Some people say, “If we don’t study history, we are doomed to repeat it.” I suspect history repeats itself regardless of what we do or don’t do, how much we do or don’t understand. History offers story after story about pandemics and plagues, yet here we are in the middle of our own. Though slews of people are writing now—scientists, journalists, thinkers of all stripes—describing the broad effects of plagues throughout human history, we can’t help but feel completely shocked and surprised. But is that a reasonable response? Contemporary writers make something very clear: Just as surely as humans have affected the natural order by opening a Pandora’s Box of microbial antagonists-turned-enemies, plagues have always changed humanity. They have forced new behaviors, evoked violent confrontations, and led to long-term changes within the structure of communities. Tale-telling of our disease wars may not stop them. Nevertheless, in the hearing we can learn from our errors and oversights as a species, counterbalance our intrinsic arrogance with the humility born of knowing we can’t understand everything. We can rediscover the imperative of coming to each other’s aid while becoming more thoroughly human in the process. One very early saga of—not one but TEN—plagues experienced in succession by people more than 3,000 years ago should bring us up to date. Told in the book of Exodus, the second book of the Hebrew scriptures, the ten plagues against the Egyptians are facilitated by Moses with the intention of forcing Pharaoh to end the Israelites’ 400-year captivity as slaves. Unbelievably, it took all ten plagues to do the trick. After a dynamic build-up—including crop-eating grasshoppers, frogs (lots of them), boils that were both disgusting and painful, and the ominously gross bloodying of the Nile, which aptly foreshadowed things to come—the tenth plague salvaged the other nine’s failure to bring about cultural reform. What, finally, was different? In the last plague, people straight-up died. Not just any people either. Children died along with every other first-born in the territory. It was a mournful and miserable plague, a ruthless and unfeeling plague with its own victims peculiarly susceptible where others were spared. Why didn’t everyone die? Why only some, the beloved, the pride of the family? Whoever wrote the story of that first Passover, whoever described these events, clearly knew what could have happened—what does happen—during a plague. Condensed into one terror-stabbed night are all the elements:
I have friends who believe good will come out of this mess we’re in, that our society is in its own moment of systemic change when injustice will be struck down and a new era of reparations will begin. I wish I could feel that positive. My sense is that good and evil are racing neck and neck, and while our desire for the triumph of Beauty and Friendship and Equality and Love is nobler, it also necessitates pure faith—faith in the unseen Power that makes positive transformation possible, that draws out and nourishes the good in people which otherwise often lies obscured within. Perhaps faith is still possible. Plagues clearly do something. The author of Exodus is trying to tell us to stay at home, feed the hungry, resist evil systems of governance and unjust economies and, while wandering the pandemic’s wilderness, hammer out a more meaningful identity within your community. Eventually, after we’ve suffered a long time, we’ll find ourselves in a land rich with resources enough for all, a land worthy of the promise we cling to: God’s victory over death, health for everyone, and freedom for captives whoever they are. Karen Jessee Please leave your comments, your reflections below. Invite your friends to Search and Know!
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