On February 23, 2020, South Korea’s confirmed COVID-19 cases surged to 433. More than half of them were linked to a church called the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony.

A religious gathering became the trigger point for an entire nation’s epidemic outbreak.

When this news spread globally, most people’s reaction was simple: “Cults harm people.” Easy to understand, with a clear villain to blame. But as a Christian, my reaction was more complex. Because I knew that the problem with Shincheonji couldn’t be summed up in three words—it revealed a danger lurking within all religious communities.

The Virus Doesn’t Care About Your Confession of Faith

Let me start with a basic fact: a virus is a physical entity.

It doesn’t care what god you believe in, what scripture you read, or what prayers you say. It only cares whether you’ve maintained distance from infected people, whether you’re wearing a mask, and whether you’re washing your hands. It follows the epidemiological laws of transmission, not the doctrines of any religion.

This sounds like stating the obvious. But you’d be surprised how many religious communities in the first months of the pandemic tried to counter this physical fact with “faith.”

South Korea’s Shincheonji Church continued to hold large gatherings because the church leader claimed believers had spiritual protection. American pastors announced on television that they would “blow away the virus with faith.” Religious gatherings in India drew hundreds of thousands of people because organizers believed the sacred river water could purify everything.

The common thread in these cases isn’t “which religion is more foolish.” It’s a cross-religious, cross-cultural cognitive error: treating religious belief as physical protection.

Two Forms of Rationality Collide

I learned a concept in seminary called “double vision”—you can simultaneously view the world through the lens of faith and the lens of reason, and these two perspectives don’t need to cancel each other out.

Faith can tell you that life has meaning, that suffering has purpose, that death is not the end. These belong to the realm of religious rationality, where science cannot and need not answer.

But faith cannot tell you that “gatherings won’t transmit viruses.” That belongs to the realm of public rationality, the domain of epidemiology and public health.

Where’s the problem? It’s when some faith communities infinitely expand the authority of religious rationality, extending it into domains where it doesn’t belong. They respond to “please maintain social distance” with “God will protect us.” They counter “science” with “faith.”

This isn’t faith. This is overreach. And it’s dangerous overreach—because your overreach affects not just yourself, but everyone you encounter.

It’s Not Just “Their” Problem

When Christians see news about Shincheonji, their first instinct is often to distance themselves: “They’re heretics, different from us.”

But if you’re honest, you’ll admit: Shincheonji exaggerated the problem to extremes, but the seeds of the problem don’t exist only in Shincheonji.

In the church circles I belong to, the early stages of the pandemic involved similar struggles. Some argued that “the church is God’s temple and won’t be invaded by viruses.” Others questioned whether suspending in-person gatherings showed a “lack of faith in God.” Some felt wearing masks to church was “not trusting God’s protection.”

These voices weren’t as extreme as Shincheonji’s, but the underlying logic was identical—treating faith as a talisman to escape physical reality.

At that time, I said something in my church small group that sparked considerable debate. I said: “If you truly believe God created this world, then you should also believe God created the physical laws governing virus transmission. Respecting these laws is not disbelief in God—it is respecting the order God created.”

Some people thought I had a point. Others felt I was “too rational” and had “insufficient faith.”

The Dual Responsibility of Believers

I’m increasingly convinced that a mature believer must bear dual responsibility.

The first responsibility is to your faith—to preserve the values you believe in, to live out the principles you profess, to maintain a genuine relationship with your God in the deepest places of your heart.

The second responsibility is to society—you are a member of a faith community, but you are also a citizen of this society. Your behavior affects not just your soul, but also the people around you. When your religious behavior might endanger public health, you cannot evade civic responsibility by invoking “religious freedom.”

These two responsibilities sometimes create tension. But this tension shouldn’t be eliminated—it should be honestly confronted.

The tragedy of Shincheonji is that they infinitely magnified the first responsibility while completely ignoring the second. They lived in an insular world, wrapping everything in religious language, until the virus burst that bubble.

A Moment for Theological Reflection

So what’s the greatest value of this situation?

It’s not to give us another target for criticism. Rather, it compels every faith community to conduct a deep examination of itself: does our faith divorce itself from reality?

Can our theological discourse address real-world problems? Or can it only offer self-comfort within church walls?

The love we profess—is it limited to “our own people,” or does it also include bearing responsibility for society’s public good?

Rather than spend time denouncing Shincheonji as heretical (which is easy), spend time asking yourself: does my faith make me a better social citizen, or a more insular religious believer?

The answer to this question matters far more than any criticism of Shincheonji.

Because the virus makes no distinctions. But the quality of your faith determines whether you become part of the solution or part of the problem when crisis strikes.