There is no theological explanation for coronavirus. None of us knows the mind of God.
From a celestial perspective, we have no way of knowing why earthquakes wipe cities off the map, why cancer kills children, and why illnesses spread.
Rather, we only know that God commands us to use every means of knowledge at our disposal – science and medicine – to stop the spread of sickness, and save lives. When religion becomes the rationalization for people dying, it becomes polluted and corrupt.
If it were true that God was punishing, say, the governments of China and Iran, then why would it be with a virus so contagious that it kills innocent people, in those countries and throughout the world?
So let’s stop making religion into an ugly form of superstition and retribution.
But that does not mean there aren’t important moral lessons that can be derived from the plague of coronavirus. And by this I mean how the virus has exposed our own hypocrisy.
When China was a place free from coronavirus but riddled with dictatorship, human rights abuses, and political oppression, no one had any problem visiting and doing business with it, without demanding that they improve their human rights record.
It was cheaper to have things made in China. So what if they brutalize political dissidents? I get to have a cheaper iPhone.
But the moment China became a danger to our bodies, the moment it imperiled not our souls but our very lives, we stopped all travel and shut down all flights to China.
The same thing is true of Iran. When the regime was threatening to annihilate Jews, was mowing down its citizens by the thousands on its streets, and was hanging gays from cranes in town squares, every European foreign minister was rushing to Tehran to sign oil and trade deals.
How many of those same Europeans are visiting Tehran now? Their moral consciences never bothered them. But risking their bodies — that, they would never do. It took the coronavirus to shut down business with Iran.
Don’t misunderstand me. I see nothing positive in coronavirus whatsoever. Our job is to summon medical science to stop its spread and vaccinate against it so it can no longer claim a single life. I pray for all the people of the world – from China to Iran to Italy to Israel to the United States – afflicted by this terrible scourge.
To the extent that some truly evil people have contracted it – like Masoumeh Ebtekar, the Iranian vice president who is better known as the vile “Screaming Mary,” who during the 1979 US hostage crisis tormented our innocent hostages and served as the terrorists’ spokesperson – I pray that they recover from the virus and let God settle with them in some other way.
Yet still, I see in our response to the coronavirus a case of significant moral hypocrisy.
The U.S. should have censored China long ago for its brutal oppression of its own citizens, including Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace laureate and political prisoner, who actually died at 61 still in Chinese custody. When he won the prize, his wife was also imprisoned. Yet the U.S. did next to nothing.
The Obama administration in particular disgraced American morals and values when it tried to normalize Iran among the nations of the world, even as the regime promised a second Holocaust and worked incessantly to build the nuclear arsenal through which to carry it out, all while sponsoring and promoting terrorism around the world.
In both cases, it took the outbreak of a physical malady, a virus, to awaken the conscience of the world as to whether we ought to treat these countries the same as law-abiding democracies.
I pray for the people of China and I pray for the people of Iran. I hope that God heals their populations, and all the world’s inhabitants, from the terrible scourge of this deadly virus.
But I likewise pray that once coronavirus is neutralized – and it will be – that these nations are pressured by the rest of the world to behave morally and begin respecting human rights, failing which they will continue to be ostracized.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” whom The Washington Post calls “the most famous Rabbi in America,” is the author of “Judaism for Everyone” and “Renewal: The Seven Central Values of the Jewish Faith.” Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @RabbiShmuley.
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