Reflection B.18 / Does God Have A Purpose In Coronavirus? / "Are These Questions Really Necessary?”

I’ve often mentioned that I’m asking three difficult questions. In reality, there are two main questions: ‘Is coronavirus a judgement from God?’ and ‘Are we living in end times?’ But are these important questions to ask?

Suppose you don’t feel well and go to the doctor. The doctor checks your blood pressure. She listens to your heart. She takes a blood sample and sends it for analysis. A week later she calls you. ‘It’s clear what the issue is’, she says. ‘Fortunately, it’s quite easy to treat.’ The doctor found out what the problem was and now she knows what treatment to prescribe. Correct treatment requires correct diagnosis.

We who are reading this are, we hope, not spiritually ill. We don’t need to repent and turn to God; we did that a long time ago. Day by day we are living in covenant relationship with Jesus and that’s great. But we live in a world that is ill, and it is primarily for the sake of the world around us that we need to ask and answer the questions above.

Is the world ill? I was interested to hear Sir David King, former UK Chief Scientific Adviser, on the news at lunchtime today. He commented on climate change and coronavirus and said, ‘There is of course, a major difference. Humanity will survive coronavirus…’ Had I heard correctly!? Was Sir David King saying that climate change is an illness which could be fatal for humankind!? I checked on some other comments by Sir David King to see if I’d misheard. He said in 2014, ‘Climate change is not the biggest challenge of our time, it's the biggest challenge of all time.’ He clearly thinks the world is facing a huge problem. We can easily reel off a dozen ‘illnesses’ that we see in the world today.

I started these Reflections in response to coronavirus. What do our ‘doctors’ say the cause of coronavirus is? Scientists have suggested that someone got the virus from a pangolin and the pangolin got the virus from a bat. Sounds remarkable! Donald Trump has suggested that a Chinese bio-lab developed it. No less remarkable! But suppose those aren’t the actual reasons. Suppose the actual reason is that God wants to wake humankind up, to warn humankind that it needs to change its ways, or else…

Just as in the analogy of the doctor, if the diagnosis is wrong, the treatment will be wrong. Let’s suppose that coronavirus is indeed a warning from God, and the treatment is that humankind repents. If that is the treatment, then nothing else will work. We, the church, can pray to God to heal. We can pray a blessing on our land. Humankind can sort out coronavirus. I’m not sure if we can sort out climate change. But if the root problem isn’t fixed it won’t solve the problem. God will simply send another warning, only louder.

We – God’s people – are the only people who are able to work out if this is actually the cause of the problem. We are in the role of the doctor in the analogy. I have no vested interest in attempting to show that the root cause is God’s anger at a world that almost entirely ignores him. But the patient – the world – is very ill, and like the doctor, I want to run the tests. I want to be confident in a diagnosis. I believe that is the best thing I can do to help the world. How we then communicate the results is another matter. And it’s very possible that ‘the world’ would completely disregard the results anyway. But one step at a time…

Have a good day.

Simon