The Theology of Pandemic: #1 - The Return of D.V.: Deo Volente

The Theology of Pandemic: #1

The Return of D.V.: Deo Volente

I often feel like my mind is a type of junk yard where things are left laying about in a disheveled manner until they are needed or I happen to stubble across them. Yesterday, as I sat in the bathtub soothing my body and my anxiety (I know too much information), I wandered past a long forgotten memory. The memory was fuzzy and came to me as a question, "In the old days, wasn't there an abbreviation that churches placed at the bottom of a schedule or calendar that meant "If the Lord wills it?" 

As it turns out old documents of many kinds were often signed "D.V." It is short for the Latin phrase Deo Volente, which translates, "If the Lord wills it." Letters were signed in this way as a hope, or prayer, that the letter would arrive in the hands of its addressee. Schedules and plans bore this note. If you search "Deo Volente" in Google for an image boats and ships come up bearing the name - a prayer to return home safe.

Over the past weeks as the Covid-19 pandemic has emerged into an event rivaling the global geographic scope of either world war many plans have been cancelled and schedules rearranged or erased. Graduations, proms, weddings, funerals, and other countless events and milestone moments have been upended. Schools have closed and church services have moved online.  Groups have been redefined from 500, to 100, to 10, each time erasing more and more of the anticipated gatherings of our lives.  As I write this post somewhere between 25-33% of the United States is being told to stay at home. All of life has been altered. Our schedules, plans and routines, which felt predictable and secure, have become tentative if they continue at all.

Added to the upheaval of deleted calendars and cancelled events is mortality. In this moment the frailty of human life is staring us in the face daily. We are concerned for our elders and those at high risk. We try to keep our families safe. Every cough bears with it concern. Each news report and press conference raises anxiety. The long incubation of the virus produces a protracted state of uncertainty. All of this connected to human health - yours, mine, our families, everyone. If you have any doubt about it think about how many times someone has asked you about your health or told you to "stay safe" or "stay healthy" in the past week, and then ask yourself how many times that happened before this pandemic.

Somewhere along the line signing letters and plans "D.V." fell out of favor and disappeared. I suspect it was a casualty of modern life. As deadly diseases that were once common became eradicated and advances in health care made life longer, healthier and seemingly more predictable there was less need to say "If the Lord wills it." As communication became reliable, and ever faster there was no need to jot "D.V." at the end of a letter as a prayer that it would arrive. As life got busier, travel more common, and as time became an increasingly valuable commodity we felt more and more like we controlled our schedules rather than God.

Yet here we are in our modern age having meetings on Zoom and posting on Facebook all the while being plunged into the human experience of the past where schedules and plans, and even our own health and life was uncertain. We are back in the the days of "D.V."  We have re-entered the time of "If the Lord wills it."

In the fourth chapter of the New Testament book of James we read:

"Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil." (James 4:13-16 - NIV)

James knows that the first step in forming a Theology of Pandemic is to realize that everything is dependent on the Lord's will. Understand me here, I'm not saying the pandemic is the Lord's will or that God is the cause of suffering. I am saying that the control we think we have over our plans and schedules, and even our health and life are an illusion of the world we live in. Those in older times knew this well, and it prompted them to write "D.V." on their plans. The mist like nature of our lives caused them to hold their schedules loosely and say, "If the Lord wills it." We might do well to do the same in these uncertain times.


Joel K

D.V.