Some thoughts stimulated by the coronavirus plague...

(We put this together originally back in March 2020, and just updated it in November 2020)

1. The Covid-19 pandemic is a bad thing. It makes people sick. It kills some of them. It scares many more. It stops people from getting together to do the things they want to do. It messes up the stock market, wiping out life savings and opportunities. (Yeah, it's come back now, but for sure some people got beaten up by it). It'll probably cause job losses. [This was written early; we've seen the massive job losses. We've seen some recovery, but there's still plenty of unemployment out there.] It destroys businesses and livelihoods. It's bad!

2. Does God want bad things to happen? No. (See the argument in True Christian Religion 43.)

3. Did God create a universe in which bad things can happen? Yes. Apparently. (If you accept that there is a God, etc. -- which will have to be another thread...). In a lot of ways, it's an incredibly dangerous universe, with black holes, and exploding stars, and incredible heat and cold. And yet, there is also at least one Goldilocks planet, where things are just right. Still dangerous, but beautiful and lush and amazing. It's a good place for human life to develop, where we can have the challenges of bad things, and develop the wisdom and staying power to deal with them.

4. What do you think is God's will in all this? Here's a piece of an answer: A good outcome of this plague could be for all of us to see and experience people helping each other, and nations helping each other. It's patchy, of course, but... as an example, efforts to develop an effective vaccine have been helped by a fairly early publication of the composition of the virus. There is an exchange of epidemiological data. There's communication. There's compassion. There's bravery. There's sacrifice, and generosity. There were charities in town that sent surplus medical supplies from the USA to China when the virus hit Wuhan hard. We see health care workers courageously caring for sick and contagious people. We've seen rapid advances in therapies, and generous sharing of information. And we've just managed to develop several vaccines against harmful new pathogens in less than a year.

As human beings, we've had, and still have, the opportunity to respond well or badly to this crisis. There is a helpful concept in the philosophy of stoicism, that is, that you cannot control all the things that will happen to you, but you can control how you respond.

God wants us to respond well. We certainly can, and will, and should, argue about how that would look. We should be able to do it without vitriol, without grandstanding, without hypocrisy, but with fair, calm consideration of facts. We have the freedom to do that. We can have the wisdom to do it.

If our primary motive is to love our neighbor as ourselves, some good things will happen.

44. That this is the nature of the Divine Love is to be known from its sphere which pervades the universe, and affects every person according to his mental state. It particularly affects parents, since it is this which makes them dearly love their children, who are other than themselves, wish to be one with them, and devote themselves to their happiness. This sphere of the Divine Love affects not only the good but also the bad; and not only human beings, but also animals and birds of every kind. What has any mother in mind when she has given birth to a child but to unite herself with it and seek its good? What bird has anything in mind when it has hatched its chicks other than to warm them under its wings, and by kisses to put food into their gullets? It is well known that even snakes and vipers love their offspring. That universal sphere especially affects those who receive that love of God's into themselves, and these are those who believe in God and love the neighbour. Charity in their case is an image of that love.

[2] Even friendship among those who are not good apes that love. At his table a person gives his friend the best portion, embraces him, touches him and holds his hand, and promises to put himself at his friend's service. The feeling of liking and the striving of those who are alike and of the same type to be together come from the same origin. That same Divine sphere also works on inanimate things, as on trees and plants, but it does this through the sun of the world, and its heat and light. The heat penetrates them from without, links itself to them, and makes them bud, flower and fruit, which answers to happiness in an animal. This is the result of that heat, because it corresponds to spiritual heat, which is love. There are even representations of the working of this love in various things in the mineral kingdom; specimens of this are to be seen in the exaltation ¹ of minerals into useful forms and the formation of gems.

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