Wow, I don’t even know where to begin.
First I must express my profound disappointment that in this worldwide time of crisis the editors of my hometown newspaper decided to print a letter (Ron Schmidt, March 21: “Coronavirus scare is well beyond faith”) that was so devoid of what people crave right now – hope – that it boggles the mind. While the writer is certainly entitled to his opinion, what we do not need right now is another missive on the hopeless randomness of life on this planet. Shame on you for giving air to the failed philosophy of fatalism, a philosophy benefiting neither the person who holds it nor your readers desperately looking for hope.
What we truly need is a path to the hope, the surety that we will overcome what we now face. What does lead us to that path? Faith, the very thing this writer demeans. Faith in the majestic personal God who created something out of nothing, order out of chaos, beauty out of darkness. How can one look around at all the intricate interconnectedness of this universe and doubt for a second that beyond it, sustaining it, and sovereignly ruling it, is a powerful and eternal God?
Our universal experience tells us that man is the problem. Mankind brought evil into this world, without question. But those of us with that dreaded word “faith,” we know that while we are the problem, the solution is not randomness, but God
My prayer is that this letter writer will receive the grace of the God of creation, that he might wake up tomorrow and realize that yes, we will get through this, and there is much more beyond this than the here and now. Eternity awaits those given the precious gift of God’s grace and God’s hope. The true hero is not the one who prostrates themselves before that altar of oblivion, but the one who bows before the God who created him and does His will.
