Here are excerpts from a conversation between Francis Collins, NIH Director and Pastor Tim Keller of Redeemer Church  (it was facilitated by Jim Stump on the Podcast Language of God – Where is God in the Pandemic?:

Stump: Both of you are affirming that in times like these, we should be praying for God to help us and we should also be doing our best to develop vaccines and to figure out appropriate treatments. I think our brains are not wired very easily for “both and” situations like this. For audiences that seemed to think prayer or science. It seems like we have to go one way or the other. How does this work on a practical level? Tim, maybe what’s God doing? We billed this event tonight as Where is God in a Pandemic? Is God sitting waiting for us to ask him to help him to do something to help the scientists figure this out? Or how do we understand God’s action and God’s work in times like this in relationship to our prayers and to our efforts?

Keller:  I want you to know that Francis knows a lot more about theology than I know about medicine. So it’s not quite a flip flop here. Well if you ask the question, where is God in the midst of all this?, I mean, you have to start very theologically. And that is Christianity presents the only God that actually comes into this world and makes himself vulnerable, mortal, killable, as it were. He experiences weakness and hunger. He experiences physical weakness, injustice, torture and death. And he does this voluntarily, in order to love us, in order to save us. And because it’s Jesus when he rises from the dead and he goes to heaven. You could say, somebody might say, well, sure, he was in the midst of all of our human suffering, but no longer. Except that when he meets Paul, St. Paul, on the road to Damascus, where Paul gets converted, it’s in Acts chapter nine, he says to Paul, “Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me?” Now, he’d been killing Christians. But he says, “Why are you persecuting me?” And Paul says, you know, he’s looking at this glorious divine figure saying, “how in the world have I been hurting you?” And obviously, it means that he is present in this world, particularly among his people, in such a way that he is so connected to us that he actually is still in the midst of the suffering. He still is. And therefore when you ask where is God, if you talk about the Christian God in the midst of the pandemic, he’s right here. Okay, I know what people say. Well why did he allow it to happen? In John chapter 11…I preached on this the Sunday after 9/11, I always go to John 11. Jesus shows up, Lazarus has died, Mary and Martha immediately start asking, basically asking questions, I mean why did you let this happen? First of all, Jesus does not give an explanation. Now we know what it is because of our…2000 years later, we’ve got the perspective, we know why Lazarus died. But at that point, Jesus does not give an explanation. What he actually does is he prays, he weeps, he helps, and he does so sacrificially because the thing… If you read the passage, the moment he raises Lazarus from the dead, the religious leaders decide that’s the final straw, we have to kill him. So Jesus knows he can’t get, he really cannot get Lazarus out of the grave without putting himself in. So he doesn’t give an explanation. He’s just there in the midst. And he prays and he weeps and he helps and he does it sacrificially. And that’s where we got to where we have to be. Now, here’s the thing, when you see Jesus doing that, without giving an explanation, we don’t know why God’s allowing the pandemic right now. We just know it’s not because he doesn’t love us. And he’s got reasons for why he hasn’t stopped suffering yet. We do know, Romans 8 tells us, someday he’s going to stop all sickness and death, everything. We just don’t know why he hasn’t done it yet. But we do know whatever those reasons are, and he must have good reasons, It’s not because he doesn’t love us. And we should just be following what Jesus said. We shouldn’t be trying to explain why when people ask, “why is God allowing this to happen?” no Christian ought to give a good answer. No Christian ought to say, well because of XYZ. They should pray, help, weep, sacrifice and be right near where everybody else is weeping and suffering.

Collins:  I think that’s beautifully said. I think the other thing is we have to recognize that this is not the most exceptional moment in all of history, even though it may be in our own lifetime. Sometimes I hear a little bit of that reflection that nothing like this bad has ever happened before. Well, goodness, back through human history we’ve had many plagues. Christians have often been at their best in those plagues, by basically doing things that people around them would not do to try to help those who are suffering. And I hope we’re doing that again, in a way that people recognize, although also we need to keep ourselves safe. So yeah, and read the book of Job for heaven’s sake and see whether you think there’s a guarantee that God’s not going to, at times, allow trouble to happen. It happens to us but he promises to be there for us. I have next to my desk a few scriptures that I have, in the course of this pandemic, pulled out and printed up just so that they were close by when I was having one of those moments. And maybe my favorite of all of them is Psalm 46, which most of you will recognize: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble.” That does not say there will be no trouble. It says, “God is an ever present help in trouble.” I am really awfully relieved to know that God is here with us in this trouble, each one of us, in ways that can provide comfort and maybe even help us to learn something that we didn’t know before about what humanity is all about and what our calling is, at a time of trouble like this.

Keller: Mentioning Job is really helpful, because both Job and Jesus are the two places in the Bible where you see someone who’s an innocent sufferer. Now technically Job being a regular human being isn’t perfectly innocent. Nevertheless, Job didn’t deserve, he didn’t do anything to deserve that suffering. And Jesus when he went to the cross didn’t do anything to deserve his suffering. But because both Job and Jesus were faithful to God without knowing why, but they didn’t turn on God they stayed faithful. Again, Job was shaky. It’s really remarkable to see how shaky he was, but in the end, he holds on. And in both cases, when you experience innocent suffering, and in spite of your questions, you still stay faithful to God, and do what you should do, it defeats Satan. In both cases, Satan is defeated because Satan basically says, “oh human beings, they just, they don’t serve you, God, except for themselves. So unless everything is going well in their lives, they’re not going to serve you.” Satan says about Job, “does Job serve God for nothing?” Take away things and so what happens in the end if you are suffering even though it’s innocent and you’re faithful to God, you’re defeating Satan. And you’re learning, and you’re also letting the suffering drive you like a nail further into God’s love. And on the other end, you’ll help people and you will actually find that you’re closer to him even though you don’t know the reason why just like Job did not know the reason why. He was never told. So I think Job and Jesus, two innocent sufferers defeating Satan just by being faithful in the darkness is a….they’re very important models for us.