Christian wisdom for the Covid-19 epidemic

The UK Government has repeatedly told us that policy for dealing with the Covid-19 virus is being guided and driven by scientific models and advice. Scientific advice is based on theories that are the synthesis of research and experiment. Scientific is always open to review and change as further evidence accrues. Therefore it is no surprise that in the fast moving world of the Covid virus, the government has had to adjust its advice repeatedly. The need to do this has been compounded by government fears of abandoning core Conservative principles – the right to freedom of the individual against control by the hitherto dispensable “nanny” state.

The virus is invisible. The symptoms of infection may not become evident for six or seven days. It can only be seen through an electron microscope or as a result of reactions in testing. It is a virus that can have and is having a lethal effect on people. The scientific advice following models of transmission for the virus tells us that social distancing is essential. This is achieved through imposing a lock down on human movement and the possibility of encounters with family, friends and colleagues. So far as it is possible we should only meet (other than those living in our house) when we are wearing protective clothing and masks. The isolation and distancing results in increased levels of anxiety, depression, addiction, and mental breakdown.

The virus is everywhere, potentially, and invisible until someone is infected and symptoms manifest. It is a potentially lethal, life diminishing, life extinguishing presence, invading and infecting our immediate world and disrupting the life of the global human community. Thanks to the scientific modelling and research we are slowly learning how to deal with the virus and how relational, real presence life might be restored. It is not going to be quick or easy.

Bishops have imposed their own lockdown condition on church buildings and clergy, conditions that impact on the laity. Clergy replace services in buildings with services live-streamed from their kitchen, living room or study. They monitor the numbers watching and wonder how to replace income lost to the collection plate. Thanks to the virus, the global economy, the UK economy, and the economy of Church of England now face huge challenges The real presence transactions possible through services held in church buildings are replaced by communicating God through cell phone, laptop and tablet screens.

The result has been a profound existential change in the dynamic of human relationships, energy and feelings. Real presence is no longer possible. Different forms of electronic communication predominate.

I model my life on the teaching and practice of Jesus. Jesus lived in the presence of people, openly, unprotected, anyone and everyone, on the road, up mountains, in hostile territory, in familiar villages and towns, in the big city occupied by a foreign power. Jesus was remarkable intimate with people in ways that the church finds it not just virtually but actually impossible to replicate.

Modelling God in the crisis

A concern of mine since my teenage years has been about the ways in which the church models God. I worked out that what the system practised wasn’t in fact believable in terms of ‘reality’, real presence, sexuality, gender, race, how prayer ‘works’, how God ‘works’. The constructs of the church, however traditional and ancient, were always still constructs, ideas evolved by humans.

I’ve recently read Karen Armstrong’s A History of God. I have gained two valuable insights from her book.

  1. The Western branch of Christianity has always been deficient in mystical awareness and practice compared with the Eastern Church and other world religions, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

  2. The Reformation, the Enlightenment, Deism, the Death of God, European exploration and Colonisation, the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific revolution, Monetarism, all products of white European Christian culture, now influence virtually every social, political and financial culture on our planet.

Putting these two insights together, every national or regional culture has been directly or indirectly affected by the deficiency of mystical awareness that is endemic in the Western, European churches. This version of Christianity was exported by missionaries, explorers, entrepreneurs and armies. We have infected the world with a deficient Christian spiritual wisdom and vision. The results are at present all too visible and immediate.

In Europe, after the Second World War, there was a new spiritual awakening and vision. New metaphors for god were used: “Ground of Being”. They opened new space for our imagination and the freedom to explore new dreams of God and the sacred, divine, mystical dimension of life, explore throughout human history in the Wisdom traditions. This new freedom of space and vision has gradually been locked down over the subsequent decades.

Having begun to explore visions of God in response to our transforming understanding of the earth and the universe, evolution and matter, energy and time, the evolution of human awareness and insight has subsequently regressed. The Christian church is now working with models and constructs of God that are inadequate to reality and to the task facing us in responding to the invisible, dangerous, infecting presence of Covid-19 virus and the 2050 deadline we face in dealing with the climate crisis. We members of the human race have become a replicating virus dangerous to the health of our planet.

The Church claims to be the authoritative representative on earth of God’s presence, manifest in Jesus and in the global environment, in the Holy Spirit, the active ingredient of God. This active ingredient has been modelled in various ways by the Church. In today’s regressive Christian environment the model has become ever more literal. We pray to God (possible through the Spirit) and God hears, responds, answers, and, if our prayers accord with his wishes, acts. The model and the language remain defiantly anthropomorphic, despite the fact that we should know this is an unhelpful model, antithetical to the mystical tradition.

The Western mindset

The Western mindset, formed by the impoverished European imagination about God, has infected and inhibited our ability to re-imagine our experience of God, the dream of God, the divine, sacred Mystery of Love and Wisdom. Despite assumptions to the contrary, I do believe in the visions of God as experienced by Abraham, Isaiah, the Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. At the moment, I see no signs that a reawakening might be taking place, provoked by the Covid-19 crisis.

The presence of God in creation is a more profound Mystery than the presence of the Corona virus in Wuhan, China.

All my adult life I have been pursued by the Mystery, subtly pressed to explore the Mystery. From the nineteen sixties to the nineteen nineties, the Church of England was a healthy, fertile, open place in which I was free to explore many dimensions of the Mystery. I was in the company of people for whom the excitement of exploration was one of the key elements of Christian living.

The environment of the Church of England is no longer so open and fertile. Until the Spirit loosens things up, blows open a few doors and windows, subtly plants a few courageous mystics, or returns to radical active service herself, humankind will not find energy or inspiration in the Christian Church nor in any of the major global faith communities.

Whatever action is currently taking place, inspired by the Mystery, it is taking place in mostly invisible cells and within the quiet, committed practice of Wisdom individuals. They will be active in every walk of life, but more rarely within religious institutions. The prognosis is not good for the energies of God the Mystery’s universal, unconditional, infinite, intimate love. Religious institutions have become addicted to control, contain, and deaden, not quicken, the energy of life. Their ambition is to restore business as usual. Usual culture of business in the Church of England is determined to be safe, nice, growing, and controlled. The church spends too much time protecting the nooks and crannies beloved of its various tribal group identities, reworking what is familiar. Ultimately, it is deadly.

God the Mystery of Unconditional Love pervades all human life and experience. We are infused with the divine, immersed in the divine presence, the love, energy, passion, compassion, and intuitive, innate wisdom that is the invisible, mystical essence of creation in evolution. A model Christian response to the Covid-19 crisis would endeavour to nurture our inner resources inspiring us open to the flow of divine energy within and between people, nourishing our capacity to love unconditionally, openly, compassionately and creatively, filled with real presence.