The spiritual significance of COVID-19

Howbeit that our civilization was able to land a man on the moon , but could not detect and control a virus so tiny in a dimension that it strains the eye to see even with the aid of a powerful microscope? We have developed computers that can process and deliver information on virtually any subject in nano seconds, yet we are still in the dark on what the corona virus which has grounded our world is about. We have invented flying machines that can take millions of people around the world without stopping yet these machines are today grounded and parked in the aprons of airports all over the world because we have not been able as yet to predict and track the flight of this plague of our times. Powerful countries and their powerful rulers, as well as powerful personalities, have been laid low by this virus which respecter of status, rank, colour and protocol. Our ever bustling world that runs round the clock without pausing now lies comatose and locked down.

What can we make of all this?

The simple truth is that the entirety of our civilization is a bubble. Yes, we have been able to transcend the frontiers of knowledge and in the process build a civilization far greater than previous ones. But we have done all this largely at the expense of our spiritual essence. In building this civilization we have tended to remove the centrality of God whose enabling benevolence made it possible in the first place. The more technologically advanced we became, the more we thought that God was irrelevant in our success. We instead attribute it to our own uniqueness in thought and ingenuity. To us, God was some abstract being who has no truck in our achievements and thus undeserving of any recognition from us beyond what the holy books say about him.

But in distancing ourselves from God the creator of all things who is ever present in our consciousness despite all our attempts to repudiate him, we lose his corrective guidance in our endeavours. And in this state of repudiation of God, we become captives, nay slaves, to the very things we have invented and substituted God with.

Thus today in our search for security and safety, for example, we have developed weapons systems that can deliver kilotons of destructive ordnance to obliterate the world several times over. Yet we still do not feel secure enough. The simple reason is that these weapons systems are more a testimony to our greed and vanity than to our need for security. We are thus trapped into believing their efficacy in securing us even as we know in our minds that we can only use them at our own collective peril. It is our own betrayal and lack of faith in God that led us to that.

Today our temples of greed, the financial and stock markets which exist to coordinate the movement of the vast resources of the world into the private pockets of individuals are in a tailspin. Our arenas of entertainment have been shuttered and bounded up and crowds that turn up to savour what is on offer have been asked to stay away.

The corona virus is not merely a health challenge. If it were so our armies of health experts across the entire spectrum of medicine and public health would have detected it by now and proffered solutions to it. Our institutions of virology, epidemiological, and biological research would have discovered the vaccine to fight it.  And its effect and impact would have been largely limited to the public health area.

God our creator and benefactor is holding a mirror to us asking us to look into the state of our existence. And to drive home the point, he tellingly introduced this affliction among those nations and individuals that are considered powerful in order to show us the limitations of our power. And through the instrumentality of the corona virus which has grounded every aspect of our lives, he is compelling us to sit up and imbibe the significance of the pandemic to our lives. With the global lockdown, he shows us the futility and weakness of our civilisation. He shows us that the gadgetry and technological devises we depend on are not as fail safe as we have made them to be. He has not spared even our temples of religious worship which are in total lockdown all over the world. It is not that he does not appreciate our supplications to him. He shows that in the various religions we purport to practise, we tend to lend more credence to the sentimental interpretations of clerics than the essential universal teachings of the omnipotence, benevolence and mercy of God in the scriptures. He shows that our cherished civilization is hollow and devoid of the necessary spiritual strength and essence to withstand the mandatory periodic tests he subjects us to.

In intervening through the corona virus, God invites us to appreciate that he could both be benevolent and wrathful in the same breath. As with the Covid-19, he could turn the elements of his benevolence and mercy which we so copiously enjoy, in the opposite direction without necessarily consulting us. With this pandemic, he is sending a poignant message to mankind that indeed we should expect fundamental changes in the world sooner or later.

For us in Nigeria, the fundamental lesson to learn from all this, is that in the unfolding new world order we surely cannot be spared. We have dared God for too long and should not expect his benevolence on us to be forever.