Twists and turns. Just a few days ago the exciting news of the roll out of COVID19 vaccinations had us all thinking that things were on the turn. Then came the twist: the virus has mutated in a way that makes it more transmissible, if not necessary more deadly. This has led to a tightening of restrictions in the UK around what we can and cannot do this Christmas. Arrangements made after the previous loosening of restrictions will have to be broken. We had one son in transit when the tightened restrictions were announced and a daughter north of the “closed” Scottish border in a quandary. I can think of worse places to be stuck, but it is an unwelcome and unpleasant quandary none-the-less. But all of this should remind us once again; life is fragile and we’re not entirely in control – any of us.
It
should also prompt the asking of those big questions, what is going on and why?
There are a whole load of different ways you could answer the first of those
questions, depending on what you think is being asked. In recent months it has
had, at least publicly for the politicians, a narrow focus. A pandemic has
happened (as has frequently been predicted), but we are going to be fine
eventually because science, technology and good logistics will come to
our aid. There is a problem, but we can fix it, and most of us are going to
return to some sort of fairly acceptable
“normality”. On this reading of the situation, the other question – why – also
has a narrow focus. It distils down to a set of factual questions about what
sparked the pandemic and how it developed. It can be answered with reference to wet markets in China (or even dodgy virology labs), and government inaction or incompetence. It can be padded out with reference to the
proportion of the population infected and the number of lives lost. Economic damage
can be quantified in the currency of your choice or in terms of the proportion
of GDP lost. The methods used and the time taken to develop and deploy vaccines
can be described and measured. In some ways this narrow approach has a lot to
recommend it. At a time of stress and anxiety, it restores some sense of
understanding and control. We have recovered from catastrophes before and life
has gone on; it always does and it always has to.
Of
course these narrow questions and their answers have the disadvantage that for
most of us, even if we are comforted by them, we are also likely to be slightly
disconcerted. They leave nagging doubts lurking in the recesses of our minds
and imaginations. The narrow approach leaves out of the account other questions
and answers, those that pertain to motives and values, deeper causes and their
more troubling effects. This is where, as I’ve pointed out before, science is of limited help. Even before we get to what might be called questions of deep
causation, we already have the questions raised by the crippling inequalities
revealed by the pandemic. While some may fret because their Christmas skiing
trip has had to be abandoned, there are parents wondering whether there will be
food for both them and their children tomorrow lunchtime, or will they have to
fast while their children eat? This is before we get to big cross-continent and
cross planet issues like who gets which vaccine when and for how much. Are such
inequalities inevitable? And even if they are, why are they? Why, in this world
will the poor always be with us? It is easy to understand why the narrow
approach is the more comforting one, even if the comfort it supplies is cold
and tinged with guilt.
And
yet, even this level of discourse still seems to miss something. Perhaps an
outside perspective is needed. But where might we obtain a perspective which is
outside all of humanity? The starting point is the realisation that we are not
all there is, and we are not all that matters. To this end, it is this time of
year that supplies some of the necessary resources. We should regard
the appearance of the pandemic as a global signpost. But I’ve been obsessing about the signpost and not what it points to: precisely that humanity is in trouble and
cannot fix itself. The world at all levels is neither what it could be, but
beyond that is not as it should be. And of course there is somewhere I can turn
that will explain this. The opening chapters of Genesis in the Bible are clear:
this is a cursed world. In such a world, bad things happen. This implicates all of us, and we can do little but suffer the
effects if we depend on out own resources. And yet into this cursed world, someone voluntarily comes who is Himself not cursed. That is what is going on in Bethlehem.
But to stop at Bethlehem is to suffer from perpetual baby syndrome. Bethlehem was only a prelude to the main event in which Jesus, the man the baby became, was
Himself cursed. That did not immediately remove the curse and its
effects from the rest of us; pandemics obviously still happen. But it was the
fulfilment of a long made promise that the curse would be dealt with and an escape provided. And at a
time still future to us, it will be entirely removed in the establishment of a
new (uncursed) heaven and earth. It is here that we find both the deeper questions,
but also the answers to them.
Of course I know that my way of framing these issues is now somewhat counter-cultural (to say the least). In polite and educated circles, only "natural" questions and answers are allowed. Well, you
can stick with the narrow, technical, natural approach if you wish. But in the promise
delivered in Bethlehem is to be found the answer to both what and why whatever
twists and turns lie ahead.
