One thing seems obvious: The levels of general panic indicate that few of us have been properly prepared for the reality of our own mortality. As a friend pointed out to me recently, when Jesus references the tower at Siloam and the murder of Jews by Pilate (Luke 13), he precludes a simplistic connection between death and particular personal wrongdoing. Yet he also asserts that such deaths should serve as a reminder that all of us are destined for the grave.

Last week, Pennsylvania state representative Stephanie Borowicz proposed a resolution that called for a day of prayer, fasting, and humiliation. The coronavirus, she wrote, “may be but a judgment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins.” The reactions of incredulity were predictable, though they perhaps misunderstand the Christian position on prayer. Orthodox Christianity does not see prayer as an alternative to prudent action, such that praying that one does not, for example, develop measles renders redundant the need to be vaccinated. It is rather an acknowledgment that nothing takes place in the created realm independent of the transcendent reality of God. To borrow the apocryphal saying attributed to Cromwell, we trust God but also keep our powder dry.

Christian claims about the meaning of particular incidents of suffering are always on shaky epistemological grounds because the Bible itself presents such things as arising for a variety of reasons—from punishment for wrongdoing, as with Ananias and Sapphira, to the deeply mysterious, as with Job. Yet while speculation by contemporary Christians regarding the significance of the coronavirus may be epistemologically misplaced, it is no more so than secular claims that, for example, certain events indicate that holding particular moral positions places one on the right side of history. Both represent not so much metaphysical truth claims so much as rhetorical strategies designed to provide personal views or preferences with some kind of objective and thus authoritative status. Appeals to metaphysical teleology take many forms, and those who deny the privilege to Christians should make sure they also deny it to themselves.

At some point, however, the COVID-19 crisis will be over, and the question for Christians will be simple: “What should we learn from this?” And one thing seems obvious: The levels of general panic indicate that few of us have been properly prepared for the reality of our own mortality. As a friend pointed out to me recently, when Jesus references the tower at Siloam and the murder of Jews by Pilate (Luke 13), he precludes a simplistic connection between death and particular personal wrongdoing. Yet he also asserts that such deaths should serve as a reminder that all of us are destined for the grave. And thence, in Christian theology, to judgment.

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