PART 3 - Epidemics and “God”: The Covid-19 Pandemic, Albert Camus’ 'The Plague', and the Question of God

(Link to Part 1. Link to Part 2)

PART 3: Faith as a Decision to Trust Reality

Faith-Trust in God is a Decision to Trust Reality

     What I would most like to highlight here though is an aspect of faith-trust in God that Hans Küng emphasizes above all else in his reflection. He points out that both belief or unbelief in God has actually to do mostly with a decision on the part of humans (individually or collectively) to adopt either a fundamental attitude of trust in reality (or life) or its opposite – a fundamental attitude of skepticism and/or pessimism about reality. In light of that, having faith in God is, I would like to propose, a matter of having an attitude of “fundamental trust in the fundamental goodness of reality.” 

     Let me further qualify that description to this: What is called “faith in God” (in the monotheistic religions) is actually the decision to continue to trust that reality (=life) is fundamentally good despite all the uncertainty, suffering, absurdity that are part of it. You can call this by whatever name you want. This might even be tantamount to what Camus means by encouraging living life to the full despite its “absurdity.” But this, I maintain, is what FAITH-TRUST in God fundamentally means. Moreover, this trust in the fundamental goodness of life should necessarily translate into an active commitment to action, that is, to respect and honour and, if needed, to fight for LIFE (taken in a holistic sense that involves positively struggling for justice, peace, equality, freedom, etc.; or [in the negative sense] struggling against injustice, oppression, destruction, calamities, etc.).

Küng on Atheism/Agnosticism as “Unjustified” Trust in Reality

     Küng makes another important point about atheism-agnosticism that merits some discussion. He thinks that suspending belief in or “denial of God implies an ultimately unjustified fundamental trust in reality (emphasis mine). Atheism cannot suggest any condition for the possibility of uncertain reality. If someone denies God, he (sic) does not know why he ultimately trusts in reality”(571). In other words, many people continue to live life believing it is worth living and they even do heroic things in order to uphold life (such as healthcare workers in the frontlines of the fight against a pandemic). While living with such a “fundamental trust in reality,” many of them do not explicitly believe, however, in an Ultimate Reality such as God. They just believe that all life is good and sacred and has to be upheld. However, if one were to dig deeper and ask “what is the deeper or ultimate reason why life is sacred?”, many people would not be able to answer that. They would simply stop at the level of “the goodness & sacredness of life itself” as the reason why they continue to uphold, defend, and honour life.

     (This is my interpretation of Küng and I may be wrong here…) For Küng, if one does not believe or one actively refutes belief in—what he has called—“a primal ground, source, and goal” of life and reality (traditionally called “God”), then one does not really know the deeper reason why one believes and trusts in the fundamental goodness of life—the reason that makes it worth struggling and even dying for. I think this is what Küng means by “an ultimately unjustified fundamental trust in reality” quoted above. I also think that Küng believes that if you are going to trust that life (= reality) is worth living well and even worthy of struggling and dying for, then, it’s better for you to know the deeper reason why you believe … and that reason lies with the Ultimate Ground, Source, and Goal (often called “God”). In short, it would be better if you can properly “label” the source of your belief in the fundamental goodness of reality. Of course, he means that the proper label is “God.”

Is “Labeling” Our Fundamental Trust in Reality “God” Always the Best Thing?

     Truth be told, I do not entirely agree with Küng here. In other words, I DO NOT think that <“labeling” our ultimate reason for believing and trusting in the fundamental goodness of life and reality as “God”> is always the best thing to do. My many reasons for that can be summarized as follows: Many meanings acquired by the word “God” over the centuries and now prevalent in the popular imagination are just unhelpful and even dysfunctional because they are naïve, childish, too anthropomorphic, and, most importantly, too simplistic to respect the fundamental fact that “God” is first and foremost an unfathomable mystery and that “God” should be treated more as a summons to action (to help realize the Kingdom of justice and peace that God, we trust, dreams of), i.e., a verb rather than a static noun. I therefore generally agree with theologians who have proposed that the word (and many popular ideas about) “God” might need a kind of moratorium until we can truly learn what “God’s” deeper meaning is. (See Gregg 2012).

     It is obvious that, unfortunately, “God” and “religion” have been associated with many negative things throughout history in western societies. Much of it, again unfortunately, is institutionalized religion’s own fault. When many come in contact with those notions in the West today, they cannot help but link religious believers and religion itself with awful things such as irrationality, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, arrogance, self-righteousness, racism, elitism, lust for power, abuse of many kinds, and so on and so forth. Even if people as individuals have not experienced personally the dark sides of religion, it is quite possible and arguable that society as a whole (in western contexts) has just become so sick and tired of “religion,” “God,” or “religious believers” that many quarters of the society as a whole have just explicitly or implicitly (such as Quebec’s “quiet revolution”) rejected or walked away from religion.

     This distancing from religion on the part of many westerners is not necessarily a bad thing. (If I sound like a hopeless optimist, I am guilty as charged!) It does not necessarily mean that non-religious people are immoral and depraved, as some religious people are wont to believe. Philosopher of religion Don Cupitt has proposed constructively that “we should learn to see our belieflessness not as a state of being derelict and damned but as a clean sheet and a challenge to be creative” (Cupitt, 2015, 48-49). Creative about what? It is remarkable that for all the massive loss of interest in religion in western societies, interest in “spirituality” remains at an all-time high. So, this contemporary context of disillusionment with religion but heightened thirst for spirituality could be an excellent opportunity to be creative about paths that could lead people into a deeper spirituality, which is, after all, the heart of all religion.

     Because of that, the attitude of <trust in life and reality as good and worthy to be struggled for> without explicit reference to God can still be a very good thing. It might be called the “religion of life” which, I would say, is a spirituality that is dominant now in the West (as proposed for example by the same Don Cupitt [Cupitt 1999]). If some people can still label that trust in the goodness of life with the term “God” in a wholesome way, then, well and good. If not (as in many cases nowadays in the West), it’s still good and wholesome. If I may speak as a theologian, I have this firm belief that God (as I believe God to be) is definitely not a narcissist and does not mind at all not being explicitly acknowledged as long as the “order” that God is passionate about (Jesus called it “the Kingdom of God”) is more firmly established on earth.

Back to the Covid-19 Pandemic and the God-Question

     The God-question can be divisive. If we insist, like I think Küng is doing, that the best way to label our fundamental trust in the goodness of reality is “God,” that could alienate a lot of people who do not think so or may have severe reservations about God and religion that are justified. I think that the best way forward is to prioritize instead “the religion of life” or, to borrow Küng’s term, the “fundamental trust in the goodness of reality.” This is something that could be common among all humans living in a fragile world. Küng has rightly (I think) identified this as the essence of faith (including religious faith). “Faith in God” is just one way of labelling it. As long as that fundamental trust is there, it need not be explicitly linked to God. 

     This is why I think that “God” as a theme is actually secondary in importance; in other words, “God” is oftentimes overrated. Trusting in the goodness of reality and life instead, even without explicit recourse to God, is PRIMARY! This strategy is to emphasize what can unite us all as humans in our common humanity. And one of the common traits among us humans includes the continual effort to go deeper and to transcend ourselves. That, by the way, is my working definition of spirituality, the heart of religion. I consider the labelling of that effort (such as seeking for “God”) as secondary.

     When we pursue the journey to go deeper within ourselves and to grow by transcending ourselves (by different concrete means and teachings which many religious traditions are so rich in), then along the way, we will hopefully realize experientially why our ancestors in the past had to use an all-encompassing term called “God” in order to name the fundamental goodness of reality. This “God” cannot be just thought of in our minds. It can only be experienced as we walk along the path of life.

     As we go along and try to do our part for our personal and for the common good during this Covid pandemic of 2020, I hope we can find it in ourselves to continue to decide every single day to trust in the fundamental goodness of life and reality and commit ourselves to action in order to realize it in ways possible to us. Let’s not pursue useless questions that will yield no fruitful answers. Rather, it is this—the reality in which we are thrown into and immersed, which counts. We decide to trust that IT is still fundamentally good and that we can do something in order to uphold that goodness and to make it flourish more.

     In the past, our ancestors (who were almost never “materialists”) believed that the whole of reality finds its ground in a Being they often referred to as God. Many of us (such as myself) still trust that it is so. But that is not the most important thing. If for some reason, “God” cannot be linked anymore to the effort to choose to trust that life is worth living and worth struggling for, then LET IT BE … because, through that, even without any explicit reference to “God” or “religion,” we are still living our fundamental and noble human drive to “go deeper and beyond ourselves” which is, I am getting more and more convinced, lies at the heart of all genuine humanity, as well as all religion and spirituality.

     And, if there is really a God, this Gracious Being who does not have an ounce of narcissism within, will definitely not mind at all “being forgotten” in the process. But here comes the strange thing about this business. When people transcend their narrow and selfish egos by living concretely the effort to “go deeper and beyond themselves” (the quest for depth and transcendence), they oftentimes encounter SOMETHING deeper and bigger than themselves; they then find that in the quest to seek depth and transcendence, they actually experience that they are not alone, that they are being inspired, supported, carried, led-on, and even finally progressively absorbed by this gracious Mystery that they have decided to trust and commit themselves to. As we know, many of our ancestors labeled that deep and bigger reality as God. Many of us still do. Many nowadays just prefer to rest in the Mystery without naming it. As long as the effort to uphold and increase integral human flourishing in our fragile earthly location continues (and at times at the cost of great sacrifice), all will be well, I trust.

THE END 3/3

(Link to Part 1. Link to Part 2)

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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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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: 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.