| Over the past four weeks, I have read a number of articles in various religious publications regarding the present pandemic. In more than one of them, disturbing conclusions have been reached. For example, one article was by Erik Raymond, the senior pastor at Redeemer Fellowship Church in metro Boston. At the beginning of the piece, he raised a question: “Is the pandemic God’s punishment?” Without nuance or hesitation, he replies: “Yes, the pandemic is God’s punishment for human sin….This curse against sin is also seen in massively destructive events like floods, earthquakes, and tornadoes. We also feel it in deadly diseases like cancer and viruses like COVID–19.” I was taken aback. Apart from being as far away from Orthodox and even mainstream Christian theology as possible, just on a purely human level, his sentiments are medieval, ill-informed, and simplistic. They do not reflect the nature of God and they do not reflect how God deals with His people: “Behold, I have loved you with an everlasting love and with loving kindness I have called you to Myself.”(Jeremiah 31:3) Above all, they ignore the life and preaching of Jesus the Christ of God. While the Lord preached sternly about sin and hypocrisy, he spoke of them as a sickness, things to be dealt with through conversion, spiritual asceticism and forgiveness. Jesus could not have been clearer: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick do.” (Luke 5:31) Sin is spiritual sickness to be addressed in the therapy of the heart and soul and in righteous living. It is not a constant and inevitable reminder to a vengeful God that his errant children need stern punishment and misery in order to turn back to Him. Those are the shadows of the Old Law. Though many if not most of some Christians and others maintain that we need that kind of ruthless punishment, it flies in the face of God as the God of mercy and compassion. St. John of Kronstadt gives us the certainty: “Human nature is deified for the sake of the boundless compassion and mercy of the Son of God; and its sins are completely purified; the defiled are made holy. The sick of soul are healed. Upon those in dishonor are boundless honor and glory bestowed. Those in darkness are enlightened by the Divine light of grace and reason.” Those in darkness are enlightened by the Divine light of grace and reason. This is the heart of the problem. Many religious leaders, particularly those who read the Word of God in a literal way, read St. John’s quotation above and see the word “grace” at the end – but fail to see “reason.” They react against reason because it connotes “science” and science is, for all intents and purposes, enemy Number One. In an academic periodical that deals with religious faith and scientific development, Dr. Henry Suld, a Baptist clergyman and professor of religion and philosophy, wrote: “In the post-Christian West, it is an article of secular faith that religion and reason repel each other like magnetic poles. Religion, it is said, is not rational and reason cannot embrace anything that lies outside material explanation.” Suld expreses the age old and man-made conflict between human reason and belief in God, between science and Scripture, between “the seen and the unseen.” He suggests that in this scenario, medical science is virtually ignored, in favor of the interpretation of Sacred Scripture. It is as though medical science is tainted by the persistent evil roaming about the world. Suld rejects this. His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew with the Holy and Great Synod, contradicts such thinking regarding COVID-19: “The Church has and continues to have profound respect for medical science. Thus, the Church recommends that all the faithful adhere to any directives and the pertinent pronouncements of professional physicians. It is considered self-evident that faith in God, as transcendence and not as the abolition of human reason, along with prayer, strengthen the spiritual battle of every Christian. Therefore, the Mother Church of Constantinople urges its spiritual children throughout the world to intensify their petitions so that, strengthened and illumined by God, this contemporary tribulation may be overcome.” Human reason and that which flows from it which is positive and for the wellbeing of the human person, is part of the creative plan of God. It is not inimical to the faith. It is not an enemy of the faith. The ideas and science which flow from human reason are God-given – unless they are directed deliberately or carelessly at the destruction or depreciation of life, human community, and the growth and uplifting of humankind. Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos (11 March 1940 – +19 December 2019), one of the most outstanding Greek Orthodox theologians of the 20th-21st centuries, was very much disposed to science and religious faith working hand in hand. He referred to St. Basil the Great’s assertion that we ought not to expect to receive from Scripture all the answers about external human living. According to Mettalinos, theology does not oppose scientific research but waits for the progress of science to adequately shape and adjust its tenets. (e.g. in the Psychiatric field of medicine the medieval understanding of conditions ascribing them to demonic possession, are today understood to be neurological, neurochemical, or other brain-related disorders.) The point is that the Church and her theologians accept the free and responsible practice of science. It is the serious task of churches and religious leaders to guard and protect the ethical and moral values that are involved in such work. It is not their responsibility to assert that disasters, medical catastrophes (COVID-19), individual human sickness or problems, and other destructive events are God’s punishment on humankind for any sins committed. That is a misuse of Scripture and a distorted image of God. As we continue to experience and deal with the COVID-19 virus, you may encounter religious opinions similar to that articulated by Pastor Erik Raymond. They are often convincing, expressed in a highly emotional or dramatic fashion, and would seem to make reasonable sense. While they sound reasonable, they stand in stark contradiction to Orthodox theology and to mainstream Christian thought. This is why I chose to share this reflection with you. Yes, our ancestral parents sinned. Yes, you and I sin to a greater or lesser degree. We fail and falter, we miss the mark (hamartia). Why? Because we share in the effects of that first rejection of our Loving God – when our first parents turned away from Him and turned to their own unbridled egos. You and I are aware of this. We know this also, with a certainty that science cannot deliver: “Gracious and merciful is the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.” (Psalm 145:8) The heart of God is filled with mercy. The heart of God does not keep a record of our sins and failings. The heart of God would never muster the anger to send natural disasters, pandemics, floods, fires, draughts, cancer and a host of other diseases. THIS IS NOT OUR GOD! Our holy Father, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, teachers us: “God heals us through the action of His Divine love, bestowed through the Church, but man’s effort is also required. God saves His fallen creature by His own love for him, but man’s love for his Creator is also necessary; without this exchange of love there is no salvation. Striving towards God and cleaving unto the Lord by His humble love, the human soul obtains power to cleanse and change itself from sin and to strengthen itself for the struggle to complete victory over it.” Dear brothers and sisters – fear not! The Lord loves you not despite your sins but because of them. He loves you not because you are perfect and all together but because you are needy, broken, and craving His love. He loves you because He is the Divine Physician whom you need in this hour and in every hour of anxiety and fear. The present pandemic comes not from this God of love, but from the randomness and deterioration of the natural world. You and I are not called to fear this God, but to fall in love with Him. I leave you with the words of St. Augustine: “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him the greatest adventure; to find Him the greatest human achievement.” God give each of you His abiding love and protection! Faithfully in the love of God, |
