GOD AND THE VIRUS

Shincheonji Church of Jesus, South Korea. A Covid-19 hot-spot.

In late February a member of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in South Korea was confronted by the evidence that she had inadvertently spread the Covid-19 virus among her congregation, and thereby set in motion the domino effect that  suddenly – and, as it turned out, temporarily -  made South Korea the second worst affected  country after China. In response to this revelation, the unfortunate ‘patient zero’ declared that  this was incontrovertible evidence that   Satan was jealous of the success of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus.

 We can easily laugh at the dauntingly high level of cognitive dissonance   necessary to believe such nonsense, but down the centuries variations on this justification have been common from  believers of  all religions, although this Korean woman’s opinion,  which no doubt parroted that of the leader of the cult, is an interestingly parochial  variation.

The monotheistic religions  all argue that tragedy and misfortune are God’s  way of punishing the sinful, or are evidence of humanity’s inability to comprehend the mind of God. During the Black Death, the Roman Catholic Church claimed  that the horrible plague was God’s punishment, while at the same time also   pleading with God to stop the pestilence.  The other possible justification, the one that is more likely to be held by today’s   less fundamentalist believer, is   that ‘the  ways of the Lord are mysterious’, We mere mortals are incapable of comprehending Him. In short, the faithful  find assurance in the fact that everything is  God’s will.  He is never, ever, wrong.

 But while those without the ‘talent’ for religious faith can scoff at the levels of dissimulation necessary for belief in a benevolent all-powerful God  in a world of indiscriminate pain and suffering,  the deep human need for  the infallible has certainty survived secularization. Religious unbelievers still all too often submit   to the logic  of authoritative and incontestable power.  We may not believe in God, but we still put   faith in the over-arching authority of science,  some ideology,   a charismatic  leader, or  some ideal.  We still claim that some things are beyond a shadow of doubt.

The marriage of science and technology is  an especially seductive version of infallibility. But the scientist seems as powerless as the rest of us at the moment. This week Western  ‘experts’ are reported to have run tests and to be  re-assessing the usefulness of wearing a face mask to counter Covid-19.

Here in South Korea, over the past week or so, me and my partner  has been anesthetizing ourselves  courtesy of Netflix by watching an American tv series called Salvation. The ‘salvation’ in question seems to be science. But  in the end, science fails,   and instead everyone is thrown into the absolute otherness of an alien visitation. That seems to more or less be where we are now, except the invasion comes from our own habitat.

Psychologically, the cognitive process that leads to the craving for infallibility  lies   in the human infant’s prolonged period of absolute dependency on the parent. When we are babies, we automatically and necessarily assume that our provider is perfect, and once this delectable idea becomes ingrained, it is very difficult for the juvenile and   adult self to exist without such certainty.  Just consider how unappealing are the words associated with the opposite of infallibility: doubtful, uncertain, contingent, questionable, imperfect, faulty, defective, weak, useless, flawed, erring, worthless, unnecessary, meaningless, frightening, vulnerable, empty, needless.

But Homo sapiens’ cravings for infallibility and perfection may very well be our ultimate downfall.   It  seems paradoxical, but unless we are more willing to embrace the  shadowy and uncertain parts of our consciousness, we will never   escape the craving   that has, in effect,  set us on a collision course with nature.