Fear may be powerful, but courage is called for all the same. During a pandemic, we are to keep our eye on the soul, for pandemics can harm the soul even more than the body. Perhaps more than anything, we need to recover a sense of horror at a culture that allows our fears to trump every sense of obligation to the dead, the sick, and the elderly.

I’ve often wondered how medieval Christians dealt with the plague, and how it compares to the way we deal with the coronavirus today. The three volumes of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, set in 14th-century Norway, don’t answer the question. This is a historical novel, not description of fact. Still, the way Undset imagines medieval Christians responded to the plague is instructive and moving.
The high point of the novel, I think, is the last few chapters, which depict Kristin traveling to take up religious life in Rein Abbey near Trondheim in Trøndelag, halfway up the coast in Norway (some spoilers to follow). Shortly after her arrival, the plague breaks out. Undset’s descriptions of both fear and courage brought tears to my eyes.
I have long thought our reactions to COVID to be mostly cowardly. We have left elderly people isolated for months on end in long-term care facilities; we have let them languish and die there. Many of our elderly parents must have wished they were dead already, to avoid being left to die alone in their old-age hovels. Our hospitals have refused family access to people with COVID. Priests were unable—and sadly, often unwilling—to visit the sick. Many died without last rites or final prayers with loved ones and pastors, because we were too cowardly to allow visitation. We even denied people dying with COVID decent funerals for fear we might catch it ourselves.
So far, I have read few reflections on our moral failings—as individuals, as pastors, and as policymakers. We seem to think that fear of risk, no matter how minimal, always and necessarily carries its own justification.
Here’s how Kristin Lavransdatter ends. One of her sons, Skule, is visiting the abbey where his old mother has settled. Kristin overhears him talking with the abbey’s priest, Sira Eiliv. Skule explains to Sira Eiliv that one of his seamen died when his ship put in at the wharf. Kristin realizes what this means and utters “a little involuntary cry of fear.” Skule then admits to her that five of his men have already died. Kristin suggests that he should stay in town rather than go back to his ship. But Skule recognizes this won’t make a difference. “Oh, I think soon it won’t matter where I am. It’s useless to be frightened; fearful men are half dead already. But if only I was as old as you are, Mother.” Skule refuses to cave in to fear, while at the same time lamenting his short life.
Two weeks later, two fishermen come to the convent, carrying a dying man in a sail. “The lay sisters and servingwomen all had fled into the buildings, but the nuns—a flock of trembling, terrified, and bewildered old women—were clustered near the door to the convent hall.” Despite the fear spreading through the abbey, the abbess herself knows what’s demanded by her faith.
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Richard Dawkins is admiring and eating the fruit of Christianity. He is happily tasting the sweetness and embracing the aromas and feeling the textures of the fruit, but he still denies the reality of the living tree from which the fruit has grown. The tree is no more dead or invisible than is the fruit we eat.

“When you give up Christian faith, you pull the rug out from under your right to Christian morality as well. This is anything but obvious: you have to keep driving this point home, English idiots to the contrary.” (Nietzsche)
Richard Dawkins is now a self professing, “cultural Christian”.
Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous atheist of my lifetime. He is a noted scientist, author of the best-selling book, The God Delusion, and fanboy for many an ardent God nonbeliever. For more than 20 years, Richard Dawkins has provided millions with reason not to believe, and with an ammunition dump of rhetorical flares for dismissing theism, and especially Christianity.
“You know I love hymns and Christmas Carols. I feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense”.
The new atheism, like earlier thought movements and ones yet to come, arrived on the scene, peaked, and is now crumbling. There will be devotees who will hold onto splintered rocks as they come hurtling down. Dawkins, however, seems to have jumped.
Okay, ‘jumped’ is an overstatement, but Dawkins’ version of atheism seems to have changed tack, and in a positive way (or at least in this interview). He has left behind the stinging attacks and is gently embracing the world that Christianity has provided.
To some, Dawkins must have suffered a brain aneurysm. 
Aaron Bastoni tweeted,
“Bizarre from Dawkins, who wrote a book called ‘The God Delusion’ claiming religion was a deeply malevolent, dividing force in the world. 
Now he’s calling himself a ‘cultural Christian’? Find it odd to use religion to extend your secular political points.”
In comes Tom Holland, the super historian to the scene of the crime. 
“Not really, because secularism & Dawkins’ own brand of evangelical atheism are both expressions of a specifically Christian culture – as Dawkins himself, sitting on the branch he’s been sawing through and gazing nervously at the ground far below, seems to have begun to realise.”
Holland is spot on. My initial response was this,
“Richard Dawkins wants to keep the fruit of Christianity while rejecting the beliefs of Christianity. 
Of course that’s not logical or desirable. Nonetheless, is Richard Dawkins moving away from his past rhetoric and a priori assumptions?”
The fruit of Christianity, the ethics and architecture, the music and its role in shaping political theory and the marketplace, all have an origin story in the Bible and especially in the God-Man Jesus Christ. The fruit comes from somewhere and that somewhere is more audacious and stunning than 21st Century observers realise.
The claim of Christianity is that there is a God behind all the fruit we taste and eat and enjoy. He is not an error or grumpy old jack-in-the-box who loves to surprise us with horrible things. 
Dawkins admits that the social good has an origins story and it is integrally tied to the Christian faith, although he is still unwilling to believe in the Divine.
“There is a difference between being a believing Christian and a cultural Christian”.
Yes,  there is one who enjoys the fruit and gives thanks to the giver, and those who eat and have their fill while not giving thanks to the provider.
Dawkin’s admission is an intellectually and morally honest one. Read Holland’s, ‘Dominion’; or Glen Scrivener’s ‘The Air We Breathe’.  For those who wish to press more eagerly into the bedrock that gives our culture form and substance, read Dr Christopher Watkin’s masterpiece, ‘Biblical Critical Theory’. 
The beautiful and the good, the necessary and the true, haven’t altogether disappeared from our culture. And while these depend upon a God of such quality, excising God has not yet fully removed them from the scene.
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Moral issues of officers generally get more attention than process and polity peccadilloes. But what about when someone says, “We’re not following the rules because a lot of people don’t follow the rules, and we don’t think you’re going to stop us”? What about when the seeming law of what’s allowed begins to damage the fabric of our polity?

In the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), there are but two offices: elder and deacon. All officers in the PCA are ordained; both offices (by definition) are filled by (and only by) ordained persons.
Officers are essential in many kinds of organizations inasmuch as they are legally required or for pragmatic reasons of function and efficiency. However, the officers of the church do not serve merely in order to please the secular government or to increase the effectiveness of the organization — they serve by Divine warrant and command. Thus they are not simply sworn in or signed up; they are ordained. Chapter 17 and other sections of the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) Book of Church Order (BCO) specify that those duly called to office are to be ordained, that ordination is by the laying on of hands, and that only qualified men are candidates for ordination to office.

There is more to becoming an officer than the laying on of hands by the elders — vows are the other essential part of officer-making. All officers vow that they approve of the polity of the PCA, that they will be subject to the courts of the Church (their brethren), and that they will strive for the purity, peace, unity, and edification of the church as a whole, which is to say the wider (not just local) Church. Therefore, these vows seem to require a scrupulous adherence to the rules, terms, and processes described in the PCA’s BCO, assuming that the written, stated law of the Church is the law of the Church. Such adherence is uncontroversially essential to the purity, peace, and unity of the Church, to say nothing of trust and true harmony among co-laborers in gospel ministry. Rule benders in organizations often joke that it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission when supposed exigency “requires” non-compliance. But if forgiveness is required (due to actual offense), should not repentance (and new obedience) also be required, especially when that organization is a church with agreed-upon standards (the written law code of the church)?

But the law of what’s allowed is a thing. We all know that the posted speed limits on state and federal highways are honored more in breach than by strict obedience. Everyone knows what the “real” speed limit is, at least until flashing blue lights in the rearview mirror suggest otherwise and bring the driver back to the reality of the written law and the posted speed limit. Highway patrolmen are needed to more or less keep order on our roadways. In the church, there are no police per se. In fact, even Presbyterian churches pretty much run on an honor system. The review and control of presbyteries via review of records is mostly review, advise, and suggest, if that. Minor issues are often covered in love. Much patience is shown in more serious offenses. Major offenses are usually dealt with, but slowly, with much empathy, and with great deference to lower courts.
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