When going to Church is a Sin

When Going to Church is a Sin

Sometimes religious folks can get pretty scary. That’s the case now as some churches defy orders to avoid large gatherings to protect the public against COVID-19. Their obstinance is baffling and exasperating to the rest of America, which, for the most part, is doing their level best to follow CDC, federal, and state guidelines.

There is, however, a twisted logic to the madness that causes otherwise sane and law-abiding Americans to willingly — albeit needlessly — put their lives and the lives of others at risk. For them it is an act of faith. In reality, it is more about arrogance and ignorance wrapped in religious garb.

They are making a trinity of blunders involving culture, context, and Christ.

Culture

Religious culture has its weird side. Special dress, language, and behavior are part of the package. Underneath much of it lies unexamined worldviews, some of which involve defiant attitudes. An us-against-the-world stance can easily arise, too often based on the ethnocentric attitude that “we’ve got it right and everybody else is wrong.” Or, in religious parlance, “We’re God’s chosen people; the Elect.” So what does that make the rest of us?

Sadly, this kind of thinking is widespread but especially noticeable in the south, where many of the non-compliant churches are based. Unbeknownst to them, their defiance is a large part of their inherited culture. Their self-identity has congealed around what they stand against instead of what they are for. I know. I am a Christian, grew up in the south, and now live next to otherwise descent southern neighbors who proudly fly the Confederate flag. Too often such people harbor a negative orientation toward the world outside their own, filled with xenophobia.

The defiant church pastors are really to blame. Their non-cooperation with shelter-in-place orders masks itself as true faith (befitting the “true church”). Defying the order feels like act of faith to them because it reinforces the “set apart” thinking that frames their view of life and the outside world.

Notice what’s going on here? The pastors are making it all about themselves, all the while thinking it’s about the things of God. The spotlight is on them and their “bold” stance against every outside “threat,” including leaders from complaint churches and every secular authority. Ironically, that attitude is essentially a form of idolatry, putting oneself before God and thus breaking one the Ten Commandments. Gullible parishioners are sheepishly following their shepherds, seemingly just as ignorant of what’s really happening.

Context

There are plenty of scriptures that seem to justify going to church is always a good thing — putting “God’s law” ahead of “man’s law,” as one pastor resolutely declared. One example is Hebrews 10:25, which instructs believers not to neglect meeting together (for public worship). But context is everything. The verse was written in the first century to Jewish Christians under intense persecution, a threat no Christian in America faces today. Anyone can pull a verse or two out of the Bible and form an errant theology based upon it, justifying whatever they want to do…or not do in this case.

Using a few verses from the Bible to justify one’s actions is fraught with danger. The Bible can’t speak to us if we’re already loudly spouting intransigent opinions. Any single verse should rightly be interpreted in the light of the entirety of scripture. It’s what the Apostle Paul called “rightly dividing the Word of Truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). He was admonishing his understudy Timothy to keep the believers under his pastoral care from taking scriptures out of context and getting into futile and contentious arguments about what each and every word meant.

Christ

So much of the confusion and apparent contradictions one comes across in the Bible — especially meshing the Hebrew Scriptures with the Greek-derived New Testament — can be resolved when filtered through the words, actions, and person of Jesus. Called “Word of God made flesh,” Christ provides the very best template to understand and apply any verse from the Bible through what he represented, said, and did. In the succinct and deeply profound declaration of the missionary and doctor of theology Heidi Baker, “Jesus Christ is perfect theology.”

And this brings us to perhaps the most well known of all of Christ’s sayings: “Love your neighbor as yourself” — a direct quote he took from Leviticus 19:18. Jesus said it on a number of occasions. But perhaps the most telling was in Luke 10:25–37, where, in answer to a question of whom one’s neighbor might be, offered the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The Good Samaritan

This parable sheds much light on what’s going on with the defiant churches today. Jesus clearly indicated that “the neighbor” one was to love was anyone and everyone. Because the Samaritans were considered unclean and despised as “half-breeds” in biblical times, full-blooded Jews were to have nothing to do with them. Yet, knowing that quite well, the Samaritan broke the customs and the law to minister to and save the life of one who despised him. In so doing, Jesus declared, he fulfilled the law of love toward his neighbor. Jesus then told his hearers, “Go and do likewise.”

The defiant churches are not doing likewise when blatantly disregarding the welfare of the “outsiders” who have crossed their path. To hold services and expose churchgoers and others to the virus is to openly declare that the health concerns of the public are not important — to uncaringly walk right on by anyone who may suffer because of it. That is not faith. It’s loveless disinterest cloaked in pseudo-spirituality. It’s self-centeredness masquerading as Christian conviction. It’s prideful, egotistical religiosity — the kind Christ condemned on numerous occasions.

The Law of Love

The gospel of Jesus puts the best interest of others first. One’s personal theology, culture, and personality are relegated to the back seat. That is not happening in any church that physically meets together for worship during the pandemic. None can possibly claim to love his or her neighbor in doing so. They delude themselves to think otherwise, disgracing the God they claim to extol. As Paul stated in Romans 13:10, “Love does no wrong to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law.”

God’s law is no longer a list of strictures against this or that — as many in the Church wrongfully believe — but is written on our hearts and expressed through love and concern for others. Paul, a converted Pharisee and expert in Jewish law, summarized it this way in Galatians 5:14: “The entire Law is fulfilled in a single decree: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Until the crisis is past, staying home on Sundays fulfills God’s law because, plain and simple, it is the loving thing to do.

Traditionally, many church services end with a benediction to go out into the world and share the manifest love of God. Until the pandemic is quelled, as each defiant church service ends, many parishioners will instead go out and share the deadly coronavirus.

May God have mercy upon us all.