Forced Rest
However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: Deuteronomy 28:15 NIV
Curses – I’m writing this in April. You’re reading it in July. Hopefully what I have to say no longer applies, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find that my words are still true. In the midst of the COVID-19 “crisis,” I have encountered many religious messages trying to force God into the picture. I don’t mean that God isn’t part of all this. I mean that it’s hard for me to listen to attempts to try to make this a religious event, to attempt to discover God’s greater purpose in all this media-driven fear. But it’s not surprising. A Christian theology that views God as the ultimate architect of all events, that leaves no real room for human manipulation and inherent chaos, is forced to explain in some way or another why God is letting all this happen, as if He is really ultimately responsible and it’s up to us to figure out what He’s trying to say. Instead of recognizing that this crisis is a manufactured panic with significant implications for personal freedom, the world’s sheep appear to believe that the horrible COVID-19 enemy is lurking around every corner, just waiting to kill us all. And, of course, believing a death threat makes people far more malleable. Okay, I know I’m being caustic and skeptical, but has anyone considered history in all this? Apparently not. Instead, we get proposals like the following, demonstrating how COVID-19 is really God’s enforced Shabbat.
The world has slowed down in a way we’ve never seen before. The mandate to shelter-in-place is forcing people to pause and rest. It’s not a pace of life our society is used to living. And it’s not one that comes easy. But it’s a life God has called us to.
God even modeled rest for us, “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” (Genesis 2:7). This model of rest from work is something we should follow and likely, not something many of us are very good at.
The call to rest is really a call to trust God.
Many of us become busy striving, achieving, and succeeding. Right now, we are very limited in what we can do. You might even feel as if you’ve lost control. That’s a very natural response in these unprecedented times. But rest isn’t only good for our physical health. It’s good for our spiritual and emotional health, too.
To step into the rest God called us to is to actively let go of control and to put it into God’s hands. In this season, you and I are being forced to slow down and rest. Rest is a good thing and yet, it’s so hard for us to make it a priority. To create space in your life for rest is a way God restores you and revitalizes you. God is moving through this time to remind us about the goodness of rest in our lives.[1]
Isn’t this so marvelous? (Sarcasm, you realize). Since God couldn’t get us to actually practice Shabbat as an honor to Him, well, He just forced it on us. Now the whole world will have to rest (that was what Shabbat was all about, right?). It doesn’t really matter that Shabbat is an integral part of a covenantal existence with the God of Israel. What matters is that we slow down, and COVID-19 is God’s way of reminding us of this great principle. Hallelujah! Now we will be forced to learn how nice it is to have the government tell us when we can join in community, when we can shop, where we can travel, who we can have in our cars, what we can buy, etc. What were we thinking? This isn’t about governmental power. This is about God’s rest. Now we can stay at home as instructed, knowing that by following the government guidelines for our every personal decision is really a call to trust God! And it’s such a good thing. After all, Shabbat is really only “creating a space in your life for rest,” right?
Hopefully when you read this in July all of this nonsense will be over, but I have my suspicions that it won’t be. I have my suspicions that religious platitudes like this, as good intentioned as they are, will just become more ammunition for the sheep herders. Fear is the real virus here. The Black Plague killed millions of people. It dramatically reshaped the role of the Church and forever altered the economics of the world. Humanity survived, but the world has never been the same. Maybe the human race didn’t get it in the 14th Century. If only we had “rested at home” during the plague, if only God’s forced Shabbat had occurred then, maybe we wouldn’t need Him to make us stay home now. Right? That’s what Moses really meant, right? All these curses have come upon us because we didn’t listen to God. Fortunately, now we can stay home like good little sheep and things will be okay.
Topical Index: COVID-19, curse, fear, Deuteronomy 28:15
