The Coronavirus: fear, faith, and reminders from home

As a gangly fourteen-year-old with an unruly cowlick, brown-framed glasses, and a silver cap on one front tooth, I was confirmed at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Minnesota in 1972. Even though in the last thirty years I’ve sat under the high peaked ceiling of the nave only twice — for the funerals of my parents — I’ve somehow managed to remain a member of the congregation, which means I still receive the monthly newsletter. It usually consists of four sheets of white paper folded in half containing the Church Council minutes, budget recap, usher schedule, and a request for prayers for members suffering “health issues.” It also includes names of those celebrating birthdays — Polkow, Petersen, and Furth; Coulter, Beerman, and Kuehl; Pfarr, Neperman, Senst, and Kronbach — names that remind me of riding the school bus or sitting in study hall, a drunken wedding dance at the Legion Club or a fatal farm accident, a junior high crush or cruising Main on a Friday night.

But this month’s newsletter also reminded me why I’ve avoided church most of my adult life. The new pastor’s message on the first page is clearly intended to comfort the small-town congregants who are enduring social-distancing, shuttering of small businesses, and the isolation of online church services. In part he says, “The Covid-19 pandemic will be used by the Devil to erode faith” and “the virus remains a manifestation of evil.” This is probably a common view among traditional Christians, but associating the virus with “evil” and emphasizing myth over modern science to explain its source and even intent is more than I can take. We need not look far for examples of how this attitude can be twisted to justify making dangerous accusations and either forgetting or denying what we actually are.

It’s normal that people want to feel they’re in control. As a result, when faced with a devastating flood, terminal cancer, destruction from a tornado or hurricane, or a deadly pandemic, we inevitably ask, “Why?” We search for a cause — someone or something that intentionally inflicted this harm because if we can identify a cause, we can take action and, therefore, reassert some control — whether real or imaginary — over our lives. This is one consequence if not the actual goal of suggesting that the coronavirus is “evil” or that it is being “used by the Devil,” who not only understands human social patterns but willfully conjures and looses upon the world a virus that causes fear, misery, isolation, and death. When people are instructed to blame some supernatural evil force, they can too easily resort to physical intimidation or violence against whomever they believe personifies that evil. Consequently, people take illogical and even dangerous actions: some invade government buildings with automatic weapons, others physically and verbally assault those who appear weak because they wear face masks, and still others buy into and spread discredited conspiracy theories about labs in China and political motives.

While some see this virus as intentionally malevolent, others see it as a sign from God. According to a “national poll of 1,000 ‘likely’ American voters” conducted by The Joshua Fund, “44.3% of poll respondents said they believe the coronavirus and resulting economic meltdown is a ‘wake up call for us to turn back to faith in God,’ signs of a ‘coming judgment,’ or both.” It seems to me naïve, ignorant, and even insulting to think that the Almighty would intentionally, spitefully, and ambiguously coerce us “’back to faith’” by targeting the elderly, the physically vulnerable, the poor, the asylum-seeker, the refugee, and the imprisoned. This suggests that people think God is no better than a low-level mobster telling us, “Love me. Trust me. Believe in me,” all the while holding a gun to grandma’s head. When people are told that the Creator warns by punishing, they are being pushed toward prayer and worship out of fear — fear that only in this way can they control this virus and its effect on them personally.

But it’s not just the loss of control over our own fates that people fear. It’s also admitting — no matter how much we try to deny it — that we, like this coronavirus, are part of the natural world. What we forget — willfully or unwittingly — is that human beings are just one version of physical life competing for room on this planet. We might think we’re different, that because of our cell phones and Netflix and social media and self-driving cars and because God in the Old Testament tells us to “subdue… and have dominion… over every living thing,” we imagine we’re separate from and not only can but should control nature for the pleasure and profit of mankind. By continually divorcing ourselves from Nature, we ignore our impact on the world and even deny the natural world’s ability to impact us. The things that recent protestors clamor for — the freedom to get a haircut, work out at the gym, see a movie, enjoy a meal at a restaurant or a drink at their local bar, stroll through the mall — are not efforts to rejoin the natural world. Instead, we do these things to escape and to deny the uncomfortable fact that despite being capable of memory, calculation, imagination, even faith, we are still mammals. Therefore, our physical lives and fates are endlessly intertwined with and dependent on all living things as well as on the soil, water, air, and sunlight we all share. The coronavirus is a blunt and deadly reminder of exactly that.

Faith can be a force for good and a comfort to those facing personal hardship. But like Mom was fond of telling my brothers and me when we were boys on the farm, “God helps those who help themselves.” And, I might add, who also know themselves for what we are.