How Should I Think About God and the Coronavirus?
As one who came to faith in Christ after years of apathy, skepticism, and dabbling in a smorgasbord of other beliefs, I have a particular affection for those who ask the tough questions, just as I too once started asking, and whom are looking for genuine, honest answers.
The lackadaisical attitude I once held would often arise from thinking Christianity couldn’t offer me any real answers. And I’m sure if this apathetically skeptical past-version of myself were still around during these Coronavirus times, the questions concerning God and the existence of something like the Coronavirus would be almost crippling. Remind you, many of us are being confronted with suffering and the fragility of life in a way most of us have never experienced before.
And so, it’s the most natural question in the world: If God is good and all powerful, then why doesn’t He just stop bad things happening? Why wouldn’t He stop the Coronavirus? Why is God allowing this?
The question of God and suffering is one of the oldest questions ever asked and there are no easy answers. Most often the response needed is our love and care for those who are walking through suffering. But, when the time comes for intellectual answers, I believe there are some helpful ways to make sense of suffering and illness during times like this.
There are many reasons why I believe it may make sense for God to allow us to go through a certain amount of suffering. After all, it’s not God’s job to keep us safe, secure, free of anxiety, or pain-free. God is concerned with bringing us into a relationship with him as fully human people, often shaped by both the joys and challenges of life. Likewise, I don’t believe God causes suffering (on the contrary, it’s our own free will that brings about much of the evil in the world) but I do believe God is wise, powerful, and loving enough to use the pain of our circumstances for His greater purposes.
When it comes to Coronavirus, we may be tempted to ask: Why has God allowed death, illness, and disease to exist at all? For that, I’ve learned that we have to expand our perspective to a cosmic scale.
The apostle Paul states that “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22).
The Christian story is that the whole created order is in some sense ‘out of kilter’ at a cosmic level.
Yet Paul includes the promise that one day “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).
By creating a world of free creatures – both physical and spiritual – God has granted a level of freedom to the whole of the created order. Even the physical processes of life itself are subject to things like viruses - the “bondage of decay” that Paul speaks of. But that also means that God won’t simply step in and wave a magic wand to take away the suffering in the world.
The Christian story is of a broken and rebellious creation that is awaiting the renewal of all things. We are called to live faithfully for the kingdom that has already come in Jesus, while awaiting the kingdom
yet to be in which “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)
I believe that God is masterful enough to be able to work through these experiences and tribulations of our life, and work through the actions and prayers of those who are seeking to see His Kingdom come on earth.
At the same time, I don’t want to simply pass off the reality of suffering with any trite clichés. There are many questions we will never see answered this side of eternity. Sometimes we can only go so far in trying to explain things and can only throw ourselves on the mercy of God, weep with those who weep, and continue to stand up for truth and love with our biblical convictions whenever we can.
The good news, however, is that whatever questions you have remaining, we are called to trust in the God of the cross and the resurrection. He specializes in turning evil into good, after all.
Many people will be discovering what a crisis can bring out of them – for better or for worse. Many will be looking for hope in the midst of despair. But God is mending His broken world, and he began it with Jesus. We are called to join with God in seeing redemption happen all around us. And in this we find both help and hope.
By Brendan Olenick