Sometimes a disease is just a disease. Asserting that it is heavenly wrath forces some unkind observations. Such as that heaven favors the wealthy, for they suffer far less than the poor, and that the faithful often perish where the heathen survive and prosper.
After a major plague, until we understood the causes of plague, there was usually a decline in the faithful, because as a group they tried to pray the disease away, and died as a group, infecting each other in church.
So while it is not wrong to pray for preservation from plague, it is also very wise to do those things that prevent disease transmission. For it has long been said that heaven helps those who help themselves.
Food for thought.
“Sometimes a disease is just a disease.”
Ditto! While there’s always plenty of evil to go around in this world, it’s rather a stretch to connect moral misbehavior to natural disasters. Now supernatural disasters are a completely different thing, but I haven’t noted any of those recently. Plenty of natural ones. No supernatural ones.
All the same, the author recounts the plague years in a rather interesting fashion. It’s certainly worthwhile knowing the history of these epidemics, just as it is useful to study the characteristics of the influenza epidemic of the early 20th century. That century had no shortage of disasters. There were epidemics, wars, attempted mass annihalations of entire races, even tens/hundreds of millions exterminated by the various flavors of Socialism (Communism, National Socialism etc. excercising their wiles upon their own populations). The “body count” in the 20th century was nothing to sniff at, and every bit of it was caused by man or natural disasters. Again, no supernatural disasters that I’m aware of.
Now, having said that, I’ll be interested to see if the author can make a credible case for supernatural disasters in his/her next installment. God can certainly get directly involved if he wishes. I’m certainly not one to stop him. The point is, that the natural Universe and the disfunctional elements within the world’s population, do a swell job of tearing things up as it is.
I want a front row seat when God gets directly involved. As a recipient of certain small, but not insignificant interventions by God on behalf of my family, I can spot supernatural events easier than most. I would be fascinated in seeing a global intervention on the part of God. Setting the matter of faith aside, it would be inspiring to see a sublime supernatural act. I don’t need it to believe, but it might be useful to those whose faith and situational awareness is poor. As of yet, I haven’t seen a big ‘un, but I appreciate whats come my way already.
God Chastises Us in This Life for Our Good, Not for our Destruction
Sure, not every sort of disease or pestilence should be interpreted as a clear chastisement from God, at least beyond the sense that disease in general is a consequence of our fallen human hature. There has always been disease in human experience, and there always will be. But it was only natural for the people dealing with the Black death to assume that there was, in fact, just that sort of chastisement at hand. The totally unprecedented scale of it alone was a clear "sign" to them. Is God constrained by any "law" to only chastise His wayward children via clearly "supernatural" means, or does His sovereignty extent to employing apparently natural occurences, too, especially when they clearly appear to be on a scale beyond that which has "natural" precedent?
Regarding your objection that epidemic-scale diseases cannot be attributed to any sort of chastisement, unless one is willing to concede that God favors the wealthy in their course: I can only deny that such was the case during the Black Death. As far as I can tell, there was no particular advantage to being wealthy at all. All social classes died like flies in this epidemic. The wealthy tended to live in towns, and the higher population density of towns, of course, was one of the key ingredients in the spread of the plague. Also, the state of medical knowledge and procedures in the 14th Century was utterly insufficient to deal with the Black Plague, and no amount of money could procure medical "solutions" for the wealthy. If anything, the extremely poor rural peasant class had the best chance of survival, as their contact with others was, by the very fact of their lack of neighbors, much more limited than that of village- and city-dwellers.
Something else has long been said. ;0)
Jeremiah 5
Verse 21- Now hear this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears and hear not:
ST. Matthew 13-
Verse 13- Therefore I speak to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
Verse 14- And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of E-sai-as’ which saith, By hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive:
Verse 15- For these people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted and I should heal them.