God's Kindness in a Pandemic

     What is God doing in the global Covid-19 pandemic?  It is unprecedented not only in our lifetime, but in the history of the world: never before has global travel been fast and ubiquitous enough to allow a disease to affect the world with this degree of synchronicity, nor communication been prompt and thorough enough to allow us to jointly process the experience.  As believers, we rightly recognize the hand of God behind it, and his purpose has been a question on the hearts of many believers.  I have read several answers that, though admittedly partial, are helpful in pointing us back to the character and sovereignty of God and his purposes as expressed in Scripture.  I believe Scripture gives us another piece to this puzzle that helps us to hold fast to the anchor of our souls in times that remind us of the fragility of life: this pandemic is an expression not of God’s wrath, but of His kindness.   

     First, we know that the Covid19 crisis is not God’s judgment, the outpouring of his wrath on sin and evil in the world.  Scripture clearly states that God’s judgment is coming, but isn’t here yet: “by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:7).  

     Second, the delay in bringing final judgment to pass is an expression of God’s mercy:  “The Lord is not slow about His promise [in context, the promise to judge the world], as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance”  (2 Peter 3:9).  God’s attitude towards mankind until the day of judgment is one of mercy.   Finally, we know that God does not wait silently in his mercy.  Rather, he sovereignly arranges the events of the world he created to draw people to himself in repentance for salvation from judgment. Acts 17:24-27 says, in part, “The God who made the world and all things in it…”  also “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though He is not far from each one of us.”   

     When we as humans experience an event outside of our experience and control, we reflexively refer to God.  Even the secular language of legal contracts and insurance policies names unforeseen events without an immediate human cause as “acts of God.”  Mariella Frostrup, in a thoughtful and humane column for The Guardian, writes, “If I believed in God, I’d consider Covid-19 a pretty strong message from him about the need for behavioural change” (May 10, 2020). 

     If Covid-19 is not God’s judgment on the world, but is rather designed to draw our attention to him for repentance and salvation, then it is surely an expression of his kindness.  Romans 2:4 declares that it is “the kindness of God leads you to repentance.”  God’s kindness is what we are experiencing in the unfolding pandemic.     

     Saying that this pandemic arises from God’s kindness need not, and must not, minimize the real and profound grief associated with our experience of it.  Those of us who have trusted Him have many promises to hold to in our hardship:  that he is working all things for our good, even these sufferings, which ultimately will be shown “not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us,” (Romans 8:28, 18); that God’s painful discipline in our lives shows us to be his children and produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:5, 11).  For those who have not trusted God, suffering which does not lead to death is God breaking into the heart that dismisses his judgment, saying, “How does God know?  And is there knowledge with the Most High?” (Psalm 34:11) with the invitation, the command, to repent and believe before judgment overtakes.   

      In sorrow, we acknowledge that many people have died in the pandemic. We dare not claim this as God’s particular judgment. Jesus addresses this issue of calamitous death specifically:  “Do you suppose that these Galileans [recently murdered by Romans] were greater sinners than all other Galilieans because they suffered this fate?  I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”   

     All of us will die, and those who have died we must entrust to the justice and mercy of their Creator. But Scripture clearly affirms that all of us who are living are experiencing God’s patience and mercy in this time of delayed judgment.  It is not presumptuous to recognize that the unprecedented unfolding of this pandemic in our lifetime is evidence of God’s kindness, designed to lead us to repentance and fellowship with him. This knowledge will not decrease the intensity or immediacy of our suffering. Yet, confidence in God’s kind purpose toward us in suffering can radically alter the experience, because in Christ the suffering Savior, God is with us and God is for us.