Biblical Perspective on Dealing with the Coronavirus Crisis

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) is considered to have been one of the greatest defenders of the Christian faith during the 20th Century. For those of you who may not be familiar with him, he was born in Northern Ireland and became a professor of Medieval English Literature, first at Oxford University (1925-1954), and later at Cambridge University (1954-1963).

He committed his life to Christ when he was 32 years old, and he proceeded to write many insightful and inspiring books about Christianity. These included some that have become Christian classics, like The Problem of Pain (1940), The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956), and Mere Christianity (1952).

In 1948 he published an essay titled, “On Living in an Atomic Age.” Although it was written 72 years ago, it is very relevant to the coronavirus pandemic that we are dealing with today. As you read the excerpt below, just substitute “coronavirus” for “atomic bomb.”

1. S. Lewis’ Essay

“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’

“In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.”

“This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

Concluding Thoughts

The Bible says that one of the reasons Jesus came to this earth was to free people from their bondage to the lifelong fear of death (Hebrews 2:15). Those of us who have put our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior should live and walk in that freedom.

We should live with confidence and not in fear because we have hope — the promise of living forever in new, glorified bodies in a new Jerusalem on a new earth (Revelation 21:1-7).

So, as people gripped with panic fight each other at stores to purchase toilet paper and Spam, we should be salt and light by exhibiting peace and calm in the midst of chaos. Doing so may prompt people to ask why we are behaving so calmly, giving us an opportunity to share the Gospel. One other thought — if you think the current panic is bad, it is nothing compared to what the mass panic will be like after the Rapture of the Church.

 

Our formerly great political system has deteriorated to the point where politicians are now appealing primarily to greed by attempting to purchase votes. Just consider the current promises that presidential candidates are making:

• The forgiveness of all college loans.
• A guarantee of free college education in the future.
• The provision of reparations to all descendants of slaves.
• A promise of reparations to same-sex couples.
• A pledge of universal medical care.
• The gift of a $1,000 savings account for each new baby.
• The provision of free child care.
• A guaranteed job for every person.
• A guaranteed minimum income.
• The Illusion of “Free Stuff.”

This insane list goes on and on. All the candidates seem to be yelling, “Free stuff! Free stuff! Vote for me and get free stuff!”

And people are responding like cows running to a fresh bale of hay. It’s a sad scene of unmitigated greed.

And who is going to pay for all this “free stuff”? The answer of the mob is, of course, “Someone else, but certainly not us.”

It reminds me of what H. L. Menken once wrote when he characterized elections as “an early auction on stolen goods.” George Bernard Shaw put it this way: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.”

Modern-day commentator Louis DeBroux has summed it up this way:

Of course, anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows nothing is free. Every good or service is produced at a cost, and producers demand to be paid. So [politicians], while promising you free stuff, are really promising to make your neighbor pay for it.

Covering the Price Tag

So, if the greedy masses are not going to pay for all the “free stuff,” then how is it to be financed? The solutions being put forward are: “tax the rich,” “tax the corporations” and “print money.”

Did you know that you really cannot tax a corporation? That’s because when you put taxes on a corporation, the response is always one of three things or a combination of them:

1. Freeze or lower wages.
2. Reduce the dividends to investors.
3. Raise prices to the consumers.

The most frequent choice is, of course, to raise prices. In any case, it is people who end up paying the taxes.

So, what about slapping a 70% tax on the rich — or even 90% as FDR did? This is always self-defeating because such high tax rates curtail investment, resulting in a reduction in business activity. And that, of course, means a massive loss of jobs. This is one of the main reasons that the economic downturn in 1929 morphed into The Great Depression.

The Socialist Congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has dismissed all the concern about cost by simply proposing that we “print money.” That is the prescription for a runaway inflation which would destroy the value of all savings.

Political Protection

The politics of greed is the inherent weakness of pure democracy. It will always end up destroying the democratic system.

Our Founding Fathers were very aware of this problem because they believed in the biblical view of Mankind — namely, that people are born with a sin nature and therefore cannot be trusted.

As we all know, they rejected monarchy. What is amazing is that they also rejected Oligarchy (the rule of the privileged). The reason that is remarkable is because most of them were aristocrats. But the point is that they did not even trust themselves. Nor did they believe in pure democracy because they did not trust the Common Man. They knew that pure democracy always evolved into mobocracy.

So, they established a Representative Democracy whereby, hopefully, enlightened persons with high morals and great wisdom would be elected to represent the masses.

This is why they insulated the federal government from the direct vote of the people. They accomplished this by making only members of the House of Representatives eligible for direct election. Senators were appointed by state legislatures. And the President was selected by an Electoral College whose members were, in turn, selected in any manner a state might choose.

The Erosion of Political Protection

Over time, this system of political protection from mobocracy has eroded. Consider, for example, the selection of members of the Electoral College. At the beginning, electors in about half the states were selected by the legislatures; in the other states they were selected by popular vote. A trend toward popular election picked up fast, and by 1832, only South Carolina was still appointing electors.

Today, despite the fact that all members of the Electoral College are selected by popular vote, there are increasing demands that the College itself be abolished so that the President can be elected directly.

Meanwhile, the same trend toward direct election characterized the selection of Senators, leading up to the adoption of the 17th Amendment in 1913 which mandates their popular election.

Other roadblocks to mobocracy and the politics of greed which our Founding Fathers instituted were states’ rights and the brilliant system of separation of powers and its built-in checks and balances — a concept based on the Scriptures (Isaiah 33:22).

States’ rights have almost disappeared over the years due to the centralization of power in the national government. And likewise, the separation of powers has been undermined by the focusing of power in the presidency.

The barriers to the mob mentality are the reason our Constitution has continued to exist to this day — longer than any other constitution in history. But those days appear to be numbered.

The “Progressive” Agenda

The “Progressives” want no barriers to “the will of the people,” regardless of how perverted that will may be. So they are advocating the abolition of the Electoral College and a scheme to pack the Supreme Court with judicial activists who have no respect for our Constitution.

Concerning the Supreme Court, it comes as a surprise to most people that the number of justices on the Court is not specified in the Constitution. Six times in America history, Congress has changed the size of the Supreme Court by either increasing or decreasing the number of justices — each time for political reasons.

“Power to the people!” That’s the politically correct cry of today. It sounds so good, but it results in horrors like the French Revolution because there is no magical goodness in the people or in the majority vote.

The current attempts to abridge freedom of religion should be sobering to all those who think “the majority knows best.” The same is true of increasing attempts to broaden hate legislation to include any speech against abortion, same-sex marriage, homosexuality or any other perversion, like pedophilia, which the majority may decide to endorse.

The Nature of the Crisis

The question looming before the American electorate is whether or not we are willing to sell our souls and our freedoms for “free stuff.” I believe we are.

Keep in mind that in the last presidential election, the future of our nation — the Millennials — overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders, an out-and-out Socialist, and when he failed to get the nomination, they voted for Hillary. Remember too, that Hillary received three million more votes than Trump. The only reason Trump is our President is because of the Electoral College which the Liberals and Socialists are determined to abolish.

The most sobering thing to keep in mind is that all the recent polls reveal that only 9% of Americans have a biblical worldview, and only 15% of professing Christians can be characterized as “Bible-believing.”

Our nation’s glory days are over. We are destined for destruction, and the fundamental reason is that we have forgotten about God.

“You have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the rock of your refuge” (Isaiah 17:10).