Plague Journal (17): From death to life

I've seen a few articles about what the recovery from the lockdown will be like. How soon things will get back to normal, or if they will ever get back to normal. Some people warn about an expanding authoritarianism. Some gloomily predict a very slow climb back from recession, others think we'll see a boom in the economy very quickly.

The bottom line is that no one knows, and only some of these guesses are anything like "educated." What we are really talking about is a the search for certainty, for confidence that the future is in our hands, and cannot be utterly subverted or rerouted by a microscopic virus. That science (how much we invest in that little word) will solve this problem too, as it seems to solve every problem. And we can all go to restaurants again, and ballgames, and dance clubs, having had our shots. 

I read Camus' The Plague back in high school, but don't remember much. This article talks about its relevance to our present situation. There's this, for example:

The city prefect is convinced the threat is wildly overstated, while another character says — stop me if you’ve heard this before — “The great thing is not to take an alarmist view.” The precautions city officials eventually do take are far from draconian, leading Dr. Bernard Rieux, the novel’s protagonist, to conclude: “One had the feeling that many concessions had been made to a desire not to alarm the public.” The plague worsens.

But what we are ultimately dealing with, down below all the layers, is our own confrontation with mortality. What COVID-19 has done is rip away the illusions that kept death safely distant.  It was an illusion we relied on science to maintain, and American know-how, and economic growth, and the ability to shunt our sickly elders off to "facilities." And on the occasion when death came near, it could seem exceptional, a passing episode.

It is salutary, at least, to make no pretense about death. It is coming for you. It is coming for me. This is not pessimism, or even unnecessarily gloomy. At least it doesn't have to be. Perhaps it is the beginning of wisdom. When David, that great poet, spoke of "the valley of the shadow of death," he was not talking about a distinct place, or a particular season in his life, but of the world as a whole, and of every life within it. 

But no, the 23rd Psalm is not gloomy, it is triumphant. For David had the Lord with him as sheep have a shepherd. And even if death should take him, he had this deep knowledge: "I shall live in the house of the Lord forever."

Finally, we have these words from the Master, Jesus: "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgement, but has passed from death to life." John 5:24