An Exercise in Practical Theology

If this Blog was ever to be turned into a book, I think it should follow the pattern of Slavoj Žižek’s Pandemic!: Covid-19 shakes the World. A series of rambling articles, originally posted online, gathered together into a ramshackle collection of relatively early responses to the emergency. This, it seems to me, is the model for the engaged intellectual (if I’m worthy of such a title), immersed in the situation, bringing out of their treasure things old and new (Mt. 13.52). 

Meditation on 'Normal'

“Vaccines mean a potential return to normalisation.” So said a business pundit on the radio. There is a widespread desire for return to normal. Even while people recognise it will have to be a ‘new’ or ‘novel’ normal, they are desperate for stability, for a style of life, that is familiar, similar to what they have lost: shopping, pubs, socialising. 

Apologetics and Action

Recently I read three Christian books responding to the Corona pandemic: John Lennox, Where is God in a Coronavirus World?; John Piper, Coronavirus and Christ; Tom Wright, God and the pandemic. Here are my thoughts.

Pioneering and Planning in the Pandemic

There is an old Jewish joke: how do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans! Certainly true of this year. How many churches in January toyed with the cliché of ’20:20 vision’? How many of those ambitions now lie in tatters? Even as believers our presumption has been exposed by circumstances. We need to submit again to God’s sovereignty (Jas. 4.13-16).

Moving through the pandemic

The pandemic has proceeded through several phases and cycles. This is bewildering to the everyday pastor, trying to adapt to rapidly-changing medical prognoses and governmental pronouncements. However, much of the religious whining about our new lockdown is merely special pleading, with arguments similar to businesses who want exemptions, because their particular premises haven’t sparked outbreaks. Government though has to take account of where they may occur. But pastors’ dismay is exemplified in the oft-repeated joke, that they never got trained at seminary about how to deal with a pandemic.