A Christian View of Things:
Coronavirus and the Christian Response/outlook

Introuction

News of the outbreak of the coronavirus broke on the world late in the fall of 2019. But it is no longer news that the disease cause by this virus, styled COVID-19 [the new coronavirus itself is called SARS-CoV-2], has reached pandemic proportion. The world today is under a virtual siege, caused both by personal fears and enforced official government lockdowns of whole cities and even entire nations. We are all aware of the panic everywhere, fueled by confusing and conflicting governmental reporting, mainstream and popular social-media trivializations, disinformation, misinformation, and politicization. And, amidst all this noise and confusion, sane and calm voices are hard to find.

Make no mistake, the coronavirus is a serious matter. And baring a few fanatical, eccentric, and polarizing voices, we are all beginning to realize the gravity of this threat as we see the rise in casualties in the silent march of the coronavirus. As I write this article, the worldwide toll of infected cases has reached 2.1 million, with more than 140, 000 death, and in the U. S. alone, over 640, 000 cases with over 30, 000 deaths in all fifty states [healthline.com, access on 4/16/20].

It is now clear that no one is immune from or safe in the path of this virus—from heads of states and top officials, to royalties and nobilities, to celebrities and entertainers, to military officers and ordinary soldiers, to medical professionals and ordinary people, etc.—all are vulnerable. This touches all of us, and Christians are no exception. Christians, however, are not only endangered by this evil virus, but above all people required to provide an appropriate response. Yet even among Christians, fear and confusion exist.

There is an urgent need, therefore, for sanity, clarity, composure, and a clear unified Christian message. So, what is a Christian response? How should Christians respond in a crisis like this? Is there a unique Christian response? In what follows, I will attempt to show what a Christian response to the threat of the coronavirus should look like. I will argue that a Christian response involves three things: [1] the basis of a Christian worldview, [2] a biblical understanding of God’s sovereignty, and [3] our personal attitude/response in the present crisis.

The Basis of a Christian Worldview

Everyone interprets or evaluates the world and his or her experiences in it from a particular point of view, even if they are not aware of it. This particular way of interpreting our world is called a worldview. We develop our worldviews, whether consciously or unconsciously, to help us make sense of the world. There are many different worldviews, but this does not mean that they are all right. They cannot all be right, because this would lead to confusion. For example, there are several different interpretations of the origin, cause, and spread of the coronavirus—it is manmade [China/Europe/America], or simply a product of nature or fate [for those who do not believe in a personal God/god], or of divine origin [God of the Bible/Christian, or some other deity]. A particular worldview, then, leads to each particular response, which is in large measure why we have the kind of confusion we see in the present crisis—because multiple worldviews result in multiple responses.

Even among professing Christians, there are different views on the origin and spread of the coronavirus. For this reason, we must define clearly what we mean by a Christian worldview. In short, a Christian worldview is a biblical worldview. Even so, some would say that this is not helpful because there are many different ways of looking at the Bible. However, there are some broad agreements on some key issues that a broad cross section of Christians agree on that constitutes a biblical or Christian worldview. These include four or five basic issues: [1] The question of origin—“Where did we come from/who is responsible for our existence?” [2] The question of identity—“Who am I?” [3] The question of purpose: “Why am I here?” [4] The question of the state of the world—“What is wrong with the world?” [5] The question of destiny or redemption: “How can I fix it?” or “Where are we headed?”

These are questions that occupy the attention of all major philosophies and religions of the world and determine how we interpret our world and our experience in it. A worldview, then, is a lens, or set of lenses, through which we view everything. It is a set of core values, beliefs, or principles that comprises a comprehensive purview for understanding the world and our experience in it.[1]

Now from a Christian point of view, what determines this all-encompassing lens or set of values is the Bible. The Bible is the lens through which we view the world, it is the filter through which we pass everything to make sense of the world and understand our experience in it. Nothing can be properly understood or interpreted outside the grid of the Bible. It is the mold or matrix by which our conception of the world is formed, because the God of the Bible is the only one capable of interpreting aright the world he created.

In the biblical worldview, then, God is sovereign creator and ruler of the world, who directs all its affairs. And we humans are his special creation, made in His very image and likeness for the purpose of ruling over the creation as his vice regents, whose mission is to multiply and fill the earth with his image bearers [Gen 1:26-28].[2] All that he made was pronounced good, for “God saw all that he had made and it was very good” [Gen 1:31], and the blessings of his providence was especially bestowed on his image bearers [Gen 1:28], whose ultimate goal and reward was to participate in his blessed rest on the seventh day [Gen 2:1-3].

God, then, is the answer to the question of the origin and source of all things. And as well, he is the answer to the question of our identity—we are his special creation made in his image. He made all things good and bestowed his blessings on them all to bring glory to Himself and eternal joy to us. But as we have it now, we all know that not only is something radically wrong with us, but with everything else in our world. The good world that God made is held together not only by the physical laws He installed in nature [see Col 1:17: Heb 1:3], but also by the moral or ethical laws he implants in human nature.

In Genesis 2:17, God told our first parents that to eat of the forbidden fruit in Eden would introduce death in the world: “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.” The remainder of the story is history, for a chapter later Adam and Eve violated God’s command and rebelled against him [see Gen 3:1-7]. On this original act of rebellion the judgment of God was swift [see Gen 3:8-19], and its ultimate punishment was the sentence of death—“By the sweat of your brow you will eat food, until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return” [Gen 3:17].

This sentence of judgment fulfilled the earlier sanction of Genesis 2:17 that if they eat of the fruit they will surely die. All of this means that life after the Fall would become one of hardship, pain, toil, carnage, disease, suffering, and ultimately death. This is the Bible’s explanation for the problem of the state of the world, of what went wrong and what is still wrong with the world. No doubt there are those who might wonder whether this consequent judgment is fitting for the crime. Clearly, this swift divine severity is an overreaction. How could God consign the whole of creation and everything within it to travail, death, and destruction simply for the eating of a single fruit?

I suggest that this is a rather superficial and trivialized reading of the situation we find in the text. We must understand that Adam and Eve did not simply make a mistake. Their action was not a simple inadvertent mishap of sorts that they would surely have avoided were they thinking clearly at the time. And neither did they sin out of mere curiosity. Instead, their action was a deliberate and calculated move to join in a conspiracy with God’s arch enemy, Satan, to overthrow God and take over the rulership of the universe—an  original “cosmic coup d’état,” if you please.

And what is more, their action was wholly unprovoked—they literally “bit the hand of divine, benevolent, providence that fed them” the bliss of paradise, and all this entirely out of sheer infernal malice incited by the Evil One. They embraced the malice of Satan against God as theirs, so much so that they believed his lie that to eat of the forbidden fruit meant that they would “become like God, knowing good and evil” [Gen 3:5]. And it was precisely because the fruit “was desirable for making one wise”—wise in the sense of being like God so that they are the ones who decide what is right from wrong—that Eve ate of it and gave to her husband [Gen 3:6]. To say the least, sin is a deadly matter, because all sins are ultimately against God. And this first sin of our first parents is the deadliest of all, because it is high treason against the kinship of heaven. It was the original attempt to dethrone God and take over the kinship of the world. As R. C. Sproul puts it, “Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in his sovereign authority.”[3]

This has significant ramifications for how we view the outbreak of the coronavirus [and, in fact, for every other disaster throughout history, whether manmade or natural], but we must return to this later. For now, we must attempt to complete the picture of the biblical worldview by addressing the question of redemption, or where we are headed, or destiny. In other words, what does the Bible have to say about fixing this problem of the world? Has sin and evil eclipsed the original good purpose of God permanently? Will the world self-destruct and end in ultimate eternal loss and oblivion? Will the consequences of sin—pain, hardship, ruin, disaster, disease, and ultimate death have the last word?

That God has not abandoned his original intention for the world, nor intended that the world should ultimately self-destruct to the point of obliteration and non-existence, was clear from the time of the Fall. For amidst his pronunciation of Judgment, He made a promise that He would redeem his world through the very means by which Satan brough about the ruin of the Fall. Eve, the first woman and mother of us all, would be the source of Satan’s very fall and the restoration of the world. As the ultimate judgment pronounced on Satan, God said, “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; her offspring will attack your head and you will attack her offspring’s heel” [Gen 3:15].

From this point on, the rest of the story of the entire Bible is the story of God’s outworking of this promise to undo the work of Satan, to redeem mankind for the fulfilling his original purpose, and to restore his creation to serving his original and ultimate purpose. The fundamental problem underlying all disasters, tragedies, brokenness, maladies, diseases, sufferings, and death in our world throughout history is a moral and spiritual one, which the Bible describes as sin. All humankind is affected by sin and will suffer the consequences of sin both in this life and beyond unless a cure is provided. Like the coronavirus, sin is infectious, and all of us have been infected by it through a kind of “spiritual heredity.”

That is to say, we have all inherited from our first parents in Eden the consequence of their first sin, namely, a sinful, corrupted nature from which we continue to live out and perpetuate the rebellion of our first parents. As Paul puts it, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” [Rom 3:23]. And the “payoff of sin,” Paul further tells us, “is death” [6:23]. But ultimately, Paul ties this universal human condition to the first sin in Eden: “So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned” [Rom 5:12].

So, to complete the portrait of this biblical worldview, the answer to this universal human dilemma of the reign of sin and death comes by way of another Adam, Jesus Christ, the ultimate seed of the woman, who dealt a death blow to Satan by way of his death on the cross. In Galatians 4:4-5, Paul tells us that “when the appropriate time had come, God sent out his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law.” Jesus is the “seed of the woman,” whom Genesis 3:15 promised would deal a death blow [“bruise his head”] to Satan who held us in slavery to sin and death.

All of us were under the curse of God’s law because we came under the curse of our first parents and continue to fall short of God’s glory. But for all who believe in Christ as Lord and Savior, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” [Gal 3:13]. The curse of the law means death by hanging on a tree, but Christ took our place by being hung on the cross for us [Gal 3:10-13; cf. 1 Pet 2:25]. Christ’s death on the cross paid the price for the redemption of the world in full, destroying the hold that Satan had on us and the rulership of the world [see Heb 2:14; 1 John 3:7-8]. Paul beautifully summarizes Jesus’ victory over all satanic control and sin over us by his death on the cross as follows:

And even though you were dead in your transgression and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he nevertheless made you alive with him, having forgiven all your transgressions. He has destroyed what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. Disarming the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross [Col 2:13-15].

Paul further expresses the final triumphant hope of the Christian worldview in Romans 8:18-25:

For I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared to the glory that will be revealed to us. For the creation eagerly waits for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly but because of God who subjected it—in hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now. Not only this, but we ourselves also, who are the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we are saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with endurance.

There is hardly a better way to round out the biblical worldview than Paul did here. In a world that is fallen and broken by sin, disease, pain, suffering, disaster, and death, often fostered by the terror we often wreak upon one another, only the Christian view as described here makes sense. And this provides a solid basis from which to address the crisis of the coronavirus. The Christian worldview offers hope for the darkest and most dismal conditions we may find ourselves in both personally and corporately, as in the current coronavirus crisis.

A Sovereign God

One powerful implication of this biblical worldview I have just presented is that the God of the Bible is the sole owner and sovereign of the world. To be sole creator and designer of everything means that God owns the universe and directs it affairs. Even after the Fall and rebellion of his image-bearers, He did not relinquish his ownership and original plan for His world. To put it plainly, this means that God remains the sole ruler and sovereign over the universe. The Bible is very clear that God never ceases to be sovereign King over the world He made, that He ever attends with watchful care to the minutest of details of everything and guides them to his desired end.

As R. C. Sproule’s now famous quote puts it, “If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God’s sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.”[4] In the universe of God’s sovereign rule, then, there are no “maverick molecules,” no “loose cannons,” and no “rogue viruses” over which He is not in control. At the most macro level, God’s supervision of the world extends to the extremities of the universe, since “He counts the number of the stars; He names them all” [Ps 147:4]; and “You set them in place” [Ps 8:3]. On a less grand scale, all the nations of the earth are under his control so that together “All the nations are insignificant before him; they are regarded as absolutely nothing” [Isa 40:17]. The nations may rage and plot against God’s rule [Ps 2:1-3], but the One enthroned in heaven laughs in disgust” at them [Ps 2:4]; He “frustrates the decisions of the nations” and “nullifies the plans of the peoples” [Ps 33:10]. And even “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord like channels of water; he turns it wherever he wants.”

In addition, all of nature is subject to him: “He does whatever he pleases in heaven and earth, in the seas and all the ocean depths. He causes the clouds to arise from the end of the earth, makes lightening bolts accompany the rains, and brings the wind out of his storehouses” [Ps 135:6-7; cf. 147:15-18; Mark 4:41]. Even the animal kingdom is at his command: He commands his lions on his mission of judgment [2 Kings 17:25] and shut their mouths when He needs to protect his faithful people from their assault [ Dan 6:22].

At the most micro level, not a single sparrow “falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will” [Matt 10:29], and “even all the hairs of your head are numbered” [Matt 10:30]. We see here that God’s sovereign will, decision, and care extends to those the world regard as the least—sparrows and his company of fledging disciples. Psalm 104:10-15, 27-30 provides a rather touching account of God sovereign care and provision for his animal creation, so that no part of his creation falls outside his bountiful grace. Amazingly, even though Matthew 10:29 [cf. 6:26] focuses on God’s care of his own people, not even the ungodly and rebellious escape his providential care, since “he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” [Matt 5:45]. That God should continually care so particularly for the entirety of his creation is a clear and powerful testimony to the fact that he intends to redeem it, and ultimately to restore it to its fulness.

Especially relevant for our purpose here is the question of God’s sovereignty over evil and evil spirits, and even in this the Bible leaves us in no doubt. Surprisingly, for many, God is sovereign even over Satan [Job 1-2; 1 Cor 12: 7-8; Matt 4:10] and evil spirits [Matt 12:27-32Mark 1:27]. God even uses the evils of wicked people, turning them into his good purpose [Gen 45: 7-8; 50:19-20; Job 12:16; John 19:11; Luke 22:22; Acts 4:27-28]. More surprisingly for some is the fact that God sends trouble and calamity for reasons known only to him [Judges 9:22-24; 1 Sam 1:5; 16:4: 2 Sam 24:1 Kings 22:20-23; Isa 45:4-7; 53:10; ruth 1:20].

In this regard, Isaiah 45:7 is rather pertinent, “I am the one who forms light and creates darkness; the one who brings about peace and creates calamity.” The New Living Translation’s rendering here is most interesting, “I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times. I, the LORD, am the one who does these things.” The context of the preceding verses [esp. vv 5-6] indicates that verse 7 is the explanation of Yahweh’s claim to be absolutely sovereign, that he has no peers. As one commentator explains, if there is any doubt as to Yahweh’s claim to absolute sovereignty, verse 7 “should lay it to rest. . . .What Isaiah asserts is that God, as creator, is ultimately responsible for everything in nature, from light to dark, and for everything in history, from good fortune to misfortune. No other beings or forces are responsible for anything.”[5]

In sum, the God of the Bible is absolute sovereign who does what he pleases from his heavenly throne and his purpose cannot be thwarted: “I am the Lord, I have no peer, there is no God but me” [Isa 45:5-6]. “Truly I am God, I have no peer; I am God, and there is none like me, who announces the end from the beginning and reveals before hand what has not occurred, who says, My plan will be realized, I will accomplish what I desire’” [Isa 46:9-10; cf. Dan 4:34-35]. In the words of Paul, “He accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will” [Eph 1:11b]. And, ultimately, He “works all things together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose” [Rom 8:28].

A Christian Attitude/Response

All of what has been said so far form the basis of a proper Christian response to the current crisis of the coronavirus. Anchored in the Christian worldview described earlier, and the resulting overarching view of God’s sovereignty, we are better situated in terms of how to view and respond to the present situation. Or to put it differently, “What should be our attitude?” I will argue that at least four attitudes should emerge from the above discussion when we consider the coronavirus crisis, namely, gratitude, fear, repentance, and hope.

First, the sovereignty of God should elicit gratitude from his people because even the crisis we are facing is part of his grand design to fulfill his purpose for us and the world. In Romans 11:33, Paul wrote these words, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how fathomless his ways!” When he wrote these words, it was not because he thought all was well concerning the subject he was addressing. In context, Paul was discussing God’s long promised salvation for Israel, which the vast majority of his fellow Jews seemed to have forfeited when they rejected their own Messiah. So bad was it that only two chapters earlier he lamented, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed—cut off from Christ—for the sake of my people” [Rom 9:2-3]. Nonetheless, Paul knew that even Israel’s rejection of their Messiah will in the long run turn out somehow to their salvation and that of the redemption of the world. So, Paul could still rejoice and be thankful for God’s inscrutable wisdom, despite his own misgivings about the grave failure of his own beloved people.

Likewise, God’s sovereign providence in our present situation is working out everything for the good of his people and the ultimate restoration of the world, and our proper response should be one of gratitude. This is the logic of Paul’s statement “in everything give thanks. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” [1 Thess 5:18]. “To thank God at all times is to see God working in every situation to bring about the divine saving will. This is not to say that God causes suffering and affliction, but to acknowledge, as Paul does in Rom. 8:28, that God works for the good of the elect through every situation.”[6] Since God’s sovereignty is at work in every situation with a good end in view, it means that “whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” [Col 3:17]. This extends to the most mundane of activities: “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” [1 Cor 10:31]. To do everything for God’s glory is to live purposely with gratitude in a world gone awry, not simply exercising blind faith.

Second, the sovereignty of God should engender a certain kind of holy fear in us amidst this crisis. Naturally, there is a great deal of fear around because of the treat of the coronavirus, both among Christians and non-Christians. But the kind of fear I am speaking about here is not paranoia that leads to distress and loss of heart and hope. Rather, it is a kind of sobriety that makes us realize that what we are experiencing is not a simple human undertaking.[7] For even if there are those who choose to believe that this is of our own making, we would still need to ask whether God is concerned or not with such a sinister human undertaking. In other words, if God is sovereign and nothing escapes his gaze, why did he not prevent it? So, did he allow it or not? And if he did, why?

It is not unusual in Scripture for God to allow disasters and evil not only to befall his people as forms of chastening, but also to judge the wicked and ungodly. The classic example of the former in the Bible is the case of Job. The clear testimony of Job chapters 1 and 2 is that God allowed Satan to bring disaster after disaster into the life of Job [see 1:9-12; 2:1-6]—loss of properties, loss of children, loss of health, loss of friends, loss of wife’s support, pain and grief. Yet we are told that “In all this Job did not sin, nor did he charge God with moral impropriety” [1:22; cf. 2:10]. Instead, Job fell-down and blessed and worshiped the Lord, acknowledging that nothing he possessed in this world belonged to him: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be blessed” [1:21].

The disasters God allowed in Job’s life were to test him to see how well he feared the Lord. When God boasted before Satan about Job as “a man who fears God and turns away from evil” [1:8; cf. 1:1], Satan retorted, “is it for nothing that Job fears God?” [1:9]. What Satan implies here is that Job fears God because of what God gives him—all the material wealth, prosperity, security, and position. The test, then, was to see whether Job valued these more than the Lord Himself. Allowing Satan to pull the rug entirely from under Job’s feet no doubt frightened him, if only momentarily, but this frightful experience also generated a deeper sense of the fear of God in him. For when the rug is pulled out from underneath, the only thing left to do is to fall before the One who is more worthy than any and everything in this world.

Crises, like the coronavirus pandemic, often have the solitary effect of reminding us of the most important things in the world we take for granted—the gifts of God and God Himself. The irony is that the gifts God gives us often become idols replacing Him and his will and purpose for our lives, so that we use the true God as the supplier of the actual “idol-gods” we worship and not even realizing it. The removal of the idols we worship should frighten us so that we realize who the one true God really is—and this can be even more frightening.

In keeping with the response of fear for the Lord, the third Christian response should be one of repentance. Crises, trials, pain, and suffering are intended by God to purge and purify his people from personal sins and idolatrous participations. The isolation and limitations brought about by the removal of much of the structures, systems, and normal practices, behaviors, and ways of life  due to the threat of the coronavirus crisis provide a unique moment for Christians to pause and reflect deeply on what we have taken for granted. On the one hand, upon adequate reflection and evaluation, if our response is like that of Job, then we have little to fear—“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

On the other hand, however, if our reflection exposes failures, then there is the need for repentance. Curiously, in the end, even Job found the need in his heart to repent, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye has seen you. Therefore, I despise myself, and I repent in dust and ashes!” [Job 42:5-6]. The furnace of the peril of disaster and death does have a purifying effect that we escape only to our further ultimate peril. Here also we may follow the example of Daniel when he confessed his and the sins of his people: “O Lord, great and awesome God who is faithful to his covenant with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned! We have done what is wrong and wicked. . . .Therefore, you have poured out on us the judgment solemnly threatened in the law of Moses the servant of God for we have sinned” [Dan 9:4, 11; see the whole of vv. 4-19].

Finally, a Christian response should include hope. Even if in some ways we are implicated in the chastening brought on by the coronavirus crisis, this is no cause for despair. Repentance and confession are our first recourse, and out of this comes the renewal of hope. But the restoration of hope does not mean that God will end the crisis or that Christians will be spared from disaster. Whether God directly brings disasters or allows them in our world, it does not mean that his people are protected from their physical effects. Elijah, for example, prayed that God would cause a drought on the land for three years [1 Kings 17:1; 18:1], but he himself was severely limited and isolated by the effects of the drought. He had to hide himself for these three years [1 Kings 17:3] and later fled for his life [1 Kings 19:1ff].

Nonetheless, Christian hope transcends the threat of any crisis, not because we are confident that we will be spared from disaster, but because our hope does not end here in this world. As Paul puts, “For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone” [1 Cor 15:19]. As we all know, many Christians have already been infected by the coronavirus, some of whom have even died. Yet Christian hope triumphs because death does not have the final word for us. From the Christian’s perspective there is no “maverick molecule,” “no maverick cell,” “no loose or rogue virus” outside of God’s control.[8] So, even in the face of death threatened by the coronavirus, we can be at peace and thereby offer hope to the hopeless around us. The Christian’s hope frees him to engage the world in its hopelessness, offering hope for it beyond death, beyond this life. The Christian can respond to this crisis with hope because he has already begun to share in the hope of Christ’s resurrection. As 1 Peter 1:3 puts it, “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”