PART 2 - Epidemics and “God”: The Covid-19 Pandemic, Albert Camus’ 'The Plague', and the Question of God

(Link to Part 1. Link to Part 3)

PART 2: Natural Calamities and the God-Question

Negative Limit Experiences (like “Plagues”) and the Question of God

     We saw in The Plague that Camus’ position on the theme <Calamities and the God-Question> is to bracket “God” out of the equation and put the spotlight instead on the absurdity of life (viewed as <the arbitrariness of the destruction of life>). That absurdity is in turn given as the very reason for humans to unite, be in solidarity with one another, and generously give of themselves in order to preserve and enhance life to the best of their abilities.

     Let me reflect now as a theologian and explicitly put the God-question back into the equation in the context of a calamity such as a virulent epidemic by asking: Where is God in all of this?

     The very first thing that strikes me when I do this is the realization that when truly thoughtful people insert “God” into the equation of a natural calamity (even if they happen to be theologians!), the logical reaction is just to feel helpless and stumped. How does one even begin to answer that question? If someone thinks they can deal with that question adequately by facilely declaring clichés such as “God has a mysterious purpose for all,” “All things shall be well in the end,” or some other similarly cozy, comforting, and even cloying formulae, it seems (at least to me) that they are simply not looking at the absurdity and real pain of trauma well enough and … in the eye. In fact, in an interview in Time Magazine, the respected Anglican bishop-New Testament scholar N.T. Wright declared bluntly (referring to the religious meaning of the Covid-19 pandemic),

It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead (Wright 2020)

     Here, Wright touches upon a very important characteristic of religion that is seldom pointed out: that authentic religion cannot actually explain why natural tragedy happens. In more concrete terms, the question “Why does God allow this (… say, pandemic)?” is almost always useless. No one (no matter how high and mighty a religious figure one is) can ever say why. This is the reason why Camus and other thinkers have settled instead on making the very absurdity of life the very means to make better sense of some tragic events. When people demand that religion does something it cannot actually do, the result is equally tragic: people lose their faith in God; they become angry or they sink into despair.

     Wright, I think, rightly shifts the focus onto something religion can and should do—It can soften and deepen the heart to plumb the profundity of compassion through—what he calls—“lament.” Wright explains,

Rationalists (including Christian rationalists) want explanations; Romantics (including Christian romantics) want to be given a sigh of relief. But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament. Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world (Wright 2020).

“God” as a “Symbol” of the Human Effort to Wrestle with Life

     And yet humans continue to wrestle with life and its many apparent absurdities. I have come to conclude after many years of studying religion that, seen from a humanistic standpoint, “god” is primarily a symbol of the human effort to wrestle with life’s difficult questions … such as the “why” of natural calamities. In other words, when humans try to make sense especially of great suffering (such as the one caused by disastrous epidemics), they have and continue to invoke “god,” imagining a supernatural and powerful Being with the ability to stop disasters from happening or to turn things around when the situation becomes quite bad. Again, analyzed from a humanistic standpoint, a god who might directly intervene to alleviate the world’s suffering primarily seems to be a symbol of the trust and hope that continue to live on in our hearts which in turn give us the strength and courage to go on with the struggle as we face the different painful challenges that beset us in life. I understand and respect that. However, I also want to acknowledge its severe limitations.

     Now as we have seen, Christianity (and, as far as I know, any other religious tradition) has no easy and conclusive answers to the question of <why do life’s absurd sufferings happen?>. To expand on that by rephrasing it, let me say unambiguously that the “God” invoked by Christianity usually does not have answers to the big “Why” question of calamities such as chaos-generating and deadly epidemics. It’s enough to look at God’s answer to the fabled Old Testament character Job when he requests some answers to the question of his undeserved suffering. God in the book (Job 38-39) proclaims that human wisdom just cannot plumb the mysteriousness of God’s ways (recall “limit experiences”) and so it (human knowledge-wisdom) amounts to nothing before God. That is another way to say that all our human efforts to understand the wherefore and whither, the why and the <to what end?> of suffering are practically pointless in a sense because we will never get any satisfactory answers.

     Even Jesus in the New Testament gospels does not make an effort to answer these questions. Rather, what the Christian tradition embodied especially in Jesus presents is an invitation and a summons (and this is very important), first, to refrain from judging because we really do not know everything; second, to be compassionate for the sufferings that all of us have to endure; and, third, to act resolutely and lovingly to alleviate suffering.

     But the plot thickens with regard to the god-question. If that is so, what use is there for “god” then? Is it any good to have faith in a god who seemingly cannot even supply us with adequate answers to our questions about the apparent random suffering that is visited upon us in life (such as Covid-19)?

     I think that this question is crucially important especially for people who consider themselves believers. Some will simply choose to ignore it for fear of rocking the boat too much and losing their “simple, childhood” faith. As I’ve wrestled with this question through the years though, I’ve realized that unless one faces this gnawing question squarely in the face and attempts to give some response to it, I’m afraid one will never shed a childish faith and advance to a more mature stage of being a believer. So let me share my two cents’ worth coming from some of my efforts over a long time to make sense of the God-question.

“God” as a Hypothesis about Reality

     One of the most useful and thorough books (although a bit on the cerebral side) on the questions of God’s existence and nature that I’ve come upon thus far has been the Catholic theologian Hans Küng’s Does God Exist? An Answer for Today [1980]. There Küng uses a good amount of space to survey and analyze the many efforts to prove, be agnostic about, or deny the existence of God through the centuries. When he comes at last to stating his major conclusions about God’s existence and nature, he starts by positing God as a human hypothesis. God as a hypothesis, Küng proposes, would be the answer to humanity’s most ultimate questions. Apropos that, we can say that these three following questions are probably the most important and consistent “ultimate” questions that human beings have asked:  Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?

     Küng points out that if God does exist there would be meaningful answers to those questions. Therefore, in answer to ‘Who are we?’, God would be the ultimate ground of being that defines our identity: We (and all of reality) are all grounded in God; we carry in ourselves—as the Bible says—the divine image (Imago Dei). Thus, God is the “primal ground” for all life and reality.

     In answer to ‘Where do we come from?’, God would be the source, the creator and sustainer of all human and natural existence. God is then the “primal support” of everything.  Finally, in answer to ‘Where are we going?’, God would be the (primal) goal in whom everyone and everything will ultimately find their fulfillment.

     Therefore, the ideal hypothetical situation is that all human and natural life takes on a deeper meaning with this awesome “God” as the ground, support and goal of everything that is. And that would make life definitely worth living to the full, despite the acute menace of fate and death, apparent emptiness and meaninglessness, sin and suffering. This, I can say, is a rather sophisticated way of expressing the traditional God-believer’s ultimate reasons for having belief in God.

     (Another recommended work) On the question of God, a more contemporary and robust exploration of this theme from an explicitly theological lens can be found in Catholic theologian Elizabeth Johnson’s Quest for the Living God (2007). I highly recommend it for further study.

The "Unprovability" of God - Revelation

     Let me underline that in the reflections above, God, we can say, is a hypothesis that humans have and continue to put forward in order to make sense of life. However, there is one big problem that is seldom stated in a straightforward way: It is commonly acknowledged in the discipline called the philosophy of religion that, despite the best efforts of many brilliant minds throughout history, there is actually no definitive way to prove conclusively this hypothesis that God exists. What Küng has stated above is merely that, if the hypothesis of God were true, then all life and existence would take on a deeper and fuller meaning.

     Meanwhile, religious traditions such as Christianity have emphasized the notion of divine revelation: that God has—it is believed—revealed to some chosen humans the very nature of the Divine and also certain firm truths about God and about life which are trustworthy and reliable. Well, I don’t like to enter too deeply into this line of discussion here. Let me just state my personal and very honest opinion on the notion of revelation. I may sound like an agnostic here but bear with me: I honestly think that the concept of revelation just does not speak anymore to many people in the contemporary world—especially people who have not been raised to believe that there is a God.

    Moreover, a detailed historical study of, say, Christianity and of its different supposedly firm and solid revelations (as I have done professionally for practically my whole lifetime as a scholar of religion) will reveal instead that these grandiose claims about “revealed truths” should always be taken more modestly because all so-called “truths” (that not only Christianity but practically any religion proclaims) actually bear the tell-tale marks that they are all too human (more than divine!)—that is, these “truths” are anthropologically, historically, and culturally conditioned in a radical way. It is seldom acknowledged that these very “human” truths have been imbued with an aura of sacredness and infallibility by some authority in the tradition’s history more than anything else for the purpose of forging a given community’s identity through a common belief in supposedly “revealed truths” rather than as a witness to conclusively demonstrable truths. Despite that, I continue to be a person of faith-trust for reasons I cannot explain sufficiently here but let me just say now that I am a very, very “modest” believer (hoping that I will have to explain my reasons for being so on another occasion). For these reasons, I do not usually like to take the path of “divine revelation” when attempting to speak about “God” to present-day people (to myself first and foremost!) who are on the whole historically conscious and are trained to think critically through things.

     The more fruitful path to take for me when we attempt to study religion and the idea of God (or gods) nowadays, especially when it is done in the context of a growing number of people in my (Western) context who consider themselves SBNR (Spiritual but not Religious), “Dones” (We’re “done” with religion!), or “Nones” (We have NO religion!), is rather to understand religion and the idea that there might be a God as first and foremost a human endeavour to search for meaning. “God” functions then as a way that humans have made use of in order to add meaning to life or to make some sense of life—life which many times can be very mysterious indeed.

     Can there be other ways of making life meaningful other than positing the God hypothesis? Of course there are! This is by no means the only way to “create meaning.” But it is probably the way by which most people have tried to make sense of life and reality throughout human history. That is why it is still important that we study the God-question if we are to understand humans and everything connected with them.

Agnosticism and Atheism Compared with Faith in God

     But let’s get back to Hans Küng. Toward the end of his tome on God, Küng, who at this point has already surveyed and analyzed the many efforts to prove, be agnostic about, or deny the existence of God through the centuries, draws a stark conclusion. He states bluntly that, in front of life and its utter mysteriousness (recall again “limit experiences”), both a denial and an affirmation of God are actually rationally possible as choices that humans could make (568).

     Let’s expand on that. First, atheism then is definitely a possible and, in many ways, a rational option in front of life’s mysteries. There is no way to refute or eliminate it rationally. For some people, the dominant experience of reality is that it is radically uncertain and even absurd. There is simply no way to “be certain” that there exists a primal source and a primal support of, let alone a primal goal for everything. Hence, for them, an agnosticism (“I just don’t know about ultimate realities and I prefer not to discuss them” attitude) that often tends toward atheism is the option that makes the most sense. This is very common nowadays and it is not always bad despite what religious people usually say. In fact, agnosticism could be a sign of a healthy humility and that the agnostic person has transcended some simplistic, naïve, and childish images of God.

     For some others, the dominant factors in their experience of reality are darker: radical chaos, irreparable hurt and damage, illusion, meaningless suffering, absurdity, and nonbeing. For them then an atheism that tends toward nihilism is the position that makes the most sense (569).

     Küng asserts however that there is another possible choice that is not irrational by any means and hence also deserves respect and legitimacy even in our secular age. This position is perfectly justifiable even in a rational way – it is the position of the person of faith-trust (note that “faith-trust” might be the best description of “religious belief”) who, despite the radical uncertainty and even the seemingly meaningless suffering and absurdity that characterize reality (life), still decides to have faith and trust in a primal ground, support, and goal of life and all reality – a Being commonly known as “God.”

     Of course, this rationally justifiable “God” should be nuanced well and explained more at length. (And that is not my aim here. I will save it for another occasion.) What we can say is that it is definitely not the “god” of earlier and more naïve stages of faith that could not hold up against the deconstructive critiques of contemporary agnosticism and atheism (such as from the “New Atheists”). Many crude and heavily anthropomorphic ideas of god espoused by a great many religious believers are what modern skepticism about God can arguably attack and refute, and perhaps rightly so. This, we can say, is the “god” that the philosopher Nietzsche proclaimed as dead and, again, perhaps rightly so. The rationally justifiable God is a more robust and mature idea of what Küng refers to as faith-trust in a primal source, support and goal of all life and reality.

CONTINUED IN PART 3

(Link to Part 1. Link to Part 3)

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Works Cited and Others Work for Further Study

Cupitt, Don (2015). Creative Faith: Religion as a Way of Worldmaking. Salem, OR: Polebridge.

______ (1999). The New Religion of Life in Everyday Speech. London: SCM.

Gregg, Carl (2012). “Do We Need a Moratorium on ‘God’?” Patheos, Published October 8, 2012. Accessed April 22, 2020. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2012/10/do-we-need-a-moratorium-on-the-word-god/.

Johnson, Elizabeth (2007). Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God. London: Bloombsury.

Küng, Hans (1981). Does God Exist? An Answer for Today. New York: Vintage.

School of Life (2020). “Albert Camus – The Plague.” YouTube Video, April 1, 2020. Accessed April 20, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSYPwX4NPg4&t=62s.

N.T. Wright (2020). “Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To.” Time, March 29, 2020. Accessed April 12, 2020. https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/.

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PART 1 - Epidemics and “God”: The Covid-19 Pandemic, Albert Camus’ 'The Plague', and the Question of God

PART 1: Covid-19, The Plague, and “Limit Experiences”

(Link to Part 2; Link to Part 3)

The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Limit Experience

     As I begin to write this essay (early April 2020), the world is still very much in the thick of the Covid-19 Pandemic which began in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has since swept the whole world prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it a pandemic in March 2020. The pandemic has resulted in a major global crisis not seen at this scale since perhaps the Second World War and it has and continues to result in many unfortunate and terrible events such as the high number of deaths among the most vulnerable classes of people, the overwhelming of healthcare systems in many countries, a wide-scale economic fallout, further suffering for the poor and marginalized, and so forth.

     With so much loss in terms of lives, jobs, mobility, and stability the world over (and thus immense suffering for multitudes), this experience can very rightly be called—what theologian David Tracy refers to as a—“limit experience.” (Incidentally, Tracy posits that as a key ingredient for a critical theological reflection about life and existence.)

     A limit experience can be described as a moment of intensification when something major—be it an event, an overwhelmingly magnificent or evil person, extraordinary beauty, a serious crisis or the like—so powerfully discloses the mysteriousness of human existence that it necessarily calls for an effort on the part of those experiencing this event as “a limit” to make some sense of this event’s mysteriousness that transcends the limits of ordinary human understanding (hence, “limit”). How to do that? By attempting an interpretation of the experience (or “interpretive understanding”). That’s just a fancy way to say: to put forward a possible explanation of the event. Of course, it is obvious that the effort to make sense of limit experiences often takes place in the midst of many strong positive and negative emotions, such as hope, faith, love, anxiety, sadness, anger, fear, despair, etc., elicited by such powerful experiences.

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Albert Camus’ The Plague

     As I watched the “normal” world I knew rapidly “fall apart” in the face of the pandemic with countries taking unprecedented steps (at least in our recent memory) that practically stopped all semblance of normalcy in life for the purpose of stemming the tide of the contagion (such as drastic lockdown measures with their huge impact on ordinary social functions), I was reminded of a novel of French literary figure and philosopher Albert Camus appropriately entitled The Plague. This work reflects on human life and existence in the light of a similar yet smaller scale event. And boy did the novel speak anew to me in a powerful way! It brought home the naked fact that Covid-19 is perhaps the big limit experience our generation has to go through in our lifetimes.

     Camus’ novel tells the story of an otherwise dull and predictable French colonial town on the Algerian coast called Oran where a plague surfaces without warning in the 1940s. The protagonist is a medical doctor - Bernard Rieux who also acts as the main narrator. The whole novel is filled with his experiences and reflections on life as he works with quiet consistency on the frontlines of Oran’s plague.

     Oran, we can say, represents a typical place (“everyplace”) where people (“everyhuman”) go on with their lives, attending to the many humdrum and ordinary occurrences in life while taking things for granted as the unremarkable part of the dull and boring normalcy of everyday existence. All this continues until a dark spectre of impending doom appears on the scene. In Oran’s case, it is the plague; in our case, it was Covid-19. And then, quite literally, all hell breaks loose: people are terrified and panic; they withdraw and protect themselves; they blame others; they sink into melancholy and despair; many (especially among the vulnerable classes) succumb to the disease and die, sometimes without anyone beside them. We are witnessing this tragedy happen as I write now in places like Northern Italy, Spain, and New York.

The Plague and the “Absurdity” of Life

     Camus is known for emphasizing what he called “the absurdity of life.” Apropos that, these lines from an online YouTube video by The School of Life on Camus and The Plague are just too good not to be mentioned in full here because it explains Camus’ dominant intention for writing the novel:

Camus was drawn to this theme because in his philosophy, we are all—unbeknownst to us—already living through a plague: that is, a widespread, silent, invisible disease that may kill any of us at any time and destroy the lives we assumed were solid. The actual historical incidents we call plagues are merely concentrations of a universal precondition; they are dramatic instances of a perpetual rule: that we are vulnerable to being randomly exterminated by a bacillus, an accident, or the actions of our fellow humans. Our exposure to plague is at the heart of Camus’ view that our lives are fundamentally on the edge of what he termed “the absurd.” Proper recognition of this absurdity should not lead us to despair pure and simple. It should—rightly understood—be the start of a redemptive tragi-comic perspective. Like the people of Oran before the plague, we assume that we have been granted immortality and with this naivety come behaviours that Camus abhorred: a hardness of heart, an obsession with status, a refusal of joy and gratitude, a tendency to moralize and judge (School of Life, 2020).

     Curiously, for Camus, the fact that human life is absurd in this way because it can be summarily rendered meaningless by death (through, say, a random infection from a plague) was his very reason for advocating that we dedicate ourselves to our “damned” fellow humans and “work without hope and despair for the amelioration of suffering” (School of Life, 2020).

Is “Absurdity” the Best Description?

     I wonder though: Isn’t Camus’ “absurdity” better rendered by other (more positive) concepts? Take the Japanese concept of “hakanai” (ephemeral) as an example. When the sakura (cherry blossom) trees break forth with their gloriously beautiful flowers in the spring (normally in late March or early April in Tokyo), the blossoms (especially in their full-bloom state called mankai) last for a very short time—around 4-5 days at their peak of beauty. After that, they start to fall and the pristine cherry-coloured trees turn into a more messy mixed sight of pink and green. Because of this, we have a saying in Japanese that goes like this: sakura wa hakanai kara koso utsukushii (The cherry blossoms are beautiful, above all because they are so short-lived!). 

     Hence, the Japanese take advantage of that short time frame to admire, enjoy, and savour nature’s beauty by staging hana-mi (flower viewing) sessions where they celebrate life under the full-bloom sakura blossoms. Concretely, they savour the short-lived beauty of life symbolized by the cherry blossoms by, of course, viewing the sakura, but also eating, singing, drinking and getting drunk, and enjoying nature and the presence of people they hold dear. Isn’t that the spirit behind Camus’ so-called “absurd”? This wonderful thing called life is absurd (by that he seems to mean “so beautifully fragile and ephemeral”) so if we could do something to support and foster it in its fragile and ephemeral beauty, let’s do it!

Camus against the Conventional Religious Views of His Time

     In the novel, this perspective on life as absurd is the one espoused by the protagonist Dr. Rieux. His counterpart is the Jesuit priest Père Paneloux who, at the height of the plague when many people are dying, preaches a sermon in which he explains the plague as God’s punishment because of their sins. If they take this as an occasion to repent, they would gain eternal life (Part 2). Later on, Paneloux urges the townspeople to accept whatever happens in life as God’s will (Part 4). The priest exemplifies typical religious ways of responding to calamities – the ones often advocated by Christianity for most of its history. It is clear though that Camus scoffs at this kind of response to disaster because key figures in his story such as Dr. Rieux and the mysterious Monsieur Tarrou, who selflessly volunteers to form sanitary squads to help move patients and corpses at the height of the plague, do not believe in God while at the same time maintaining a high standard of ethical principles and action – they dedicate themselves tirelessly in service for the alleviation of the suffering of their fellow townspeople.

     The narrator (who turns out to be Dr. Rieux himself) explains along the way that since life is absurd in its arbitrariness with regard to the destruction of life, the only way to combat an absurdity like the plague is for humans to band together and struggle with all their might against what threatens life. Tarrou even reflects that the plague is in a sense within everyone and the right thing to do is to exercise the utmost care to infect as few people as possible. This, I thought, is amazingly and prophetically relevant today because it is what we commonly hear in our own pandemic experience in 2020! Tarrou and Rieux are also portrayed as affirming life to the full especially in the scene where they meet as friends to enjoy some moments of respite and relaxation and even agree to go for a swim as an affirmation of their life and health (Part 4).

The Plague as an Existential Condition

     Back to the story plot. The plague becomes even worse and many more people in Oran succumb to it, even apparently P. Paneloux himself who passively submits to treatment, gazing all the while at the cross. Tragically, even the selfless M. Tarrou dies of the plague just a short time before the lockdown of the town is to be eased. On this occasion, Dr. Rieux concludes that the only things one can gain in the conflict between life and death are knowledge and memories.

     Finally, the situation becomes better as shown vividly by the reappearance of live rats in the town. Eventually, the gates of the town are reopened and the crisis is surpassed. As Dr. Rieux hears the happy sounds of the liberated townspeople, he poignantly reflects on the plague and muses that this joy is actually always an endangered one because the plague (as an existential condition) never disappears for good. It is always lurking somewhere, ready to reappear for the “bane and enlightening” of us all (Part 5).

... CONTINUED IN PART 2 ...

(Link to Part 2; Link to Part 3)

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Works Cited and Other Works for Further Study

Cupitt, Don (2015). Creative Faith: Religion as a Way of Worldmaking. Salem, OR: Polebridge.

______ (1999). The New Religion of Life in Everyday Speech. London: SCM.

Gregg, Carl (2012). “Do We Need a Moratorium on ‘God’?” Patheos, Published October 8, 2012. Accessed April 22, 2020. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2012/10/do-we-need-a-moratorium-on-the-word-god/.

Johnson, Elizabeth (2007). Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God. London: Bloombsury.

Küng, Hans (1981). Does God Exist? An Answer for Today. New York: Vintage.

School of Life (2020). “Albert Camus – The Plague.” YouTube Video, April 1, 2020. Accessed April 20, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSYPwX4NPg4&t=62s.

N.T. Wright (2020). “Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To.” Time, March 29, 2020. Accessed April 12, 2020. https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/.

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Early Christians and Epidemics

Recently, I re-read Rodney Stark's chapter on epidemics and Christianity in the ancient world. These are some of my personal takeaways.

Reading:
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 1996), Chapter 4, "Epidemics, Networks, and Conversion".

Some Points that Struck Me:

• [Plagues]  There have been major epidemics throughout humankind's history and we have some good records of some that occurred in the Roman Empire and the behaviour of Christians during plagues. In the immediate centuries after Christianity was born, these plagues had a substantial effect on its growth as shown by concrete instances within the Roman empire.
• [Flight and Status]  Whereas many non-Christians who were able to do so tended to escape from a plague-stricken places in order to keep themselves safe from infection, Christians generally stayed on in a plague-stricken place. This is connected in a major way with many Christians' low economic status. 
• [Christians Stayed on to Nurse the Sick]  One remarkable trait that marked the behaviour of many early Christians during an epidemic was their commitment to care for their sick members. This care also extended to people outside the community in many cases. Such a trait occasioned the famous praise noted in (church father) Tertullian's work even from those who were opponents of Christianity. "It is our care of the helpless, our practice of loving kindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. 'Only look,' they say, 'look how they love one another!'" (Apology 39, 1989 edition)
• [Religious Reasons for the Behaviour of Christians]  As mentioned, Christians stayed on to care for the sick because of the resources that the Christian religion itself was able to provide, such as: the spirit of service of others which was understood ultimately as a deed done for God, the traits of charity and compassion, the firm faith and hope in an eternal reward even if one should succumb to the plague, etc. 
• [Religious Resources Apparently not Present in Paganism]  These "religious resources" were by and large not present in non-Christian religions (paganism) and, hence, they were not really motivated to practice charity and compassion during an epidemic. E.g., The emperor Julian "the Apostate" urged pagan priests to provide some parallel spirit of charity to the poor that the Christians showed.
• [Nursing and Its Sociological Impact]  Many Christians practiced some form of nursing by caring for their sick. Studies have shown that even without active medical solutions (that the ancient world did not have), nursing can save lives. Hence, many Christians were able to survive during epidemics whereas many non-Christians with no one to care for them perished. The sociological and demographic effect of plagues then was that Christianity grew because of the higher percentage of Christians who survived them. 
• [Conversions as Another Result]  Another noteworthy effect of plagues was that a substantial number of pagans converted to Christianity precisely because they were inspired by the spirit of charity and service that they clearly saw among Christians during a plague. Again, this resulted in the growth of Christianity.

Reflection:
The real life context of the oft-quoted line, "See how they (Christians) love one another!" was the remarkable spirit of charity that was present among Christians particularly during epidemics. This we can still see in many of our front-line workers during this 2020 pandemic. Although many do not link their selfless service directly to God or Christianity, a similar selfless and giving spirit characterizes many of them, one can say. It's remarkable how the spirit of charity in early Christianity has been "institutionalized" in society now for the common good. This may be considered a good effect that the Christian tradition has bequeathed to society at large.

To Be a Christian – What does it mean? (Twenty Summary Statements)

(These 20 theses were originally proposed by theologian Hans Küng in "The Christian Challenge" [1979], pp. 313-316, which in turn is based on his “On Being a Christian” [1974]. This version has been extensively revised by Julius-Kei Kato)

Yes, I know that all attempts at summarizing complex things are imperfect. But "summaries" have their own usefulness. You have to begin somewhere in order to get an idea of the WHOLE and having a sense of the whole is indeed an important thing. Only then can you begin to add and revise, subtract and challenge, and so forth. This summary of what it means to be a Christian (based on Hans Küng's proposals although extensively revised and rephrased by me) is meant to be just a "springboard" or a "working document." Do not treat it as written in stone.

      Who is a Christian?

#1 [Being Human – Being Christian]  The most important thing about being human is striving to live one’s human and social life to the full in an ethical way. Being Christian is a particular way of being human that has distinctive characteristics. The Christian is someone who tries to live their human, social, and spiritual-religious life in the light of Jesus Christ. In practice, that means: following Jesus, living according to his teachings and example, and having a relationship with God through faith and hope in Jesus Christ.

#2 [The Distinctive Christian Reality]  The distinctive Christian reality then is the very person of Jesus Christ himself. Hence, the Christian has to have a good familiarity with Jesus and this starts with a good knowledge particularly of Jesus’s historical context as we can deduce from a good study of the gospels.

#3 [Being a Christian means…]  In short, being a Christian means: FOLLOWING JESUS CHRIST (In Latin, Sequela Christi). By following Jesus Christ, Christians in the world of today can truly live their human lives to the full. In effect, that means that Christians can love, act, suffer, and die; they can go through joys and sorrows, through life and death while being helpful to others and sustained by God in all of these. 

Who is Jesus, the Christ?

#4 [Jesus as Provocative]  Jesus of Nazareth, a historical person who lived in the first half of the first century Common Era, is believed by Christians to be “the Christ” (the anointed one of God). As a historical person, Jesus was neither a priest nor a political revolutionary, neither an ascetic monk nor just a devout ethical teacher of right or wrong. He was originally from the peasant class. At a certain point in his life, he became a public figure who healed, taught, and gathered people, especially the marginalized ones, into fellowship. In his lifestyle, Jesus was “provocative” especially for those who kept the established “status quo” and “order” of the times.

#5 [Jesus proclaimed the reign of God]  Jesus did not primarily proclaim theological theories or new laws, nor did he explicitly proclaim himself (contrary to the impression we get particularly in John’s gospel). Rather, he proclaimed the coming of the “kingdom” (or the “reign”) of God. This refers to God’s cause-God’s “order”-God’s will, which—Jesus believed—would be soon realized here on earth, and which is identical with humanity’s cause (=humanity’s true well-being).

#6 [Jesus’s struggle on behalf of humanity]  For the sake of human well-being which is what God wills (Jesus labeled this “for the Kingdom of God”), Jesus was prepared even to relativize sacred institutions, law, and cult. In a deep sense, we can say then that Jesus was a humanist, who believed that humans and humanity—a humanity that is in relationship with transcendent reality (=God)--is worth struggling and even dying for.

Further Thoughts on the Jean Vanier Revelations: (Nefarious) Weeds among the Wheat

I continue my efforts to make sense of the distressing revelations that Jean Vanier (JV), the once highly-esteemed founder of l'Arche, did himself engage in the sexual abuse of at least six women who sought spiritual direction from him, something that his mentor and spiritual father, Fr. Thomas Philippe, also did to others (according to the l'Arche report). My "initial thoughts on the Jean Vanier revelations" can be found here.


"Tradition" "Family"
Let me frame these disheartening revelations in the wider context of "tradition" and how we deal with the dark sides of the tradition(s) we belong to. In order to make this hit closer to home (as it does for many of us), the word "tradition" can even be replaced by "family". How do we deal with the dark, even sinister aspects of our tradition, of our family?

Let's recall that, in various senses, each of us belongs to a "tradition" and to a "family." It is a truism of course that we don't usually choose our traditions and families; we're just born into them. And, as we all know too well, no family is perfect. Some families are not only imperfect, they contain very dark and sinister elements within them. This holds true many times for the groups or the relationships we enter into. No one can perfectly know a potential "friend" or a group one can possibly join at the beginning of the relationship. Unfortunately, we often find ourselves already in a relationship with persons or with groups before we find out the darkness in them.

In the wake of these revelations about Jean Vanier, the reason why I bring up 'traditions and families' here is that I'm thinking of l'Arche above all. I know quite a few people who consider l'Arche their family in a deep sense. How are they holding up now? How do they deal with the destruction of the founder Jean Vanier's holy image after these credible allegations that he himself engaged in sexual abuse?

And then there are the scores of people who may not be strictly connected with l'Arche but whose lives have been touched for the better by Jean Vanier, directly or indirectly, maybe through l'Arche, maybe through JV's teachings received in various forms, or perhaps even just through the high esteem in which JV was held for a long time by many people before the publication of the damning report on his abusive practices. All of us (and I count myself one of those touched by Vanier) have now to make sense of the figure and legacy of Vanier in the light of these recent revelations of sexual abuse by the once-revered founder. How do we go about doing this?

The Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat

There is an intriguing parable of Jesus in Matthew 13:24-30 (NIV version) which, I feel, could speak powerfully to the situation at hand. It goes like this:

The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. ²⁵ But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. ²⁶ When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

²⁷ “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

²⁸ “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

²⁹ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. ³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn

In my continuing efforts to make sense of the Jean Vanier revelations, my thoughts turn to this parable. It presents a powerful image of humanity (and everything that pertains to humanity) ... at all levels. Everything is strictly characterized by this metaphorical situation - weeds among the wheat. There is no perfectly pure entity, be it a person, a church, a group, an organization or practically anything under the sun. Every.single.thing is a mixture of "weeds and wheat." This teaching is echoed in practically every religious tradition: "yin and yang," "light and darkness," "samsara and nirvana" (and so forth) are frequently thought and taught to coexist; to mix and fuse; some traditions go so far as to teach that one cannot be without the other. Yes, what is really striking is that "the good wheat and the bad weeds" have to be allowed to coexist and to grow together because, as the householder wisely says in the parable, "while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them" (v. 29).

Becoming a Grown-Up Member of a Family and a Tradition

Growing up is not easy; it's frequently accompanied by lots of "growing pains" (as this kind of pain is very appropriately named). If you had the fortune of having had a happy childhood, one aspect of growing-up is discovering that daddy is not the superman or mommy is not the wonder woman you once thought them to be. At some point, those idealized images just fall apart. In many instances in the process of growing up, we realize just how human our idealized "heroes" in life are - they're deeply flawed. Sometimes, we shockingly discover that these heroes have very sinister and toxic sides to them. In this Vanier affair, the hallowed icon has now been defaced and tragically shattered, without any hope of being restored.

However, we should recall that becoming a grown-up means, among other things, acquiring the capability of dealing with the dark and nefarious sides of our family and tradition, particularly in the "revered" people who embody them. It is especially painful when a personified embodiment of the tradition is discovered to have done evil. Human weaknesses, isolated slips and falls may be more easily excused, but when the embodiment of the tradition's most sacred ideals is found to have been in a continual state of deception about and even betrayal of the very ideals he himself had taught, this is really irredeemable. How to make sense of this?

Again, weeds among the wheat. I must say though that in this case, "weeds" is too benign an image. It doesn't communicate the nefarious quality of these revelations. But the idea is there: evil and good ... coexisting, commingling, growing together, often hard to separate. This is very much part of the mystery of life, in front of which we can only bow down and acknowledge because we fail to truly grasp so much of it.

I also think that it's crucial to affirm another aspect of--what I'll call--the "weeds among the wheat" principle: Both good and evil are greater than any one person or thing. They transcend any individual or thing. Each and every one of us is part of the bigger structures of good and evil that envelop us. Each and every one of us has both good and evil within. Each and every one of us has both an imago Dei (image of God)-a Buddha nature, as well as its opposite, so that no one is unilaterally good or evil. Weeds among the wheat.
(Having said that, I will add though that I fully agree with Jamie Manson's points in her "No, Jean Vanier is not 'like all of us,'" reminding us that there is a particular evil to be found in JV's pattern of behavior)

L'Arche: What the "Wheat" has Become

When I look at the "wheat" and what it has become, I am profoundly grateful. L'Arche, according to its self-definition, serves adults with physical and intellectual disabilities and is rooted in values that recognize the dignity of each person, the importance of belonging in a community, and the creation of a more just society. It's an amazing community and organization. This is a reality that needs to be treasured and cherished, now more than ever! Where did this come from? What is Jean Vanier's part in the development of this magnificent "wheat"? I don't really know the right answers to those queries but I will just stammer out for now (and I may be wrong about this!) ... that if good was perceived in JV or if good was perceived to have come out of him, it's because, yes, he, like all deeply flawed human beings, was also able to tap into the wider matrix of good that thankfully envelops and contains all of us.

And yet we mourn the evil...

And yet, there is no condoning the sinister abuse of others that JV perpetrated over a long course of time. The problem of evil here just stumps all of us and we can only, once again, bow down ... acknowledge it ... and, for now, mourn.

... Hopefully, we can in time recover a little strength, enough for us to get up and move on ... for that is the grown-up thing to do.

L'Arche's Amazing Courage and Transparency

In closing, let me clearly say that I admire the leadership of l'Arche for taking the initiative to commission an independent investigation that led to the revelations of these wrenching and sordid sides of its founder.

I apologize that I'll have to say this hurtful thing about the Catholic hierarchy but I think it is fair: L'Arche is led by lay people, not church hierarchs ... and very thankfully so. Because this non-clergy leadership displayed firstly an admirable compassion for the victims, as well as courage, transparency, and accountability in the face of damning truths about its once-revered founder. Isn't this an amazing case of a lay-led (not clergy-led!) organization courageously striving to make itself accountable? It's an amazing breath of fresh air in leadership! For once an organization rooted in the Catholic tradition gets leadership right! (Of course that was hyperbole because many other Catholic leadership structures display amazing leadership!) But just imagine if clergymen were leading this organization, I'm sorry to say from the record that chances are, the process would have been very different ... (and I'll stop there)

Thank you, l'Arche, from the heart, and more, yes a lot more power to you!


My reports on the 2019 Toronto theological colloquium on the Catholic sexual abuse crisis can be found here . Another article with my biblical reflections on the sexual abuse crisis entitled "Remembering Jerusalem While Rome Burns" can be found here.

My Initial Thoughts on the Jean Vanier Revelations - the Unhealed Wound

Distressing Revelation

Late at night on Feb. 21, the Globe and Mail newspaper released a shocking story that in an internal investigation ordered by l'Arche itself,  Jean Vanier, its revered Canadian founder, has been found out to have himself abused at least six women over the course of a 35 year period.

Some Resources:
An excellent initial report by the Jesuit magazine America / The pdf version of the report released by l'Arche

This news is really distressing for me and for many others, as many of us at King's (King's College-Western University, London, Ontario) where I work have (close to) "revered" Jean Vanier as a contemporary saint. We even have a research centre at our university named after him dedicated to studying his valuable contributions to, among others, the valorization of those with various disabilities. It turns out, Vanier had a very dark and hidden shadow in him which was largely left unaddressed and unsolved and which wrought damage in his victims and many others.

I am sorry, first of all, for the women who had to endure this abuse from Vanier and I admire their courage for coming out to tell the terrible truth. I hope they find some measure of healing and closure.

The Unhealed Wound

At this point, I cannot help but think about what the late Catholic psychologist Eugene Kennedy (a former priest) argued for mainly in a book called The Unhealed Wound: The Church, the Priesthood, and the Question of Sexuality, a book I read many years ago which, I remember, made a deep impression on me.

In his review of the book, John Krejci, describes the book thus,

In the Unhealed Wound Eugene Kennedy, psychologist and married [former] priest, applies to the Church the mythological tales of the Western Knight, who, seeking the Holy Grail, slays the Eastern Knight, who symbolized nature, But in his victory the Western Knight is wounded and the wound will not heal until someone asks, "What is it that ails you?" and the wound is acknowledged. In other words, the Church cannot be whole or fully holy until it recognizes its wound, its imperfection.

Kennedy is therefore putting the spotlight on the fact that there is "an unhealed wound" in the collective psyche of  many Catholics, particularly, in those who are in its structural core, namely, members of the hierarchy, members of religious orders and (I would definitely include) spiritual leaders and teachers (even though they are lay people like Jean Vanier).

This unhealed wound refers to an unwholesome, better yet, a very SICK attitude to sexuality. Kennedy argued (convincingly for me) that historical and conventional Catholicism has driven an unhealthy wedge between grace and nature, practically equating "grace" positively with the state of chastity and celibacy on the one hand, and, on the other, "nature" as sexuality, but viewed in a very negative way and often demonized. Catholicism has never succeeded to integrate these two factors in a healthy, wholesome way, hence, the wound remains and continues to fester, affecting and victimizing so many people in the process.

It is this woeful lack of wholesome integration between spirituality, humanity and sexuality in the common Catholic psyche (especially of Catholic leaders [and Jean Vanier was one such leader in the l'Arche community and among his admirers]) that has resulted in many terrible consequences, such as the continuing scourge of sexual abuse done by some in positions of spiritual authority toward those who are under their authority and pastoral care. Of course, we have to add to that the self-deception and abuse of spiritual authority that are very common in religious/spiritual leaders. The pattern is seen ad nauseam in the many instances of sexual abuse that have plagued the Catholic Church in recent years. This is--I would venture--also clearly seen in what transpired and has been distressingly revealed in Jean Vanier and his spiritual mentor, the Dominican Fr. Thomas Philippe, who also sexually abused people under their authority and care.

[Recalling the Toronto Symposium on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church] We had a noteworthy symposium in Toronto in 2019 about the Catholic sexual abuse crisis. My notes on that symposium are here.

Unhealed Wounds

Unhealed wounds, if not treated properly, go on to fester and eventually can lead to serious infection and even sepsis, a point when the whole organism begins to shut down in a fatal way. I think that this applies in many ways to institutional Roman Catholicism.

Something radical has to be done -- something tantamount to removing the "band aids" that cover the disgusting and festering wound particularly of the Catholic Church's leadership structure. Kennedy said years ago that healing will never come until someone asks the one who is wounded "What is it that ails you?" and truly acknowledges the wound. What is so distressing is that so many people have already asked and acknowledged this. The terrible effects of the wound have been demonstrated in case after case of sexual abuse ad nauseam, as we also see in this latest round of revelations about Jean Vanier and his mentor. The burning question for me and for many is ... what if the wounded person continues to refuse to be healed? What is there still to be done?

My Continued Appreciation for l'Arche

I would also like to say clearly that these revelations about Jean Vanier do not subtract in any way from my deep respect and appreciation for the many outstanding things that l'Arche (its members and the many people who support it-you know who you are!) is doing in the world, particularly, for people with various disabilities. I will continue to support them and I hope its various patrons continue to do so. Keep up the good work and more power to you, l'Arche!

My "further thoughts" on the Jean Vanier revelations can be found HERE

How to Read the Bible: The Biblical Story as a Five-Act Play (acc. to NT Wright)

Transcript-Summary-Paraphrase (by JK Kato) of N.T. Wright's talk in: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN1bZhAhR38&list=WL&index=4&t=0s

Published on Youtube on Dec. 18, 2016

The Metaphor: A Five-Act Play

Imagine that you're part of a guild of actors. During a weekend retreat in an old mansion that once belonged to a great stage actor, you and your friends unexpectedly discover a long-forgotten yet seemingly fascinating play in the dusty attic. Upon further examination, you find out that this riveting

story is composed of four full acts. Unfortunately, the script only goes up to the beginning of the fifth act. Most of the fifth and last act is either unfinished or lost! What would you and your friends do? You may of course get a good playwright, show him or her the unfinished script and request this person to complete the fifth act based on how the wonderful first four acts played out.

Improvisation

However, if you and your friends are good and creative actors, another exciting and more creative alternative course of action would be, first, to "soak yourselves" in the first four acts in order to get the "spirit" and "flow" of the play and then, second, ... improvise the performance of the fifth and final act!

     NT Wright uses the image of improvisation to refer to how Christians should live their lives, based on scripture, so it is a key metaphor here.

     Improvisation (at least in music) is not merely "making up" just anything as you go along, contrary to how it is commonly and too simplistically imagined. More precisely described (by NT Wright who, it turns out, played jazz in his youth!), improvisation in a musical group means that the musicians in the band have to do the following: pay very careful attention to what the others are doing, know well the basic rhythmic and harmonic structure of the musical piece as well as its theme ; and then, they also have to know where it is that all of them are going to at the end. NT Wright describes musical improvisation as "weaving different new creative patterns around the musical drama to get where you have to go."

     The above metaphor is appropriate for us to reflect on what it means to read the Bible and apply its message to life as part of a community that—in NT Wright’s description—is a “Scripture-reading and God-following people” (from Scripture and the Authority of God). In short, the Christian community and all of its individual members are part of a people who follow God, mainly by reading and applying the Sacred Scriptures (the Bible) in their lives.

The Bible as a Story

(see 4:40) The Bible offers itself to us first and foremost as "a great narrative," not so much as a book with plenty of lists of rules we have to obey and things we have to believe in. It's a story that moves from 'creation' to 'new creation'. It's a story that "catches us up in the middle of it."

     Stories work differently from lists or rules because stories have beginnings and ends and middles as well as different phases. In particular, when we think of some of the really great stories in world literature, the story will have a different kind of "phased rhythm," that is, certain things set up the narrative; conflicts make it all difficult and tense; other events seem to make it even worse; when things seem to be improving, some other complication happens and makes things go awry ... Finally though, there's often some resolution which leads us to an ending, an end that might also be a new beginning... This is how interesting stories work.

     When you take the Bible with its two bookends of 'creation' to 'new creation' and all sorts of things going on in-between--particularly the story of Israel and, especially, the story of Jesus--it's helpful to see it "as a play in five acts." (~6:03)

The First and Second Acts: Creation then Human Rebellion and Arrogance

The first act is creation itself. Christianity and Judaism affirm that a good God created a good world. This (our world) is a good place and a good place to be. It's not trash; it's not rubbish; God is not going to get rid of it. But this good world is put into the care of human beings who are called to reflect God's image into the world. That's an incredible vocation: to be God's image, bearing God’s reflection into the world and reflecting the praises of creation back to God himself.

     That's the first act. If we get that wrong, for instance, if we mistakenly think that humans were put in the garden--such as, as a sort of test to see if they can get 10 out of 10, if not they were in deep trouble--we would distort all the other things that come after. 

     So if we start with this good world and God giving humans responsibility for it, then Act 2 is where it all horribly goes wrong. In the narrative structure of Genesis 3-11, we see the story going from human rebellion to the arrogance of empire.

The Third and Fourth Acts: Israel - Jesus

Act 3 (which runs longer) goes from the call of Abraham right up to before the birth of Jesus. Act 3 is made up in a big way of the story of Israel, the nation and the people chosen by God. Unfortunately, lots of Christians treat that as a miscellaneous collection of stories, ideas, principles, prophecies, ideals, examples of people getting it right or wrong, ... and, of course, all that is there. But the story of Israel means what it means as Act 3 in our five-part play.

     Act 4 is Jesus himself -- Jesus who draws Israel's story into its climax and does for Israel and for the world, what the world could not do for itself. If we look at the gospels, each one of the gospels in its own way begins by hooking the story that it's telling into the story of Israel. Take Matthew telling the genealogy from Abraham to Jesus, for instance; or John opening with those echoes of Genesis 1. The gospel writers themselves are telling us that the story they're relating doesn't stand by itself . Rather, it's the climactic act of this drama.

     But then again, the gospels themselves end with the death and resurrection of Jesus, not with the sense of 'Oh that's solved it all and there's nothing more to happen', rather with this strange new vocation--the renewal of the original human vocation: that those who follow Jesus are to be equipped with his Spirit, to be God's 'new creation' people; they are people who are put right so that the world may be put right.

     When we get that vision, we not only have a way to read the Bible but we also have an extraordinary energy for the mission of the people of God in the world. This is what it means to be renewed human beings.

Some Concrete Suggestions for Bible Reading and Living in the “Fifth Act”

When I (NT Wright) read the Bible and when I encourage others to read the Bible, I say, read it in great swaths, large chunks. Only then could we get an idea of the "big picture," "the big story". We humans are hardwired to do story. 

That's how you need to read the Bible.

     And then, going further, we also need to focus in on the details of the biblical story because every little bit needs working, needs fresh understanding. But the main thing is to understand those five acts, particularly, where we fit in – and it is within the fifth act – We are supposed to be fifth act people for the sake of the world, indwelt by the Spirit so that the story from 'creation' to 'new creation' can go forward and we'll be able to play our part within it.

     So when we think of ourselves as Bible-readers reading this “five-act play,” we find that we're in a very odd moment in the play because the fifth act isn't scripted yet. That is to say, we've got some strong clues as to where it's supposed to end. If you look at Revelation 21, 22, the picture there isn't as many Christians imagine--saved souls going to heaven. Rather, it is of the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth. We have a sense that the ultimate new creation is God's sphere and our sphere, heaven and earth, joined together. We're not fully there yet; it's happened in Jesus. It's happening through the Spirit but it hasn't fully happened yet and we are called to be people to live between one and the other.