In 1986 Michael Card released an album that included the song Spirit of the Age. Based on the text from The Gospel according to Matthew about the slaying of the innocents, where King Herod kills all the babies in Bethlehem trying to slay his rival to the throne Jesus, Card uses the text to compare Herod’s act to the many acts down through the centuries where people sacrificed children in an attempt to make their own lives better.
In 1986 the issue of abortion was a big political hot button, and this song resonated well with that. But to simply focus on that issue, I think, misses the point. Every age has heard the spirit of the age, and I think ours is calling it’s serpent-song to us through the fear of Covid. Social Distancing is not a Christian response. Jesus didn’t say “suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not – but keep them 6 feet away”. By adopting it as the Church’s response we are condoning the slaying of children – by distance.
Christianity is a contact religion. We get down in the mud, we get face to face, we touch, we go toe to toe. This standoffish social distancing is an offense to Christ. Sure we take all the proper hygiene precautions with an epidemic, but social distancing isn’t hygiene, it is fear; fear of the masses by their betters. It is the Spirit of the Age.
That is not the gospel we preach. “there is no fear in love but perfect love drives out fear for God has not given us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power a spirit of love and of self-discipline.”
At The Rainbow 