Covid-19 and religion.

Hi Mike As a Christian I would just like to respond to what you have posted. Firstly, I have to strongly disagree with the quoted statement. Partly because it is in opposition to the general theme of the New Testament view of the whole Bible and how God interacts with His creation. The Bible is very clear that God, as we see in the person of Jesus, is the God who is there for all mankind, regardless of doctrine.Secondly it is an anti-scriptural position. This is from Matthew:

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5 When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6 Lord, he said, my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly. 7 Jesus said to him, Shall I come and heal him? 8 The centurion replied, Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it. 10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. 11 I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 13 Then Jesus said to the centurion, Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would. And his servant was healed at that moment.

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As we can see God answered the prayer of a Roman Centurion who wouldn't have been Jewish and of course Christianity didn't exist at the time.Another one from Luke

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"As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, Jesus, Master, have pity on us! When he saw them, he said, Go, show yourselves to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked himand he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, Rise and go; your faith has made you well.

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Here was one of the hated Samaritans that Jesus healed. Jesus didn't care about his doctrine, He just loved and cared about everyone.Look again at the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus was clearly making the point that it wasn't about our theology but about responding to God's call on our lives to love our neighbour. As I said, the Samaritans and the Jews were not at all well disposed to one another. I would contend that if Jesus was here telling that parable today it would be about the Good Muslim.Also I take issue with your view of evolution. I am fine if someone wants to argue against it on a non-biased academic basis, if one has the credentials to do that. However to argue against it on Biblical grounds, all it does is make Christianity look ridiculous. Genesis when read through a mythological lens gives us wonderful insights into the Christian faith. Those insights get muddled or lost when we try to understand it in the way that we would a science text or newspaper.I think that from a Christian POV we should marvel at this incredible process of evolution that has resulted in the fact that we exist, and thank God for it.I like Faith but her response when clear contradictions in the Bible are pointed out to her her response generally is that there aren't contradictions. I don't know if that is your view or not but from what I have read it suggests that it is.At any rate, I'm glad you're here.

Here is a Christian response in "Time" magazine to that deals with Covid19 by N T Wright, who is generally conceded to be the leading New Testament scholar that we have today.
Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed ToHere is a part of it.

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No doubt the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation. But supposing it doesn’t? Supposing real human wisdom doesn’t mean being able to string together some dodgy speculations and say, So that’s all right then? What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot recognized in the early 1940s, when the only advice is to wait without hope, because we’d be hoping for the wrong thing?

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Rationalists (including Christian rationalists) want explanations; Romantics (including Christian romantics) want to be given a sigh of relief. But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament. Lament is what happens when people ask, Why? and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world. It’s bad enough facing a pandemic in New York City or London. What about a crowded refugee camp on a Greek island? What about Gaza? Or South Sudan?

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BTW still waiting for a response to this post. Message 141