Amidst the hysteria of a global pandemic, biblical scholar and research fellow N.T. Wright reflects upon the Covid-19 moment and shows us the pattern of life and behavior in the kingdom of God—a pattern from which many contemporary Christian responses to crisis diverge. It’s a rallying cry to look to Jesus rather than signs of “the End,” and a reminder that such crises do not alter the Christian’s call to bear God’s image.

Throughout ancient history (and in some places in the world today), disasters are interpreted as the actions of angry gods punishing people for failing to bring the right sacrifice to the temple or offer the correct prayer, or for committing some act of immorality so repugnant that the pantheon saw fit to quash it.

The ancient philosophers of the Greco-Roman world thought differently. The Stoics took calamity in stride as much as they could, refusing to grasp for control of matters beyond their control. The Platonists saw this world as shadow and illusion, less real than the world beyond. Then there were the Epicureans, who opted against cause-and-effect speculations, and chose instead to enjoy life as much as they could while they had it.

We see manifestations of these philosophical strands in our own day. Much of the West marches to the Epicurean drum of pleasure. We hunker and procure what comforts we can as we wait out disasters. Others take the route Plato described—even a number of Christians: This less-than-ideal world is not our ultimate destination, so let’s use common sense and continue with life.

There are some who, in the face of a global pandemic, have stopped asking “Why?” and started asking “What?” People want to know what they can do to help. In the United Kingdom, for example, 500,000 people volunteered to assist the National Health Service with non-specialized services and errands. In some cases, volunteering has cost them their lives.

What is remarkable is that people who perform such service to humanity are behaving much like early Christians did in ancient Rome. When plagues invaded cities, the rich would flee and the Christians would stay behind to care for the sick and the dying—to the astonishment of the ancient world. They would explain that someone named Jesus had given his life for them, and they were now willing to give their lives for others. And some of them did. This kind of response to a plague was unheard of, which is why so many were drawn to the Jesus path his followers were treading, despite the empire’s frequent attempts at persecution.

Today’s broader society has, quite movingly, taken up the charitable bits of the Christian story (in education, medicine, and social services). Simultaneously, many of today’s “Christian” responses have been less reminiscent of ancient Christian handling of a plague and more akin to its pagan and philosophical neighbors. Many Christians are jumping in on the blame game, which fuels the shallow but influential culture wars. Talk of “end times” is reaching a fever pitch again, which has led people to set their gaze on heaven and tough it out on earth until they can shuffle off this mortal coil and embrace the celestial expanse beyond. Very Platonic. Others commandeer Old Testament texts and decry the brand of immorality they find most reprehensible—presumably sins that “others” are committing.

There are numerous denouncements throughout the Old Testament that link Israel’s calamities to their disobedience (often worshipping the idols of surrounding nations and indulging all attendant deviations that Yahweh forbade). Prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel framed Israel’s fall to the Babylonians as God’s punishment for Israel’s refusal to abide by the covenant promises that God laid out. The nation insisted on rebelling, and their sin led to their exile.

The logic that many Christians in our own time follow is that if this is how it worked in the context of the Babylonian exile, then, naturally, it can be applied to today, whether on a more localized, even individual scale, or on a grander, global scale. Thus we have some Christians proffering extrapolations from crises like the Covid-19 pandemic.

Instead of treating tragedies as signs of God’s judgment and then presuming to divine exactly which set of sins provoked that judgment, perhaps we should pause and consider other portions of the Old Testament. When we do, we discover that our tidy cause-and-effect explanations don’t work.

The book of Psalms begins with a poem that shows us the fates that await good people and evil people. But there are other psalms, like Psalm 73, which lament the wicked succeeding and going untouched by tragedy while the righteous are thwarted and oppressed. Psalm 88 is the grimmest psalm in the book. The writer has nothing hopeful to say about his situation, nor any praise for God. These psalms add complexity to our understanding of life.

And then there’s the book of Job. When Job suffers tremendous tragedy, his friends tell him this is God’s punishment for some wrongdoing. But the book includes Job’s friends being rebuked by God for their wrong assessment.

When Elijah took refuge in the home of the widow (1 Kings 17), her son died, leading her to believe that her decision to shelter a prophet had caused the tragedy. When Elijah brought the boy back to life, he put that inkling of simplistic cause-and-effect thinking to death.

Jesus of Nazareth stood at a pivotal transition point between the Old and New Testaments, between the older, partial covenants and the newer, fuller one that he was ushering in. We hear in his teachings, laid out in the gospels, some echoes of Israel's ancient prophets. Speculation by the Jews of his day that Jesus was Ezekiel or one of the prophets attests to the familiar ring.

And yet, Jesus departs drastically from stern, direct indictments of past sins and looks ahead at the kingdom of God that’s coming now. We see signs of the coming kingdom throughout the Gospel accounts, most pronounced in the book of John, where water turns to wine, the lame walk, the blind see, and the dead are raised. These miracles pointed to the fact that something new and hopeful was en route.

We see this transition from Old Testament paradigm to New in stories like the healing of the blind man in John 9. Jesus’ disciples asked if the man’s sins or his parents’ sins were to blame for his inability to see. The disciples expected confirmation of their self-satisfied preconceptions about divine retribution, but Jesus showed them something different:

“He didn’t sin,” replied Jesus, “nor did his parents. It happened so that God’s works could be seen in him.” Jesus wasn’t preoccupied with a man’s past sins but focused more on what God was going to do about it. He healed the man.

Jesus recapitulated the entire prophetic tradition in his final warning to the Jewish people. He urged them to drop the ethno-national revolt against the empire and put their feet on the path of peace that God, in Christ, was forging. Following this path of peace means following Jesus and trusting him. He talked about wars and famines and earthquakes not so people would obsess over these signs and make sense of them, but so they would trust him, whatever tumult may be around the corner. “Follow me,” he said.

This is beautifully exemplified in the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. He told them to make “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven” and “forgive us our trespasses” their daily prayer. Seeking the kingdom and repenting does not suddenly become our modus operandi when there are rumors of war (or, we could add, a global pandemic); it is a way of life. Seeking the kingdom and asking forgiveness are what it means to walk along Jesus’ path of peace, and this is what we invite others into.

Jesus’ death and resurrection, the sign of Jonah, is the one we need to keep before us as our point of orientation. Jesus viewed this event as the ultimate call to repentance. Moreover, he told his followers that his second coming would be sudden and unexpected—not telegraphed with a sudden spasm of awesome and terrible signs to watch for. The Lord’s Prayer delivers us from the diviners who try to decode a message between the lines of newspaper headlines.

We must keep Jesus at the center of the frame and venture out from there. The moment we start obsessing over what’s happening in the world without also fixing our gaze on Jesus is the moment we become susceptible to apocalyptical theories that crowd Jesus out.

This was exactly what Jesus warned his followers about in Luke 17 —about people who look at the world around them shouting, “Look here!” “Look there!” The sign we need to be looking to and building our lives around is Jesus himself. In the messianic moment of death and resurrection, and all the miracles and kingdom announcements preceding it, God provided Jesus: the greatest sign of all, the sign that all other signs point toward. When he is not the central sign, we will look for other events to fill in the gaps. The explanations we come up with might sound clever or pious, but they miss the mark.

In Acts 11, Luke writes about the church in Syrian Antioch. One of the leaders in that community revealed a prophecy the Spirit of God had given him: A severe famine was coming. Ancient texts from that time tell us that, as a matter of a historical fact, there was a famine during the reign of Claudius (mid-first century) and it was among the worst in that era.

When the church in Antioch heard about the famine, what was their reaction? Did they call it a sign and begin forecasting what it meant for the future? Did they call it a sign from God that people need to repent? Did they call it a chance to evangelize to a frightened world? No. They asked several questions: Who will be most vulnerable? How can we help? Whom will we send?

Rather unspiritual, right? But if God’s kingdom brings the restoration of all creation, then this church in Antioch was very much about their Father’s business. This approach is much closer to the original vision of kingdom people that Paul showed us and Jesus modeled than sitting back and trying to answer questions about why the famine was happening.

God doesn’t have some separate plan utterly divorced from human activity. He wants to work with us and through us. Some Christians watch for the signs of their time in their own generation (e.g., Covid-19 and its attendant social and political upheaval) and they figure out what it does and doesn’t mean. Others say it’s time to call people to repent because God’s coming soon.

Both of these camps miss the intimate intertwining of providence and atonement. God’s supervising what’s going on and he also is calling the world to repent. But he accomplishes his mission of bringing the kingdom by partnering with us.

Misinterpretations of oft-invoked verses muddy the picture of what of life in Christ is like. Romans 8:28 is a perfect example. The New International Version renders Paul’s Koine Greek as “in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” It communicates that, whatever is going on, things are going to work out fine for people who love God. But the word “work” in this context is synergeo. It doesn’t connote things working out for someone’s benefit, but a working together, a collaboration, in this case a synergy between God and people. God doesn’t do what he wants in the world regardless of people, time, or place, but by working with and through people in particular times and places to accomplish his purposes.

Once we understand this, we realize we are not confronted with an exhortation to retain a Stoic disposition in the face of setbacks in Romans 8:28. It’s much more a reminder of the active role we play in God’s purposes, that we act and work with him. Like the church in Antioch, we don’t need to discern a “Why?” before looking to answer practical questions, such as how to help, and who to task with doing so.

These works are not the grace-tainting variety which some traditions fiercely guard against. These works are the marks of people bearing the God image. We are called into hard work, knowing that God is mightily at work within us as we do.

Asking “Why?” in the face of crisis and attempting to answer it without asking, like the church in Antioch asked, “Who is at risk?” and "What can we do?” and “Whom should we send?” assumes a view of the Christian who is a passive observer and beneficiary only. The posture of passive recipient is a different understanding of life in the kingdom of God than what Jesus taught about and exemplified. Jesus invites us into something deeper.