Caution, disclaimer, advisory if you think there is nothing to laugh at in regards to Covid and/or politics, stop reading, now.
I don’t think the worse faux pas is talking about religion and politics in public. I think it’s mixing them in private. If you mix theology with politics, you end up compromising because that is what politics does. If you mix your politics with theology you get jihad, fanaticism, and dementia.
Look at the history of the middle of the road Lutheran Churches, the ALC, old and new, the Old Norwegian Synod from which the ELS came out, the General Synod, and of course the Missouri Synod. These all narrowed their theology down to only what they can find explicitly stated in the Bible. Attaching a “thus says the Lord” to anything more than that, is going too far. That was the General Synod’s position on the Lodge question. That was the modern ALC’s position on the inerrancy of the Bible, and the LCMS’s current position on the Order of Creation. All the middling positions eventually end in Unitarianism or Civil Religion. This is the error of narrowing theology too much.
In regard to Covid people put theology behind political issues and argue that their zeal is not only according to knowledge but according to Christ. I know there are issues the world considers political that are really moral. Abortion is one and gay marriage and LGBTQ-ism are others. But there are still issues that are only political and not moral.
I can see that Covid – or government mandates connected to it – could cross that line. If they mandated that you could only have the Lord’s Supper in those hermetically sealed “Communion” packets that the Sacramentarians of all stripes have used for years or by means of Communion pills containing maize and wine extract, that would cross the line from politics to faith. (By the way these were invented pre-pandemic (https://denver.cbslocal.com/2018/11/08/gods-pill-communion-pill-wine-catholic-protestant-wafer/.) But mandating masks, spacing, or even temporarily closing churches along with all other public venues, does not. When you start arguing these issues with “thus says the Lord” or “freedom of religion”, where are you going to go?
I’ll tell you where you go, not to the Bible but to science, experts, studies just as the other side does. For every doctor, scientist, and epidemiologist you have who says masks do nothing, spacing is stupid, and closures are ineffective, they have an equal number saying they are.
Mandating vaccines, particularly ones they admit are in the study phase which means you are part of a study, that is harder for me to say one way or the other. I can see being opposed to all vaccines traced to the line of fetal cells of aborted babies for theological reasons. I can also see accepting those as instances of God bringing good out of evil. The WELS position statement gives both sides: https://christianliferesources.com/wp-content/uploads/CLR-Vaccine-Statement-Final.pdf Of course, if you want your kid to go to a public school, all sorts of vaccines are going to be mandated. Same thing with the military. You want to serve? You won’t have a choice but to be vaccinated. And does anyone want to see a return to the days when Small Pox, Polio, and Rubella ravaged populations? But then, who thinks the millions spent on developing PrEP, a vaccine so fornication can go on with a lower risk of developing HIV, was a God pleasing endeavor?
I myself am asea in regard to some of these questions, but I do see that when people hold political opinions but defend them theologically, they do it fanatically. They are right in the sense that an unbelieving world, science, medicine, and politics is certainly knowing or unknowingly opposed to God. But what does the God in heaven do when He looks down upon men in opposition to Him? He laughs.
Psalm 2:2-4: “The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One. ‘Let us break their chains,’ they say, ‘and throw off their fetters.’ The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.” Psalm 59:7-8: “See what they spew from their mouths– they spew out swords from their lips, and they say, ‘Who can hear us?’ But you, O Lord, laugh at them; you scoff at all those nations.” Psalm 37:12-13: “The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them; but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming.”
The one thing a fanatical person will not do, does not appear able to do, is laugh at what he is so upset at. You shouldn’t laugh at false teaching, but you can laugh at all those plotting against God, and you can laugh at all the politicos from talking heads, to pundits, to talk show hosts that claim, infer, or act like it’s the end of the world if their politics is not victorious.
