Proverbs 19:21 – "Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails."
Living in a lockdown area, we’re trying to adjust to new, legally enforceable restrictions. I could face a fine just for visiting my parents in their garden. I’m still not entirely sure whether I broke the law this week when my son’s school bus failed to turn up, and I gave not just him a lift to school, but also three of the neighbours’ kids (all suitably masked).Though I imagine Boris Johnson wouldn’t know if I’d broken the law either! The level of control the government has over our daily lives is unprecedented in this country, though pandemics certainly aren’t.
Wisdom to make good choices
Humans like to have control over their own lives. To a large extent, this is a good thing. God gave us choice, and it is up to us to use our choices wisely. Living just from day to day is not wise otherwise we risk just drifting along, never really achieving anything worthwhile. The book of Proverbs teaches us that much, encouraging good stewardship (Pr 27:23-27) and hard work (Pr 28:19) so we don’t go hungry, for example. It’s good to have control over our tongue and our behaviour (Pr 29:11). Self-control is one of the ‘fruits of the Spirit’ listed by Paul (Gal 5:22-23).
It’s also good to have a government with a level of control. We’re instructed to pray for our government (1 Tim 2:1-2), so that we may live peaceful lives. A good, robust and enforceable legal system is important. The last thing we want is anarchy.
The problem is, we are apt to take more control than we should. Throughout history, we have seen ways in which people have tried to control others. This has come in many forms, not least slavery, empire building, or the socialist regimes and other dictatorships of modern times. There have also been many attempts recently to control freedom of speech. Individuals try to control others, which is what we are seeing in ‘cancel culture’. Control is often the main dynamic in abusive relationships, too.
As a nation, we have generally resisted external control, hence ours being one of the world’s earliest democracies. We want to feel in control of our own lives. And we’ve felt until now that we can make our own choices about them.
An illusion shattered
The Covid 19 crisis has highlighted just how much, until now, those living in Western societies have been under the illusion that we were in control. Whether it was A Level students feeling that if they put enough hard work in, they would get the grades they needed, suddenly assessed by an algorithm. Or whether it has been others making plans for holidays abroad or at home, only to be caught out by one restriction or another. Or businesses, planning for the future, suddenly no longer viable. We’ve felt that if we fell ill, the NHS would be there to fix things. But all of a sudden, we could no longer get treatment.
The need to bring everything under our control has led us to losing control.
On a national level, the Brexit vote was won on the slogan ‘Take back control’. As a nation, we no longer wanted to be controlled by external forces in Brussels. Patterns have emerged of regions and small countries wanting independence from larger entities, wanting to take back control, not least Scotland.
The government, with the backing of most of the population, has been seeking to ‘control the virus’. Yet what has happened? The more that lockdowns and restrictions have served to limit the spread of the virus, the more control is lost over other areas of life. Mental health issues, already a pandemic more serious than Covid before this year, are now affecting approximately a fifth of the UK population. A freelance counsellor friend of mine has described how requests for her services have shot up. Domestic violence multiplied during the lockdown. Children and adolescents in particular have suffered from the isolation. Many elderly people in care homes have been effective prisoners in their own rooms, unable to see family (which is, ironically, one of the main reasons they have to keep living). And that is before we even contemplate the economy. The effect on poorer countries has been even worse, to the point that more and more parents are literally selling their children1, as the gains over poverty in the last few decades have been starkly reversed.
Many of the attempts to control the virus have come from a laudable motive – to protect the vulnerable. But in their panic, governments have only deprived other vulnerable people of their livelihoods, of support, of a future. In the end, we have to recognise that we can’t control everything. And it is wrong to try to. In ‘taking control of their bodies’, some women end up taking the lives of their unborn babies. As soon as any control we exert begins to adversely affect others, questions need to be asked.
God is in control
We need to metaphorically hand over the steering wheel of our lives to God, who loves and cares for us.
And the bible warns us of relying too much on our own plans. James warns those who boast of their plans, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow … Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’” (Jas 4:13-15)
Ultimately, God is the only one in control. We can plan, and we can make wise decisions, but it is up to God to determine whether these plans can be accomplished. I’m not one of those who believe that God ‘sent’ this disease, but he certainly allowed it. The reality is, it is a lot less serious than many plagues that have come before. And I believe he may have allowed the coronavirus epidemic to highlight our inability to control our surroundings beyond the authority he has given us. It is our response to this pandemic that has caused the biggest problems; the need to bring everything under our control has led us to losing control. The only question now is, which way will we go?
Is it the way of fear, of retreating further and further into our fortress castles, the way of governments dictating our freedoms, yet pushing more and more people into poverty? Will already-repressive governments across the world move to control their citizens more and more?
Trust in God
As individuals, will we recognise that this world is a fallen and precarious place, one where we need to trust in God, to use our faith? To steal someone else’s saying, it is a faith that is spelt R-I-S-K. A faith where there are no guarantees, except the one that says that God will be always with us, to the end of the age. That he will help us endure. That we will be resurrected for eternal life – a life where there will be no more tears and sickness. It’s not a faith that insures against suffering nor one that promises to keep us from all harm. But one that is built on a solid rock.
This is not a call for an all-out, ignore-the-consequences type of behaviour. Just as wisdom teaches us to put a seatbelt on in the car, following the basic guidelines is sensible, and we need to love our neighbour too. It’s a question of where we put our trust and our faith, relinquishing the idea that we can control our own lives. We need to metaphorically hand over the steering wheel of our lives to God, who loves and cares for us. We need to be ready to hear His voice, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isa 30:21)
We can’t control whether this virus is going to ‘get us’ or not. And that’s scary. But it was an illusion that we could control our lives in the first place.
The lockdown period was probably the hardest time of my life, for painful reasons I won’t go into now, one where I felt completely out of control. One chorus helped me during this time:
‘Because He lives, I can face tomorrow,
Because He lives, all fear is gone,
Because I know, I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living, just because He lives.’2
Hold on to that truth today.
Endnotes
1 Children for sale: How the pandemic is forcing poverty-stricken parents to make desperate choices, by Jennifer Rigby, The Telegraph, 28 September 2020
2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La9Zy917JcQ