all things” (1 Cor 13:7), it bears even the hurdle of underserved offense. This is the uncomfortable but indispensable way of the cross. Ongoing sleep disturbance is a small cost to pay for an increasing presence of the Lord.
Conclusion
Generally speaking, the Western Church lacks biblically directed maturity to ask Christ in the Spirit (Eph 6:18; Jude 20) to reveal to her his final purposes for every trauma, personal or global. This is because we are a Laodicean community of incredibly materially indulged people (Rev 3:14-22). If what I have outlined above is basically correct, we should be grieving over the divided and immature spiritual state of our Church, especially for her failure to keep Christ at the sole centre, circumference and substance of every conversation (Col 1:16). Its time our congregations understood that especially traumatised people, such as the mentally ill, disabled, abused and so on, are to be treasured as keys to the kingdom of God, and that the Lord in his wisdom has sent already into our midst long term traumatised ethnic communities, like the Karen from Burma and the Copts from Egypt, who have learned the ways of God in a far deeper form than nearly all of us. in Christ, we can overcome together (Rev 12:11).