COVID Crisis

Crises are never averted when they are avoided. The trivialisation of Covid-19 is symptomatic of the detachment of digital society from wider society. We are literally living in our own world when we open up this app. We are creating cultures that are contrary to reality.

Perhaps if we look deeper we see an underlying strategy utilised by social media, which is to facilitate escapism. Is it not the reason why we go on the app when we are bored, or when we have a spare waking moment? Have we not succumbed to the appeal of social media, and are now operating under the paradigms it offers us? Perhaps this crisis is more than about you Instagramming the barrenness of a supermarket, but maybe there is something that you need to do at this moment?

Nonetheless, there are realities the outside world is facing that need to be addressed. The world is in hysteria and panic, perhaps for a valid reason.

Rather than applying motivational thoughts which deal with fear, let us actually define what everyone is feeling. Existential crisis. People are confronted with the reality of death. The fear we are witnessing is rational to the non-believer.

A non-believer walks in futility. To them, there is no hope in death. Thus, the only hope they have is in self-preservation, and the fear is rational for the purpose of self-preservation. It is, therefore, futile to preach to non-believers the motivational message of having no fear, they need to hear the Gospel.

Here is the discrepancy, we who have heard the Gospel do not believe in the finality of death, thus, we instinctively do not give in to fear. Perhaps what we find is that fear has arisen in the natural because there is fear in the spiritual realm? What could God be doing that has caused fear in the spiritual realm?

Could He be sending revival? Should this fear of existential crisis be suppressed, or should we use this awakening to go out into the world and preach and practice what we truly say we believe?

Perhaps God has shaken us up out of our pews and into the reality of the world to say: “Now is not the time to sit idle in Church, but to move where the Holy Spirit is moving.”

Where are you moving to?