Guest opinion: Conspiracy-rapt pastors have muddled thinking and do not speak for other believers

I’m glad that Coeur d’Alene pastor Paul Van Noy has recovered from his COVID-19 infection. But statements he made around this reflect very muddled thinking, to put it politely. Moreover, his explicit statements, and those implied by his actions, reflect interpretations of Christianity greatly at odds with historic beliefs of my faith and of myriad other Christians.

Start with the muddled thinking. Van Noy told his congregation: “We’re adults and we don’t need the government to tell us what to do.”

This is true for some decisions but flat wrong here.

No, no one needs the government to tell them whether to fry eggs or grab Cheerios in the morning. Ditto for boxers or briefs. Ditto for RAV4 or CRV.

Yet, would Van Noy say the following? “We are adults and we don’t need government to tell us which side of the road to drive on, or which intersections to stop at. We don’t need government banning our zeroing in a 30-.06 at the neighborhood playground. If we pound down a few brewskis, we are adults and can decide whether we can drive safely. We don’t need jack-booted cops with Breathalyzers crushing our individual rights.”

Perhaps his sense of God-given personal autonomy is so warped that he would endorse these. But I doubt many others in Idaho would.

The difference is that pork chops versus spaghetti affects no one else. Driving on the left-hand side of the road does. Choosing to do tai chi in the park does not. Shooting a deer rifle does. Asking your proctologist to wield her scalpel, or ordering more cases of Preparation H yourself, affects no one but you. But wearing a mask or not certainly does affect others.

There is no legal system anywhere in the world that gives every person blanket freedom to disregard others in all choices they make. That is true for nations following British-style common law or Roman-style codified law. That is true for the Bill of Rights, no listed right is absolute.

Similarly, there is no major religion, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or other, with doctrines that individuals may make any and all decisions ignoring effects on others. None. Ditto for major historic philosophies over the centuries.

While evangelical pastors may not have to master “combinations and permutations” for ordination, nearly everyone learns the basics of exponents and exponential growth in school.

Epidemics do not spread in a process of 1,2,3,4,5,6. It is 1,2,4,8,16,32.

No, each stage of COVID-19 is not a doubling. In Idaho, for each of the 180 days from April 3 to September, the growth factor for total positive tests has averaged 1.022. The rate of growth of deaths rounds to the same. Some 2.2% a day means that the number of cases grew 41 times over, from 891 to 40,048, in these six months. Deaths grew 52 times over, from nine to 469.

Wearing masks and closing more places where people congregate would not have reduced growth to zero. But even if these, and other measures rejected by many in Idaho, only had reduced it to 1.016, some 27,000 people would not have gotten sick and 312 would still be alive.

Mask-and-distancing mandates are not a nanny state ordering you to protect yourself or even Aunt Mildred. It is about the total number of people who sicken and die. And the relationship is exponential.

Now consider some differences in beliefs. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus or any apostle or Old Testament prophet tell individual believers to ignore how personal decisions impact others. Indeed, the exact opposite is true. Repeatedly, in one phrasing or another, Christians are commanded to place others above ourselves. “On this hang all the law and the prophets.”

Similarly, nowhere in the Bible is there permission to defy government on any issue bugging us. Christ’s admonition to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” is broad. In every modern country, especially democracies like ours, protecting public health is among the most important tasks of government.

The command in Romans 13:1, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God,” is so sweeping it often unsettles me. Yet it remains at the core of Christian principles.

Brigham Young University-Idaho’s affirmation, “We are committed to honoring civil authority,” in an excellent statement on their addressing Idaho’s worsening coronavirus travail, is an example for all believers. Mormons should be proud of their institution.

Yes, there are times when commands of government so strongly clash with our interpretation of God’s will that we must refuse to obey. I enlisted in the Army at my 17th birthday, served in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne and accumulated three years of active and another 29 of reserve service. I do not feel my decisions violated God’s will. But I also respect, even admire, my Quaker, Mennonite and Hutterite friends who believe that they themselves may not so act. Complying with a government order to wear masks or limit numbers in certain settings is of piffling importance in comparison.

Finally, there is the issue of Christians respecting epidemiologists and other scientists. I do not know how Rev. Van Noy reads the order to “subdue” the earth in the first chapter in the Bible. To people in my Calvinist tradition, this is not permission to kill every whale and clear-cut every forest. Rather, it establishes believers’ duties to steward, husband, protect and conserve all creation. This is our “mandate for culture.”

Moreover, we cannot obey without using God-given abilities to study the universe, do research and teach. Medicine, virology and epidemiology are not just permitted ways to earn a living, they are callings that obey Genesis 1:28. The knowledge that scholars generate fosters understanding our creator through the worlds in which we live. Epidemiologists and other scientists are not priests with special links to God. Yet we are called to respect their conclusions and be guided by them except in extreme situations of conflict with other Christian duties. Disliking masks or believing delusional conspiracy theories gleaned from the Internet don’t pose such a situation.