Who unleashed Covid-19?
If you listen to the conspiracy theorists, it’s not a virus but a disease caused by radiation from 5G cellphone towers. Damaged cells in our body then (somehow?) secretes a substance that looks like a virus. All this has been crafted by the Illuminati or a new one-world government that is about to reveal themselves.
Another theory is that this virus was created in a lab as a warfare agent and then accidentally released — or even deliberately released? Conspiracy theorists are in their element here.
Moving away from the fringes, scientists first told us that the virus originated in a bat and then jumped to humans. That theory progressed to a pangolin — a scaly anteater to you or I. But after recent genetic analysis, the latest theory is that two viruses have fused together (1).
The theological angle
Being a pastor, what concerns me is the theological angle to this question. Whatever caused Covid-19 to spread across the world? Christians are debating whether God or Satan is ultimately behind it.
Is God’s wrath being unleashed? Or it is the devil wreaking havoc, through whatever human agents he may choose to go through: A national government gone rogue? A terrorist organisation? Foolish eating habits, or a powerful secret society? The list goes on.
I see many social media posts quoting Isaiah 26:20:
“Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by.”
And also 2 Chronicles 7:13–14 (of which I spoke on recently at my church):
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Verse 13 has been pointed out is very similar to the start of 2020:
- bush fires in Australia (‘no rain’),
- ‘locusts’ in East Africa, and now
- this virulent ‘plague’.
In my own message, I suggested that we should follow the command of verse 14 and seek God to ‘heal our land’. But surely, that only applies if God has sent the virus? Repenting from wickedness only applies if the wickedness has led to the plague, right?
At the core of this question are assumptions about the very nature of God himself. Is God angry and wrathful or is he loving and kind?
My answer?
The Bible tells us he is both. Think about it. You’d expect that if you recollect the number of emotions you go through in a day. You can’t really be whittled down to one emotion. And neither can God. God is loving but God is also angry. New York pastor, Tim Keller, says you can’t have a loving God without an angry one. Love and anger are intimately connected — and he’s right. If you love someone, you’ll get angry at anything that tries to harm them. Picture somebody about to snatch away your three-year-old.
Here’s the crux: our selfishness and sin are hurting us. God loves us and so he can’t stand by while sin destroys us. Murder, rape, violence, oppression afflicts the people God loves. But it’s not just the victims of sinful behaviour that are affected. Sin itself eats away at us and distorts who we were designed to be. Sin taints us. Sin done against us brings violation and shame. At a population level, ultimately, sin is rebellion against our creator — and none of us is innocent of that.
God is both loving and angry: God loves human beings but is angry at our sin.
We see from the Bible that if we consistently rebel against God he will eventually tear down those altars of rebellion. Israel experienced this through the Assyrians and then the Babylonians. Both were declared as vehicles of God’s judgment (Isaiah 7:17, 13:5 & Jeremiah 25:8–11). When Israel rebelled God tried to woo them back with prophetic message after prophetic message. Eventually, God sent judgment against them (including plagues) to break down their hardened hearts and to humble them. The outcome was that the Jewish people never again worshipped physical idols. Tragically, it took the Babylonian exile to do this.
If Jesus never came to earth, we’d have to face the same thing. But the good news for everybody today is that Jesus has made a way to beat sin and to expunge its tarnishing, destructive elements. Jesus became our substitute. He experienced God’s anger at sin so that we can experience God’s love and acceptance.
If you are a believer, then you have completed that substitution. You can access God’s love. But if you are outside the family of faith, you still need to make that exchange. Exchange your sin and the judgment that this sin carries for God’s love and acceptance.
The Book of Revelation shows us that God will continue to bring judgment on the world to humble and break down our rebellion (Revelation Chs 8,9,11 & 16). But if we are ‘in Christ’, then that full judgment has fallen on Jesus and not us. If you are not yet ‘in Christ’, then repent of selfishness and rebellion and experience God’s unconditional love. Do it right now. It’s the greatest news the world has ever heard.
So, who ultimately unleashed Covid-19?
It’s currently not clear, but if Satan is behind this then God is using it to lead people to himself through repentance and love. But if God is behind it, he’s doing the same thing. God loves us so much that he willingly came to earth and died to remove from us the very thing that is destroying us.
Now that’s something to be thankful for.