Some of the Most Visible Christians in America Are Failing the Coronavirus Test
If the coronavirus is a test of our collective character, some American Christians are flat-out flunking.
Consider the popular pastor John Piper, who was asked what he would say to pastors who claim that the pandemic is God’s judgment on sinful cities and arrogant nations. “God sometimes uses disease to bring particular judgments upon those who reject him and give themselves over to sin,” Piper responded. Or perhaps look to R. R. Reno, the editor of the conservative Christian journal First Things, who argued that it’s not worth a “mass shutdown of society” just to fight the virus. “There is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost,” Reno wrote, decrying the “ill-conceived crusade against human finitude and the dolorous reality of death.”
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