God and Coronavirus
So it's about time I got back to talking about God, right? Let's mix up topical news with the age-old problem of evil and rationalising belief in God.
I probably don't need to re-establish the problem of evil with regard to coronavirus, other than to say if God was all-loving, or-knowing and all-powerful, then how come there is so much suffering in the world, namely the onset of the coronavirus?
What I want to talk about today concerns the day-to-day considerations of religious believers with regard to practically dealing with and understanding the ramifications of Covid-19. Imagine you are a pastor of the church and you are prohibited from holding gatherings to worship your Lord. This is not a government sanction by oppressing your belief, but a practical solution to the notion that if you held a religious service in your church, you would be endangering the lives of those in your congregation. Imagine that some of your family members have been seriously affected by this virus, and perhaps someone you know has even died. You see death in the news around the world, suffering through illness and suchlike. This is a virus, a product of the natural world that your God has designed and created. This is nothing that humans have created (unless you are a rabid conspiracy theorist!).
How do you really justify this virus being in existence?
Punishment? Retribution? Teh gayz? Eating impure food as set out biblically?
Or is it a case of building up this the souls of the survivors, improving them from what they previously were in some way, despite the instrumentality of this theodicy in terms of those who suffered or died?
What theodicy do people at the coal face actually employ, I wonder? Do people automatically look to blame the ills of society for the onset of a natural disaster like this? Or, do religious people allow a seed of doubt to settle in a crack of their worldview: shit happens. And this world can be pretty shitty. End of.
What have my readers here experienced from religious colleagues or famous commentators?
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