Category: Christian

COVID-19 and Spirituality in the 21st Century

We are made for interaction and for relationship. 

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To paraphrase from the article linked below, spirituality in the 21st Century is is a one-person-show. You tap in, you tap out. You are the curator of the experience; you are in the pilot’s seat. Self-betterment. Self-discovery. Self-awareness…. Spirituality in the 21st Century is a singular, self-focused pursuit.  You are your own god, attempting to build your own island paradise. Sounds like a dream.

That dream is a attractive to a recluse like me. As a child, Robinson Caruso and My Side of the Mountain influenced my impressionable psyche at an early age. Thoreau captured my imagination as a still impressionable, but disillusioned, teenager. Of the major world religions, Buddhism spoke to me as an early college student.

Retreating from the messy cacophony and harried competition of modern life seemed like Nirvana to me. Back to nature, isolated on my own island paradise, beholden to no one but myself, released from external duties and melting into the oneness of all life seemed like a laudable and desirable goal.

My inspiration comes from a blog I follow by a lovely lady and Christ follower. You can read the original blog post here: Eavesdropping on a Plane. She calls to mind the siren song that beckoned me up to a point in my life.

As I sit here in self-imposed quasi-quarantine (for the sake of others, not myself this time), some 40 years after a paradigm shift in my life that changed the trajectory of my journey, I recall the allure of that dream, and I am also convinced it’s a mirage, an unattainable state of illusory bliss.

We are social creatures, created for relationship with God and each other. The ordered, but largely self-regulating, isolation we now experience as we fight the threat of the alien invader, COVID-19, proves the point: we are uneasy, restless, and missing the regular, personal contact we need and thrive on.

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Perspective in the Reminder of Our Own Mortality

The lack of control that we feel is real, but there is purpose behind the chaos.

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From the moment the Chinese government woke up to the significance of the corona virus threat, they kicked their efforts into high gear. I have a friend who described to me what it was like for his parents, who live in China. We have all heard reports of the virtual lock down of the country by the government.

That’s what totalitarian governments do. They exert the collective power of man by the force of governmental control en masse. Totalitarian governments rest on a foundation of top down, human power. The philosophies that gird them are largely humanistic, not reliant on divine power, but on the iron fist of self-governance.

Not that democracies, republics and other forms of government don’t rely equally on variations of collective human power, control and ingenuity. They all do. And we do the same on a personal level. In the face of the present corona virus threat, we have all taken personal measures to protect ourselves, our loved ones and our neighbors. As well we should.

Ultimately, though, the corona virus reminds us of things we can’t control, though we try.  Underneath the collective and individual determination to take control of this virus Thing that threatens us, and all the things that threaten us, runs an undercurrent of uncertainty and uneasiness, sometimes even dread. It ebbs and flows from conscious to unconscious. Some of us are more aware of it than others.

Its roots are found in the same place: try as we might, we know that we don’t ultimately control the outcomes. We don’t ultimately control our own fate.

Beginning with our own birth and the circumstances, time and geography in the world into which we were born, we are not in control. We didn’t choose any of it. If we strip away the façade, we don’t control our own lives.

We don’t control our nature or nurture. We don’t control the generations of DNA we carry in our genes, and we don’t control the way our parents raised us, the classrooms in which we were educated, the circle of friends that influenced us and the myriad influences that shaped us.

Things happen in our lives that we don’t control. We could be sailing along at a good clip when a rogue wave comes “out of nowhere” and knocks us overboard. The car we didn’t see coming, the cancer growing inside us, the closing of the place we always worked, an unseen virus that shuts down the state and national economy, putting hundreds of thousands out of work for who knows how long.

When we really think about it, there are so many things that we don’t control in our everyday lives that it can be quite overwhelming to spend much time thinking about it. It’s no wonder the undercurrent of alternating uncertainty, uneasiness and dread ebbs and flows in our conscious and unconscious minds. It causes many of us to panic and worry.

What’s the solution?

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Change of Perspective: From the God of Moses to Jesus

Our perspective of God changes dramatically in the New Testament because God came to us in different form.

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I can’t how many times I have been reminded and drawn to the words Paul penned in his letter to the Philippians about Jesus (Phil: 2:6-8):

Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
    he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

Scholars tell us these words were an early creed. The creed that Paul recited to the people in Philippi was probably familiar to them, as it was intended to be recited. That is the nature of creeds: they are meant to be repeated.

Thus, I suppose, the fact that I find myself drawn over and over again to the Philippian creed is apt. It carries significant and timeworn meaning to me, as it certainly must have done for Paul and and the early followers of Jesus to be considered so worth repeating.

I found myself thinking again about these words today as I wrapped up another blog post (Lessons Learned from the Edge of the Wilderness). As often is the case when meditating on Scripture, meanings deepen, grow and broaden. The Philippian creed takes on new meaning for me in light of the exercise of comparing and harmonizing the “God of the Old Testament” with Jesus (another theme I have focused on in the past).

In Lessons Learned from the Edge of the Wilderness, I was thinking about the fact that Moses and the people of Israel were distanced from God – such is the fate of all people in our natural and sinful state. In this piece, I want to explore what that means (and why it is the case), and I want to explore why our perception of God changes in the revelation of Jesus.

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Lessons from the Edge of the Wilderness

The bodies we live in now are tents constructed for a temporary sojourn through the wilderness of this present life.

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View of Promised Land from Mount Nebo in Jordan

I am reading through the Bible chronologically. The “books” of the Bible are only roughly chronological. Following the chronology closely requires jumping around a bit. I didn’t realize to what extent that is true before taking this journey that I am on.

Presently, I am right at the point where Moses stands on top of a mountain (east of Jericho, on the edge of the plains of Moab) to survey the land that God promised hundreds of years earlier to Abraham and his descendants. Moses dies right before they go in.

Before he dies, though, he reminds the people of all that has transpired. He reminds them how God delivered them out of slavery in Egypt and went with them every step along the way. The reminder of God’s presence was with them by fire at night and cloud during the day.

God revealed Himself in dramatic ways to these people. God instructed them through Moses in very detailed ways how they could have a covenant relationship with Him as a nation. He provided ways He could be approached through Tent of Meeting, Ark of the Covenant and the offerings they were to make through intermediaries (the Levite priests) among other things.

They had 40 years of wandering in the wilderness with God’s presence continually among them in visual demonstration and ritual reminders.

Reading through this history of God’s interaction with these people through a modern, intellectual lens can be unnerving. The skepticism of the age echoes in my mind and unsettles my heart. Of particular note are the times we read that people are stricken dead for ignoring or refusing to follow the instruction. For instance, the Sons of Korah.

The sons of Moses’ cousin, Korah, led a revolt against Moses. They and all the people who followed them died when “the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households, and all those associated with Korah”. (Numbers 16:1-33)

Incidences like this prompt a person of modern sensibilities to wonder, “Why would a good God do such a thing?!”(Or to allow it.) It seems Draconian.

The stakes were high for these people, and even less intentional “slips” were sometimes met with the same fate. It’s hard to imagine living in those circumstances, especially in light of the grace that seems to color everything that Jesus said and did.

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Loving Our Neighbors During a Corona Virus Outbreak

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We live in trying and interesting times. In the midst of enormous political and social polarization in the United States, we are now dealing with the announcement of a global pandemic. The reactions have ranged from virtual panic and hoarding of toilet paper to mocking and distrust.

Yesterday, a group of people I gather with once a month under the auspices of Reasons to Believe, a ministry that blends science and faith. We were live with Anjeanette (AJ) Roberts, who is a research scholar with RTB.

Timing was perfect. AJ is a virologist. She studies viruses for a living. She was one of the small group of people who studied the SARS virus in the early 2000’s at the National Institute of Health. SARS is a coronavirus, the same type of virus as COVID-19, the one we are dealing with now. She was on the ground floor of dealing with SARS, so she is in a unique position to provide wisdom and guidance.

I took notes as best I could yesterday and will pass on what I was able to capture in them. The facts are the facts, but how we respond to them is more important than the facts, themselves. As Christians, we need to be guided by the commands of our Lord to love one another, to love our neighbors.

Politics has a way of creeping into and tainting everything. We should not allow politics to color the facts or affect how we follow the clear direction of Scripture. Jesus is the way and the truth. We should not ignore truth in favor of political agendas or deviate from the way, which involves taking up our crosses and following Jesus, loving others as He demonstrated his love for us.

With that said, which is my paraphrasing of the guidance AJ Roberts gave us at the end of her presentation on the current state of COVID-19 in the world and in the US, I will summarize the facts she presented as best I can recall them. It’s important to note that the landscape is rapidly changing as the virus spreads around the world and in the US. In fact, she said the situation is changing on a daily and even an hourly basis.

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