Coronavirus and Christ

Last month, N. T. Wright wrote in the Times how Christianity offers no answers to the coronavirus. Wright goes on to say that:

No doubt the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation.

Instead, for Wright the answer or correct response is that we should rediscover lament because that "is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer." The article ends almost as a warning to ministers, to not offer answers to tragedies: "It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead."

John Piper, on the other hand, wrote a book on the coronavirus and 14 days later it was available for free, even as an audiobook. In this book, Piper looks at who God is and offers six reasons as to why the coronavirus is happening.

The first section of the book starts off with how we know God and who He is. For a modernist or rationalist, Piper's justification for why the Bible is true about God was surprisingly subjective. He appeals to a "divine glory that shines through" the Bible. Piper says scholarly and historical arguments don't work for most of the world when proving the Bible, instead just by reading the Bible, you should see Jesus shine through the darkness and that will resonate with a God-shaped template in your soul, which you were made with.

Moving on from how we know about God, in the Bible we see that God is sovereign, and it is in God's all mightly power where Piper draws his comfort from. God isn't just some abstract powerful being, He actually does care for us. We see this in Jesus who was sent to secure all things for us, to bring us to God Himself, and nothing will be able to separate us from God, not even this pandemic. The main refrain in this section is that:

The same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn't, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it

The second section of this book offers six things God is doing through the Coronavirus, they are:

1. God is giving the world in the coronavirus outbreak, as in all other calamities, a physical picture of the moral horror and spiritual ugliness of God-belittling sin.

2. Some people will be infected with the coronavirus as a specific judgment from God because of their sinful attitudes and actions.

3. The coronavirus is a God-given wake-up call to be ready for the second coming of Christ.

4. The coronavirus is God’s thunderclap call for all of us to repent and realign our lives with the infinite worth of Christ.

5. The coronavirus is God’s call to his people to overcome self-pity and fear, and with courageous joy, to do the good works of love that glorify God.

6. In the coronavirus God is loosening the roots of settled Christians, all over the world, to make them free for something new and radical and to send them with the gospel of Christ to the unreached peoples of the world.

These are just the dot points, there is a chapter on each of these. Really, what this book is about is dealing with the classic problem of theodicy (If God is powerful and loving, why doesn't he stop this problem? Either He isn't that powerful or He isn't that loving.) and the book gives the main answers that we can derive from the Bible. Piper never makes a one-to-one comparison about same-sex marriage, or abortion or some other issue and claims this is a specific judgement from God, instead all the points he suggests can really be applied to any tragedy, to a lesser or greater extent, depending on individual circumstances. I particularly use the Luke 13:1-5 framework in point 4.

So, N. T. Wright could accuse Piper as being a modernist or rationalist in seeking comfort in knowing what might be the reason for the coronavirus. However, Piper could push back and say Wright is coming from his own post-modern perspective which actually embraces the mystery of the unknown and doesn't want neat little answers. I would hope that a minister who has been in the job for a few decades has a decent grasp of the issues of theodicy, and in this book it is Piper's attempt. Of cause, there is a time and place for just sitting in lament. Those who are in the midst of trouble and grief don't need a philosophy class, they need a person to know them and to understand where they are at. But before trouble comes, it is good to have the issue of suffering under your belt to prepare you. Sometimes,

It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
the living should take this to heart. (Ecc 7:2)

This book is free and not very long. It is worth a look, and if you don't like it, remember you get what you pay for.