On Backing Into Our COVID-19 Convictions
On Backing Into Our COVID-19 Convictions
Overreaction is not a Christian principle
Dear friends and supporters:
Christian mystic A. W. Tozer was one of the most courageous, prophetic voices of the 20th century. He once warned about “backing into our convictions.“ By this he meant staking out a position not because the Bible demands it, but because we are fearful of taking some other position. We are so anxious over the prospective disapproval of our contemporaries that we permit our fear, rather than the word of God, to guide our convictions (if we can call them that). Ours is an era that craves a public digital reputation, particularly on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Therefore, the temptation to back into our convictions is constant.
Reputational Blackmail
Thoughtful conservatives are particularly vulnerable, because the regnant culture is Leftist and sneers at almost any conservatism as retrogressive, provincial, and boorish. The more intelligent, cosmopolitan, upwardly mobile that conservatives are, the more susceptible they are to backing into their convictions as a result of self-imposed reputational blackmail.
The flashpoint is the growing number of imbalanced, conspiratorial, quackish, and sometimes downright bizarre Rightists, some even on the edges of the so-called alt-right. I’m talking about Alex Jones; about military fatigues-wearing, ostentatious, gun-toting, anti-lockdown protesters; about the theorizers that Covid-19 was intentionally introduced by Democrats to capture the 2020 presidential election. These folks are often the loudest and of what many consider the “base” of the conservative movement. The fact that they are not makes little difference to culturally elite soft-core secularists — and, too often, also to genuine, that is, thoughtful and balanced, conservatives.
Conservatives rightly disavow this Rightist segment, which in an operative sense is not conservative at all, and they should.
But they often do more than disavow. They are so concerned not to be tainted by this faux conservatism that they overreact in order to win grudging approval (or at least to avoid the scorn) of prominent respectable leftists. How?
Liberty
For one thing, by broadly opposing pro-liberty, anti-lockdown protests. But public assembly protesting gubernatorial (and other political) overreach is as American as mom and apple pie. It won’t suffice to argue that the issue is not public protest, but the health dangers posed by protest. This is surely ironic, since being outside is healthier than being inside during an epidemic. In fact, non-socially distanced outside meetings are probably safer than socially distanced inside meetings. But if our concern is not to be identified with the distasteful, flag-waving rabble rousing hoi polloi, we might shy away from the visible fight for liberty, which would put us outside the conservative tent.
Church
Second: Many of us know of the Virginia pastor who flouted prudent personal contact precautions and later, along with some family members, died of the coronavirus. In the secular press he was depicted as nutty, and since few of us wish is to be considered nutty by the elite press, we might be tempted to avoid sustained, serious, principled consideration of public worship in light of the virus. The easy tack, an overreaction, would be simply to cancel all public worship until further notice — apart from any other considerations.
The correct tack would be to consider the church’s responsibility during times of coronavirus, the need of the members, the demographics of the local congregation, the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the assembly, and, taking all of these things into consideration on their knees, the elders determining when, where, and how the church should worship publicly. In some, perhaps many, cases the church should have temporarily canceled public worship. In other cases, it should not have. None should judge the other.
But in no case whatsoever should any church or individual be driven by reputational blackmail: “We don’t want to be considered a cult or weird church, so let’s just cancel.” This is a prime example of backing into one’s convictions, or, rather, lack of convictions.
Life versus the Economy
Third: Consider the moniker “lives versus the economy “ unshelved when conservatives predicted the tragedy to human lives that the economic lockdown would produce. We don’t hear this moniker as often as we did a few weeks ago, since now we observe the utterly predictable economic ravages, millions unemployed and likely millions dying in the Third World, due to draconian political lockdown measures.
But since conservatives support the free market, and since they are constantly harangued by Leftists for being callous towards people and caring only for capital, some are oversensitive to the recent (and false) “lives versus economy” bifurcation. So they backed into their conviction that the lockdown is probably a good idea since it will save lives. It is not now clear how many lives have been saved (if any), but it is clear that the lockdown unleashed massive diminution and destruction of lives.
It would’ve been more prudent to take the convictional stand all along: in a fallen world, all decisions, including public policy decisions, include trade-offs. As Thomas Sowell has noted, there are no solutions. So we must find the best trade-off possible.
Likely the best (and biblical; see Lev. 13) trade-off in the current situation would’ve been to quarantine the elderly and immunocompromised, strongly urged virus-resistant hygienic policy to the rest of the population, and keep society going. Asserting that such a policy would’ve been unthinkable and disastrous is flatly wrong. Because this approach was never tried, we don’t know whether it would’ve succeeded, or how much. We do know that the lockdown approach failed in one major respect, at least: millions of lives were destroyed by decimating the economy and countermanding the creational responsibility to work and provide for one’s own. This is a huge price to pay for caving in to reputational blackmail.
Newsflash to conservatives: it does not matter how accommodating and tolerant and intelligent and reasonable and respectable you are, if you oppose abortion and homosexuality and socialism and support individual liberty within God’s moral order and civil society and, in particular, the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all things, no amount of laudable personal qualities will protect you from Leftist sneers of your palpable ignorance, retrogression, and callousness.
Mask-wearing cowards?
There’s another form of backing into one’s convictions coming from a different direction. This was exhibited by Rusty Reno, editor of First Things, leading conservative Catholic magazine, when he declared on his Twitter account that wearing a mask during this outbreak is a sign of cowardice. Well, it can be. It also can be a form of virtue signaling. But it also can be pragmatic good sense.
My wife Sharon recently flew from San Francisco to Pittsburgh on United Airlines, which, like many others, requires masks of its passengers. She wore a mask, not because she was a coward, but because she wanted to visit her aging parents. As I write these lines, a mask is required to enter any building in San Francisco. I don’t enjoy visiting that lair of Leftism, but when I do, I don a mask, not because I crave approval or avoiding disapproval, but because I probably need to buy something and do not want the bother of a silly citation.
Staking out the mask-wearing-is-cowardice position in response to the centralized sociopolitical push toward mask-wearing is an example of backing into one’s convictions. It would be better to calmly, reasonably, and biblically determine a prudent decision about mask wearing, not simply overreact to the stampede of Leftist elites.
Conclusion
In particular, conservatives rescued from the near-alt-right fever swamps of their youth understandably cringe at any guilt-by-association with that moral morass. Revulsion toward life in the sociopolitical sinkhole of wild conspiracy theories, thinly veiled racism, constant combativeness, and anarchic economics could tempt any true conservative to fudge on his convictions to avoid the identification.
But to anxiously plant your flag on ground you have been forced to back into by your opponent is not a principled stand.
And over time, you will find that you continue to uproot and move your flag away from unwavering conservative — and biblical — conviction.
List of Coronavirus-related posts, podcasts, and video:
“What the COVID-19 Drama Has Revealed About Our Institutional Character”
COVID-19 and Legality: An Interview with Jeffery J. Ventrella
COVID-19 and Economics: An Interview with David L. Bahnsen
COVID-19 and Theology: An Interview with Brian G. Mattson
“COVID-19 and Our Crisis of Liberty”
“Thinking Christianly During Covid”
“COVID-19, Politics, Church, and Culture”
(Dr. Ardel Caneday and I address vital questions. This was a succinct, wide-ranging conversation discussing everything from the interpretation of Romans 13, radical 2-kingdom theology, the nature of the church, whether the church should cancel public worship, whether the civil magistrate is bound to God’s law, the Founders’ view of human nature, the diabolical basis of coronavirus fear, and much more. The password is: 1j$@^=S#)
God’s Law, Coronavirus, and Love:
Get the e-book here.
Personal
I own and have read thousands of books, and my personal library monopolizes a lot of our house (much to my wife Sharon’s chagrin). I have no idea how many books I’ve read in my life. I read, dog-ear, highlight, underscore, annotate, and index almost every non-fiction book I read. My reading is tilted toward theology, philosophy, history, sociology, political science, and the history of ideas. I read mostly fiction on Kindle. I generally read about eight books at a time. I am never bored because I always have a book to read.
Here I’m obviously headed to some formal event, but I can’t remember which.
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Don’t back into your convictions. Seek the truth and plant your flag, not worried about wide approval. Seek approval from the triune God alone.
Yours for the King,
Founder & President