As coronavirus brings the world to a grinding halt, I contemplate the spiritual ramifications and responsibilities of Christians and the church.
I went out this past Friday . Not walking, no, not quite yet, just “out”. A short drive with my wife through the small pseudo-township adjacent to my neighborhood to our favorite local spot. A well-desired if not well-deserved date after two weeks of relative uncertainty.
Passing through town we see more and more people out and about walking, a stark reminder of the world that we now live in. It seems that Netflix and chill is not all that it’s cracked out to be when it’s all that is to be done.
The owner is glad to see us again and calls us by name. My wife is better with the pleasantries, I’m trying hard not to look uncomfortable…because the contrast is striking.
This is not normal. This is not the world we lived in even a week ago. The faces are all the same, but the lady behind the counter is wearing nitrile gloves and is clearly flustered as she cradles the phone, puts another customer on hold to ring us up, and cheerily greets a man who has wandered in. All in a fluid motion—impressive. Jarring. Unsettling. This is not normal.
We thank her and take our food outside to the only table still available to sit at in the area. Local ordinances being what they are, all public seating has been blatantly removed. Tables are gone, and at the ones that are bolted down, the chairs have been stacked and shackled. We are fortunate to find a table literally welded to the cement: a wrought-iron affair with built-in seating. Let’s just see them take this away.
We dust off the pollen, say a prayer, and begin to unpack our carry-out order just a stone’s throw away from the establishment from which it came. The sun sets, the world turns, and we can’t help but wonder how things turned this upside down in the span of a week over a disease that no one we know has contracted yet, but for which the entire world has stopped spinning.
We fumble with plastic silverware and boxes. My wife has dressed up for this date… and I can’t do a damned thing to make it any more special.
The owner walks out of the restaurant and asks us if we need anything. God bless her, but we thankfully decline. Seeing our plight, she returns a few moments later with dishes and silverware. Virus be damned, she’ll take care of her customers.
It strikes me then as it has several times this week that the world, though impacted, is no intrinsically different than it was a week ago. Circumstances may have changed, but we’re all still here, still in the picture, still playing out the cosmic drama in which we’ve been cast.
For better or for worse, this is the world. This is reality. And there is much hope in that, no matter what may or may not have been said. Because we’re still here, the end is not nigh, and we have the opportunity now more than ever to rise to the occasion and live up to our best thoughts and values. This is a time for mobilization, even as we are socially distanced. This is a time for actions to line up with words. This is a time for heroes, big and small, to serve their families, friends, and communities well.
A few months ago I met with a friend over lunch, and talk quickly shifted to deep things. In the face of a fractured society constantly at each other’s throats, we pondered what could possibly come next for our nation and the world at large. What might the future hold?
I posited the notion that each generation has its landmark crises and trials: wars, depressions, pandemics, political upheaval. Rare is the generation that passes untouched. For two decades, however, it seems like that was precisely what had happened here in America. Not since September 11, 2001, could I recall a unified cultural moment of crisis in which everything seemed to stop here in America. A moment when individuals were forced to reconcile their worldview with the world itself and realize that despite all material gains and life stations, they were powerless in the face of the cosmos. By all accounts, we’ve had it pretty good.
I had but a seed of a notion how fortunate we have been in that respect. I know that America has prospered despite a slew of injustices and dispossession the world over. Truly, the poorest among our number live as kings in the majority of the world, and even those from our recent past. We have had it exceedingly easy in this country, and most surely it has spoiled us.
Despite my platitudes and awareness of the trends of history, I had grown complacent: surely the good times would continue. Surely, not within my lifetime, would the world just stop spinning. Surely not. Yet, for the last two weeks, it seems like that is precisely what has been happening.
In retrospect, it was inevitable. A cursory glance at world history shows that our society’s prolonged relative peace, stability, and prosperity has been an exception, not the rule. Both secular sources, as well as the Bible’s descriptions of the course of human history are clear: human existence is fraught with plague, war, economic turmoil, and uncertainty. This is what happens in human history. This is what always happens. History is one long narrative of the human species struggling to gain some semblance of control over the world, and being put in its place over and over again.
This isn’t to say that I think we’re in some manner of cataclysm at the moment, in many ways I believe we’re overreacting. This virus is not Captain Trips, the superflu at the center of Stephen King’s The Stand that decimates 99% of the world population over the course of a few weeks. This virus is not the resurgent Black Death or anything approximating similar diseases in their scope. By all accounts, the preventative measures that we are taking should be an effective course of action to preserve the lives of those at risk within our communities. These preventative measures should work. What concerns me, however, is not the scope of the virus, but the effect on the populace and governing bodies. What concerns me is not nature, but the hearts of mankind.
I have found myself wavering between a quiet resolve and a deep existential angst over the course of the last week. In so many ways I feel as though my introspection and contemplations have prepared me to perform my job and support those around me during a time such as this. Not to put too fine a point on it, but dwelling my own mortality and smallness compared to God and the universe is more or less my default setting, the current moment in history is merely validation. I have labored for years, uncompensated financially, pursuing projects that have taught me the skills necessary to execute and distribute media content online on a tight delivery schedule. Working in a church media center, this is precisely what is needed.
My resolve comes from the fact that I have struggled in prayer and diligence to reconcile my calling with my current station in life, faced frustration with what I perceived to be professional stagnation, yet ultimately have found a deeper sense of calling in serving the Kingdom of God directly as part of a ministry team, and just in time to be mobilized in distributing ministering content to those in our church family and beyond. Speaking with my mentor earlier this week, I reflected that it is as though I have been created and placed for a time such as this, a deterministic conviction that squares with the deepest parts of my soul. Earlier this year, as I charted out my calendar in prayer, I had the striking conviction that my efforts to streamline my creative processes and work schedule had been in preparation for some shift. I thought, surely that means that my creative projects will finally get their place in the sun! Surely.
Then the announcement of pandemic. The social distancing. The business closures.
I quite suspect that I’m now seeing that shift play out in real time, not at all in the manner that I had so vainly hoped.
So many that I know within the church have been praying for some manner of revival in the West. The unfortunate reality is that revivals, spiritual awakenings, and true conversions to the faith often come as a reaction to desperate circumstances, and that certainly seems to be the trajectory that we’re on now. I, overall, take great hope in this, because a cultural moment of discipline by the hand of God indicates that all is not lost, and that His patience has not worn out. There is still yet time to work towards Kingdom purposes in our world.
There are conversations to have with friends and family that could never have been had in a world with consistent market gains and certainty. There are examples to be made as we give of ourselves to serve those who cannot leave their homes. The world over, communities seem to be coming together in the face of uncertainty and slowing down, and perhaps looking up. Perhaps this pandemic and social distancing is precisely what we have needed spiritually. Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise.
Yet, I confess existential angst as well. I suspected a market correction within the next year, I suspected more political turmoil, I suspected that housing prices would drop and that we might have a recession—I did not suspect that anything like COVID-19 and the ensuing market crash would happen. I was complacent. I was a fool.
As governments across the globe issue decrees, as death rates skyrocket overseas, as troops mobilize even in our nation to help slow the spread of the virus, as local stores shutter, as layoffs come, as markets tank, as the world slowly grinds to a halt, I confess that I am fearful. It is all-to-easy for me to speak about noble callings and the Lord providing opportunities to serve our communities while my hand is on the plow and my eyes are set on a goal, but each night, as I lay down to sleep, I am troubled by the uncertainty. I have absolutely no idea what the future holds, only that it’s a future that we all must partake in. Somehow, I will need to confront the struggles ahead. The potential of unemployment, the ramifications of an economic recession, the challenge of raising up a family in the face of it all. Maybe none of these things come to pass, but they are certainly on the table. I know, better now than in the past, just how blessed I have been, and that gives me hope, because my God remains the same though the seasons change.
I can thank God for His provision throughout the years. I can thank God for everything that He has done, from saving my soul to providing for my wedding, from growing my faith to bringing basic provision. God has been good, and I know that He is sovereign, even over this time.
With impeccably dark timing. My daily Bible reading has crossed into the territory of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Babylonian exile, a time of unprecedented tumult in Israel’s history as they were scattered to the nations. In that time, God did not call his remnant to look back upon where they had come and long for it—He lambasted the “feel-good-best-life-now,” false teachers that brought such messaging. Instead, God encourages His people to serve His purposes faithfully where they are in exile, accept their lot, and look towards His promises in a spirit of humble faithfulness:
The book of Jeremiah, chapter 29 verses 5-14 say:
Build houses and dwell in them. Plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and father sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there, and don’t be diminished. Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to God for it; for in its peace you will have peace.” For the God of Israel says: “Don’t let your prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you. Don’t listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them,” says the Lord. For The Lord says, “After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,” says The Lord, “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future. You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You shall seek me, and find me, when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” says Yahweh, “and I will turn again your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places where I have driven you, says Yahweh. I will bring you again to the place from where I caused you to be carried away captive.”
This time will pass. There will be changes made to our lives overall, changes to the world and economy, there will be difficulties and uncertainties, but God is sovereign, and while we draw breath we are to be faithful in serving precisely where we have been placed. This is a time for heroes. This is a time to help those around us. This is a time to serve the city. This may be a time to isolate, but not in the manner of Prospero, drinking to his health in a raucous party as the Red Death devastated his country, and finally his own castle. We can maintain a healthy distance while making sure that we stay in touch with those around us.
We are not in control, and that is okay, because we have never been in control. We have always been operating at the good pleasure of a Sovereign God, and though we cannot see the grander picture from where we stand, we can be assured that He will bring His work to completion according to His will, and that we have the opportunity before us to put our money where our mouth is.
I hope and pray that this blows over within a few weeks and that everything moves on, but I won’t act as though I believe that is the case. I certainly hope this is a footnote in history, but have to entertain the notion that this very well could be the type of cultural moment that is written up in history books that future generations look upon and marvel that anyone could have lived through it. Yet, those of us alive now are the end product of generations that have passed through storms far worse than the one before us, globally as well as within the church, and have marked the way with faithful witness of God’s provision and grace.
I recall Gandalf’s encouragement of Frodo, reminding him that no one seeks out times of trouble, but will be subjected to them all the same, before calling him to action to make the most of the time before him. This is such a time. A time for heroes, a time for action, a time for faith, and I hope and pray, a time for revival.
