Why does the good God allow COVID-19?

Thoughtful people can have honest questions about God's goodness because of COVID-19, the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, Cyclone Tracy (1974) and the September 11, 2001 disaster in the USA. So …

What makes him a good God?

Everything he does is 'worthy of approval'. God is the final standard of goodness, holiness and righteousness. It is his very nature – as demonstrated through Scripture and the world around us.

Jesus said 'no one is good but God alone'. After he had created everything in the beginning he declared 'it was very good'. We may find it hard to understand but the truth is that 'The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made'.

Consider how this is worked out in a Covid situation. We are dependent on God for every breath we breathe. He made plants to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. Human beings mainly breathe in nitrogen and oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. So the God-given cycle continues with God maintaining it.

He created the universe in the beginning and provides light through the planets. The scientific discipline of astronomy has helped us gain a much better understanding of the enormous universe. He sustains the cosmos. Life and death are in his hands. Is this pandemic causing people to consider how short life can be and what lies beyond death? God patiently waits for people to come to him in remorse for their sins against him.

Adam and Eve fouled it up for the whole universe.

When God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he gave them the choice to eat from any tree in the garden except 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die'.

They ate from that tree and death and sin entered the human race with disease like we are experiencing. There was increased pain in childbirth, cursing of the ground with thorns and thistles. Its origin is from our first parents who disobeyed God's command.

What were the consequences of sin-disobedience entering the human race? Romans 8:19-21 explains that creation is waiting for God's children to be revealed. Until then, creation is subject to God's curse (including COVID-19, SARS, Ebola, rabies, the plague, and Black Death). 'Glorious freedom from death and decay' awaits God's future kingdom.

Bill Gates, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, considers 'Covid-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we've been worried about. I hope it's not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise…. It can kill healthy adults in addition to elderly people with existing health problems…. Covid-19 is transmitted quite efficiently. The average infected person spreads the disease to two or three others - an exponential rate of increase'.

I disagree about the origin. The great harm to creation brought on by Adam and Eve's sin resulted in the curse of disease for plant and human life. Yes, there may be transmission from animals to human beings but the origin is not with Mother Nature but with the first human beings.

Fadela Chaib, spokesperson for the World Health Organisation, told a news briefing in Geneva: 'All available evidence suggests the (Covid) virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else'.

The media and Mother Nature

Who are the media blaming for the virus?