I don’t believe in God. At least I don’t believe that there is a creator, master controller and judge.
I do however find value in a more abstract idea of God. The idea helps me to remember just how insignificant I am and we are and at the same time how powerful.
We all sit at the centre of our own little worlds. Those little worlds can seem very big and very important – after all they are all we have. The reality is that I am a tiny speck in history. Viewed as God would, with an overview of all things across all time, I am insignificant. Indeed we collectively are insignificant, when we think about the span of history, the scale of the planet and the scope of possible universes.
Not only am I pathetically trivial, I am also hopelessly ignorant. I know nothing, compared with what there potentially is to know. I know a lot more than I did last year, but it is still nothing. That realisation is also true for humanity collectively. We are fondling around in the dark. We know orders of magnitude more than we did a century ago, but that only tells us that in a century’s time we will look back on today and scoff at our ignorance. And even in a century, or a millennium, we will still have barely started on learning what there is to learn.
But as well as being small I am also mighty. I am a miracle. How can all those billions of cells be configured exactly as they must be and achieve exactly what is required every second to allow me to breathe, grow, procreate, or think? I am a miracle. You are a miracle. And together we constitute a much bigger miracle and create unimaginable miracles. Indeed that is what we do, all the time, even if those miracles are a tiny fraction of what we could conceivably achieve.
I find this God helpful, not least because I don’t have to stretch to believe anything. When I remember this God, I can stay somewhat humble. I am more curious, and judge less. It reminds me of what really matters: love, kindness and thankfulness, as well as what is possible if we work in teams. It also helps me to accept fate and chance: this God has a wicked sense of humour.
The pandemic has shown this God in a good light, and also might allow for a legacy with some silver linings. It has been less good for some of those trusting in a more traditional God. If God really is a master controller, how can He cause such suffering? If God really does have a chosen race or people, how come the pandemic has afflicted everybody?
Humanity has become so arrogant that we can think we are immune from things like pandemics. Of course we are not. We know nothing. We experiment with the natural world day after day, year after year. Surely things will go wrong from time to time. Most of us live with fresh water out of the tap and constant electricity and phone connection: we didn’t used to have such things, they are not rights, we might lose them at any time and many people don’t have such luxuries. We must be thankful, and humble, and cautious. I am optimistic that one positive legacy of the pandemic is a greater acceptance of the risks of climate change, and more concerted action.
There has been some schadenfreude in observing how the pandemic has brought down the mighty from their seats. Various clerical soothsayers have been left looking rather dumb. Any nation that has declared itself beyond the pandemic has been struck down soon afterwards, especially those that claimed victory through their own brilliance. Modi is the latest victim of this. Trump would have won the election but for the pandemic, and of course it felt so fitting when he was struck down himself.
But Sometimes I think I know better as well, and it is good to be taught some tough lessons. It pains me to acknowledge some pandemic heroes among people I typically despise. Trump himself had two big calls to make as president. With the first, sounding the alarm in January 2020, he failed. The second call was to mobilise maximum resources behind vaccination, and he did that brilliantly, to the benefit of all Americans and ultimately of all humanity. All the rest, the behaviour we scoffed at daily, in practice made little difference. Blue states and red states were affected more or less to the same extent despite their wildly different approaches.
Boris Johnson, another personal victim, also made great calls about the vaccines, and I also applaud his signalled, phased reopening. That contrasts with Wallensky and Fauci over here. According to those experts, one day two weeks ago I could safely do almost nothing, and the next day I could do almost anything. Both statements could not be right. It is no surprise that we end up believing neither.
Finally, Netanyahu, a man not beyond starting a war to save his skin for a few months, made great calls with the vaccine and his passport programme, which served to nudge sceptics to take the shot. Why others seem so reluctant to follow his lead escapes me.
While on the subject of uncomfortable heroes, how about Xi Jinping? That picture of thousands frolicking in a swimming pool in Wuhan last summer is testament to a brilliant programme to control the virus, and must give pause to those of us convinced that our way is always superior. The truth is always more nuanced.
There have been many other heroes it has been more comfortable to get behind. Dr. Leana Wen has been clear and brave throughout, including recently when she berated the CDC for their slow relaxation of advice. Tsai Ing Wen and her Taiwanese leadership team were the only ones who really reacted quickly enough at the start. Adar Poonawalla of India’s Serum Institute worked on vaccines before he had funding, to the benefit of all of us.
The Economist, bless its heart, has been outstanding throughout, including last week when it published a credible model for the true scale of the pandemic. That recalled an interview at the start of the pandemic with Bill Gates. Gates calmly predicted that the pandemic would probably kill 10 million or more, over 3-5 years, concentrated in the poor world. He was spot on, but few listened, and those who listened and could have acted did nothing helpful. Do we learn? Gates recently published a book with a practical plan to alleviate climate change. The Guardian, amongst others, was rather scathing, its main complaint being that Gates is rich.
Gates’ foundation shows the sort of miracles humanity is capable if we only pull together. The pandemic has also spurred wonderful innovation, not least via the vaccines. It is wonderful, but also sad, that it took a pandemic in the rich world to accelerate development of a malaria vaccine. We have all changed behaviour, and have tamed the flu as a result.
The pandemic also accelerated advances in telemedicine and IT enabled education. It has also been partly responsible for a significant positive shift in prevailing economic policy, finally casting aside the damaging Thatcher/Reagan era.
So my God has achieved many miracles at the level of humanity over the time of the pandemic. But the personal miracles are wonderful as well. Who has not woken up one or more days of the last fifteen months with a tell tale deep cough, and wondered if the end might be nigh? I certainly did, and, horrible though that experience is, it does help me to remember to love and be kind (at least occasionally), to be thankful, and to savour all the miracles offered in my life, taking nothing for granted ever again (until I do). Last Saturday I sang once again in public performance while not wearing a mask. What a joy that was.
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