John Piper

What can we learn from the Ebola crisis about containing viruses?

The community played a key role in stopping transmission of Ebola, and, in the United States, the community practicing social distancing has definitely flattened the curve [with Covid-19]. We are doing better than those terrible projections, the worst projections, and I think it is because of that social distancing.

One of the biggest lessons with Ebola was that you have are going to stop the virus from spreading. Our social distancing, our mitigation, is to flatten the curve so that everybody does not get infected at once. Community transmission will still occur. So it is just to slow it down, not to stop it. This virus is here, it is going to come back, and it is going to come back according to its timing, not ours. It’s a new reality, so we need to adapt and we need to change…but there will still be significant difficulties and pain and where there are great challenges, there are also great opportunities. So the Holy Spirit will be present in ways that we do not know. There is terrible suffering with this, but God will take something like a great calamity and work in ways that we do not anticipate or know. We are a people of hope, and this, too, will pass. We need to support each other through it, and really be closer to our Lord in that way, [We need to] realize our Lord is present. Even in great suffering, our Lord is always present.

to work together with the community and with healthcare, How does a medical and we need to support each doctor end up teaching other and go out of our way to a class on C.S. Lewis at do more than our fair share. Brown University? Unfortunately, in the middle of I absolutely love this course. difficulty, the devil loves to It has been a total blast. We have cause division, hatred, and anthree sections going with about ger, [especially] in communities 65 students. I consider it a litwhere there is suffering and tle bit of a miracle, a little bit people are focusing on blame of the work of the Holy Spirit, and hate. There is a spiritual that we could have a course like aspect. It is not just all political this at Brown. It is amazing. and social. Spiritual warfare is real, and we have to look towards Christ, and not give in Credit: Encyclopedia Britannica At Brown University, Dr. Flanigan teaches a popular seminar on the works of CS Lewis. I remember thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if students at Brown could read The Space to [division]. Some people reTrilogy, by C.S. Lewis?” That ally give in to it and all they want to do is suffering. As the curve is being flattened, series strikes me as quite the antidote for talk about recrimination and blame and we now need to walk our way backwards. our modern secular humanism. I wondered anger, and stoke the fires of hate. if it was possible. I got some advice from How has the pandemic impacted a faculty member [about submitting an Do you think we are doing a students at Brown, especially application for a course]. I did, and they good job in the United States, Christian students? accepted it. of containing the coronavirus? We are social beings. We love to be with On my first day walking to the first

I think we are. The curve has been flateach other, and we love to share our space class, I thought to myself, “What am I tened in so many places. Look at New York, with each other, and we love to pray with doing? I don’t know who’s going to want by far and away, the epicenter. It was absoeach other. We know that Jesus asked us to take it, and I don’t know how this is lutely hammered, just terrible how the virus to pray with each other. It is hard to do going to go.” I walked into the class—and just swept in with massive community that by Zoom. You can, and that is good, the typical seminar is maxed out at 18 to transmission. And the projected death toll but our hearts are nurtured when we are 20 students—and there were about 28 was so much lower than it could have been. with each other and we share our friendship students, some sitting on the floor. I said, They have flattened the curve and have with each other, and share that friendship “This is shocking. If you think it is shockturned the corner. It is a beautiful thing. in our faith. ing that I want to teach a course on C.S.

Flattening the curve does not mean we This is a hard, challenging time. Now Lewis, it’s even much more shocking that you all are here and interested in battle for the soul of the subject.

taking this course.” Junior Devil is “delirious with

The students really love joy” over the start of the war.

talking about C.S. Lewis and Screwtape tells him not to get

faith, and their questions about carried away, that there are times

faith. The students lead the diswhen war may be a great thing

cussions. That is what this is all

about. It is not about C.S. Lewis; into their roles. [But Screwtape

it’s about giving them the opporsays] it works the other way, too,

tunity to talk about faith.

because fear and anxiety can play

When you read The Screwtape Letters, and yet it is a very small part of The Screwis not the real battle. | cu one of the things that is interesting is how tape Letters. Of course, the real battle is the

in that the Enemy [the Enemy being God] can, all of a sudden, During the pandemic, take somebody who has never there have been several Credit: Kenneth C. Zirkel considered that the Enemy [God] social media posts and The Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University might be real, available to him, articles that quoted C.S. and calling him—he can realize Lewis in regards to his that is the case—and they will writings about life during World little the war is featured. Screwtape is have lost their subject forever. War II and the threat of an tempting his subjects during World War Screwtape tells Junior Devil, that atomic bomb. What do you think II. He is in London, the blitz is going on, although the world’s drama is real and Lewis would say to us today? there are all sorts of disaster and calamity, present, not to lose sight of the fact that it