After almost two weeks of government-advised physical distancing, the President has announced a 30-day extension to this part of the fight against the coronavirus. As various numbers associated with this pandemic continue to grow, especially the shocking prediction that U.S. deaths could top 100,000, we must never forget that behind each and every number is a precious life made in the image of God. Numbers are necessary to communicate scale, of course, but they can also obscure that what we’re talking about here are real people.

Speaking of numbers and names, over three million Americans have filed for unemployment in recent weeks. Combine that with the volatile stock market, and the economic toll of this virus is beyond staggering. Still, behind these dollar figures are also real people, many trying to figure out how to keep their homes and feed their kids.

A one-time check from the government won’t be enough for restaurant and small business owners, hotel and shopping center employees, barbers and stylists, bus drivers and substitute teachers, and many others, who face a financial crisis if they practice social distance, potentially as real and damaging as the sickness they could acquire or spread if they do not.

The tension here is real, and I’m not talking about spring breakers who scoffed at the health and well-being of others to have their own fun or those spouting despicable “if they die, they die” sort of rhetoric. I’m talking about my friend Dale who, after contracting a particularly nasty bacteria during a routine surgery several months ago, would be at tremendous risk if he contracted this virus. He needs others to help slow the spread of this disease by staying home.

But I’m also talking about other friends, legal refugees from a war-torn area of Africa, who go to my church and rely on wages now lost because a local hotel closed until Memorial Day and fired its employees. Certainly, unemployment assistance will help for a while, but it’s impossible to know if their long-term security is now in jeopardy.

As more hospitals reach capacity and COVID-19 cases rise, our city, state, and federal leaders are making some of the hardest choices imaginable outside of wartime. While physical distancing is the most important thing we can do right now to slow this virus and save additional lives, the consequences of doing this will be devastating for many.

Now, I’m in no place to offer different policy solutions, of course, but I am convinced that a Christian worldview can help us think through these tensions.

SOURCE: Christian Post, John Stonestreet and G. Shane Morris

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By now you’ve seen the prediction that the US death toll from COVID-19 could rise above 100,000 people. We could see 2,214 deaths a day at the nation’s peak in two weeks.

One of the most difficult dimensions of this disease is the degree to which it can be transmitted by people who show no symptoms.

The director of the CDC was asked this week if his agency has learned anything new about the virus in recent weeks. He stated that “a significant number of individuals that are infected remain asymptomatic. That may be as many as 25 percent. That’s important, because now you have individuals that may not have any symptoms that can contribute to transmission, and we have learned that in fact they do contribute to transmission.”

He added that those who develop symptoms are “shedding significant virus . . . probably up to forty-eight hours before [they] show symptoms.”

In other words, every person we meet could infect us with a deadly virus, whether they know it or not. And we could have the virus while being asymptomatic and infect others.

I am not aware of an analogous medical condition to this. More Americans die from heart disease and cancer than any other causes. However, neither can be “caught” from someone who doesn’t know they have the condition.

To find an historical parallel, we need to go back more than a century.

“Fear moved ahead of the virus” 

According to the CDC, “The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history.” It is estimated that around 500 million people—one-third of the world’s population—became infected with the virus. The number of deaths is estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide, with about 675,000 in the US.

In The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, John Barry describes the 1918 outbreak as a pandemic that “would kill more people than any other outbreak of disease in human history.” He notes that the influenza’s victims “died with extraordinary ferocity and speed.”

According to Barry, “In 1918 fear moved ahead of the virus like the bow wave before a ship. Fear drove the people, and the government and the press could not control it.” He notes, “Terror rises in the dark of the mind, in the unknown beast tracking us in the jungle. The fear of the dark is an almost physical manifestation of that. Horror movies build up the fear of the unknown, the uncertain threat that we cannot see and do not know and can find no safe haven from.”

However, as he adds, “In every horror movie, once the monster appears, terror condenses into the concrete and diminishes. Fear remains. But the edge of panic created by the unknown dissipates.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Jim Denison

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Former Ohio Governor John Kasich said the fear and panic surrounding the new coronavirus pandemic led him to ask some deep questions about his faith in Jesus, which in turn renewed his confidence about what he believes in.

Writing for USA Today, the former presidential candidate admitted that he’s been “in and out of a funk these past weeks, ever since the full force of this global COVID-19 pandemic started to impact our communities here at home.”

In the midst of the spread of the disease, Kasich recalled he walked for over six miles, keeping a safe social distance from others and “the whole time thinking about where we were as a society and where I was with God.”

He spoke to Father Kevin Maney, from St. Augustine’s Anglican Church in Westerville, Ohio, about the “disconnect” he was feeling, “believing wholeheartedly in the resurrection of Christ and the promise of a new creation and a life after death, while at the same time harboring these feelings of fear and anxiety.”

“I told him that what had me frustrated was that it sometimes felt to me as if my faith was in my head and not in my heart.”

Maney responded to him, “It’s normal for us to be afraid, John. We’re born to live, not to die, so our focus should be on living, not dying.”

Kasich, a senior political contributor for CNN, said he shared about his sense of lacking in his faith also with his friend Tom Barrett, whose wife never complained or questioned her faith despite having and eventually dying of cancer.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Anugrah Kumar

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As Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man) said to the alien invaders near the beginning of Marvel’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” “The earth is closed today!” The world continues to respond to the current novel coronavirus pandemic by closing everything from churches, to restaurants, to movie theaters and many other public spaces in order to limit person-to-person interaction. While my own family practiced “social distancing” this past Sunday by watching a livestream of our pastor, we reflected on current events and the changes we are all making. We talked about having peace in the midst of trouble and the fact that God is still in control. Then my oldest son made an interesting comment. He said, “God made the coronavirus.”

This makes perfect sense to 9-, 6- and 3-year-old boys, my sons’ ages, who have a simple belief that God made everything. The coronavirus is a thing. Therefore, God must have made the coronavirus, right? Well, the answer is both yes and no. There are at least three things to consider when wrestling with this question.

1. Why Does Anything Exist?

As we have argued in many places like Southern Evangelical Seminary’s e-book, Why Trust the God of the Bible?, nothing at all would exist apart from the creative and sustaining power of God. Indeed, God at this moment holds in being the novel coronavirus, along with everything else that exists. Were this not the case, nothing at all other than God would “be.”

That is not to say, however, that everything that exists here and now is a special creation of God out of nothing. A piece of blue chalk causes a blue line on the chalkboard, but the chalk could do nothing apart from the hand holding it. The chalk is only an instrumental cause. In a similar fashion, God acts through secondary, or instrumental, causes in this world. As Thomas Aquinas puts it:

“Nor is it superfluous, if God can produce all natural effects by Himself, that they should be produced by certain other causes: because this is not owing to insufficiency of His power, but to the immensity of His goodness, wherefore it was His will to communicate His likeness to things not only in the point of their being but also in the point of their being causes of other things: for it is in these two ways that all creatures in common have the divine likeness bestowed on them, as we proved above.—In this way too the beauty of order is made evident in creatures.”

Assuming the novel coronavirus is a naturally occurring virus, God created the original virus(es) and animal kingdom that eventually provided the needed conditions for the novel coronavirus to emerge. Much like tornados, hurricanes, lightning and even other disease-causing agents, the novel coronavirus is a byproduct of the good world God created. How can this virus be part of a good world?

2. What Do We Mean By ‘Good’?

In the creation account of Genesis, we read that God called everything He made “good.” Does that include things like viruses? Classically speaking, good is a matter of actuality or being. Something is good to the extent that it exists as the kind of thing it ought to be according to its nature. Understood in this way, everything that exists is good in one respect just by virtue of the fact that it exists. Things are good instances of their kinds when they exist and fulfill the ends toward which their natures are directed. Even a virus, by virtue of existing, is good. Moreover, a virus that finds a host and replicates itself is a good virus. That is, it is fulfilling the end toward which it is directed. Notice that “good” means more than just “morally good.” (Moral goodness is a subset of good as such and is not our current topic).

SOURCE: Christian Post, Adam Tucker

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At least three more pastors have lost their lives to the new coronavirus in just over a week, leaving more churches across the nation mourning in the fallout from the pandemic.

Bishop Timothy Titus Scott, Sr., 88, of St. James Temple Church of God in Christ in Clarksdale, Mississippi; Pastor Alvin Charles McElroy, 79, of Friendship Baptist Church in Riverhead, New York; and Father Gioacchino Basile, 60, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, who had been leading Saint Gabriel Church in East Elmhurst, New York City, all died as a result of the coronavirus.

Scott, who died last Friday, had been the pastor of St. James Temple Church of God in Christ in Clarksdale since 1972, according to the city of Clarkdale’s website. He also served as prelate of the Northern Mississippi Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of the Church of God in Christ and prior to his death was the longest serving Jurisdictional Prelate in the Church Of God In Christ.

“Bishop T. T. Scott is an icon of fatherly leadership, humble servitude, and unwavering faith,” Bishop Robert G. Rudolph, Jr., adjutant general in the Church Of God In Christ, Inc., wrote in a statement on Scotts passing.

Both Scott and his wife tested positive for the virus after attending a funeral on March 7, WREG-TV reported. One of the attendees at the funeral from New Orleans had tested positive for the virus.

Prior to his diagnosis, Scott may have also unknowingly exposed about 300 people to the virus at a funeral held at his church on March 14, WREG-TV said. Due to restrictions on gatherings due to the ongoing pandemic, COGIC said they will wait until after the restrictions have been lifted to celebrate Scott’s life.

“During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic resulting in local and state restrictions on public gatherings to achieve social distancing, the Terry family will hold a private memorial service for this valiant soldier of the Gospel. When the restrictions are lifted, a date will be set for a Jurisdictional Memorial Service that will appropriately recognize the godly life and notable achievements of Bishop Timothy Titus Scott, Sr,” Rudolph wrote. “During this time of uncertainty, we request the continued prayers as well as acts of emotional and spiritual support for the family. It is with great honor that the National Adjutancy will assist the Scott family and the Northern Mississippi Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction during this most difficult time.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair

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