The Corona virus will change us forever. According to the dictionary, a paradigm shift is defined as "an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way." Just as the Corona virus has shattered lives, disrupted markets, exposed the competence of leadership and systems of government, revealed ways we interact with each other and even with family members, blocked travel, changed our work and study habits, reshaped our eating, playing, and loving, and reframed our grocery shopping and errand running, COVID-19 is keeping everyone in their homes, perhaps for months, readjusting our relationship with the government, remolding our connections to the outside world, and even altering our relations with our God. For example, how will Christians observe their holiest day if they cannot rejoice together on Easter morning since most churches will remain closed? How can Muslim people celebrate Ramadan if they cannot visit mosques for Tarawih prayers or gather with loved ones to break the feast? Almost all religions at some point in their history have faced challenges to spread their faith or to keep their faith alive under persecutions or war with one another, but never have all religions faced the same challenges at the same time. There is no doubt that COVID-19 is a matter of seriousness for all humanity, not just for the Chinese. Unfortunately, some of clerics are exploiting the issues and inciting their followers to extreme measures, failing to undergird their practice with their faith.
When I heard the initial reports of the deadly spread of COVID-19 in China, some of my good Muslim friends rejoiced and called the virus Allah’s will to punish the Chinese for their cruel treatment of the Uighur Muslims of Western China. There is no doubt that the Chinese government has inhumanely persecuted the Uighurs, and I strongly condemn that, but when the virus broke through China’s borders and hit Italy, Iran, and Spain very hard, some Arab people cheered on social media because they thought the reason the virus had attacked Iran so intensely Iran was also because of Allah’s wrath, this time over Iran’s cruel treatment of Sunni Muslims in the Middle East and around the world. The majority of Iranians are of the Shia sect of Islam while the majority of Muslims are Sunni and thus consider Iran as not being true followers of Islam. However, when COCID-19 started to spread wider in the Middle East, some Arabs believed that this pandemic was an Iranian conspiracy against Arabs. In this vein they thought the COVID-19 was a warning to humanity from Allah to return to him and that the only solution was renew their commitment to him so that everything will be ok. However, the governments in the Muslim world, including Saudi Arabia, closed the mosques and shut down most of society. Even the Muslims’ holy cities of Mecca and Medina closed their sacred sites, and for the first time since the time of the prophet Muhammad, public prayers have been canceled in the cities.
Even in literature we see scary predictions of a dystopia, as Dean Koontz wrote in 1981 in his work of fiction The Eyes of Darkness, “In around 2020, a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread around throughout the globe attacking the lungs and bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatment. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, and then disappear completely.” Koontz continues, “They call the stuff Wuhan-4oo because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the city of Wuhan, and it was the four-hundredth visible strain of man-made microorganisms created at that research center.” As ironic, uncanny, and perhaps unnerving as that text is, it has a basis in reality to about the same degree of a fortune cookie. Out of the millions of textual scenarios, one, at least in part, may parallel a real phenomenon. In addition, among the top trending films on Netflix are the 2011 Contagion, the 2019 sci-fi 3022, the 2016 Pandemic, 2016 Containment, and the 1995 Outbreak, all signaling its viewship’s fascination with pandemics and end of the world scenarios. But dystopia novels and sci-fi films do not alter the world; reality does.
This pandemic will lead to a paradigm shift in society, in healthcare, in lifestyles, and in political as well as economic power in ways that will fundamentally change how we will write history, recording life before Corona and life after Corona, like an event such as 9/11 changes the world and patterns of our life. The Corona virus will change our politics, both within national and local entities, including the interaction between them. The world has become socialist. The battle against COVID-19 already has made the role of federal government far more visible to people than it normally has been. As we listen to daily briefings from public health officials, tune in for guidance from our government, and seek help from the leaders’ updates, we are seeing the critical role that government plays in our lives. The countries around the world are ingesting a massive dose of big government to get out of this crisis with America’s swift, giant economic bailout package as a clear example. Some people already argue that authoritarian governments are more successful to handle the Corona virus pandemic, but the countries that responded early and successfully, such as Korea and Taiwan, have been democracies, not those run by authoritarian leaders.
The global economy has entered the opening stages of collapsing that has the potential to become a depression. Already, large parts of the world have shut down. Many governments, including the US, are taking steps more often seen during wartime. The COVID-19 will strengthen that state and reinforce nationalism. Citizens look to national governments to protect them, and states and firms seek to reduce future vulnerabilities by relying on the national leadership and policies. COVID-19 is pushing governments, companies, and societies to strengthen their individual capacity to deal with extended periods of economic self isolation, but at the same times, the virus itself is proof that our world is interconnected and interdependent. There is no doubt that this crisis will cause various camps to debate about the future of our world system vigorously. The nationalists, fundamentalists, globalists, and anti-globalists will all examine the rise of China, the decline of the USA, power shifts, leadership of the world, the weakening integration of the European Union, and the role of multinational institutions and will all see new evidence for the urgency of their views. The COVID-19 will not change the global economic directions; it will only accelerate a change that had already begun; a move away from the Western-centric globalization to a more Asian-centric globalization.
I, however, believe in God, who is bigger than the Corona virus, who is all powerful, who is omnipotent, and, consequently, I understand that it can serve a useful purpose with good coming out of it. I believe we can handle COVID-19 because God would never give us something we could not handle; therefore, we will handle it. We need to ask God to reveal the way to the solution and petition him persistently like a child would continually ask a parent. Every need in the world is an open door to share God’s love. For those who believe in God, we should not panic or hide because we are frightened, but should serve the people who are most needy. No matter our level of frustration or fear, we should follow the divine injunction, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Our hope is built on the perfection of God, so that we have been called to share that love with the world. Granted, we must be wise and responsible, and we must carefully consider all the recommendation of our City Mayor Sara Duterte and other officials, but, as believers, we should show sanity, sympathy, and patience, taking one day at a time.
Our life has both a foreground and a background. The foreground is the things that are right in front of us, the things that we easily see and get consumed with because we feel they are weighing on top of us. Some things we see immediately before us, such as fake news, hypothetical scenarios, or conspiracy theories about the virus, such as those I mentioned above, or the effects this still might have on our world and daily living. But we must also remember the background of life— that is the invisible we cannot see, the spiritual realities that are beyond us. We have to understand clearly that those two things are not mutually exclusive. We live in a simultaneously physical and spiritual world, the seen and the unseen; the physical and the spiritual make up our lives and world.
The problem is that right now we are focusing only on the Corona virus and the means and degrees that affect our shattered lives as well as those of people around the world because the visible life is all we see. We forget to consider the unseen, the spiritual and eternal background that is meant to put everything into focus. The good things come out of this crisis. Specially new millennials who never experience difficulties , crisis, wars in their lives . This might help and teach them how they can deal with the crisis , rise above the crisis. Family values. We fail to understand that even this is happening for a reason. If we look carefully enough at the image of our world, if we try to see the background, then we will gain the right perspective not allowing the pandemic to consume our lives with the seen so that we disregard the unseen. Our sacred text tells us, “Do not have fear, do not be anxious.” If we surrender to God, he helps us to stay positive and peaceful by reminding us that he is bigger than the Corona virus. Remember, dear readers, life is short, yet behind the seen is the unseen, the foreground and the background, the temporal life and the eternal life. I pray that during this Corona virus crisis, you will be conscious of the God who is our background in the way you see everything while staying healthy, positive, and responsible as the foreground almost blinds us. Developing this better way of seeing will indeed change our lives forever. Please stay healthy and maintain social distance.
Dr. Aland Mizell is with the MCI, SETBI and a regular Mindanao Times.You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com
