Christianity and COVID-19

Pathways for Faith

Chammah J. Kaunda, Atola Longkumer, Kenneth R. Ross, Esther Mombo, Chammah J. Kaunda, Atola Longkumer, Kenneth R. Ross, Esther Mombo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032123455
• eBook ISBN: 9781000522310
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This volume explores current understandings of the global meaning of faith and suffering in the context of COVID-19 and interrogates responses to the pandemic that have emerged from World Christianity. It includes chapters by a range of international contributors approached from a variety of angles within Global Christian theology. They provide reflections and analyses focused on the question of God, human suffering, structural injustice, the role of the church and Christian praxis in the milieu of COVID-19, where misery and dying is a daily routine. This book will be of interest to scholars of Missiology, World Christianity, biblical/public/contextual theology and various Contemporary Christian studies.

PART 1 FAITH MAKING SENSE OF SUFFERING

1 A critical examination of how some questionable perspectives are revealed within Chinese Christian reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic

DOI: 10.4324/9781003244080-3

Tsung-I Hwang

Introduction

Rare events like the COVID-19 pandemic in the past decades have lasted for such a long time, inflicted such a grievous, widespread, various and diverse harm to human lives globally so that the general Christian reactions to it are perceived and observed readily, through both individual communications and public media. In facing this unexpected disaster (but not limited to)—one that threatens individual lives and livelihood and affects the social and economic stability¹ —the immediate response and reaction of Christians and churches to it are naturally, directly and strongly reflected by what they prayed about and what they were taught to pray about. Theoretically speaking, the prayers of Christians and churches should be based on an informed Christian worldview. However, among all kinds of immediate reactions and responses of Chinese Christians and churches (but not limited to),² especially in Taiwan, some questionable perspectives are mixed up with their Christian attitudes in prayer. From a transformative and apologetical viewpoint, it is worth reviewing such perspectives critically. Here, I will employ biblical evidence and theological analyses to examine and critique three main kinds of questionable perspectives revealed through the Chinese Christian reactions to this pandemic. They include perspectives that imply God has failed to act sovereignty in a spiritual warfare, and secondly, the Christian faith believes in God’s favouritism to His believers in everything, and the Christian prayer is “this-worldly”-centred. My claims are not based on a systematic survey, but rather on searchable information found on the international internet postings and through my personal interactions.³

A perspective that God fails to be sovereign all the time in a spiritual warfare

During the worldwide spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic, an ever-present perspective has been promoted online more often than before that God fails to be sovereign all the time in a spiritual warfare. It can be found easily in some online Chinese prayers and prayer guides. For example, an original English prayer for this purpose was posted bilingually on the Kingdom Prayer Network, an influential website for international prayer themes in Chinese, including the declaration:

Today … suddenly I heard … “my crimson angels, crowned with my authority on a mercy mission/assignment to break the demonic death thread of disease.” let us … pray … “the mercy of god shall intervene and the covenant blessing of our Savior shall overcome.” ⁴

This declaration obviously identifies some “demoniac force”—probably Satan or the Devil as the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic and instructs Christians to pray that God would conquer that disease power and stop the pandemic. Such a prayer guide assumes that there is a spiritual warfare between God and Satan behind the COVID-19 pandemic and that God has failed for whatever reason. The result is that Satan succeeded in producing the COVID-19 pandemic. It might also imply that Satan is somehow an equal-powered enemy of God and the source of most of the bad things and terrible disasters that cause humanity to suffer. Based on this series of assumptions and claims, the prayer against any kind of suffering always partakes in a spiritual warfare. It asks for God to turn the tables on Satan, defeat him and rescue humanity from his attacks.

A similar identification of the COVID-19 pandemic as “Satan’s false alarm” also appears in a prayer to end the USA’s spread of the pandemic.⁵ Other prayer guides in other websites ascribe the pandemic to “the authority of the enemy”⁶ or an attack of “the evil spirits,”⁷ and so clearly identify it as a demoniac scheme to delay or destroy the awakening and revival they believe God wants to bring.⁸ In one Chinese prayer guide, the coronavirus is viewed as a conscious being lying “in wait to harm” humankind.⁹

Another call to prayer in Chinese, prepared originally in English by Francis Myles,¹⁰ found in the Kingdom Prayer Network,¹¹ and another blog,¹² proclaims (translated by the author):

We summon the Corona Virus and the evil spirit, the dark authority, and the demonic altars that are empowering it into the Heavenly Courtroom to be judged in front of the righteous Lord … We pray that the Heavenly Courtroom shall destroy the altars and authority that are empowering the Corona Virus.

Within the same post, it names the evil spirit spreading the coronavirus as “Pan,” and instructs that prayer should focus on asking God to “close the gate of the Devil and bind the evil spirit—Pan.”¹³ (The detail of this instruction is also posted on the Facebook of the Prophetic Prophecy Altar, in Chinese.)

Similar teaching presents the following scenario which appeared later in other websites in Chinese (translated by the author):

The coronavirus is a global attack against revival. The Lord showed me the source of the attack … From the root of that snake will spring up a viper, its fruit will be a darting, venomous serpent … This 3-cord global attack (of the coronavirus) is against the global outpouring the Lord is bringing … Lord, we ask that You cast out the attack of the Snake of Deception, the Viper of the Religious Spirit and the Venomous Serpent of the Coronavirus. ¹⁴

The latter two examples present the so-called “strategic level spiritual warfare” (SLSW), a subtype of this perspective that God fails to be sovereign all the time in a spiritual warfare. SLSW further differentiates the power of the Devil into different “territorial [evil] spirits” that rule their own specific areas, called “strongholds,” which exist in/behind the “mind,” “thoughts,” “ideas,” ideologies and physical location of individual persons, groups or societies.¹⁵

Another prayer presented in a television programme operated by a church in Taiwan reveals an SLSW perspective as follows:

Today, in the name of the Lord Jesus, we command … the virus genes from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the COVID-19 should not be complicit in rioting … We pray … [that] when the arrogant Corona Virus is spreading out, it shall be driven away by the Lord God, the mighty one of Israel.¹⁶

Notably, even if the Devil or the evil spirits are not mentioned above, it still counts as promoting an SLSW perspective when the COVID-19 disease is viewed as a conscious and autonomous plotter.

Biblically speaking, Satan is “the prince of this world,” and other evil spirits under Satan exist. Their cosmic opposition against God should not be ignored by Christians.¹⁷ But the perspective that God fails to be sovereign all the time in a spiritual warfare involves the evident difficulty that this claim contradicts the biblical perspective of a God, namely, that God is “above all” (NRSV 1 Chronicles 29:11),¹⁸ “greater than all” (John 10:29), “formed all things” (Jeremiah 10:16, 51:19), “rul[ing] over all” (Psalms 103:19; John 19:10–11; 14:30), “all things [being in God’s] hands” (John 3:35, 13:3), “Lord of all”(Acts 10:36), so that all things exist because of God” (Romans 11:36). The biblical view of Deity reveals the divine use of Satan as a tool. The most obvious and direct evidence is in Job. Although, in responding to Satan’s challenge, “But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that [Job] has, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 1:11), God allowed Satan to attack Job by saying, “Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him” (Job 1:12a), God did eventually not attribute the attack to Satan but Himself because He said to Satan after it attacked Job, “you incited me against [Job], to destroy him for no reason” (Job 2:3).¹⁹ And Satan has no authority over anything on the earth, particularly now after Christ died on the Cross because it is written in Ephesians 1:20–22:

God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church.

As Hiebert points out, the spiritual warfare between God and Satan is absolutely “not one of power” but “the establishment of God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven.”²⁰ Biblical evidence from Jesus’s parable of the rebellious stewards (Matthew 21:33–44) highlights the “legitimacy” instead of power as the “central question in Scripture.” Therefore, the perspectives that God fails to be sovereign all the time in a spiritual warfare of power and SLSW are questionable from a biblical perspective guided by Christian theology.²¹

As Samuel Hiokee Ooi points out,²² these perspectives (especially SLSW) are similar to “Chinese common religion,” namely, folk religion and the “Eastern spiritual worldview,” which Hiebert categorises as a “traditional tribal worldview.”²³ Notably, many Chinese people who have a cultural background in folk religion are familiar with “a concept of hierarchical ranking of spiritual beings” that SLSW embraces. Therefore, I agree with Ooi that SLSW would be perceived easily by many Chinese people “as a ‘Christian version’ of a [poly]theistic view of the different levels of gods.”²⁴ Two other perspectives are related to what has been described in this section, and so will be described and evaluated in the following two sections.

Faith in God’s favouritism to believers in everything

Faith in God’s favouritism to His believers in everything usually appears in a form of proclamation prayer, such as “God must save us from all the threat of the Corona Virus,”²⁵ or similar declarations,²⁶ “[We] declare that [Christ who died and resurrected for us] has borne all of our sins and healed all of our diseases.” These are based on 1 Peter 2:24,²⁷ and similar proclamations based on Isaiah 53:5.²⁸ It is noted that interpreting the “promised healing” by the Messiah mentioned in these two verses as physical healing is problematic. The context is a discussion of God’s eternal salvation²⁹ —namely, in the realm of special grace—and the reality is that not all believers are healed physically—namely, in the realm of common grace. Zhang Maosong, a famous preacher in Taiwan, claimed: “If you fix your eyes on Jesus Christ … [I] bless you in the Lord’s name, that [the COVID-19] won’t come to you.”³⁰

Some other similar proclamation prayers and teachings are such as (1) “the ones whose health are being challenged and the infected must be healed by Jesus’ precious blood,” based on Psalms 103:2–3.³¹ Notably, the context is, in fact, a reflection on the psalmist’s personal experience of having been healed after confessing sins.³² The emphasis is not on physical healing alone—namely in the realm of common grace—but on the healing of sin, to which the diseases are related—namely in the realm of special grace.³³ This v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Faith facing suffering
• PART I FAITH MAKING SENSE OF SUFFERING
• PART II FAITH TAKING ACTION
• Index