IS THIS LIFE ALL THERE IS?

By REV TONY ZEKVELD

I look around me and I feel saddened. If all there is to this life is this world, the situation looks grim.

I’m thinking of the lockdowns, and the hundreds of thousands of businesses which are going bankrupt as a consequence. The hotlines for mental health are ringing off the walls. Youth are stuck in their homes unable to connect with one another in person. People are unable to visit their loved ones in hospitals.

There are more lives being affected and lost through the severe measures than from the virus itself.

I heard a word recently which characterizes well the response to the pandemic: reductionistic.

Life is narrowly conceived as merely biotic or physical. We are merely physical beings. And no more than that.

And without God, this is all that life is and this world, all there is.

And you see the harsh consequences of this reductionistic view being applied in the lockdowns: no visits, no in-person school, no in-person worship.

Our culture has lost the sense of what it means to be fully human, being made in God’s image.

No doubt, our civic authorities do not have an easy job. We need to pray for them and encourage them. But it is clear that the measures are shaped by a reductionistic view of man.

God created man in His image; that is, He created us to live in relationship with Him and with one another. He made us not only physical beings, but also emotional, spiritual, social and mental beings. God never intended that we live in isolation from one another.

He created us to live in relationship, in fellowship with one another. This is not reductionistic but a holistic view of man.

Perhaps God sent this virus to show us how empty life is without Him. Perhaps He is using this virus to call us back to live in relationship with Him in Christ. How are we responding to Him? 

In Christ, we discover life is so much fuller and richer and there is eternal life, life beyond this earth, promised for all who trust in Him.

So I invite you with these words:

“Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God” (Psalm 43:5).