How changing my views about Covid led me to Christianity

Judeo-Christian belief may be what makes science and free speech possible

When I changed my position about Covid, I experienced so much hatred directed at me. I knew my position was correct. I knew this scientifically. I had spent half a decade debunking misinformation, and I knew the government was promoting misinformation.

But it immediately occurred to me that the hatred of my opponents prevented them from seeing the correctness of my position. It prevented them from being scientific. They could not consider seriously a position that they were so filled with hatred about.

It then occurred to me that Christianity is the religion that teaches us to value other human beings--regardless of what they do or say. It teaches us to value them because they have a divine soul. I realized that my opponents overwhelmingly did not believe such a thing. They believed that because none of us have a divine soul that ensures our value as human beings, then if I say something they are convinced is evil, then I myself am thoroughly evil.

This lack of belief in a human soul inclines people toward radical hatred and radical dehumanization. And with it, radical belief. But a belief in a human soul provides a buffer against our hatred and condemnation of others. According to Christianity, everyone has a beautiful, divine soul, no matter how wicked or evil their beliefs or behavior is.

The idea of a soul, it occurred to me, acted as a buffer against hatred and radicalism. It also acted as a conduit, a canal, a pathway. Once one appreciates another person's fundamental humanity, one cannot dismiss them as evil. And one cannot as easily dismiss their ideas as evil either.

Ideas and beliefs just are. They can be erroneous. They can be wrong. They can miss the mark and be sinful. They can even be evil. But that understanding of the evilness of other people's ideas cannot fully radicalize into a radical hatred of other people as people. We cannot become overcome with hatred, because in Christianity, we are commanded to love--even to love the evil ones.

Loving the evil ones means remaining open to the evil ones. And that means deradicalization. It does not mean not opposing, not combatting, not going to war against evil. But it does mean not losing sight of another person's humanity. It means always being open to who they are, because they have a divine soul, even if they use this for evil.

And it occurred to me that if everyone felt that way, we would become much less radicalized against each other. Much less polarized. It does not mean we should not be prepared to fight. It does not mean we should not be prepared even to kill or die.

What it does mean is that we yearn for and seek peace. We strive for compromise with those who can be compromised with. And we do not regard or treat other humans as vermin, no matter bow evil we regard them as.

Love for one's neighbor is a fundamental principle in Judaism and Christianity. It is a bedrock of peace and civilization. It is a requirement for civility and civilization.

I believe it is also a bedrock for science.

And we have lost it as a society. We have replaced it with the principle of power, of the obsession with oppressors and oppressed.

To me, healing this society means the principle of charity. And this principle is grounded in the love of the neighbor.

I believe that we must never waver on this principle. We must extend it to everyone. We must believe it with all of our souls. We must embrace the kinds of actions that will help everyone else embrace that idea too.

But I also believe that people who refuse to embrace this principle have no place in civilization. They have no place in science. They will tear our society apart, and they will tear science apart, if we do not excise or reform them.

I believe in the future of humanity and in Western civilization. I am therefore drawn to the Christian faith as the bedrock, the prime example of this.

I came to the Christian faith from this vantage-point. But I also believe that we must be the change we want to see in the world. This means taking the Christian faith seriously. It is not enough to say that everyone else should be a Christian. I should be one.

I am a questioner and skeptic. I cannot help but radically question myself and everything around me, constantly. This makes me radically averse to Christianity or any settled viewpoint. But I also see where my reasoning is leading me.

I can never stop radically questioning myself or everything around me, even if I only do it silently. But I can make a commitment to grow in faith, even if I struggle in it. Even if I am deficient in it compared to other people. I can try with all of my will.

This is why I am a Christian. I am committed to believing. And this is my path to faith, even as I will always struggle in my commitment.

I do not see any way out of Christianity as the fundamental truth on which to base all of human society. Christianity has captured this better than any other belief system. If I believe in the world and in the future of the human race, then with all my heart and soul, I must be a Christian.