What Are We Arguing About?
Here we are, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, with no clear consensus (it seems) regarding the truth about the event. On one hand, we have official pronouncements from government officials and health authorities, giving dire warnings based on models produced by epidemiological think-tanks. On the other, we have countless critics and naysayers calling the official line into question, searching the internet for counter arguments, bolstered with studies or documents that run counter to the prevailing official narrative. The sources for the latter often seem suspect, ginned up by some denizen of the “dark web,” but the predictions for the former seem so divergent from reality that many have a hard time taking the official pronouncements seriously.
Besides all that, controversy swirls around the question, “to mask or not to mask?” Proponents act as if we could whip the plague and get back to normal if only we could get everyone to wear masks all the time (even insisting on masking when alone at home in a public Zoom conference). Critics point to the dearth of any conclusive studies on the effectiveness of masking and mock the many well-meaning souls who are dutifully masked, but not wearing their masks properly.
So, here we are, gripped by an unending crisis, hearing warnings of “a second surge,” and seeing governments all over the world imposing more or less Draconian measures to “stop the plague.” Despite widely divergent strategies, the results across the world are all relatively the same. Some with stringent government intervention fare well, others do not. Some with limited or no government intervention fall within the average results of all nations, some better, some worse.
An article published recently by the Claremont Review of Books surveys literature from past plagues, going as far back as ancient Athens, described by Thucydides, and ending with an 1827 Italian novel set during a 1630 plague that destroyed thousands in Milan. This literature reflects several different responses to plague:
· Thucydides described a degeneration of community cohesiveness, where men and women, thinking, “I’ll just die anyway,” looked out for their own advantage and pleasure in the chaos of their surroundings. “Men had died in war for Athens and for each other, but in the plague summer it was every man for himself.”
· Boccaccio wrote a book called the Decameron in 1350, two years after terrible affliction from the Bubonic plague struck Europe. The people of his time likewise turned into self-centered monsters, despite their residence in “Christian” Europe. “Experience of the plague changed decent men into reprobates and reprobates into monsters.”
· Samuel Pepys, in his diary of 1665, records the progress of the plague in his native London. “Pepys survived the plague year in fine fettle, his appreciation for life’s fundamental agreeableness and for his own good fortune keeping the general evil at arm’s length. Healthy egotism and a certain insensibility to the suffering of others helped.”
· Daniel Defoe’s novel, A Journal of the Plague Year, written in 1722 of a plague in 1622, takes a much different tack, “Defoe inclined more to thanking Heaven than to hurling defiance its way. The narrator’s decision to ride out the plague in London rather than flee to the countryside rested on his utter trust in ‘the Goodness and Protection of the Almighty…[who] was able to keep me in a Time of the Infection as in a Time of Health; and if he did not think fit to deliver me, still I was in his hands, and it was meet he should do with me as should seem good to him.’”
· Finally, as mentioned above, is an Italian novel of 1827, The Betrothed, set partly during the plague in Milan of 1630, where, reportedly, 140,000 of Milan’s 200,000 population perished. The story pulsates with emotion from the crazed mobs, the hate between protagonist and antagonist, and the final redeeming love that brings the story to a resolution. The description of the mobs turning on anyone suspect of causing or encouraging the plague reminds one of the vitriol poured on “non-maskers” today, perhaps excepting the physical violence: “Crazed, desperate multitudes were willing to believe any and all rumors of evil intent behind the pestilence—preferring ‘to blame disasters on human wickedness, against which revenge is possible, rather than to attribute them to a factor which can only be met with resignation.’” In so doing, they pursue the hero because they suspect his complicity in causing their terror.
The whole article is worth reading, though long. However, the thing that catches my attention is the variety of responses men and women had to the visitations of plague in times past. Their worldview generally included a notion of the supernatural, which governed events. Pagan Athenians resigned themselves to Fate, reputed Christians of the Middle Ages and beyond often manifested their lack of faith with an almost “Curse God, and die,” approach to their crisis. Here and there, some resolutely trust Providence (and thus their God) to preserve them or to take them as He willed. All of them, however, agreed with the notion that an almighty power was behind their troubles. They were either resigned to it or defied it, depending on their spiritual condition.
In our age, we are witnesses to a different phenomenon. By and large, the people of the West no longer believe in a God (or gods) who control events. More and more, we see events like this as the product of random chance, and therein lies our fear, despair, and rancor.
“As men tend more and more to accept that these calamities are purely accidental, the ground buckles under their feet, for the suffering and death that once seemed moral ordeals—trials of the soul—are exposed as meaningless mischance.”1
What do you think? What are we arguing about, and why does it seem so intense and vitriolic? I think the problem lies in a clash of worldviews. Those with an essentially materialistic worldview have their foundations severely shaken by these events. Man is not the master of his fate, his technology is no match for the silent, insidious progress of a tiny virus that can have devastating personal effects, if one is so unfortunate as to catch it. We are living amongst a very fearful people.
One troubling aspect of these times, however, is not the fearfulness of people who have no hope, it is the imitation of their fearfulness by Christians who know the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. We seem drawn into the same arguments as the wider world, holding their same fears, waiting for, or touting, the same solutions, as if the way out of this mess depends on us alone. We seem convinced, like the world, that if I keep making the same arguments loudly enough and long enough we will overcome the ignorance that prevails on the other side (whichever side that might be).
Shouldn’t we do better than this? What are we arguing about? Shouldn’t we concentrate on proclaiming the grace of God and hope of eternal life to a fearful and despairing world?
Yes. Yes, of course, yes, that is what we should do. What about you? What will you do when “the virus” comes up in conversation tomorrow?
Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.
Photo by cloudvisual.co.uk on Unsplash
- In Plague Time – Claremont Review of Books, emphasis added. [↩]