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.