A poll by University of Chicago Divinity School conducted in early May, 2020, found nearly two-thirds of believers think COVID19 is a message from God telling humanity to change how it lives. Is it?
I, too, look for deeper meaning in the sweep of current events. Some Christians and Muslims yearn for apocalypse, and when Trump and Pence were nominated, and won, I wondered whether fate was setting in place the mechanism by which we destroy ourselves. Trump, a shameless lying narcissist, partnering with the religious right seems like a perfect storm for an apocalypse. I even wrote a book of poetry (Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic, Rabbit House Press) inspired by present peril and fear of peril to come. While Christian and Muslim eschatology (theories of final destiny) have in common (after a lot of death and destruction) a happy ending for the chosen few, legend and some history says that entire civilizations can become extinct without winners.
When people interpret current events as messages from God, they tend borrow God’s authority to validate their own pre-existing views. Remember the 1980s, when the religious right said AIDS was God punishing homosexuals? Nonetheless, having warned against doing so, I offer some possible “messages” of COVID19.
Long before COVID19, Fox News and its ilk, backed by well-organized rich people, fashioned an alternate reality that has become the asylum for a third of our country. We’ve installed a pathological liar in the Oval Office that the religious right compares to King David. Trump and Republicans continue to systematically dismantle government, deplete the treasury with tax breaks for the rich, and destroy the rule of law. Maybe COVID19 is just another tool in the tool box dismantling democracy and steering the Titanic toward the iceberg. Already, it’s being used as Trump’s excuse to stop enforcing environmental laws and as Trump’s justification for assuming dangerous emergency powers (while simultaneously telling people to return to work because it’s “safe”). I easily imagine scenarios where COVID19 plays a role preventing meaningful and fair elections or facilitates dictatorship like the North Korean one Trump so admires. Maybe the message is that karma, fate, or God is piling on, steering the Titanic toward the iceberg.
Or maybe the message of COVID19 is Gaia (the personality of Earth) is trying to kill off some humans to save creation. The burden humans impose on creation through climate change, factory farming, and other actions that demean the value of non-human life is enormous. I remember the early days of the COVID quarantine, when I walked for exercise in streets without auto exhaust, how happy the birds were, how relaxed nature was. During those days, sea turtles laid eggs like madwomen on beaches emptied of humans. For a moment, it seemed they had their planet back.
Or maybe COVID19’s message is simple. We all breathe the same air. If you get sick, I get sick. My neighbor really is myself. Walls of hate and boundaries of yours-and-mine perpetuate notions of separateness, but COVID19 shows separation is illusory – we are a single body. Just as cells and organs in our body function together cooperatively, guilelessly, and truthfully, people must function collectively in the same way or be extinguished by the cancer of selfishness.
If that’s the message, I hope we hear it.
