Theological Journal - March 25: Coronavirus

What Does the Church in America Do in the Coronavirus Pandemic?

"The notion that the elderly should give themselves over to infection so that millions can return to their subsistence existence while the disparity with the wealthy can continue to increase is not a rational proposal. If protecting the economy as it is presently organized is a reasonable proposal, I’m sure they’re taking volunteers in hospitals across the country."
-Barry Harvey

One thing the church does not/must not do is support proposals that privilege the American (or any) economy over people.

To so fetishize the economy is idolatry and participation in the larger idolatry of American exceptionalism.

The church stands with and under this crisis with its people (of both church and nation).

The church shares God’s view that the health and well-being of a community depends on its care for the victims and the vulnerable in their midst. To so care is to meet the needs of those at the margins and the bottom of social heap before those of people better able to take care of themselves. To promote our economy “as it is presently organized” is to fail in this basic duty to God and our people.

Our predicament today is adaptive, tragic, and apocalyptic.

-adaptive: presents us with problems we have never faced before, do not how to handle, and for which previous knowledge and experience do not prescribe answers and may well mislead us. In other words, we do not know what in the hell is going on except that it is hell.

-tragic: there is no painless way out of this pandemic. Whatever strategy we settle on will unsettle or destroy the well-being and existence of an unacceptably large number of people. The question of who will suffer and how much are unavoidable aspects of coming to terms with this crisis. In other words, this pandemic is inescapably tragic. The church must at least stand with its people in our tragic suffering, helping where we can, bearing what we must, and sharing the burdens in sacrificial generosity.

-this pandemic is apocalyptic. That is, it is an event that discloses the dynamics and dysfunctions driving our national existence at this critical moment. Apocalyptic means revelation, and revelation means God. Not as the cause of it, to be sure, but as the One who uses all things to advance his purposes with and for his creation, whether in judgment or in mercy. We cannot know how God will use such tragedies but we can in faith know he does. Knowing that means aligning ourselves with others who want to address and change those skewed dynamics and dysfunctions.

Some thoughts to spur our reflection today about what God is doing in our world.