Is COVID-19 God’s punishment? Is COVID-19 God’s plan?

Is God punishing us? Is this virus God’s wrath upon the disobedient?

As I sit in quarantine, I make a study of these questions. I come to them from my point of view as pastor and as a respecter of all faiths.

Is COVID-19 God’s punishment?

I read an article, published on April 24, 2020, in The Atlantic. Jonathan Merritt describes religious leaders who proclaim that God is judging certain people with this virus. God bestows blessings and curses in direct correlation with those who obey and disobey God’s orders. Who is “blessed” and who is “cursed” has been decided according to their own interpretation of what God has ordered. Merritt calls out their callous words, which alienate those who do not fit their norms for gender expression. Merritt points out how they perpetuate toxic, rigid views of faith, and “heap pain on the grieving.”

I read about Ralph Drollinger, who conducts a weekly Bible study for some of Trump’s White House Cabinet members, including Health Secretary Alex Azar, who serves on the White House’s coronavirus task force. Drollinger proclaims that God is judging America through COVID-19. In a recent bible study, he writes, “Those individuals who are rebuked by God’s forsaking wrath are largely responsible for God’s consequential wrath on our nation.” The individuals he cites as deserving of God’s “forsaking wrath” include people who are gay, environmentalists, those who support Planned Parenthood, and allies of these groups.

Drollinger is defaming people I admire, those whose work promotes the common good, the health of our dear planet, the globe entrusted to our care.

These views reveal corrupted understandings of the ancient texts, whose words require a lens of context and a view of the big picture of the unfolding of God’s work.

Virus as a Summons to Faith, Walter Brueggemann, Cascade Books, 2020. — *Virus as a Summons to Faith*, Walter Brueggemann, Cascade Books, 2020.

Is COVID-19 a summons to faith?

I find background for these ancient texts and clues for understanding offered by Walter Brueggemann in his recent publication, Virus as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief and Anxiety.

Brueggemann wrote this book in the first six week of quarantine, taking up the mantle of opportunity and responsibility to address faith through the lens of virus, and to look at virus with the eyes of faith. He outlines three interpretive options, three threads of understanding, to be found in Old Testament texts.

The first option is a transactional quid pro quo. Blessings will come with obedience and curses will come with disobedience. This horizontal, transactional relationship is outlined in a list of blessings and curses in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. There is a triad of consequences for disobedience in the form of sword, pestilence and famine. The prophets continue this thread, especially Jeremiah and Ezekiel, whose voices arise in closest proximity to the destruction of Judah in 586 B.C. at the hands of the Assyrians. The triad of consequences is expanded to include captivity, as the Israelites are threatened with being carted off to the land of Babylon.

A second option is one in which God acts forcefully for a specific and intentional purpose. It is vertical, as God acts upon the world. The Plagues in Exodus are a demonstration. God gathers various elements of creation in the service of divine intent. The prophet Isaiah continues this thread, as the Day of God brings the destruction of the commercial-military establishment in Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:12-17). The terror of God is mobilized “against all that is proud and lofty.” The form of destruction is named only in imagery, but likely reveals an understanding of the devastation caused by Assyria and later Babylon, as the political entity that is Israel dissolves into exile.

A third stream of thought within Hebrew scripture is to be found particularly, but not exclusively, in the book of Job. It is neither horizontal nor strictly vertical. I will call it a circle, encompassing everything. In this interpretation, the holy God acts “in utter freedom without reason, explanation, or accountability, seemingly beyond any purpose at all.” In the whirlwind speeches in the book of Job, God declares that “God’s forceful, creative action is beyond any capacity of Job to master, explain or comprehend,” Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4). In a similar vein God speaks to Isaiah, “Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, ‘what are you making?’ or ‘your work has no handles?’” (Isaiah 45:9,10). Several Proverbs also make this claim: “The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established” (Proverbs 19:21).

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels — Photo by **Pixabay** from **Pexels**

Brueggemann summarizes these three “angles of vision” for our interpretation of the onslaught of a plague: a transactional quid pro quo, a purposeful mobilization of negative force to effect God’s intent, and “a raw holiness that refuses and defies our best explanations.”

I am hearing versions of these three views as I listen, read the news, scroll through Twitter, talk to friends and relatives. How about you? Are you struggling with these questions? Do you wonder if God is punishing us? Is God causing this pandemic with the intention to teach us some sort of lesson? Is the virus God’s way of ending consumerism? Exposing the inequities in our world?

Bruggemann suggests that it can be of value to think about these three streams of thought and ponder:

In what manner do we reap what we sow in a world governed by the creator God?
In what way do the destructive forces of creation perform the intent of God to show sovereignty over human pride and self-absorption?
And finally, how does the pandemic cause us to pause before God’s raw holiness in a world that is not to be tamed even by our best knowledge?

What if there is an element of truth in each explanation; yet, each falls short before the majesty of God and the expansive nature of God’s grace. Ultimately, Brueggemann illustrates how the pandemic “plague” brings us to prayer and renews our relationship with the God whose love is steadfast and strong. Throughout Hebrew scripture and in New Testament texts, the message is clear that, though we do not understand everything in this world, God will never abandon us. God hears our prayers of lament and cries of despair. In addition, this crisis offers up a crucial moment in which to love our neighbor and to care for the community around us in concrete ways. We are united with each person on the planet in the face of this great threat. We are called to unity in love as well. The sum of the Law and Prophets was given by a Rabbi, who gave a “new commandment:”

“Love one another as I have loved you.”