Covid and Popular Theology

I am interested that much of the Christian discussion about Covid focusses on the infectiousness and morbidity of the disease and the effectiveness of vaccination. While some of this discussion is helpful, this discussion takes place in a materialistic/naturalistic framework without any consideration of whether the cause of, or solutions to, Covid are spiritual. I am struck that my worldview seems to be very different from that of many other Christians.

The popular theology these days seems to be that God created the world and set it going (so everything that happens is his will); he sent Jesus to die and get us to heaven, but apart from that, we should not expect him to do too much in our world. I call this theology that we have imbibed from our culture “practical deism” with a bit of fatalism thrown in. Most prayer and thanksgiving is for things that could happen anyway; my daughter will find a nice man to marry (not surprising if she is nice), the surgeon will do a good job on my mother’s bowel (which he has trained for years to do), but we don’t expect too much more. Some hope that God will dramatically intervene in the world to bring revival, but they don’t really expect it.

In parallel to this is an implicit materialism/naturalism that says that everything important happens in the physical world we can observe and that the spiritual powers of evil do not influence the big events of life (also imbibed from the culture). The assumption seems to be that the billions of evil spirits that the Bible describes are in Africa working with the witch doctors or doing trivial things like tempting me to eat an extra chocolate biscuit (actually just my flesh). In the scriptures, the spiritual powers of evil are very strategic, working cleverly at pivotal times to shape history and shift the balance of power on earth in their favour.

I am concerned that many of the Christians I encounter are more willing to blame evil on human conspiracies than on the spiritual powers of evil: eg, the dastardly Chinese released the virus to destroy us, the medical organisations and governments are suppressing information about vaccine side effects, drug companies are suppressing good news about Ivermectin, the Democrats stole the election from Trump. Many Christians seem to be willing to believe that human conspirators are responsible for most evil in the world but choose to ignore the works of the spiritual powers of evil.

If it is assumed that the spiritual powers of evil are involved in situations where they are active, it appears as if the materialistic/naturalistic worldview assumption is correct. This is risky for the future of the church.

When Christians think about what is going on with Covid, they need to rise above the naturalistic assumptions that we have imbibed from our culture. I see the Covid pandemic as a spiritual attack on the people of the earth, that does what the spiritual powers of evil love to do; kill, rob, and destroy.

Luke records Jesus healing a woman crippled by an evil spirit that had done its best to rob and destroy her life.

A woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all (Luke 18:11).

If the powers of evil could damage a woman’s spine and prevent her from raising her head for eighteen years, it must be easy for a few evil spirits to meddle with the DNA of a bat virus so that it can infect humans, or to tamper with the Covid virus and create a Delta variant so that it becomes more virulent and infectious.

Free Markets (20) - Theology and Value

Theologians are expert on values.

• God is good
• Murder is evil

They understand these values, but when it comes to economic issues they get confused. Free markets allow business to create value, yet theologians make statements like these.

• Free markets are morally flawed.
• Capitalism is evil.
• Making money is wrong
• Profits are bad

They tend to support actions that destroy value and object to institutions that add value. Despite their expertise, they seem to be confused about value.

Theologians tend to see profits as a sign of immoral behaviour. They assume that money is made by cheating people. This is not true. Successful businesses must offer things that people want. This is not easy, because people will only buy products that:

• are more valuable to them than the price they have to pay for it;
• are more valuable to them than any other product at the same price;
• makes them better off than they were before making the purchase.

If a business cannot produce things at a price that fulfils these conditions, buyers will go to other producers or buy different products. Producers who do not make people better off will not make a profit for long.

Adding Value
Profit is a crude measure of the extent to which the business has made people better off. The costs of production reflect the value of components, materials and labour used in production. The price received reflects the value to buyers purchasing the product. The difference between sales and costs reflects the additional value created by the producer.

Profit = income – expenditure
Profit ≈ value added

This is new value that did not exist before. The producer created the value by making the product and by finding people who valued it.
To make a profit, a business must add value. They must take some components and put them together in a way that makes them more useful to other people. The components must be worth more when put together in the product than they were worth separately. That is adding value.

We want producers to add value, so we implicitly want them to make a profit. Therefore, profit is good. This is acknowledged in the scriptures.

All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty (Prov 14:23).

The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty (Prov 21:5)

Businesses make money by adding value. They must have produced goods or services that made people better off, so making money is good.