Where is God in this Crisis?

As I was perusing the news articles this morning on my phone, the title of one piece caught my eye. It asked the question, “Where is God in a pandemic?” This is essentially the same question I have often been asked by the patients I have visited in my time as a Spiritual Care Volunteer at UCI Medical Center. “Where is God?” and “Why did God let this happen to me?”

His answer is always the same, “I’m right here.”

God hasn’t gone anywhere, as if He could be one place and not another. He is the ground and foundation of all existence. While He could exist without us or the rest of creation, we cannot exist without Him because we depend on Him like a sound wave depends on the air it moves through to exist. So, no, God hasn’t disappeared. He’s right here where he has always been and will always be.

So then, why is He letting this happen? Why is He letting this potentially lethal virus spread and kill people? Why is He letting the Stock Market crash? Why is He letting the world seemingly collapse around us?

The answer is simpler, and harder to take, than you might think. He will not interfere in our free will. He will not turn us into robots who always make the right decisions. It was, one way or the other, human decisions which caused the current global crisis all the way back to the caging and selling of the bats in which the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolved, to the human governments’ responses, to the responses of panicked buyers and sellers. This was all human decision making, not His, and He will not force us to do the right thing.

Frequently, God does damage control to keep things from getting as bad as they could. He does love us, He does care about us, and like any good parent, He does try and steer us away from danger and poor decision making. But also like any good parent, He knows that the decision making has to be ours, and if we’re absolutely determined to have our own way, then He will step aside and let us do it and incur all the damaging consequences from it. An illustration I frequently use is of driving down a windy road at night in a car with God. As long as God has the wheel, the trip goes smoothly. If we demand to take the wheel, He will warn us against it. If we insist, He will take His hands off of it and let us do it. This is when we find the car wrapped around a tree we didn’t see but He did.

Often, also, God uses these times to get our attention so that we will get to know Him again, or at least better. He wants us to know Him, to walk with Him, and to be in relationship with Him. This does not ensure catastrophe (in our opinion) does not happen, but when it does we know He is right there with us through it.

God didn’t cause this current crisis, human beings did. He hasn’t left, He’s right here. All it takes is turning around and reaching out to Him.