Testing God

In March 2020, Bishop Gerald Glenn, pastor of New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Virginia, dismissed CDC warnings to avoid mass gatherings and said in a sermon, “God is larger than” Covid-19. Less than one month later, Bishop Gerald Glenn died of Covid-19, and four members of his family are infected.

If one is going to rely on God to keep them safe, then they should consider a verse from the Bible’s book of Mathew.

Then the devil took him [Jesus] to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.“If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’

Jesus answered him, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

There’s another, non-religious way to state this wisdom, and that is with the idiom “Don’t press your luck.”

When someone ignores scientific advice and medical wisdom and tempts fate, are they putting God to the test? Are they pressing their luck? Yes and yes. That is precisely what they’re doing.

I saw a man in the street protesting the quarantine. He was in a crowd of similar protesters. He said he needed to go back to work and he said, “I’m not afraid to die.” He might feel a little differently when he’s in a hospital bed with a plastic tube shoved down his throat and a machine pumping air into and out of his lungs because he can’t breathe. He might feel differently if he were able to see his doctor tell his wife that her husband is dead, or see his wife tell their kids that their dad will not be coming home again, ever. And even if that man doesn’t care about his own life, what about the lives of those people he may infect? How about the young mother with children, or the young father who is the sole support of his family? Does the man who wants so badly to get out of quarantine not care about their lives?

Enough preaching. Everyone must do what they believe is the right thing. I am simply asking people, before you demand your “rights” to go anywhere and do anything you please, to remember why the rules are there. They’re not there to inconvenience us. They’re there because our government is trying as best it can to keep us—and the people who cross our paths—alive.