2020 has been tough, and to make things tougher, Christians have found themselves pitted against each other over whether practicing precautions shows a lack of faith. Do we lack faith if we practice Covid precautions? Would it show a greater faith if we cut the cords that separate the seats and call everyone back into worship? Or, if we wear masks, does that show a lack of faith? After all, God will protect us from this virus, right?
So, we want to trust God, but we want to be safe. Is it fear, or is it faith?
The Bible teaches no contradiction between practicing precautions and exercising faith. Or between trusting in God’s protection and applying common sense solutions (1 Tim. 5:23). But sometimes God calls on us to join Him in His greater purposes, even asking us to do what we might not feel comfortable doing. Like practicing precautions.
Wonder what I am talking about? You can find an example in the Christmas story.
Joseph was an ordinary Jewish man who lived the uneventful life of a carpenter in a small, backwater Galilean town called Nazareth. We are introduced to this young man when his whole life is still a sunrise on the horizon. He is daydreaming about a home with Mary, the family they would have, and a business he would build. Then he finds out Mary is pregnant, and he is pressed to make the hardest decision of his life before his life is hardly hitting a pace. And that’s when the Bible declares one seminal fact about him, the character trait that guides his decisions and decides his actions. He was a “righteous man” (Matt. 1:19).
That means he was a man of faith, trusted God, and wanted to do what God wanted him to do. But so far, trusting God resulted in fairly predictable outcomes. Do what God asks, and God provides. Marriage, business, family. It was all going according to plan.
But suddenly, God requires Joseph to practice a risky faith. That is, to believe God for the extraordinary and do what God asks when it is out of the ordinary. That’s what real faith is—trusting God when the outcomes are not so predictable, and when He requires obedience to do what you have not done before (Luke 6:46).
And Joseph steps up. He shows he is, in fact, a man of faith. He accepts Mary’s pregnancy, and off to Bethlehem they go. Jesus is born and raised in the small town for two years, concluded by the arrival of the Magi.
So, two years passed. Life became fairly routine, and Joseph probably thought that, from here on out, faith would become predictable again.
Hardly.
God reveals to Joseph through an angel in a dream that conditions were dangerous for the child. Not a pandemic, but politics. And God again commands Joseph to act in faith and do what Joseph would not naturally choose to do. Take evasive action. So Joseph travels routes that protect him and his family, and he even takes them to Egypt until the threat passes (Matt. 2:12, 13-15).
In other words, Joseph takes precautions, and the Bible never implies that doing so shows a lack of faith. Quite the opposite. Joseph takes precautions precisely because he is a man of faith.
Now, you might say, well, sure, if an angel showed up in my dreams and told me to wear a mask, it would be easy for me, too. But that misses the point. The reason that we are told he was a “righteous man,” a man of faith, is to prepare us for what he is going to be asked to do. First, to accept Mary as his wife. Then, second, to take precautions. Protecting his family doesn’t show fear. It shows faith.
And it wasn’t easy at all. The rabbis didn’t teach this kind of faith in Hebrew school. These were not predictable outcomes. God was asking Joseph to do something contrary to his nature, something uncomfortable, inconvenient, and maybe even embarrassing.
God was asking Joseph to run. And he had to have enough faith to do it.
A man of lesser faith might have sat around and wondered if that was really an angel in his dream. If God really wanted him to sprint through the desert to Egypt. If hiding on back roads was really being faithful.
And a man of lesser faith would have said, if I run, everyone will think I don’t trust God. So I’ll stay, and God will protect me and my family. After all, that’s God’s job, right?
Well, no. Not that way. See, the Bible explicitly warns Christians not to “test the Lord your God,” using a word that can mean “tempt” (Deut. 6:16). It means that you are not to presume of God what you want Him to do, calling it “faith” when in fact it’s just pride (1 Sam. 15:20-24).
That’s what Jesus was referring to when Satan tempted Him in the wilderness. Satan wanted Jesus to test God the Father’s loyalty by trying to force God into proving His promises are true (Matt. 4:3-7). We do the same thing when we put ourselves in hazardous conditions and expect Him to get us out of it. It’s not God’s job to obey us. It’s our job to obey Him.
But what about all those times that God says for us to trust Him, that He will protect us? All true. But here’s the thing. God decides what qualifies as faith for that occasion. Sometimes it’s fight, sometimes it’s flee. But it’s always God’s will. It’s always obedience (Luke 11:28). And repeatedly putting ourselves in a bad situation and then expecting God to get us out of it is not exercising faith. It’s practicing pride.
Joseph understood this was God’s plan. It was not about him. It was about his part in God’s purpose. He had the faith to practice precautions because he had the faith to know that what God had planned for the future was bigger than him. And if he stayed the course, he was laying groundwork for more than he could ever imagine.
Don’t respond out of fear. But don’t mistake practicing precautions for a lack of faith when, in fact, practicing those precautions might be what puts you and your church in the perfect position to see God’s greatest work in the days to come.
Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen
Heb. 11:1