Did God punish us with the coronavirus pandemic? Was the vaccine a divine miracle?

Americans and others around the world have finally begun to receive inoculations against the coronavirus. We have worried. We have prayed. Many have suffered, and some have died. We yearned for a vaccine. Now we have one, with others on the way. Thank God!

But should we thank God? Was this not a human achievement? Scores of scientists. Billions of dollars. These drugs are the latest fruits of the study of our immune systems, genetics, and pharmaceutical testing and manufacturing. Medical research and our technological culture, not God, came to the rescue.

“A miracle!” say some. But if by “miracle” we mean God intervening in history, suspending the laws of nature to save us, this was no miracle. We had placed our hope in human ingenuity, not divine intervention.

Logic and laws of nature are implicit in the world and the universe. We do not understand it all by any means, but the amount we understand that our ancestors had scarcely an inkling of is amazing. They thought that when plagues struck — and we know from Bible stories such as the exodus from Egypt account that they did — God must be punishing people. Now we know about evolution, communicable diseases, and public-health measures.

Could God inspire scientists without them realizing the source of their insight? Conceivably. But if we want to credit God with intentionally bringing the cure, we must face up to the logical implication that God consciously, perhaps angrily, sent the pandemic in the first place.

No doubt a minority believes that, but we have not — like the Ninevites in the biblical book of Jonah — fasted and repented. Again, in our technological society we quickly turned to medical science. We were saddened but not surprised, moreover, to learn that the virus spread at worship services and choir rehearsals. If God were going to intervene, there were more direct ways to do so.

This is not at all to say that faith does not help. There is still meaning in a world in which we experience love, beauty, compassion and other divine intangibles. Social beings that we are, community upholds and encourages us. “Virtual community” via videostream is better than nothing, helping many of us cope with grief, fear and the general disruption of our lives.

The pandemic, though, brings into focus the need to reconsider our theologies. Even as our forebears millennia ago spoke of God as King, Judge, Father and other human terms, they knew that God was not literally a human being.

All God-talk is metaphorical, saying more about our perceptions of the divine than about the divine itself. In the Psalms we hear God referred to as rock — solid, reliable — and in Jeremiah as an ever-flowing fountain — soothing, refreshing. The New Testament says “God is love” — more than a lover, in other words, but love itself.

In the age of science, as we learn so much about how creation works, we are better off thinking of God less as the author of the laws of nature than as the laws themselves. We will not be disappointed or disillusioned expecting miracles, the suspension of the order of being, if we realize that God is that order, including the values we find in ourselves and the world that give meaning, purpose and hope, to our lives — love, truth, beauty, compassion, morality and more.

The divine order, from the microscopic to the vastness of intergalactic space, is glorious. Our human achievements are part of it, so God’s saving presence remains even without a miracle.

Everything physical in that sacred realm eventually perishes, and living things need nourishment, fuel, to live out our finite lives. The coronavirus does not intend to sicken or kill us; it just plays out its genetic program.

This awe-inspiring order sustains us, and we have evolved to the point of being able to understand it far beyond the understanding of any other creature on earth. That scarcely means, unfortunately, that disease and suffering are not real, as well.

God as order does not punish us with suffering and mortality. God has instead blessed us with the potential to appreciate the profound beauties of life and the universe and to contribute to the store of divine intangibles as partners in ongoing creation.