As Christians consider what is a proper response to the Coronavirus, the words and wisdom of Martin Luther might prove helpful. Luther lived in the wake of the infamous Black Plague, which destroyed one-third of European citizens, or 50 million precious souls, and he confronted a deadly Bubonic Plague in own day. Since then, diseases in a variety of forms have wiped out scores of millions of humans, one of the most deadly in the last century being the 1918 Spanish Flu, killing as many as 100 million people. To date, COVID-19 has caused 68 deaths in the United States, and 6,500 deaths worldwide.
What is forgotten in the midst of the social hysteria is that on a typical day, for a multitude of reasons 6,392 people die every hour; 153,424 died each day, 4,679,452 die each month, and 56,000,000 million die each year.
With these background statistics in mind, why is there such hysteria over the flu like Coronavirus? There is no simple or singular answer. There are social, economic, and political factors to consider. My concerns is from a spiritual perspective, and how a Christian might want to respond.
The Bible does teach that one form of Divine discipline is for God to judge people with a spirit of fear. “I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror” (Lev. 26:16).
Those societies which kill babies without thought, or mercy, those nations which promote homosexuality, those nations which worship the earth more than the Creator, those nations which have forgotten God are now under Divine discipline, manifested by the spirit of terror God has appointed. And the worst is yet to come, apart from gospel repentance, faith, and prayer to the Living Lord.
The Church has a wonderful opportunity to call the nations of earth to repentance, and a renewal of faith so that believers can authentically say, “IN GOD WE TRUST”.
To encourage Christians not to be afraid, to encourage Christians to not forsake the assembling of themselves together, to encourage Christians to continue to worship, consider the counsel of Martin Luther who ministered during the Bubonic Plague, the Black Death, that swept through Asia, Europe, and Africa in the 14th century.
“Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague”
by Martin Luther
“Others sin on the right hand. They are much too rash and reckless, tempting God and disregarding everything which might counteract death and the plague. They disdain the use of medicines; they do not avoid places and persons infected by the plague, but lightheartedly make sport of it and wish to prove how independent they are.
They say that it is God’s punishment; if He wants to protect them He can do so without medicines or our carefulness. This is not trusting God but tempting Him. God has created medicines and provided us with intelligence to guard and take good care of the body so that we can live in good health.
If one makes no use of intelligence or medicine when he could do so without detriment to his neighbor, such a person injures his body and must beware lest he become a suicide in God’s eyes. By the same reasoning a person might forego eating and drinking, clothing and shelter, and boldly proclaim his faith that if God wanted to preserve him from starvation and cold, he could do so without food and clothing.
Actually, that would be suicide. It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have.
He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor’s death and is a murderer many times over. Indeed, such people behave as though a house were burning in the city and nobody were trying to put the fire out. Instead they give leeway to the flames so that the whole city is consumed, saying that if God so willed, he could save the city without water to quench the fire.
No, my dear friends, that is no good. Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate the house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city.
What else is the epidemic but a fire which instead of consuming wood and straw devours life and body? You ought to think this way:
“Very well, by God’s decree the enemy has sent us poison and deadly offal. Therefore I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it.
I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence.
If God should wish to take me, He will surely find me and I have done what He has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others.
If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely, as stated above. See, this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.
Moreover, he who has contracted the disease and recovered should keep away from others and not admit them into his presence unless it be necessary.
Though one should aid him in his time of need, as previously pointed out, he in turn should, after his recovery, so act toward others that no one becomes unnecessarily endangered on his account and so cause another’s death. ‘Whoever loves danger,’ says the wise man, ‘will perish by it.” (Martin Luther, “Whether One May Flee From a Deadly Plague,” Luther’s Works, Vol. 43: Devotional Writings II (ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann; vol. 43; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 43: 131–132).
With that being noted, God has not given to His people a spirit of fear, but of faith, and a sound mind.
