The whole COVID-19 situation threw me into panic mode. On the Internet bad news are followed by another bad news or worse news. Although there are many articles published about the hacks and survival guides during this time, I didn’t see many good news or reports of hope. That’s when I knew what I had to do when feeling panic — try to see the hope and share it with other people.
I believe in God. Please allow me to first define what I mean by “God”.
Our existence depends on the existence of many other things. For example, your existence depends on the existence of your parents, the existence of air and the existence of water among many other things, which are the conditions for your existence. Therefore, our existence is contingent. These conditions themselves are also contingent because their existence also depends on other things. For example, the existence of air depends on the existence of the Earth. However, these second-level conditions are also contingent things, which in turn depend on some third-level conditions. If we want, we can extend this chain of dependency forward again and again.
Does this chain have an end? If it doesn’t, that means there are an infinite number of steps that need to be fulfilled before we can exist, which means we cannot exist. But we do exist, therefore this chain of dependency has an end. The existence of this end does not depend on any other things and it is not contingent. This end is what I mean by God.
Things in this world exist because of God. God supports the existence of our world not because he needs the world (as shown above, the existence of God does not depend on any other things). This voluntary act of support without wanting to get some recompense back is what we humans call “love”. Therefore, we can say that God created the world and supports the existence of it out of pure unselfish love.
The love of God is where the hope lies amid this desperate time caused by COVID-19. God will turn every bad thing into something good. God allows some bad things to happen so that greater good can emerge from them that otherwise cannot happen, even if we cannot see this or understand this right now. This hope is invisible, intangible and maybe irrational, but this hope is real, as real as our own existence. If God loves us, what’s there to fear?
Because God loves us, he wants us to have fulfilling lives in all circumstances, especially amid difficult time. Instead of spending time in panic, concern, depression, anxiety and wasting our lives away, God wants us to enjoy every day to the fullest. You definitely have the means to enjoy your day to the fullest and find a lot of good things in it. Forget about tomorrow and yesterday, but only focus on today! Let today be the best day in your life so far! Although many things are out of our control right now, this is not out of our control!
Our lives can actually be better because difficult time helps us recognize what’s really meaningful and of value. When things that we normally depend on become unreliable, we learn to discover what’s truly reliable that will never be shaken. That’s the foundation on which stands our hope.
In the end, I want to securely put this hope in your heart. Be joyful!
References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#Argument_from_contingency Argument from Contingency by Thomas Aquinas
