Chaos, the Virus and God

The thing about the virus is that it's pretty much beyond our control. Left to itself, it would run riot throughout the human race. Which is why we're doing everything we can to keep it within bounds, restrain it, put limits on its capacity to hurt and destroy us.

Most of us in the developed world have never before had this sense of a power beyond ourselves that threatens our very existence. My parents' generation did, living through the war. Survivors of the Blitz used to tell us as children what it was like to greet the morning with relief and gratitude at still being alive after a night of bombing. They learned to live from one day to the next, help one another through seemingly endless ordeals. It brought an awareness of the fragility, and therefore the sheer preciousness, of life.

In this pandemic however, the 'enemy' is far more elusive. We can't see it or detect its presence. It creeps upon us by stealth, lurking as an invisible threat that's all around us, maybe even within us, yet as an unknown, sinister presence to haunt our imaginations and stoke our fears. Not only that, but we can't even find strength and solace by facing this intangible foe by being physically together. There are no bunkers or air-raid shelters where we can hold one another through times of assault. In spite of our digital connectedness (which is a great benefit), we are more alone than we've ever had to be before, especially when we need one another so much.

I've been searching for metaphors and analogies that will do justice to what we are experiencing. To my mind, the image of warfare only takes us so far. But I found a different clue in a recent news item about the victims of the catastrophic floods on the Yorkshire River Don in February. Just as homes were beginning to dry out and repair works getting under way, the virus hit and lockdown was imposed. If you've ever been flooded, you'll feel for those poor householders trying to recover fromi a watery ordeal only to be overwhelmed by another kind of chaos that is putting a stop to so much everyday human activity.

Chaos is the idea I want to focus on. If you think about it, lockdown is how we always respond to chaos or the threat of it. Here in Tynedale, we became all too familiar with floodgates and sandbags in the floods of Storm Desmond in December 2015. As 'biblical rain' was bucketing down outside, I watched the water creep up the cellar stairs over a period of a couple of hours until it was two metres deep (yes, exactly that emblematic measure by which we now calibrate our social distancing). It was slow, it was silent, it was relentless - and it was sinister. How far would it rise? Would it invade the ground floor? That's when the image of chaos became a vivid reality. I was facing an invasion. The good order of my much-loved home was threatened by an enemy I could see (it's true), but could do nothing whatever to stop.

At once I was taken back to the Hebrew scriptures. The Psalms are full of references to keeping chaos at bay, mostly expressed in the language of the flood that was always threatening to overwhelm the dry land and civilised life. 'The floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their roaring.' To the Hebrews, for all its life-giving benefits, water was a force to respect and be afraid of. They never forgot the defining myth of the global flood that had all but destroyed life on earth. So they needed again and again to reassure themselves is that there was a power that was greater even than they were, strong enough to banish the waters to their proper place and reimpose order. 'More majestic than the waves of the sea, majestic on high is the Lord!' (Psalm 93.4).

This idea is fundamental in the first creation story in Genesis. 'In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep' (Genesis 1.1-2). In Hebrew, tohu wa vohu describes the chaotic ocean where, in semitic mythology, malevolent demons lurked, presences that needed to be overcome in a primordial battle with the god before the world could come into being. In Genesis, the separation of light from darkness, waters above from waters below, dry land from sea hint at this mythological battle with chaos. It was all part of the Creator's programme of introducing shape and structure into the cosmos so that it could become a place where life would flourish. When Jesus stills the storm in the gospel story by addressing the turbulent sea as if it were a malign conscious presence, 'Peace, be still!', he is recalling this ancient theme in an act of new creation (Mark 4.39). No wonder his terrified disciples were in awe of him.

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I'm wondering whether we are experiencing the virus in this way, as a kind of flood that must be kept within boundaries so that its power to damage is limited. Most of us are locked-down in our homes, safe places that we trust are havens from the flood of infection. But for many they are also experienced as prisons where freedoms are drastically curtailed. Our health and care workers are armed (when they are) by layers of personal protective equipment (PPE) observing hygiene protocols that are as exacting as any sanctuary ritual. All these are necessary acts of defence against the chaotic threat we are not yet able to cure or immunise against. The watery analogy is especially apt when you consider the etymology of the Latin word virus. It means a fluid that has potency to change things, usually in the bad sense of a poisonous liquid or venom. Those who have experienced the effects of the virus in themselves or others describe the saturation of the lungs as akin to drowning. Which is to be overwhelmed by water.

There's an important consequence to draw from this. Water is good, wholesome and utterly essential - in the right place. It gives us life, keeps us clean, provides us with energy. But when it overflows its appointed bounds, it becomes a threat, even a danger to life. The point is that water isn't evil in itself. It's only when it becomes an uncontrolled chaotic power that it has the capacity to destroy. Similarly, without viruses life on earth could not have evolved in the form we know it, nor would we exist as human beings. However damaging viral mutations like Covid19 are to us, they are no more intrinsically 'bad' than water (or fire or storms or volcanoes or earthquakes or any other natural phenomena). They simply are. 

So we should be careful about our language. In particular, we need to resist attributing personality to the virus by calling it 'evil' or even 'the enemy' as if it had some devious moral purpose in being out to get us. It doesn't. It just is what it is. In a universe of accident and risk, the only kind where life can evolve and humans come into being, stuff happens. It's unbearably cruel at times. But we're not to take it personally. Nature is already 'red in tooth and claw' as Tennyson said, as capricious against itself as it is against us. It may be a cold comfort to realise that the virus is indifferent to our destiny, and is only being true to its own nature in finding hosts in human beings. Indeed, what we experience as ‘chaos’ is in reality merely following its own rules which can be understood and described, such as the behaviour of the virus in human populations or of floodwater flowing in particular environments. But it's not 'meant' in any ultimate, metaphysical way. We all tend to ask, when afflicted by pain or disease, what we've done to deserve it. But as the Bible's wisdom literature makes clear, it's not only unanswerable, it doesn't even make sense as a question because it misconstrues reality. When they asked Jesus whose sin had resulted in the man being born blind, Jesus' response was to challenge the very assumptions of the question (John 9).

But there's one more aspect to the flood analogy. Just as the chaos of flooding is the result of water violating its proper boundaries, we can say precisely the same about this virus. The science points to Covid19 having 'transgressed', that is, crossed over from one species to another. In the bat (or whatever animal life it was resident in), the virus did no harm as far as we know. In jumping across to human beings, it transmuted into a presence whose effects we are seeing all too clearly. It not only causes dreadful chaos and destruction to the human body, it's also capable of replicating that same chaos in our collective social and economic life together, not to mention our spiritual, mental and emotional health. The body corporate is as much a victim as our physical bodies. Like flood water, it's an alien intruder that has violated its proper bounds. (I'm aware that even this graphic way of putting it may invoke memories of the Alien films and invest the virus with personality and moral agency which it doesn't have.)

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What's the answer to chaos?

In the Psalms, God's reign reintroduces order into the realm of chaos by subduing it, driving it back behnd its boundaries so as to contain it and recreate a safe place. Subduing the virus is what social distancing, quarantine, self-isolation and screening are all designed to do, 'flattening the curve' so as to contain within secure boundaries. At the same time, testing, tracing and monitoring help map the way this chaos is infiltrating the population and in time, please God, retreating to its proper place. A vaccine will probably not be the 'answer' to Covid19, but it will be a powerful tool to help curb its worst effects until it poses no further threat to us. (But it's imperative that we learn from this experience how to respond next time a pandemic strikes - which, the experts tell us, is not a matter of if but when.) 

We are not to look for a deus ex machina to rescue us from this or any other predicament that ambushes the human race. It's futile to pray that the virus will go away as a result of divine intervention. The chaos of this Coronavirus will not be subdued by divine fiat, only by natural processes such as the virus exhausting itself, or, more likely and certainly more swiftly, and at vastly less cost in human lives, as a result of concentrated human intervention. And theology wants to say that it's precisely through skilled human agency in ordering chaos that the hand of God is at work. I think this should be the clear focus of our prayers, alongside holding victims in our hearts and remembering those who care for them. And the very act of praying in this way begins to lay a template of good order over the chaos because it's fundamentally an act of love. It makes a real difference to the Zeitgeist, the sentient world of thought and feeling in which we experience our life together. It puts positivity and hope back into the system. We mustn't underestimate what this can do.

I think of St Benedict in the sixth century. He lived in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire, surrounded by the crumbling ruins of a great civilisation whose memory he held dear. It must have felt as though darkness was extinguishing every lamp of knowledge, culture, law and social life for which ancient Rome had been famed throughout the world. Just as the prophet had predicted of the holy city, it must have seemed as if the entire world was unravelling, reverting to that primitive chaos of Genesis, tohu wa vohu (Jeremiah 4.23).

How might the best of the empire be kept alive in these disintegrating times? Not the cruelty or love of display, not the lust for blood and sex, not the self-deceit and idolatry but all that was best in Roman civilisation as Benedict understood Christianity had transformed it: its nobility, its virtue, its public institutions, its art, its discipline, its sense of honour, its spirituality. His answer was to create monasteries, cells of men and women living under Rule, in which the light of civilised life, however precarious, could be cherished and safeguarded. He saw the good order of his communities, and especially the ordering of place and time through the threefold division of activity into prayer, study and work, as vital to a healthy common life. These local efforts at keeping chaos at bay may not have seemed much at the time. But it's hard to exaggerate their influence fifteen centuries later. It's not too much to say that the monastic vision and the movement it gave rise to kept European civilisation alive.

By kindling lights in dark places where people are overwhelmed and frightened, we 'bear witness' to the conviction that chaos does not have the last word. It's a mighty act of faith, of course. But it's the only antidote to despair that I know. We all have a part to play in affirming God’s good order in the face of the threat we face, indeed, helping to establish it in every aspect of our life together. It’s what I understand by the kingdom of God which, says the gospel, is already birthing within us.

A Birthday Appeal

It’s my birthday soon, my seventieth. It will fall just inside* the Easter season, so modest rejoicing will be permitted (but no partying), alongside the inevitable reflection on attaining this personal milestone. 

Cue introspection? Not now: this blog isn’t about me. I’m writing because this special birthday falls right in the middle of this terrible Coronavirus emergency as it’s hitting us here in the UK. We are holding so many people in our hearts during this crisis: the sick, the dying, the dead, the bereaved, all who are caring for others in these times, our leaders, those who maintain the fabric of our society. 

But we also know that this pandemic is global. Many communities are exposed to very great risks in places where healthcare is so much less developed than here in the UK. So to mark my three score years and ten, I’d like to ask you to join me in helping Oxfam respond to Covid19 across the world. 

Oxfam is deeply involved in helping to contain the spread of the virus worldwide, and in supporting victims and communities that have been badly hit by it. As many of you know, I volunteer each week in the Oxfam bookshop in Hexham here in North East England. I love this involvement for so many reasons, but the principal one is that it helps Oxfam make a difference to some of the neediest people in the world. So perhaps I can appeal particularly to people who support the charity by visiting Oxfam shops and who are missing them (as I am) during this lockdown? If I single out book-lovers especially, well, you’ll understand why as one of them myself.

We all share anxieties about how Covid19 is affecting everyone whether they are far away, closer to home or among our own families and friends. The impact is being felt across the world, especially where people are living through conflict, disaster and poverty. What could happen once the virus takes hold in less developed countries hardly bears thinking about. Bangladesh, for instance, about which I saw a report recently, where critical population densities in towns and cities make any prospect of social distancing, let alone isolation, impossible. In time there will be antiviral drugs and wholesale testing. But by then it will be far too late for many, many people.

Oxfam’s humanitarian staff and partners are working hard to help stop the spread of Covid19 by providing vital support like handwashing facilities, clean water, toilets and soap in many of the world’s most vulnerable communities.Work like this has helped contain deadly disease outbreaks in the past such as Ebola and cholera. It will help protect people against this virus too. 

Oxfam is also able to provide vital equipment in some places to healthcare facilities and hospitals that urgently need support. And it’s helping people who are losing income or at greater risk of domestic abuse because of restrictions on movement. Supporting the world's poorest communities is more important than ever right now.

You don’t need me to explain all this. One of the good things to come out of this emergency is that it’s heightening our awareness that we are one human family. Locally, we are learning how to look after one another better, love our sick, elderly or vulnerable neighbour in practical ways that make a difference. 

But my neighbour is every man, woman and child in every part of God’s world. At times of crisis when it’s tempting to look inwards, I need to make a conscious effort to think about people far away who are facing threats I can barely imagine. Each of them is my neighbour too. I know that in theory. But loving my neighbour isn’t a matter of theory but of developing a feeling for humanity that’s summed up in words like sympathy and compassion. They both have at their core the idea of suffering-with. In my last two blogs I explored what this might mean in this season of the year when we reflect on the Passion and cross of Jesus. For me, the thought that he continues to suffer in every suffering human child is at the heart of what Holy Week and Good Friday mean.

Which is why I’m asking if you’d be willing to join me in being part of this great effort if you can. I’ve made Oxfam’s Coronavirus appeal my birthday fundraiser on Facebook. You can give via my Facebook page. Please use this if possible. The post is public so you don’t have to be a member. But if you prefer, you can give directly to Oxfam though it won’t be included in the total raised by my personal appeal. You can find Oxfam’s Coronavirus giving page here.

Thank you. Stay safe and well. I hope and pray that this season of Holy Week and Easter brings health, peace and blessing. 

*To clarify, because some have speculated, my birthday falls on the Ides of April.

Abroad Thoughts from Home: on not travelling

It’s a dull, wet day here in Tynedale. Nothing unusual in that: the weather has been unspeakable for weeks. But today we should have been driving off the Newcastle-Amsterdam ferry and heading south into Germany and France.

The plan was to drive up the Rhine to a village near Strasbourg. I was due to give addresses there at a weekend conference for church people from the Anglican Diocese in Europe. On the way we had planned to stay in Düsseldorf. This was where my Jewish mother was born and brought up until, at the age of fourteen, she was sent to Britain to escape the Nazi persecution. We'd arranged to meet the head teacher of her old school and some of his current students. He has taken a great interest in Jewish children who had attended it before the war, making contact with survivors (my mother was one of the few) and helping today’s young people understand the terrible history of Germany under the Third Reich.

After the conference, we were going to linger for a few days in Alsace, one of our favourite regions of France. That too is an area with long memories for me. In my gap year (we didn’t call it that in the 1960s), I worked for a few months on a pig farm at Pfaffenhoffen, a village north of Strasbourg. I grew to love Alsace and its culture, positioned as it is at a crossroads of Europe by the Rhine where French and German identity, language and culture meet. And at the end of our tour, we had booked to stay a night at Edam in the Netherlands (where the cheese comes from) where my grandparents were kept safe underground for two years by two evangelical Christian sisters who saw it as their vocation to shelter Jews during the Nazi occupation.

But we’re not on the autobahn where we should have been today. It’s the virus of course. Last Friday I was talking on the phone to my GP about the medication I’m on. It’s relevant to this story that a few years ago I had a silent heart attack which was only discovered during an MRI scan later on. I was already on medication for atrial fibrillation and hypertension. ‘Too much information’ you cry! Point taken. That’s all you need to know.

‘By the way’, I asked my doctor, ‘what about travelling abroad with Covid19 spreading across the continent?’ He spelled out the risks: not travel per se, but being in close proximity to people you don’t know in ships and hotels and conference centres. It’s not only the risk they pose to you, but yours to them. Any of us could be carrying the virus without knowing it. Only 20% of those who catch it will develop severe symptoms. Of those, a few percent will die. You could be one of the unlucky ones, he went on. You are nearly 70. You have an ‘underlying health condition’. You are male. You tick all three ‘higher risk’ boxes.

‘Ok’, I replied, ‘I know you’re not telling me whether to travel or not, but giving me the information I need in order to make a sensible decision. But perhaps you can answer this: what would you do in my situation?’ He paused, then said: ‘In your position, I would not travel. Maybe you’d be fine. You probably would. But I don’t think any of us should travel just now unless it’s essential. I’m surprised that the FCO website is as relaxed as it is about overseas travel. And if you found yourself quarantined while you were away, you’d say to yourselves that this ordeal was avoidable. Far better, if it comes to it, to be quarantined in your own home’. Or words to that effect.

I’ve often found that to ask someone, ‘what would you do in my situation?’ can open the door to a really helpful conversation. The other person – priest, financial advisor, counsellor, GP, spouse or friend - isn’t doing my work for me. In adulthood, other people can’t and shouldn’t make decisions for us. Not if we are in our right mind, and competent to be led by the evidence, weigh it up and come to a view about what we should do. But to ask ‘what would you do?’ does allow my conversation partner to be candid. I’ve often said to others who’ve sought my advice: ‘I can’t make this decision for you. But given what you’ve told me, I can suggest how I’d respond if I were in your shoes’. My GP was willing to do that. I needed to hear what he had to say. But the decision not to travel was ours, and ours alone.

Today, when we should have been on the road, it’s inevitable that I ask myself whether we did the right thing. It all comes down to risk. Did we do the risk analysis well? Was our appetite for risk unduly cautious? On the other hand, had we crossed the North Sea after all, might we now be asking if this was a reckless adventure we shouldn’t have embarked on? I’ve since learned that the Land or province of Nordrein-Westfalen which includes Düsseldorf is where most of Germany’s cases of the virus have been reported.

As I wrote in my last blog there is a virus that is more contagious than Covid19. It’s the fear and anxiety that it’s generating. One professional I’ve heard speak about it, a senior epidemiologist, says that Covid19 poses the gravest global threat through disease since the Spanish flu of 1918 that killed so many millions. This coronavirus is not as deadly as, say, Ebola, but crucially, it is far more infectious. The combination of high probability of contagion with serious impacts on more vulnerable sections of the population raises the risk level significantly. Enough to make it essential that we change our behaviours to mitigate the risk.

Our travel dilemma is a case-study of how we are all being faced with new and difficult choices thanks to the virus. They involve changes of thought, habit and behaviour. Handwashing and hygiene, not kissing or shaking hands – these are straightforward enough. Trickier are choices that involve our daily work, our education, our family and social lives, our holiday plans. Wherever people gather - schools, sports and leisure venues, pubs, restaurants, businesses, shops, theatres, cinemas, churches, airports and railway stations – all are having to negotiate territory that is unfamiliar and unwelcome. They have to make choices about how to manage in these coming weeks and months, aware that there are big economic and social consequences at stake. We have to decide what kind of engagement with them will be low-risk and safe, and where we need to be more cautious. It’s a kind of exile, a strange land where ordinary rules of engagement are suspended. (‘Exile’ was to have been the theme of my Bible studies at the church conference – how much material there suddenly is to reflect on!)

As for me, I’m hugely disappointed not to be travelling today. Yet relieved, too, that we don’t have to. Our children certainly feel that way. It’s a conflicted place to be. Only hindsight will reassure us about our decision, or not, as the case may be. We tried to act for the best. But life is lived not in the crystal-clarity of black-and-white but in ambiguity, among a million shades of grey. Faith becomes a real factor when you have to weigh up risks. As does courage, whatever path we opt to tread. ‘Face the fear and do it anyway’: the fear of doing something or of not doing it. These are early days in the story of the virus. There will be many more decisions we shall need to face in the future, and some of them will be painful and hard.

That’s where prayer, wisdom and God-given discernment come into things. There’s spiritual work to do at times like these. The virus sends us back to the foundations of our faith and what it is that gives us our dignity as men and women. And where we believe God is found at the core of seems to be dangerous and frightening. 'Do not worry about tomorrow' says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. I try not to, though temperamentally I find it's one of the hardest challenges of the gospel. Cultivating wisdom, learning to take the long view, finding hope where I can, and above all, living contentedly, thankful for the goodness of God - these I've found to be the most important strategies for mitigating risk at an inward level, facing it with equanimity and becoming, God willing, a better human being as a result.