I need to begin with two important qualifications. First, Christians are commanded to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15) and we are commanded to care for the sick. Compassion must always be our first response to tragedy but, sadly, too often that is not the case. In what follows I’m not writing on how to comfort the sick! I’m writing to help explain one of the ways that God uses a disaster like the Coronavirus pandemic and it is this: Disaster is always a call to repentance. This will surely offend many non-Christians but we Christians shouldn’t run away from that.
Second, I’ve been embarrassed when some famous evangelical leaders (no, I’m not going to name names) have blamed people for the disaster they’ve suffered. For example, I reject blaming 9/11 on this sin or that or blaming the Haitian earthquake victims for the earthquake because they practiced Voodoo. We aren’t in a position to say why a particular disaster strikes a particular group.
Now, that being said, that doesn’t mean that disaster isn’t always a call to repentance. Again, every disaster is a call to repentance. I’m just saying we shouldn’t pontificate as to specific reasons that a particular disaster strikes a particular people.
Consider Luke 13:1-5 where Jesus addresses the problem of suffering most clearly:
Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.
So whether it’s the Haiti earthquake, 9-11, or the Coronavirus, these are a call to repentance. I can’t do better than relate D. A. Carson’s insights about the Luke passage:
First, Jesus does not assume that those who suffered under Pilate, or those who were killed in the collapse of the tower, did not deserve their fate. Indeed, the fact that he can tell those contemporaries that unless they repent they too will perish shows that Jesus assumes that all death is in one way or another the result of sin, and therefore deserved.
Second, Jesus does insist that death by such means is no evidence whatsoever that those who suffer in this way are any more wicked than those who escape such a fate. The assumption seems to be that all deserve to die. If some die under a barbarous governor, and others in a tragic accident, it is not more than they deserve. But that does not mean that others deserve any less. Rather, the implication is that it is only God’s mercy that has kept them alive. There is certainly no moral superiority on their part.
Third, Jesus treats wars and natural disasters not as agenda items in a discussion of the mysterious ways of God, but as incentives to repentance. It is as if he is saying that God uses disaster as a megaphone to call attention to our guilt and destination, to the imminence of his righteous judgment if he sees no repentance. This is an argument developed at great length in Amos 4. Disaster is a call to repentance. Jesus might have added (as he does elsewhere) that peace and tranquility, which we do not deserve, show us God’s goodness and forbearance.
It is a mark of our lostness that we invert these two. We think we deserve the times of blessing and prosperity, and that the times of war and disaster are not only unfair but come perilously close to calling into question God’s goodness or his power—even, perhaps, his very existence. Jesus simply did not see it that way.1
Exactly! Again and again in the Old Testament God uses disaster to encourage repentance. Revelation 16:8-11 says that the Lord sends plagues, “but they refused to repent and glorify him.” Notice that when plagues come, He expects repentance.
So when disaster strikes, let us not wring our hands over the mysterious ways of God but remember that disaster is always a call to repentance. We must encourage everyone to reflect on their sinful and doomed state in hopes that some will escape the Final Disaster that awaits the ultimately unrepentant.
Jeremiah 5:3: “O LORD, do not your eyes look for truth? You have struck them down, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent.”
Amen.
This was updated on March 19, 2020 and some of this was excepted with modification from my book, Why Does God Allow Evil?
Below is a link to Sean McDowell and my discussion of the Coronavirus.
- D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker 1990), 66-67. [↩]
Very insightful observations and principles from that passage. Jesus doesn’t assume those who perished were guiltless, nor does he say they were worse than anybody else. He uses it to illustrate what people really need.
Things like this seem the most plausible biblical explanation for natural disasters. But it’s a still hard sell to any secular person.
In the past, I’ve been asked, “Why did [disaster] strike [location]? What did God want?” I’ve always said something along the lines of what you’ve outlined here.
Great answer, I love it! Not just because it’s the same thing I tell people who ask me the same the question, even highlighting the same biblical passage. But because it’s more succinct than what I would have come up with had I posted on the same topic!