On Living in an Atomic (Coronavirus) Age
On Living in an Atomic (Coronavirus) Age 1
If you have known me at all, you would know that I am a fan of C.S. Lewis. I have read just about everything he wrote including his children’s stories; you might have heard of them – The Chronicles of Narnia.
Until recently I had not read one of his essays titled, “On Living in an Atomic Age”. While Lewis wrote the essay in 1948, three years after the first use of the atomic bomb, it seems to me we could retitle the essay, On Living in a Coronavirus Age, and it would apply to us as well as it did to folks in 1948. Here is how Lewis begins the essay:
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds. 2
It is interesting that Lewis mentions that a microbe can do to any of us what a bomb could do. It is also interesting that Lewis says that such things, like the coronavirus, need not dominate our minds. Such thinking, Lewis suggests, is a result of our idea (if not our belief) that nature is all there is, whether we believe that or not. I suspect that even as followers of Christ that you and I may find ourselves acting as if nature is all there is. After all we often live our daily lives in a sort of naturalistic way. We get up, have breakfast, go to work or school, come home, do more work have dinner and go to bed all the while thinking about what comes next, and hoping that our daily lives do not get interrupted by the car breaking down, or by much more difficult things like cancer, or the coronavirus…
Lewis says that most folks deal with such concerns in one of three ways. First, one may decide to commit suicide. Suicide happens after a person comes to a point where they feel hopeless against all that nature has dumped on them. Oddly, suicide then becomes the logical next step in the face of a universe where there is no meaning. The writer of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher, seems to capture the idea,
“Futile! Futile!” laments the Teacher,
“Absolutely futile! Everything is futile!” Ecclesiastes 1.2 (NET)
Second, you might decide to have as good a time as possible. You recognize that the universe has no meaning but since you exist, you will enjoy it for as long as you can. This so-called enjoyment typically is the abuse of sensual pleasures, sex, drugs, violence, money, etc. The Teacher from Ecclesiastes tried this,
I thought to myself,
“Come now, I will try self-indulgent pleasure to see if it is worthwhile.”
But I found that it also is futile.
I said of partying, “It is folly,”
and of self-indulgent pleasure, “It accomplishes nothing!”
I thought deeply about the effects of indulging myself with wine
(all the while my mind was guiding me with wisdom)
and the effects of behaving foolishly,
so that I might discover what is profitable
for people to do on earth during the few days of their lives. Ecclesiastes 2.1-3 (NET)
The third option Lewis says is to defy the universe. You might say, “The universe is irrational, I will be rational; the universe is merciless, I will show mercy.” We may attempt to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the meaningless universe. However, we realize that while we may hold such standards in the meaningless universe, our standards are just as meaningless. The Teacher touches on this,
Yet when I reflected on everything I had accomplished
and on all the effort that I had expended to accomplish it,
I concluded: “All these achievements and possessions are ultimately profitless—
like chasing the wind!
There is nothing gained from them on earth.” Ecclesiastes 2.11 (NET)
None of those three options are especially useful in this age of the coronavirus. The virus is more powerful than us. It takes from us time, worry, physical safety, jobs, friends, income, and for some, life. While different in kind, like the atomic bomb, the coronavirus forces on us the meaninglessness of the universe we live in.
Lewis reminds us there is a fourth alternative. Nature (the universe) is not all there is. Nature is not the beginning and the end of things. There is a spiritual reality that if we care to understand, shows us that nature is not our “mother” but like us, is part of the Creation; we are both here because of the Creator.
We are not finally subject to the law of nature but to the law of the Creator. Our gaze should not be on the coronavirus, or the atomic bomb, but on the Creator. We need not defy, or give in, or give up. Rather look to fulfilling the law of the Creator. The Teacher of Ecclesiastes says,
Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
because this is the whole duty of man. Ecclesiastes 12.13
What is the command we are to keep? John the apostle recorded these words of Jesus,
For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. John 3.16-18 (NET)
Reading that passage you might be led to think that believing is the most important thing; and it is. But belief without an object is useless. What do we believe? We believe the gospel,
But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, because we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved by his life? Not only this, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation. Romans 5.8-11 (NET)
How do we believe?
The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we preach), because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and thus has righteousness and with the mouth one confesses and thus has salvation. For the scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, who richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Romans 10.5-13 (NET)
Believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ puts us in the right place in the universe. Believers realize that this is not home. The universe is in fact not all there is. Believers know that while atomic bombs and viruses (and so many other things) can damage and kill, being sick and dying is not the end of things.
OK, so you have believed. There are still people who are dying and who are suffering and who have needs and people who do not yet believe. What now?
Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect. Romans 12.1-2 (NET)
Christ followers serve God to share the gospel with others and to meet the needs of those around us - wherever God leads us to serve. In this we are not denying the universe or defying the universe or giving up to the universe, God is using believers to redeem the universe and those who live in it.
I had a friend named Keith who trained to be a Bible translator. He was called to serve a tribe in Papua New Guinea who not only had never heard the gospel but who did not even have a written language. Keith went there to preach the gospel and to develop a language for those people so they could read the gospel.
Keith spent several years doing the language work and translation. In the middle of the work he was diagnosed with cancer. The cancer that killed him long before he could finish the work. While he was in treatment, he was suffering badly, very badly. I asked him how he could handle such pain and suffering in the face of not being able to finish the work he knew God had called him to. Keith replied that apart from knowing God he could not handle the suffering. Apart from knowing God through Christ, Keith said that he would not have wasted his time. Rather he would have set himself to making money and seeking pleasure, not unlike the Teacher.
Keith knew his place in the universe. His place was to serve his Creator who saved him, the same One who created the universe he lived in, temporarily. Keith had figured out what C.S. Lewis wrote about in his essay.
Lewis ends his essay, “Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best. Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.” 2
You can listen the Lewis essay in its entirety along with a ‘doodle’ of it at:
https://americandigest.org/c-s-lewis-how-are-we-to-live-in-an-atomic-age/
1 Ths blog was inspired by C.S. Lewis and the Coronavirus on the Break Point podcast from the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, recorded by John Stonestreet
2 “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays