Covid-19 and The Tree of the Garden in Modern Human Civilisation

by Dr Park Seong-Won, President of Gyeongan Graduate University

Twenty years ago, when the world shifted from the T 1900s to the 2000s, we were excited that human history was entering the 21st century, the new millennium. At that time, there was optimism that “the infinite development of technology would make enormous improvement in human life” during the 21st century, and scepticism that “although technology might develop, without caution in consumerism and ecological destruction, we might be in danger of more diseases and ecological threats.”

But what has happened? Unfortunately, as soon as we entered the 2000s, the world fell into a war spiral – with the Gulf War, 9/11 terrorist attacks, Afghanistan war, Iraq war etc. – and the economy was polarised by neo-liberal economic globalisation and continued ecological destruction, resulting in serious ecological crises such as climate change and fine dust. In addition, it was foreseen that new life-threatening diseases which we have never experienced before might arise, and that is now becoming a reality.

Dilemma of the Modern Human Civilisation

Twenty years ago, I was working at the World Communion of Reformed Churches, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and whenever I had an opportunity to preach at either a European or Korean congregation, I preached a sermon entitled "The Fruit of the Tree of Garden of the 21st Century" based on Genesis 3. At that time, in this particular sermon, I mentioned the disease “Ebola” and warned that if we would not change the path of current human civilisation, we would face far more serious diseases than with Ebola. Ebola is a terrifying disease with a fatality rate of 50 to 90 percent that first appeared in the central African Congo in 1976. It swept Africa in 1998, just around the corner of 2000, putting the world in a state of panic. Ebola did not come under the spotlight this year as the world was engulfed with COVID-19, but it actually reappeared in Congo on August 1, 2018, setting a record of 3,470 confirmed cases, 2,287 dead, 1,171 survivors. A record of 1/3 of confirmed cases ended in death and was declared terminated in June 25, 2020.

Twenty years ago, a warning was issued about future diseases; unfortunately, this was followed by a series of new, scary diseases. SARS in 2002, MERS in 2013, the Zika virus in 2015, Ebola again in 2014, and COVID-19 in late 2019, just a few days before 2020, resulting in an indefinite stop to all systems around the world.

Is this image of us wearing masks during our daily lives the new normal? Is social distancing, for humans who are social animals, the new normal? This situation is clearly abnormal – an absolutely abnormal reality.

Many people say "this too will pass!" and hope that the situation will soon end and we will be able to go back to living like we used to. But it won’t. Some say human history should now be divided into BC and AC – before corona and after corona – by comparing COVID-19 to BC and AD. This unparalleled reality is unlikely to change easily, with the world's nations sealed off by a virus which was never seen before. Even the world wars could not shut down all systems for so long and close national borders. Are we going to live like this? Or do we wish to change something?

These days, there are a lot of analyses and prospects predicting post-corona life style. However, after seeing most of these analyses, I am doubtful whether we actually understand the core of the corona crisis. A leading Korean broadcast programme "Programme on the Way of the Republic of Korea After Corona," focuses on just how to adapt to the corona era rather than look for alternatives. The whole world is focusing on vaccine development in response to COVID-19. Of course, vaccine development is important to prevent the spread of the virus and treatment development is also of importance. Nonetheless, this is a defensive strategy, not a pro-active strategy to overcome COVID-19. What is of more importance is not to adapt and live at this point brought by the Corona crisis, but to thoroughly find out the root cause of Corona and find an alternative way to deal with it.

Many different assumptions are said in relation to the origin of the coronavirus – from the Wuhan Market in China, leaked from Wuhan Virus Research Institute near Wuhan Market, and that the world's dominant forces intentionally spread the virus for population control and digital control and so on. Current information does not tell exactly what the real cause is but most commonly points out the ecological crisis as the root cause. Precisely, the fact that humans have invaded the realm of nature too deeply is an important cause that has led to COVID-19.

All modern diseases, such as SARS, MERS and COVID-19, are caused by viruses which originally existed only in animals but crossed species boundaries from animals to humans. The question is how did it happen?

Twenty years ago, also quoted in the sermon "The Fruit of the Tree of Garden of the 21st Century," in 1998, a lab in Canada examined how the animal virus, Ebola, came to humans, and when humans damaged the deep jungles of Africa for resource development, the virus that lived there moved to the monkeys and then to the humans in contact with these monkeys. The new diseases that humans are experiencing now are the cost and boomerang phenomena that humans exploited nature for development and growth.

Originally, humans are meant to coexist with nature. However, modern civilisation has gone beyond co-existence with and utilisation of nature. For development and economic greed, humans have ruthlessly damaged nature and disturbed ecological principles through genetic manipulation, forcing nature to invade into human territory. In addition to the human metastasis problem of animal viruses, today farmers are really struggling with animals when farming. In other words, humans are desperately fighting for food with animals, and animals are fighting for food with humans.

Animal counterattack began because humans took away their unique places where animals used to live. The violation of human animal habitats is the first cause of SARS or MERS, or the outbreak of COVID-19, which we are currently experiencing, and the uncontrolled violation of nature by humans’ beings has brought about this situation.

There is another cause besides human encroaching on the boundaries of animal life. It is the development of human technology, especially convergence technology. The Wuhan Virus Research Institute is constantly suspected as the source of the COVID-19 virus leak. Ralph S. Baric, professor of mechanics at North Carolina University and Zhengli-Li Shi, researcher at the Institute for Special Pathogens and Biological Safety in Wuhan Virus Research announced that strains of the coronavirus in Chinese bats can infect people and cause pneumonia and lung damage in 2015 on Nature Medicine, a renowned international journal of medicine. The new virus made here is not a naturally occurring virus but a virus combined by human technology.

According to another source, there was a theory that COVID-19 is a combination of AIDS and other viruses, and unfortunately, the treatment drug given to the No. 1 COVID-19 patient in Korea was a cure for HIV and AIDS; news reports stated this patient was completely cured. It is also worth noting that Remdesivir, an Ebola treatment, is constantly being mentioned in relation to COVID-19 treatments.

A Theological Reflection on Dilemma of the Modern Human Civilisation

We need to pay attention to a Biblical insight with regard to the dilemma of modern human civilisation.

First, Let’s see Genesis 1:6-7.

And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters”. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. (Genesis 1:6-7)

The keyword of Genesis 1:6-7 is “divide.” The waters above the firmament have been divided from the water under the firmament. This division of the realm of sharing appears steadily if you look at the process of creation. Not only here but all throughout Genesis, we can see that God divides all creation into appropriate places, saying, "God shares light and darkness, shares the day and the night, shares the sun and the moon, divides the seasons.

As we can see from this unprecedented rainy season, things in the universe should not be in one place at a time. Everything should be spatially distributed properly. The ecology of the universe created by God is designed this way.

Here, we have an important point to make clear. We clearly note here that literal meaning of the term “divide” has been highly problematic in connection with all sorts of unjust political systems like dictatorship, totalitarianism, imperialism, colonialism and etc. which we have been experiencing throughout history. We all know very well a satanic character in Apartheid system. Therefore, the biblical term ‘divide’ shouldn’t be understood as it is. It needs to be understood as a ‘shared’ or ‘allocated’ based on God’s given grace and justice.

According to Genesis 1:11-12, all living things in the universe, such as grass, vegetables, and trees, were created according to their kind.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth”; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind; and God saw that it was good. God said, "Give the land the plants that sow, the plants that sow, and the trees that bear the fruit of the seed according to their kind." The earth gave the grass, the vegetables that bear the seeds according to their kind, and the trees that bear the seeds according to their end, which was good for God to see. Let the waters of the earth gather in one place, and the land be revealed, so that it will be as it will be. (Gen. 1:11-12)

If we look at Genesis 1:20-21, God not only created plants but also all kinds of animals – birds living in the sky, animals living on land and all kinds of fish living in the sea – and chose distinct habitats for each group. When the people of Israel came out of Egypt and entered the land of Canaan, God again divided the land for each of the twelve tribes to live in.

This sharing is God's detailed plan, which gave all beings their own place to carry out the meaning and mission of their existence and arranged it so that it would not cause chaos.

It is the principle of dividing the realm of life. In light of this principle, today's COVID-19 problem is the result of human invasions of habitats where animal viruses should exist; the viruses that should be in animals lost their habitat for survival and have moved into human bodies. This is the consequence of breaking the fundamental principle of God's creation.

Examples of one organism intruding another’s territory have appeared repeatedly in human history. This is the case with colonial history, world wars and racial conflicts around the world that are taking place now. Isn't all human conflict and injustice - colonial history, war, trade conflict, racial conflict, gender conflict, economic injustice - a phenomenon that occurs when one being dominates or seizes the unique position or rights God has given to another?

knowledge in ancient Greek. Theologically, the universe is the oikos, or house made by God, and ecology is the logic in which the universe operates. What disturbs this order, this logic, is the ecological crisis. Today’s climate change and outbreak of diseases such as COVID-19 came from the ecological crisis that disrupted the logic of the house made by God.

The term “Economy” also originated from the same oikos root. Economy is a combination of “oikos”, meaning household, and nomos, meaning rule. Therefore, the economy is the rule and order of God’s house. Economy is not about capital, production, consumption, finance, money-making or investment, but rather a rule that enables the lives of all family members making up the house. The real intention of this economy is distorted by modern capitalism and human greed, and the skyrocketing housing prices, which are now shaking the foundations of Korean society, is also a phenomenon of this distortion. The house is a place to live, not a means of property accumulation, and breaking this rule of economics is leading to confusion.

Let's go back to COVID-19. Everything is this world stopped with the advent of COVID-19. A keyword came up in my mind as I faced this unheard-of situation: repentance. ‘Shuv’ is a Hebrew word meaning return; this is the root of “teshuvah” which means repentance or return to God.

The famous story of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil appears in Genesis III, and the way I see it, to desire and eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is to destruct the logic of God in reference to the ecological crisis. In Genesis I and II, after creation, God said all the fruits in the garden were free to be enjoyed by human beings (We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden). However, He said not to touch the tree in the middle of the garden or there will be death. (You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.) This means that human beings can develop nature considerably, but if they break the laws of ecology that God has planted in this universe, life will become impossible.

The COVID-19 incident is the outcome of human greed and arrogance that eventually broke the ecological order by crossing the boundaries of life given by God. Hence, repentance, return! If human beings do not turn away from colonialism, domination, and hegemonism that infringes on the existence and rights of nature, there will be no way to stop this cycle of tragedy. There were theories that if human beings don’t stop destroying the ecosystem now, they will suffer from more natural disasters and serious diseases, and since then, the world really has suffered from numerous pain resulting from ecological destruction and diseases such as SARS, MERS, ZIKA, and now the all-stopping COVID-19 in the 21st century.

Last year or so, a scientist working in Antarctica shocked us by warning that glaciers, which had never melted under any climate change, had begun to melt and would melt completely by 2030. He stated this would lead to rapid rising of global temperatures and sea levels, putting survival on Earth in considerable risk. Ecologists believe that climate change has already crossed the Rubicon and is completely irreversible. Nonetheless, this world that is experiencing COVID-19 has no intention of stopping this ecological wreck and is still talking about economic activity.

My concern is that COVID-19 won't end easily and that if human beings don't immediately stop the ecological destruction, there could emerge a much stronger virus that could lead to a far more serious situation. There was a report that Bill Gates, who has donated an enormous amount of money and is eager to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, reportedly predicted that the disease that will follow COVID-19 will not be a type of coronavirus but a never before heard of disease that will lead to 30 million deaths within 6 months. Although I look into this phenomenon with a theological perspective and not complete accuracy, it seems that Bill Gates speaks with information. What's clear is that if we don't stop here, if we don’t follow God’s creation order here, there will be more serious diseases than COVID-19. We need to stop and turn around.

New Normal!

Humankind turning around from the current direction of civilisation and converting into a new life civilisation that aligns with God’s creation principle is the New Normal. With the temporary suspension of church ceremonies, churches are questioning if online worship can count as true worship and offline worship services should be resumed at the risk of danger since offerings are decreasing. However, this is not what is important. What really matters is the prophetic mission of proclaiming to the world an urgent message of repentance: that we must restore the history of humankind, the economic activities of humankind, the science of humankind, and the whole life of humankind to God's creative order.

“...if human beings don’t stop destroying the ecosystem now, they will suffer from more natural disasters and serious diseases...”

A Grand Direction for Transformation of Future Human Civilisation

I believe human beings should now shift its civilisation paradigm. Details should be viewed more deeply and systematically, but from a broader perspective, I believe there are three points in terms of a shift in civilisation.

The first is that humans now have to live a life that is close to the soil, that is, nature. Gyeongan Graduate University has been continuing to host the symposium since 2017 to study how humans should live in the fourth industrial revolution and the age of artificial intelligence. This is to find the meaning and place for human beings in the age of artificial intelligence. In the first year of this symposium (2017), I suggested that in the age of artificial intelligence, humans need to become much closer to soil than to machines. 5 To divide world history largely into three equal parts, human beings concentrated on God until the Middle Ages. Since the Middle Ages, in other words, post humanism and reformation, we have so far focused on human beings. However, after the 21st century, humans must focus on soil or natural ecology. Artificial intelligence developers predict that artificial intelligence will achieve a singularity beyond humans in 2040 while ecologists see 2030 as a turning point in the ecological crisis. Nevertheless, Hollywood movies had already covered the prospect of a civilisation crisis beginning in 2020. The period between 2020 and 2040 is a time of divergence in which human civilisation must revolutionise the paradigm shift into entering life civilisation. The nucleus of this transition is centred on land, earth, and ecology.

The concentration on this land, earth and ecology, however, should be a new approach, repenting from the humanism of the past in which man reigned and ruled over nature. It must consider how nature and human beings will live in harmony with the right of life given by God. This is not to say that we should go back to the primitive times. Until now, modern civilisation had been running on industrialisation, but its limitations are finally being revealed, and it is necessary to emphasize getting closer to soil and the structure of life civilisation.

Secondly, humans must de-urbanise and restore small-scale village communities. The catastrophic impacts COVID-19 had in such a short period of time was due to globalisation and urbanisation that allowed the virus to flourish in each region. Although they have been the paths to developments of civilisation that humankind has walked on, industrialisation, urbanisation, and modernisation are the dilemmas of modern civilisation in my opinion. On top of that, Globalisation has created a "Development Pandemic" from this dilemma, which is now leading to an ecological crisis and the outbreak of diseases.

Sociologists have observed that the race for urbanisation of humankind will not stop until 2050. I don't remember the exact percentage, but they stated more than half of the world's population will be centralised in cities. This will be the disaster. COVID-19 could be a small signal of this disaster.

Now the future needs to restructure society in a way as to spread out population and industries into rural areas and create small village communities. Gyeongan Graduate University created a village studies major in the Department of Social Welfare to study the academic basis for creating a village community in anticipation of this. However, perhaps

people don’t understand the importance yet as not many students are showing interest. What is clear is that in the future, the government should pursue a new social structure in which life on a small scale and on a village unit are woven together. The Swaraj movement which Gandhi advocated to lead an independent life against the British Empire, is needed.

Realistically, there can’t not be a city. The important point is that cities and villages must be developed in balance. There is a political capital relocation issue currently, but this does not end with a political capital relocation. The development of local villages determines the future.

Thirdly, it is necessary to compose an industrial structure map for the position of agriculture to return to an important position even if it is not the centre of the industry. According to ecologists, 70% of the area where humans live becomes the most ecologically healthy space when farming or pasture is secured. Of course, science must develop and various industries such as heavy industry, electronics industry etc. must develop as well.

In the age of artificial intelligence, only 1% of humans who understand and deal with artificial intelligence are said to be needed. What will the other 99% do? Will 99% who cannot handle artificial intelligence become a ‘useless class’ as stated by Yuval Harari? Instead of just saying that basic income should be given because human jobs are lost in the artificial intelligence era, society should allocate 1% of the population who handle artificial intelligence to take care of the industry and have the rest 99% lead a much more relaxed style of living.

Nevertheless, the core of the future depends on the food industry that guarantees healthy lives. If COVID-19 had anything to do with food and not human health and diseases, the world would have gone into a war pandemic instead of a corona pandemic during this lockdown. There will come a day when the accessibility of healthy food becomes a very important issue. In order to protect the future, we must design a future that centres life around agriculture. There are endless factors to think about creatively, not just regarding artificial intelligence, but to make life possible in the future of life civilisation. We really must think creatively from now on.

A Concluding Remark

The story ends by quoting a poem that has been widely mentioned on the internet written by a poet named Vivienne Reich.

Coronavirus’ “Letter to Humanity”

The earth whispered but you did not hear. The earth spoke but you did not listen. The earth screamed but you turned her off. And so, I was born… I was not born to punish you… I was born to awaken you…

The earth cried out for help… Massive flooding. But you didn’t listen. Burning fires. But you didn’t listen. Strong hurricanes. But you didn’t listen. Terrifying Tornadoes. But you didn’t listen. You still don’t listen to the earth when Ocean animals are dying due to pollutants in the waters. Glaciers melting at an alarming rate. Severe drought. You didn’t listen to how much negativity the earth is receiving.

It was more important to get that latest iPhone than worry about what the earth was trying to tell you… But now I am here And I’ve made the world stop on its tracks.

I give you fever … as the fires burn on earth. I give you respiratory issues … as pollution fills the earth air. I give you weakness as the earth weakens every day. I took away your comforts… Your outings. The things you would use to forget about the planet and its pain And I made the world stop…

And now…

China has better air quality … Skies are clear blue because factories are not spewing pollution unto the earth’s air. The water in Venice is clean and dolphins are being seen. Because the gondola boats that pollute the water are not being used. YOU are having to take time to reflect on what is important in your life.

Again, I am not here to punish you … I am here to Awaken you… When all this is over and I am gone… Please remember these moments… Listen to the earth. Listen to your soul. Stop Polluting the Earth.

Stop fighting among each other.

Stop caring about materialistic things. And start loving your neighbours. Start caring about the earth and all its creatures. Start believing in a Creator. Because next time I may come back even stronger…