Hantaviruses, named after a river in South Korea, are a family of more than twenty different viral species. Almost all are linked to infection by rodents, typically rats and mice, through dried urine and droppings.

One strain, however, known as the Andes virus, is thought to spread by human-to-human transmission, although rarely. In late 2018, an outbreak in Argentina was traced back to a single person who is thought to have unwittingly spread it to thirty-four confirmed cases, with eleven deaths.

As I’m sure you know, a cruise ship called the MV Hondius has made headlines this week because of another suspected hantavirus outbreak onboard that has killed three people so far and made several others very sick. Health officials in at least a dozen countries are now monitoring dozens of passengers who disembarked from the ship before the outbreak was fully understood; at least seven of them are Americans who returned home.

Should you be worried?

Since hantavirus is difficult for humans to transmit, one health official assured us, “There’s no need for concern over a global outbreak.” According to another, “There’s really no risk to anyone who is not on that ship.”

But in a metaphorical sense, we’re all on that “ship.” From Ted Turner’s death to Jeffrey Epstein’s possible suicide note to tornadoes that devastated southern Mississippi and a deadly volcano eruption, mortality is in the headlines today. As it will be again tomorrow.

Here’s why this news is not such bad news for believers.

The power of “positive affect treatment”

The Washington Post reported this week on a “promising new depression therapy” that “focuses on finding paths to joy.” The article notes that while depression treatments seek mostly to decrease negative emotions, a recent study found that increasing positive ones might be more effective.

“Positive affect treatment,” or PAT, is designed to help people find more meaning, connection, and joy in their lives. Patients are taught a variety of skills that boost mood, such as introducing positive activities into their lives and focusing on their enjoyment of these experiences. Clinical trials indicate that this can help people change the neural pathways in their brains to feel more positive emotions and less negative ones.

Let’s utilize this approach in a spiritual context.

Evil and suffering are typically considered the greatest impediments to faith in an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God. But there are positive ways of reframing the issue. Suffering invites Christians to:

• Believe in the God who “comforts us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:4a).
• Seek to “comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (v. 4b).
• Endeavor to remain “steadfast under trial,” knowing that we will then “receive the crown of life” (James 1:12).
• Remember that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).

But there’s a very big catch.

“Grace to help in time of need”

In The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, the American sociologist Philip Rieff showed that our culture has shifted from a society built on shared moral commitments to one focused on psychological self-actualization and personal happiness. In such a mindset, you are reading this article to feel better about yourself and your day, to find a word of hope and help as you navigate your life.

But what you and I need far more than encouraging words about God is a transforming daily experience with him.

I cannot overstate how important I think this is.

Every major religion in human history invites its followers to believe the teachings of its long-deceased founder and apply them to their lives in the therapeutic hope that they will profit in so doing.

By contrast, Christianity declares that our Founder is still as alive and active in our world today as when he launched our faith. We believe that he is right now praying for us (Romans 8:34), forgiving all we confess to him (Luke 5:20; cf. 1 John 1:9), speaking to us by his indwelling Spirit (John 16:13), and giving us “grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

Now he wants us to trust our suffering to him as he trusted his suffering to his Father with the prayer, “Not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). When we do, something extraordinary happens: We commit ourselves unconditionally to Jesus just as he commits himself unconditionally to us.

“The reason for our loving God”

Think about it: What can you do for the “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16)? What do you have that he does not have? What can you do better than he can?

Your Father does not love you for what you can do for him—he loves you because you are his. He loves you when you disappoint him and frustrate him. He loves you when you don’t do what he wants you to do and do what he doesn’t want you to do.

Suffering presents us with a unique opportunity to love our Lord in precisely the same way.

Not for what he can do for us, but for who he is. Not for our good, but for his glory. When we trust Jesus even when he disappoints us and obey him even when we don’t want to, we reciprocate his unconditional love for us.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) observed,

“The reason for our loving God is God.”

Why do you love God today?

Quote for the day:

“The true measure of loving God is to love him without measure.” —St. Bernard of Clairvaux

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