Providence, Pandemic, and Progress

The progress of technology in history increases the power of humanity for both good and evil. This means that the power for free markets is increased, but it also means that the power of criminals, criminal syndicates, and tyrannies is also increased.

This dual increase of power means that the potential fallout from an imbalance of good versus evil in society also grows over time. Good and evil are in certain respects a zero-sum game. If evil prevails, it does so at a corresponding deficit of good, because evil prevails only in places where good should be, in the hearts of individuals. A disruption in the social equilibrium between good and evil then has consequences multiplied by the increased power available in any age. This is why it is absolutely crucial to have a moral populace if we are to have a free society, and this need grows over time.

The famous sentence from John Adams describes this situation: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The same sentiment, however, underlies the Proverb: “When a land transgresses, it has many rulers” (Prov. 28:2). As evil manifests more greatly in the hearts of individuals, people look for ways to suppress it. People seem to want to deal with increased wickedness that is magnified by power by using more or opposing power—power must be suppressed with power, or so is the most common sentiment (which is only sometimes correct). In short, in order to address growing evils in society, people demand more government, i.e., “many rulers.” Government is by definition power, so it never misses a chance to respond to this call.

It is crucial to realize that the social evil of which we are speaking need not be crimes in order for this phenomenon to play out—either rightly or wrongly. The evil that grows magnified by the powers of the age could simply be lusts, class conflicts, abysmal manners, disrespect, and many other things not classified as crimes under biblical law. The types of things that lead one to say, “This is why we can’t have nice things,” as an understatement, or, “Some people should not be allowed to have children,” are often not misdemeanors or felonies, but when many people begin to do such things, a corresponding number of well-mannered folk will want to put a stop to it, somehow. Civil government is the usual choice.

The same is true for rampant poverty and lack of access to health care, especially in a land of abundance. We want adamantly to protect property rights and privacy and individual responsibility in a biblical society, yet the call to love your neighbor and care for the poor is every bit as much of the same law, and you could argue strongly that it is even more fundamental. How can we have a society in which we do a great job at banking our wealth and also poorly at voluntarily caring for the poor and vulnerable? Can we set God’s law against God’s law? Can we appeal to one aspect of God’s law to nullify our obligations in another?

We can argue about some nuances, but we cannot dispute the basic point. People in general feel this tension and problem, and in general they want something done about it. We can condemn it as the effects of socialism as far as their solution goes if we want, but it is addressing a serious problem and deficiency: the impoverished need to be cared for, for example. If, and we should also have the virtue to admit when, we fail to meet this need, it grows by the powers of the age, and people demand the powers of the age to address it. We get more government—government empowered by the latest surveillance and other technology.

The same is true when actual crimes increase. Crimes like human trafficking or sexual abuses occur rampantly, but they are notoriously difficult to prove and prosecute. Yet the thought of women and children suffering as their sexual abusers and pimps hide behind due process is infuriating to many people. If ever there were an example of using God’s law in order to violate God’s law utterly, these abuses are it. The same was true for American slavery. It is not surprising that calls and efforts to oppose such abuses with bigger government powers arise.

A biblical view

As Babel began to grow, God went down to check it out, because, He said, “And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them” (Gen 11:6). Increased knowledge and power for them was growing on the foundation of increased wickedness.

God was not concerned with nothing being impossible for them in general. He was not concerned with human progress or technology even to the nth degree. He was concerned with progressive tyranny and wickedness that would be compounding with it. It can be read as if God is saying “If the starting point is utter rebellion and wickedness, then there will be no end to the evils they will do in the future.”

The same process had already played out once in the line of Cain: human ingenuity built technologies: cattlemen, musicians, and smiths (Gen. 4:20–22). But wickedness had grown with it. We went from Cain’s murder and legacy to his progeny Lamech’s polygamy and high-handed murder (Gen. 4:22–23). In time, the world grew so filled with violence (power versus power) that God destroyed it (Gen. 6:1–7, 11). After Noah, we arrive at the scene of Babel. The problem of compounding evil in society had not disappeared from the hearts of humans.

This problem continued to grow even as God elected a people, Israel, and confirmed them as a holy, priestly nation unto himself. They were given, directly, all of the oracles of God (Rom. 3:2). They should have been a light to the rest of the nations, and yet they let the nations corrupt them instead.

As evil grew and people began to feel more threatened by the powers of evil around them and within them, they decided it was time to turn to the same type of power as those nations around them. God told them specifically that it would be a tyranny heaped upon their backs, very costly in lives and fortunes and servitude. The elected to have it anyway (1 Sam. 8).

As the evil continued anyway, the size and power of that tyranny grew with it. God had given Israel laws to regulate its kingly power: no standing army, no large treasury, no foreign alliances / multiple wives, no national servitude, and no elitism (Deut. 17:14–20). In each successive rule of Israel’s civil government, we see successive growth in violations of these laws: multiple wives, collecting greater powers, idols, etc., beginning already with the Judges. By the time we arrive at Solomon, the apex of the monarchy and of wisdom in Israel, Solomon had something like $2.2 trillion in his treasury (OK, I adapted that number), foreign alliances with every nation possible, standing armies and artillery all over the place, and 1,000 wives and concubines (1 Kings 10:14–11:8).

How could it be the wisest man who ever ruled Israel (until Christ) did this?

The same man told us, “When a land transgresses, it has many rulers” (prov. 28:2). Virtuous rulers and wise men are powerless to stop it.

Power and responsibility and plague

God also warned Israel that when the people transgressed his covenant, they would suffer his chastisements. If they departed from him, judgment would come. The very first form of judgment that would come would be “panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache” (Lev 26:16).

Some have noted that the Levitical laws governing quarantine refer only to a unique particular condition that was linked to ceremonial uncleanness in Old Testament Israel, not a disease in the sense of public health (Lev. 13–14). This suggests these laws have no application to today, we are led to assume. This would mean civil governments have no biblical authorization to shutter businesses, issue stay-at-home orders, etc., in the event of a pandemic. I disagree with that view, for at the very least there is a direct analogy between ceremonial uncleanness and disease, as well as the fact that both this unique condition wrongly called “leprosy” in Leviticus 13–14 and actual communicable diseases are both seen to be judicial judgments from God. There is also no accounting in this for the fact that uncleanness was contagious in the Old Testament context. There are also aspects of the law concerning liability to content with. But let’s assume the argument stands anyway, despite all these things.

In that case, we still have to consider what people are going to demand when other people flatly refuse or fail to do what is right in the face of a genuine health crisis, for example, a plague or pandemic. What are Christian, biblical, responsibilities in such a time, and what shall we expect if these responsibilities are widely ignored?

God allows us to have increasing knowledge over time. Indeed, he gives it, provides it, and commands us to go get it. Science is both a gift and a mandate.

Knowledge, however, means power; and power means responsibility. Increased knowledge means increased responsibility. God will hold us accountable for the increased knowledge over time, and the way we address it.

If we are to accept the providence of God in all affairs, we must accept that he at least allows plagues, if not actively sends and directs them.

If we accept the providence of God in all affairs, we must accept that he also brings technology to pass in each generation.

The plague and the level of technology/knowledge are both factors of providence. Plagues and contagions occur in God’s providence. These may increase or decrease in scope and severity. The knowledge/science/technology by which we understand and fight contagion are also occurrences in providence. They certainly increase over time. So, the way in which we understand viral and bacterial infections, and others, can change as we have increased knowledge over time. (Indeed, it should change!) Likewise, the knowledge about the way we treat or prevent contagions will increase over time.

That which is available knowledge in one generation may be different than in another, due to the technology available. What is a “symptom” or “visible symptom” in one generation may give way to something of a greater degree in another. Microscopes have made things quite visible to us which were not visible, say, in 1200 B.C. Today’s virus is yesterday’s “swelling on the skin.” While the principles beneath contagious disease may not change, the standards of what qualifies in such a category certainly does.

If God holds us accountable for what is detectable in one generation according to the technology he made providentially accountable, so he will do in the next generations when greater technology and greater detection are available.

Again, God has brought to pass the plague and the level of technology available to detect the evidence of plague. In ancient times, what was visible to the naked eye was all that could be detected—i.e., a “raised scab” or “whiteness,” etc. With more advanced technology, we are not limited to the naked eye. We can see just as convincingly with microscopes and “see” with chemical tests. We know viruses exist, and we can know he nature of transmission.

But even this is not the end of our deduction with today’s tools.

We can also compute rates of transmission, deadliness of the strain, and full disease burden to the public.

Further, we can compute generally accurate models of what will happen if a disease is allowed to run rampant, versus if it were checked in various ways. We can predict, with scientific predictability in some aspects, and with generally reliable statistical models in others, what the consequences of such a contagion will be, how long it could last, etc.

God not only holds us accountable for the liabilities related to raised white spots or swelling on the skin (Lev. 13–14), he also, today, holds us accountable for the liabilities associated with what we know and can reliably predict about non-visible viruses and other contagions.

This fact will remain true whether or not a particular virus initially presents outward symptoms or not. We are just as accountable in cases where we know that a virus can be present without symptoms for the first few days. This latter scenario makes it more difficult to convince some people that extreme measures of quarantine may be necessary for everyone precisely because a virus without initial symptoms is on the loose, but visible symptoms is not the only measure for which we will be held accountable. It is, in fact, an ancient one long supplemented by increased knowledge.

God’s law calls us to freedom. It is in fact a constitution of freedom, as I have said many times (Ex. 20:1). But were not supposed to use our freedom as a cloak for evil (1 Pet. 2:16). In our liberty, we should be the first to lead the way in efforts to address obvious social needs, including public health needs. Caution here is not cowardice; it is leadership. Sacrifice here is not submitting to tyranny or surrendering rights. The time to make sure of that will be here soon, and probably will not need reasserting. But if it does, we will be ready.

Higher standards of sacrifice demanded in times of emergency, or sometimes non-emergency, are not necessarily a sign of tyranny. It can be, but is not automatically. Instead, it may simply be a sign of growing up. We now have more knowledge. We are now being urged to move on to greater responsibility, greater wisdom. It calls for greater sacrifice. That may seem uncomfortable at first; but growing almost always is.

The alternative is chastisement, which is even more uncomfortable. And when a whole nation goes into lockdown due to government action, you can be relatively sure that some failure existed first in making appropriate actions freely to begin with. This is almost always how big-government and socialistic enterprises come about. Yes, it may be fear and panic. The government response may even be disproportionate to the need, and thus to some extent tyranny. But the initial cause of it was the lack of trust in voluntary action to begin with. And why should we be trusted for this? We have very little if any track record of it. We tend to shift blame and serve our own interests, neglecting others, most of the time.

None of this is to excuse tyranny or call evil government intrusions good. It is simply to explain it. We live under judgment, and the path out of that judgment is repentance—in a whole lot of areas. That means voluntary action, voluntary sacrifice, voluntarily meeting the needs of the vulnerable in a whole lot of areas.