Coronavirus might be a start and not the end.

Coronavirus is not the end of the world, but it is a global crisis, unlike anything we have experienced before.

There is a strange sense we are living through something that students will be reading about in textbooks for years to come.

I also have a sense that this moment is a bit of a wake-up call.

Each of us wants to believe that we have some level of control over our lives. We want to believe that we are in charge of our own destiny.

The Coronavirus is like a big flashing neon sign for each one of us. It is screaming at us that our world is more fragile, and we are much more dependant on one another than we ever imagined.

Have you noticed that media personalities and politicians keep saying something like “we are all in this together”?

Over and over again at the moment, we are being reminded, as John Donne tried to tell us many years ago, that no man is an island.

Twenty years ago, social Researcher, Richard Eckersley wrote about the fact that so many of us were seemingly asleep to the reality we were actually living:

“There has never been a period in human history when so much hangs in the balance between what is and what might be, when so much depends on the choices we make as individuals, when it is so clear that we are, each of us, ‘decision-makers’ in deciding the destiny of humankind.  And yet, because of the pressures, preoccupations and priorities of life today, we don’t sense the significance of this moment – or sensing it, seem unable to hold it and be inspired by it.  This is one of the most profound paradoxes of our times.”

Richard Eckersley

He was right then, and his words are still true now.

About 2000 years ago the poet Juvenal was facing a similar frustration to Richard Eckersley. Juvenal was looking at the decay of the Roman Empire and seeing that people had moved from caring for one another and for justice, and instead were focussed on themselves. People were spending their time on entertainment and their appetites:

The people have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses

Juvenal (c. AD 100

I think a real case can be put that just like the citizens of Rome in A.D. 100, we have been much more interested in appetites and entertainment than justice and our neighbors.

I have been struck by a book by Walter Bruggeman called Prophetic Imagination. He highlights the difference between political powers who want to keep everyone happy with the status quo and the prophets of God who seek to bring change.

Bruggeman points to the prophet Jeremiah, who lived 600 years before Juvenal and was trying to wake people from their self-absorption. Jeremiah rails against a world where everyone is focussed on themselves and their leaders try to pretend everything is ok:

“From the least to the greatest,
all are greedy for gain;
prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.
They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.

Jeremiah 6:13-14

Bruggeman believes that it is normal for people to get stuck in a delusion that what was normal in the past will always be how things will be in the future. He believes that this kind of self-absorbed delusion requires living in an “uninterrupted eternal now.”

In the warmth of the delusion of timelessness, people focus on their own needs and don’t need to think about issues of justice or responsibility.

Coronavirus has taken away the chance for the false prophets of our world to be declaring peace where there is none, and in doing so is making clear how much responsibility each one of us actually needs to accept for our neighbors and our world.

God’s response to the false prophets of Jeremiah’s time was very clear:

“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.”

Jeremiah 6:16

Our political leaders can’t fix a world broken by self-interest and greed. The ancient paths God called his people to in 500 B.C. are the same paths we need to rediscover in 2020.

I hope and pray that as each of us steps up for the battle against Coronavirus, we will start to realize that this is just the start.

If we truly want our grandkids to inherit a world we can be proud of, we need to heed the warnings of Eckersley, Juvenal, Jeremiah, and Bruggeman, and not sink back into self-interest once the immediate danger has passed.

Coronavirus is not the end of the world. Hopefully, it might be what we needed to show us how to create a better one.