Theology & Disease
As a preacher's kid and life long Christian, I want to take a deep dive in the Bible's accounts and recommendations concerning infectious disease. Why? Well I've seen many Christians make wildly incorrect statements justifying their lack of caution or concern about Covid. I've seen rampant use of blanket statements completely out of context and contradictory to several chapters in the Bible. Pandemics and plagues, have been documented all throughout the Bible. Infectious diseases, especially leprosy, are mentioned in both the Old Testament and New Testament. So are quarantine and social distancing measures.
There are three chapters in Leviticus, 13 to 15 that clearly describe measures of quarantine, sterilization and treating infectious diseases. The priests, also work as doctors who are to carry out depicting homes, people and objects as clean or unclean. After the priests come into contact with unclean items they are told how to sterilize an quarantine. This is IMPORTANT! It indicates that even the MOST HIGH priests in the promise land can contract and spread and succumb to infectious disease.
Many times in the Bible, you'll see the lepers as named by priests were to stay outside of the cities (quarantine) to not spread it and that person has to shout UNCLEAN ( social distancing) as anyone approaches them. The person cannot come into the city until the priest, who also works as a doctor, gives them the all clear.
If faith in God was all one needed to be safe from illness, then there would be no need for the Priests to medically treat anyone, or be cautious around infectious people in the Bible. They would just tell everyone they encountered to pray more and they would be completely safe themselves from all illness.
If faith was all one needed, then our majority Christian nation wouldn't have more covid deaths than Muslim, Buddhist and agnostic nations.
If faith was all one needed to stay safe from Covid then some of the most beloved pastors wouldn't be dying from Covid. I know some of the most devout, wise, prayerful, fervent believers of Christ who have been sick just as long as I have. People who have entire churches praying for their healing every single day. Yet they remain sick, or worse die from covid.
So let's instead move to a higher level of theology instead of the prosperity/ healing televangelist gospel that made a few men wealthy for an entire generation. Instead let's go to the practical verses in the Bible which encourages us to use wisdom and scholarly understanding ( science) to help mitigate the need for being in situations that require prayerful intervention.
