One of the challenges that we all faced during COVID was that the intense pressure on health care meant that none urgent surgery and treatment had to be cancelled. There were two reasons for this. First, hospitals were at capacity treating virus patients. Second, we wanted to minimise face to face contact to reduce the risk of people spreading the virus. However, people still did need to see a doctor, receive treatment and have surgery and the wrong call could potentially cost lives.
It was important, therefore that doctors and nurses had effective triage systems. One of the questions any COVID inquiry will have to consider is whether or not they did and if this cost lives, not directly from the virus but indirectly from the pandemic. I suspect that this did happen but it’s difficult to prove. Nor should such a conclusion be judgemental given the unique situation we were in.
Christians and churches also run a form of triage system. All the time we are running theological triage as we make judgement calls about whether a theological issue is first, second or third order.
By first order, we mean issues if potential heresy, where getting it wrong means substantial understanding essential truth about God and the Gospel. Second order issues are those that are still important but don’t result in risk to the Gospel. You wouldn’t break fellowship with other believer’s but you would want to ask members of your local church to have a clear position. Third order issues are those that you might have different views on even within your church leadership team.
It’s not always a simple matter as to whether something is first, second or third order. Sometimes, the way we go about disagreeing on something apparently trivial leads to Gospel level divisions. Our actions can make something a first order issue.
The big question is whether our theological triage worked under pressure. I’m not sure it did. It seems that even now people are pushing disagreements about attitudes too masks and vaccines up the order and are willing to split churches and break fellowship over them.
Then there are a whole host of other issues that have been coopted into bigger culture war battles where I wonder if they are really as high up the order as people are making them. I would include here EFS, classical theism, the debate over conplementarianism among others. Sometimes it seems that leaders and theologians are spoiling for a fight.
Why is this. I suspect that it is at least in part because we have cultivated a culture of competition and rivalry. This has come at a time when it is harder for light to be seen and easier for heat to be felt because of the way that social media functions. It comes at a time when if we are thinking in terms competition for followers, book sales, church members that we will feel that we are fighting for a larger piece of a shrinking pie.
So, we need a radical turn around in our thinking and culture. Perhaps teaching from 1 Corinthians would be timely for our churches.
Faithroots 