In March 2020, a billboard outside the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, posed the question, “Is the coronavirus a judgment from God?” Even though the question was followed by reference to Revelation 15:1–8, which refers to “the seven angels with the seven plagues,” the pastor, Robert Jeffress, said the coronavirus is not one of the plagues in Revelation. Nevertheless, he said, like all natural disasters, it can ultimately be traced to sin.¹ John Piper, chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota claimed that “God sometimes uses disease to bring particular judgments upon those who reject him and give themselves over to sin.” While he does not say there is always a direct correspondence between being positive for the virus and an individual’s personal sin (there are faithful Christians, he says, who succumb to the virus), he believes God sometimes uses disease to bring judgment on those who give themselves over to sin and uses homosexuality as an example.² Taking a different approach, R. R. Reno, editor of First Things, believes the devil is at work in the “false god of saving lives,” demonstrated in the “mass shutdown of society” to fight the virus. He suggests a certain kind of passivity in allowing people to risk their lives—and the lives of others—when facing the threat of death that accompanies this disease. “There is,” he wrote, “a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost,” and criticizes the “ill-conceived crusade against human finitude and the dolorous reality of death.”³

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瘟疫和对邻居的关注

2020年3月，德克萨斯州达拉斯第一浸信会教堂外面的广告牌提出了一个问题：“冠状病毒是上帝的审判吗？” 尽管这个问题后面提到启示录15：1-8，其中提到“有七个灾祸的七个天使”，牧师罗伯特·杰弗里斯（Robert Jeffress）说，冠状病毒不是启示录中的灾祸之一。不过，他说，像所有自然灾害一样，它最终可以追溯到犯罪。^1个明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯市伯利恒学院和神学院院长约翰·派珀声称：“上帝有时会利用疾病对那些拒绝他并将自己屈服于罪恶的人做出特别的判断。” 虽然他没有说对病毒呈阳性与个人的个人罪恶（总是有忠实的基督徒屈服于病毒）之间总是存在直接的对应关系，但他相信上帝有时会利用疾病来对那些放弃自己的罪恶，以同性恋为例。²《First Things》编辑RR Reno采取了不同的方法，他认为魔鬼正在“拯救生命的假神”中工作，这在“社会大规模关闭”中与病毒作斗争得到了证明。他建议采取某种消极态度，让人们在面对伴随这种疾病的死亡威胁时冒着生命危险以及他人生命的危险。他写道：“存在着不惜一切代价挽救生命的情感主义的魔鬼面”，并批评“对人类有限和残酷的死亡现实的不明智的十字军东征。” ³