General

Is the COVID-19 virus a curse from God?

April 9, 2020

Human nature seeks to link up cause and effect.  Sometimes this is easy, and sometimes more difficult.  In the difficult situations, especially those that have a negative effect, it is human nature to blame God.  This is not a new trend; we have a record of it dating all the way back to one of the earliest Biblical books, Job.  When Job’s good fortunes suddenly sour, his three friends come to visit him, with each of them suggesting to Job that his misfortune must be due to something bad he has done.[1]  

As I see it, their reasoning is something like this:

  1. God sends misfortune and calamity only on the wicked.
  2. Job has suffered misfortune and calamity.
  3. Therefore, Job has done something wicked.

To be fair to Job’s friends, their reasoning is not always in error.  There are indeed places where God uses a calamity to punish the wicked.  We find a historical example in Sodom[2], and multiple future ones in the book of Revelation.  But the error in their reasoning is to treat this as a rule. 

Fortunately, Jesus gave us insight into this issue in Luke 13.  When a group He was with brought up the issue of what appears to refer to a massacre of a group of Galilean pilgrims in Jerusalem by Pilate,  Jesus responds to the group with the question, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?”[3]  Jesus then referred to another situation which was apparently big local news, where a tower had collapsed, causing multiple deaths.  To this incident, He raises another question, “Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?”[4]

Jesus is discussing two very different situations, one a murderous act by an evil leader, and the other an unfortunate accident.  Where the situations may have been different, His answers to the questions He raised about each was the same – exactly the same in fact: “I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”[5]

So back to our original question, Is COVID-19 a curse from God?  Most likely not, but as a quick follow up to that answer, the important part is not the answer itself but Jesus’ main point that unless we repent, we will all perish.

[1] See Job 4:7-9, Job 8:20, and Job 11:14-17.

[2] see Genesis 19:1-29.

[3] Luke 13:2 (NIV). 

[4] Luke 13:4 (NIV).

[5] Both Luke 13:3 and Luke 13:5 (NIV).