Repent! … but does this really help against COVID-19?
A Christian’s view on how to deal with the Coronavirus
I am being flooded these days…
…. on e-mail and social media, with urgent calls from Christians, preachers and religious leaders to pray and do penance.
Am I now, as a christian believer, for, or, as a university graduate, against these calls?
Or do I form my own opinion before plunging into the fray of social media debates? Because, especially as a Christian, I know that according to the Bible, it is an important competence to actively search for truth and understanding.
Repent — and Wash?
The call for penance and prayers was widespread and widely accepted in the old times, in the Bible and in the Christian Church. But what did doing penance mean?
In the beginning, repentance was often associated with baptism. Especially in the time of Jesus, baptism in the water of a river or lake was an important ritual act: incidentally, not only in personal and social crises and not just once as a family baptism of a child or as a personal conversion baptism of an adult, but repeatedly and more than once. When people experienced a disruption in their lives and wanted to make a fresh start, they demonstrated that with a baptism:
The past was washed off, literally drowned under water, and a new clean start was made.
John the Baptist was one of the important penance preachers in the Bible — and he baptized, even Jesus was baptized by him in the river Jordan near the Sea of Galilee.
As I continue to search, I am finding numerous examples in the Bible that show that spiritual life and prayers were closely connected with washing of hands, with hygiene and purity. No distinction was made between an inner and an outer person, between the spiritual heart and the carnal body — repentance and prayers went hand in hand with washing and cleaning oneself, internally and externally.
In the times of the Bible it was “the leprosy”, in the Middle Ages “the plague” — and currently, we are looking for ways to fight COVID-19.
Today, modern medicine and the current behavioral guidelines of our governments in the fight against COVID-19 confirm how important hygiene and washing of hands are in the fight against this pandemic!
Repent — and Isolate?
But let me take one more step in my search for clues.
At those times, doing penance meant that I isolated myself to pray and fast.
In biblical times, people did not attend a spectacular worship service in a megachurch or a large congress with famous preachers and miracle workers, or hours of euphoric worship. Instead, they searched for God — alone, in their own hearts and in silence.
Jesus specifically admonished: “Go behind closed doors”.
Jesus himself went into the desert to fast, the prophets of the Old Testament kept going to the desert, and the famous encounter of Moses with God and the burning thorn bush also took place in the desert. The Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers from the first millennium of Christianity are another very impressive, and at the same time extreme, expression of this phenomenon. The church history is full of examples of pilgrims, monks, hermits and “starets” who went into loneliness to do penance and seek and find God.
Modern medicine and our governments confirm the importance of “social distancing”, or “physical distancing” and “quarantine” in the fight against epidemics!
Repent — and Reflect?
Now I stumble in my search for further clues.
Isolation was closely connected to words such as “contemplation” or “reflection”.
For the first time for many of us, we are facing the consequences of governments accross the globe deciding to quarantine their people, to ban them from going out, to ban public meetings and gatherings. We are disconnected — from public life, from shopping, from pleasure, from mingling with the crowd — and from attending services at our churches.
But are we really experiencing a time of quiet and reflection these days? Or are we spending hours on hours on Netflix, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok? The range of distractions and dissipations on the Internet, on social media and on TV is huge. We are not reflecting — we are dispersed and distracted!
But let us take this chance: do we have the courage to listen to ourselves? Do we have the courage to face our own thoughts? Do we have the courage to embark on a spiritual journey these days? Some call it prayer, some meditation, others call it mindfulness or have their own word for their own spiritual ritual.
Right now, in spring 2020, we have the opportunity to reflect. To ask ourselves who and what we miss. To ask ourselves who, in these difficult times, accompanies and helps us loyally and lovingly. To ask ourselves which thoughts, which concepts, which rules of conduct, which spiritual rituals and prayers day after day help us not to lose our courage and our joy of life.
Let us take this opportunity and gather the necessary courage to do so!
The Bible encourages us to start looking for truth and knowledge. It is a search. It is a personal search. It is a brave search because we will be confronted with ourselves in this way. And the Bible encourages us to find God in this search too.
To repent means to have the courage to embark on an inner journey to one’s own self.
Repent — yes, holistically and comprehensively!
So “Repentance” is an old spiritual concept that we hardly know anymore — or act upon — in our modern and technical world.
“Repentance” is not a religious spell. Also, “Repentance” is not the activation of a magical superpower.
“Repentance” is a holistic and comprehensive pattern that affects various aspects of the whole person — the recurrent cleansing and cleaning of the body, the dissociation and the reflection.
This comprehensive pattern is indeed helpful and useful in the fight against contagious diseases and epidemics.
And — maybe — it is also helpful and gives us, as human beings, the courage to deal with spiritual matters again, in a world that has in the past been guided by the sciences, by the economy, by technology and practicality.
Hopefully, right now, in the Holy Week and Lent — a time that has been used in a very special way by Christians and their churches for two thousand years — to reflect and go in search of God.
