So, if you haven’t heard the new hit single Past the Pandemic do yourself a favor and check it out…seriously, if you don’t listen then what follows will make less sense.

So, if you heard that song, out of the blue without knowing who wrote and performed it beforehand, you might be surprised to find out that the artist was Dr. Francis Collins, the outgoing head of the National Institutes of Health. Collins is famous for being part of the team that originally mapped the human genome. So, scientifically, this guy is a heavy hitter. And more than that, he’s an evangelical Christian. He’s also been a bureaucrat for 12 years.

And I’m not sure if Francis Collins has always written and performed unironically cringey songs, or if that’s a result of his time spent in Washington, but that song was something that demonstrates the widening divide between everyday Christians and the elites. It’s not even fair to call it a divide, anymore, it’s more like a chasm, and if things aren’t rectified soon, it will become a great gulf that no one can cross.

But perhaps you’re confused by what I mean – “OK,” you might be thinking, “yeah, the song was a bit dorky, but Collins is just a nice guy, and he’s a believer and so we have to tolerate anything he does nomatter what the results are because he’s a nice Christian.” I know lots of Christians for whom that’s their way of assessing the theology of others. Friends how many times have you heard this excuse for bad theology, “well they love Jesus” or “they’re just trying to help” or “they really mean well”? Who cares?! We excuse all manner of bad theology, even heretical theology, because people are nice and say they love Jesus.

Look at what Dr. Collins is saying, pay attention to the lyrics and not only the lyrics but the tune to which the lyrics are set. The song is about “somewhere past the pandemic”, but set to the tune of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Which is disconcerting considering that “somewhere over the rainbow” is a teen-girl’s fantasy, which incidentally has been co-opted by sexual perverts and deviants for decades. Thus, what Collins is saying by his tune choice – nevermind the lyrics, we’ll get to those – he’s saying that the best way for an Evangelical Christian Scientist to say farewell to the American people, is by telling them that getting past the pandemic is a fantasy and also gay pride.

Now, I’ll admit it’s possible that Collins is just really bad at understanding how poetry works and doesn’t see the reality that saying “let’s end COVID now” as the final strain of a song, while setting it to the tune that says that everything in the song lives in an impossible make-believe alternate universe is a bit self-defeating. It’s possible he doesn’t see that. I’d say it’s unlikely because Collins is a very smart man, who’s pretty talented with the guitar, and as a Christian he would have been exposed to poetry and literature and metaphorical modes of thinking to a degree that many other scientists aren’t. It’s also possible that Collins didn’t catch the connection between the gay pride movement and the tune he chose, and that for an evangelical, that’s a bit odd.

All that is possible. But is it likely? Is it likely that Collins was just unaware of the contradictory messaging? I doubt it – I think he just didn’t care. He liked the tune and the lyrical framework and decided to use it. I don’t think that Collins is laughing maniacally in his lair about all the sheeple that didn’t realize that the pandemic would never end and that he made us all think there was an end in sight. I think that Collins just came up with the lyrics and went with it and didn’t care at all about the mixed messaging.

And doesn’t that fit the data a lot better? I think it’s the perfect ironic summary to the entire American bureaucracy’s take on COVID. It’s the perfect summary to the Evangelical Elites take on COVID – they just don’t care about the mixed messaging. They don’t care if, when, or how often or how badly they contradict themselves. They don’t care because they KNOW they can get away with it. They know that they can contradict themselves in the same speech – in the same paragraph! – every word can contradict the song to make it incoherent, and they don’t care because they can get away with it.

Why can they get away with it?

Because they aren’t trying to convince people; they’re trying to intimidate them with their degrees and authority; they’re trying to overawe people into submission. They aren’t making cogent arguments for their policies; they’re just telling you to shut up and do as you’re told; and if you ever decide to question these naked emperors you’re told that you’re killing grandma or that you aren’t acting like Jesus.

Now look, if you’ve followed this show and my writing and preaching, you know that I have repeatedly said that people need to make prudential health decisions for themselves. I’ve said repeatedly that we are our brothers’ keepers and we do have a moral responsibility to prevent spreading communicable diseases if they could have effects that outweigh the benefits of not taking certain precautions. I have said publicly, repeatedly, in print and on the radio that there IS a biblical case for vaccine mandates. So, I think I’m coming to this conversation as someone who has repeatedly demonstrated that I’m in good faith and willing to hear arguments.

But I haven’t been met with arguments – not least with arguments that can withstand scrutiny. And the evidence that the arguments for the outsized reaction to the coronavirus is the fact that our elites in government, media, and the church can repeatedly contradict themselves, repeatedly not follow the rules they make for others, repeatedly employ threats and bully tactics and yet nothing has happened. Fauci is still in power – and Biden said he was the real president. All the evangelicals that have told you that if you don’t wear a mask, no wear 2 masks, no, wear 2 masks in the car and never go inside a public space again, no stay in your house and never go to Church again, no get the vaccine, no get the vaccine again, no get the booster, no get another booster, no get another another booster; they’ve told you these things and people still listen to them and respect them and act like these are the serious people. All these evangelical elites who have beclowned themselves by going along with the government in shutting down churches and dragging us along a never-ending series of hoops to jump through, while we ruin our economy, psychologically damage our kids, ruin the education of children, increase deaths of despair like suicide and drug overdose, increase domestic and particularly child abuse – these elites have never faced any real consequences.

Nobody is out there demanding that these folks resign. Nobody is telling them that they have demonstrated a disqualifying lack of wisdom and discernment. Nobody is telling them that they need to answer for why they thought that the benefits of ruining the lives of hundreds of millions, was worth it. Indeed, there’s no way to prove that the masks or lockdowns did anything whatever to prevent COVID deaths. More than that, there has been an estimated 800k COVID deaths in the US total, that’s over the course of about 2 years. Now in those 2 years there have been an estimated 6 and a half to 7 million deaths – official stats for 2020 and 2021 aren’t in yet, but using the estimate from 2020 and doubling that, and probably adding about 80-100k more (as total US deaths have increased by about 42k every year since 2009) – so that means that even with the lower number of total deaths, the 800k deaths since COVID started make up about 12 percent of total deaths. Not 12 percent of the population, 12 percent of total deaths. Others have estimated total deaths from COVID to be a much lower share of the population. And that’s with other causes of death increasing as well. And here is where it becomes crucial to pay attention. Consider these stats from Advisory Board’s Daily Briefing:

However, the researchers also found substantial increases in the numbers of deaths attributed to other leading causes of death. For example, deaths from heart disease—which ranked as the leading cause of death in the United States in 2020—increased by 4.8% from 659,041 in 2019 to 690,882 in 2020, marking the largest increase in heart disease deaths since 2012. Similarly, the researchers found deaths increased by 15.4% for diabetes, 11.1% for unintentional injury, and 9.8% for Alzheimer's disease.

And when we look at those deaths that suggests that these are a lot of lockdown deaths. These are deaths of despair. And this isn’t taking into account the incalculable cost of what it did to kids for them to not see faces for years on end.

But more than all of that is the theological cost that Christians have paid. We’re so terrified of death, of death of any kind that we were willing to stop worshipping God. But worse than that, Christians WANTED GOVERNMENT to force other Christians to stop worshipping God. And for what? What is the rational basis for these policies?

What was the rational basis for masks? That they would stop transmission. But when real world data demonstrated that they didn’t stop transmission and people pointed this out, the elites told us to shut up and obey. What was the rational basis for lockdowns and taking away Americans’ civil liberties without due process? Well, to stop transmission. Except 1) it’s arguable that was a bad policy and 2) it’s arguable that it had no real longitudinal effect because disease don’t just hang around for 15 days and go away. When people pointed this out we were told that we weren’t acting like Jesus because Jesus would mask-up and lock-down. What was the rational basis for vaccine mandates? To stop transmission. But again, like every government policy it hasn’t done the thing they said justified forcing you to do it.

These people are clowns. They are not serious people. That’s why the most prominent Christian medical scientist in the world ends his tenure with a disturbing, self-contradictory ditty. He tells us to end COVID now.

How Francis? How? By doing all the stuff you guys have been saying to do for 2 years that hasn’t worked? By panicking about every variant? By giving government unfettered power? By refusing to enter the public square and answer simple questions about prudence and the costs and benefits of government COVID policies? By ignoring prudential arguments from experts and non-experts alike?

None of those things will stop COVID because they haven’t. All these government policies have done more harm than good. Now look, I’m not saying that lockdowns didn’t save ANY lives. I’m not saying that shutting down nursing homes didn’t save ANY lives. And I’m not saying that a vaccine mandate wouldn’t save ANY lives. What I am saying is the costs have far outweighed the benefits, with some serious estimates saying that the costs of lockdowns in the US have been at least 5x worse than the benefit, and more likely around 90x worse.

What price have evangelical elites paid for advocating policies that are orders of magnitude worse than the alternatives? What price have they paid for unthinkingly, unqualifiedly, asserting their authority and telling all of us peons and serfs that we just need to do as we’re told or we hate Jesus and wanna kill grama.

Friends, the elites in this country are clowns. They are fools who despise wisdom and are incapable of and unworthy to make serious decisions that affect your life and wellbeing. Now, as far as government goes that’s what we can expect!

But the obsequious clownery from people who pompously make their Sinaitic pronouncements is laughable – except nobody’s laughing – which makes it lamentable.

The chasm between Evangelical elites is teetering on the unbridgeable. As our elites advocate demonstrably failed policies, push Wokism in colleges and seminaries, backslide from the Bible on sexual morality and abortion, advocate Darwinism, plagiarize, embezzle, and mismanage they somehow have the autocratic audacity to try to browbeat the lowbrows if anyone dares question them.

Christian elites are clowns. They are now serious people. Stop taking them seriously. Stop buying their books. Stop going to their conferences. Stop visiting their websites. Stop trusting them to speak from on high. Stop the hero-worship. Stop living your lives based upon the nostrums, maxims, and dictums of these fools. They are worse than useless because they are not content to just leave things alone! They do actual damage to the cause of Christ in their desperate and pathetic attempt to be loved by all the swells as they seek secular sainthood.

Of course there are dangers on the other side – active anti-intellectualism has hurt Christianity and there is an ugly side to populism. But corrupt shepherds are always worse for the flock than unruly sheep. And right now the shepherds seem to be little more than a pack of heretical hirelings.

We need a better class of pastors in this country. I’m not sure we deserve it, or that we’ll get it – but it is what we need.