Judgement and Victim-Blaming in America: Misguided Responses to COVID-19
June 10, 2020 | By Timothy Han, SM ‘22. Timothy is majoring in Comparative Literature.
When we begin to point fingers, to victim-blame, to separate the alleged wheat from the supposed chaff in advance of the Lord, we fail the test of love.
In Job’s divine suffering, his ‘friends’ come to judge him and accuse him of being righteously condemned for his own sin. God later rebukes them.
With the total number of loved ones and neighbors lost to COVID-19 surpassing 100,000 in America, we are naturally seeking out answers for our questions and our grief. I have delayed publishing this article so as not to take attention away from the important, ongoing conversation regarding the murder of George Floyd. But as the country slowly transitions into a socially-distanced approximation of normalcy, it is important for us in the Church to reflect on how some of our leaders have responded to the pain and suffering of the pandemic. Many members of the Church have reached out in loving-kindness to their grieving neighbors, extending God’s message of comfort and love for those who weep. Unfortunately, there are some prominent Christian voices who have instead offered hurtful interpretations of what we are now experiencing. Even a survey of just those influential Christians writers with a mainstream audience demonstrates a painfully divisive response to coronavirus.
Asked to comment on how to Biblically understand the current global pandemic, theologian John Piper offered the following interpretation: if non-believers die to COVID-19, it may be because, “God sometimes uses disease to bring particular judgments upon those who reject him and give themselves over to sin.” But if Christians die to COVID-19, it is simply because we too are mortal: “The difference for Christians, who trust Christ, is that our experience of this corruption is not condemnation.” Dr. Piper painstakingly prefaced his message as neither definitive nor intended as a conjoint assessment, but simply “building blocks in our effort… to make sense of [a global tragedy].”[1] Nevertheless, his suggestions for Biblical interpretation posit a troubling dichotomy between the righteous and the righteously condemned. Such a juxtaposition, although intended in good faith to help interpret this crisis, can lead to the rhetoric of victim-blaming and self-righteousness found in Christian triumphalism.
In contrast to Dr. Piper’s tone, R.R. Reno, the editor of First Things (an ecumenical, conservative magazine which styles itself “America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion”) is bombastic and hyperbolic in his criticisms of stay-at-home orders:
The Eucharist itself is now subordinated to the false god of ‘saving lives...’ The pro-life cause concerns the battle against killing, not an ill-conceived crusade against human finitude and the dolorous reality of death…. Just so, the mass shutdown of society to fight the spread of COVID-19 creates a perverse, even demonic atmosphere…. Fear of death and causing death is pervasive—stoked by a materialistic view of survival at any price and unchecked by Christian leaders who in all likelihood secretly accept the materialist assumptions of our age.[2]
Mr. Reno incorrectly assumes that the COVID-19 death count is a set and inevitable fact. Coronavirus is neither Pharoah’s nor Sennacherib’s Angel of Death, come to collect a certain number of proscribed lives. It is an evil that we can and ought to fight. Just as Joseph stored grain in anticipation of the years of famine and Americans build storm cellars in Tornado Alley, we too should prevent needless COVID-19 death. Contrary to Mr. Reno’s suggestion, to do so is not a hubristic attempt at immortality, but instead an act of human decency.
Moreover, Mr. Reno adopts a rather Gnostic position when he claims that the Church accommodating stay-at-home orders is a submission to sinful materialism. Christ Himself commands us to care for our neighbors not just in spiritual terms, but in material terms as well. Christ commands us to feed and clothe the poor when they are in need (Matthew 25:34-40). Our Lord broke the spiritual regulations of the Sabbath day to heal a disabled man (Mark 3:1-6). And when Christ saw that the 5000 and their families were hungry, He had compassion on them and gave them bread to eat in addition to the spiritual food with which He nourished them (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-15). Just as our Savior did, ministers and clergy can and should demonstrate concern for the physical health of their congregants. The decision by many churches to hold virtual services is not a capitulation to creeping secularism. It is instead a difficult choice made out of genuine concern and compassion for our neighbors.
Finally, even if one leaves aside the mistaken premises of Mr. Reno’s argument, his article presents a heartbreaking dearth of compassion. Were it not so dangerous, Mr. Reno’s stoic resolve against death would be admirable. However, at a moment when more than 100,000 American families are in mourning––and who knows how many of us will soon enough lose loved ones to COVID-19––Mr. Reno’s rhetoric harmfully divides the Church.
The indiscriminately contagious nature of the novel coronavirus means that we cannot simply cordone off the old and the immunocompromised, stow them away in a corner of society for two years, and move on with our lives. This disease spreads into nursing homes, into hospitals, into our homes, and it will continue to spread at deadlier rates if we do not all take precautions. Mr. Reno’s argument would have the elderly, the immunocompromised, the frail, and the young and middle-aged who are still dying from coronavirus meekly march off to their deaths like so many sheep being led to the slaughter (Romans 8:36).
It is one thing for Mr. Reno to advocate for keeping church doors open. It is another thing altogether for Mr. Reno to accuse Christian leaders of being secret materialists. Mr. Reno benefits no one and harms many people when he says that obeying stay-at-home orders is not just misguided, but an acquiescence to demonic forces. At a moment when the Church ought to come together to support our brothers and sisters in need, Mr. Reno glorifies unnecessary death.
In what has become unfortunately routine during this pandemic, some of the most troubling statements have come from the bully pulpit of the White House. Ralph Drollinger is the leader of the Trump Administration’s White House Bible Study, which includes 10 Cabinet ministers. He is also the founder of Capitol Ministries, a conservative, Evangelical organization aimed at influencing officials in local, state, and federal governments. In response to the tragedy of coronavirus, Mr. Drollinger has concluded: “It is reasonable to believe that God is judging America via consequential wrath.”[3] Mr. Drollinger clarifies that a “small minority of individuals who are grossly disobedient to God… are largely responsible for God’s consequential wrath on our nation.” At precisely the moment that Christians ought to mourn with, pray for, and love our neighbors, Mr. Drollinger instead picks scapegoats and divides the Church. So, whom should we blame for coronavirus, according to Mr. Drollinger?
The “unregenerate” who do not believe in God. In Mr. Drollinger’s scathing judgement, non-believers must be “lying.” Because they must be “suppressing the truth” within themselves, in Mr. Drollinger’s estimation non-believers have rendered themselves intellectually incapable of engaging with believers: “Their subsequent engagement ends in futile dialog [sic] and reasoning. Such communications are moronic, or roughly equivalent to an [sic] intellectual level of a 7–12 year-old.”
Environmentalists. In the screed against environmentalism to which Mr. Drollinger directs the reader, he strawmans and harshly maligns the movement: “The religion of Radical Environmentalism on the other hand is anti-mankind. In their twisted way of thinking, devoid of acknowledging, serving and worshipping God, all they have left is the physical world around them in which they find themselves.”[4]
The LGBT community. According to Mr. Drollinger, the “proclivity” toward homosexuality is itself a manifestation of God’s “forsaking wrath.” One wonders how Mr. Drollinger thinks that homosexuality can be at once a punishment for sin and the cause of the sin itself.
Mr. Drollinger also includes those with “depraved mind[s]” and those who encourage the aforementioned wicked, concluding his survey of American sin by declaring: “These five characteristics provide the mature-in-Christ Christian public servant with enormous insights and discernment in order to wisely identify the presence of forsaking wrath in those around him.” It is precisely this language of “those around him,” the condemnation of others from a seat of arrogant self-righteousness, that is so harmful, so destructive, and so contrary to Christ’s message. The haughty triumphalism of Mr. Drollinger, who uses his theology as a bludgeon, blinds the Church to the pain of those with whom we ought to mourn and suffer.
Scripture explicitly warns us not to point fingers at our neighbors: “There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” (James 4:12, ESV). If we disagree with our neighbors, Christ provides us with a template to lovingly correct our brothers and sisters (Matthew 18:15-17). I don’t see much love in Mr. Drollinger’s message. Mr. Drollinger’s exclusionary, needlessly provocative, and judgemental message tells us to blame others for our misfortunes. And if our environmentalist or secular neighbors are dying from coronavirus, Mr. Drollinger tells us that it’s their fault, anyways.
This triumphalism finds its roots in certain elements of Scripture but does so at the cost of ignoring the spirit of God’s message. The Psalmist of Psalm 1 eagerly anticipates the judgement of the winnowing fork, or of the Psalm 2 God who sits in judgement over evil. True, when evil is crushed––when “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more”––there will be cause for great joy. But in awaiting the Exodus, we too often forget the long years of captivity when we too were marginalized, and how we thus ought to care for the marginalized among us.
The God of Scripture repeatedly warns us not to forget that we too were once strangers in a strange land. Before giving the Ten Commandments, God reminds us, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2, ESV). He repeatedly reminds us that He is the God of the downtrodden: “Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19, ESV)
Triumphalism ensnares us in the dangerous trap of “us” against “them,” the saved within the walls of the church against the barbarians at the gates. This triumphalism is the exact opposite of Augustine’s conception of the Church as a dragnet, bringing in all of us––wretched, lost, and in need of salvation. The Church ought to be a hospital for the sick, not a museum of the perfect. Of course, there is evil in this world. Scripture’s ubiquitous “be not afraid” indicates that there is evil to fear. Yet that evil is rarely “those around [us],” but instead the battle we all face against sin’s dominion.
In the context of our current global tragedy, the divisive and victim-blaming comments of influential Christians like Mr. Reno and Mr. Drollinger are especially harmful because they negate the particular goodness of Christ. What has always set YHWH apart from the false gods of the world has been, is, and forever will be His care for the poor, the downtrodden, and the lost. Christ broke bread with prostitutes and tax collectors; YHWH remained with a nation of slaves for four centuries in Egypt and followed Judah in captivity to Babylon. Our Savior was crucified. Our Savior was crucified.
God’s choice to stay with His people, even in defeat, was a rarity in the ancient world. In a world where countless sets of gods jockeyed for relevancy, the gods of defeated peoples were either cast away as false powers or tamed by their conquerors. Livy tells the myth of how Juno, the goddess of Rome’s early rival Veii, was incorporated into the Roman pantheon. In his account, upon conquering Veii, Roman soldiers entered the Temple of Juno in gleeful triumph and mockingly asked, “Juno, do you want to go to Rome?” to which the statue nodded her ascent (Livy, 5.22). In his Aeneid, Vergil depicts the gods of Rome defeating the gods of Egypt in combat.[5] The images and idols of defeated gods were paraded in Roman triumphs and the Philistines dragged the captured Ark of the Covenant as a trophy into the temple of their god Dagon (1 Samuel 5). Psalm 137 presents an image of this kind of defeat, when Babylonean overlords mock their Judean captives:
By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
The Psalmist’s lament reads in the same emotional register of, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?” My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? (Psalm 22:1, ESV). But the miracle is that, yes, even in a foreign lord, we can sing the Lord’s song. The miracle of our God is that He abides with us in trial, in tribulation, in defeat––yes, even in death. He did not abandon His people in Egypt, or in the Sinai desert, and He abides with us even today, in the midst of so much death and suffering. God abides with us and in us, even here. To reduce Jesus Christ to merely the God of the vanquisher and victor is to strip God of His immeasurable loving-kindness and fidelity: I Am is the God of the sojourner and the prostitute, the slave and the crucified.
The global Church reflects this message of a God for the marginalized. Far from Latin Christendom or Manifest Destiny America, the Church is increasingly socio-economically and geographically diverse. A majority of the Church lives in the Global South. As many Christians live in sub-Saharan Africa as in Europe. It may seem shocking, but more Christians died as martyrs in the 20th century than in every previous century combined. Some of the most radically on-fire churches today are house churches under persecution in the Global South and Asia. In South Asia, lower-caste Hindus adopted Christ by the thousands, drawn to a God who dared to touch the untouchables near Him. In the American South, enslaved African-Americans sought the God of the slave and the Church remains a source of comfort for many in this systematically marginalized community.
The strain of Christian triumphalism that led Mr. Drollinger and like-minded Christians to point fingers does not reflect the reality of our Church or our Christ. When we begin to point fingers, to victim-blame, to separate the alleged wheat from the supposed chaff in advance of the Lord, we fail the test of love. The struggle is within each of us against sin, not between ourselves and our neighbors. Instead of judgement, the Church ought to proffer prayer, love, and kindness, to be the manifestation of Christ’s second Beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4, ESV). Amen.
[1] https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-do-we-make-sense-of-the-coronavirus
[2] https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/03/say-no-to-deaths-dominion
[3] https://capmin.org/is-god-judging-america-today/
[4] https://capmin.org/coming-to-grips-with-the-religion-of-environmentalism/
[5] Augustine later quoted this line from Vergil (Aeneid VIII.698-700) in full in his Confessions (Confessiones VIII.2.3).