People believe all kinds of stuff that I don’t believe, and that’s generally fine with me until it has some kind of negative personal effect on my life. I’m not surprised that religious people are seeking out some divine reason for the Covid-19 pandemic. It doesn’t shock me that evangelicals and religious blacks are particularly predisposed to believe that God will protect them from the outbreak. I don’t really care one way or the other unless it means that people are taking risks that put my family at increased risk.
It also isn’t any wonder that everyone from vegans to environmentalists to anti-globalist nut-jobs are trying to hijack the disease as a messenger for their cause. I get it, but I’m more inclined to credit the folks who specifically predicted a novel coronavirus and tried to warn us to get prepared. They seem like the one’s who’ve been most clearly vindicated.
If you’re the type who thinks God (or the gods) sends messages through natural disasters, I can understand that. Earthquakes are a good indication that you’re living on a fault line. Perhaps you should rebuild elsewhere. Hurricanes tend to follow familiar routes. If you can’t handle them, you ought to find some place with better defenses against the weather. I’m not sure about the wisdom of building a major metropolis near an active volcano. Ignore these “messages” at your peril.
As for Covid-19 in America, the lesson is obvious. The Senate had a chance to remove Donald Trump from office while the virus was still almost entirely absent from our country. They declined and a plague was immediately unleashed on us that has already cost more than 80,000 lives in just a couple of months. If people want to believe this is divine retribution for being too stupid to breath, I’ll find little fault in that. I expect there’s quite a bit of political advantage if people believe it. And why wouldn’t a just god punish us for allowing Trump to remain in office?
Like I said, I only care about weird stuff that people believe when it has some negative impact on me. I don’t mind if people conclude that the gods won’t stop thrashing us until we rid ourselves of Trump. It might even be true.
When this first came down, it felt like something out of the bible. Like it might start raining frogs any moment.
I tend to view biblical stories not as history but as allegory. I say this as a Jewish Sufi (Jufi if you prefer) who is fasting for Ramadan. In other words, a person of faith even if my amalgam of practices is odd. To the extent there is historical relevance in spiritual texts, I take them again as part of a larger picture. Things like this happen all the time. There’s a social issue or risk that needs to be addressed. It isn’t. There’s eventually a natural and logical consequence. People then point to God but I see it more as a simple matter of karma. To be clear, karma just means “cause and effect”. There could be an intelligence behind these things. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of how in his view the arc of history is long but bends toward justice. Sounds like a theological statement. But it doesn’t imply an old man with white beard looking down on us.
It is karma for sure, and while I cant ascribe any divine meaning to it, who knows there is not a real moral universe. MLK might just have noticed that.
The gods aren’t just angry about Trump—he’s just the worst of the symptoms.
What they are mad about, in my opinion, is the unbearable stupidity of Americans.
That too.