On August 1, 2020, Father Nathan posted an article on his blog titled “In Data We Trust: Covid and the Limits of Control”. Below are some excerpts from his post. To read in its entirety, please go to: https://exsulare.com/2020/08/01/in-data-we-trust-covid-and-the-limits-of-control/ “Every respective era makes collective societal decisions about which voices do and do not hold sway over people’s behavior. A quick glance at the long sweep of history reveals that as we tire of one voice of authority, we go in search of another. Our contemporary society is no different, and indeed it may be the case that we may be on the verge of yet another collective shift in our allegiance to whose voice we follow, with the arrival of, and response to Covid as the game-changer.” … “We have faced wide-spread outbreaks of deadly diseases before in human history, and we have indeed relied upon the helpful expertise of medical science to tame them for the preservation of human life. However, this is the first time in centuries that we are doing so in the absence of a well-established widespread Christian worldview that checks the runaway control mentality of ideological science. A Christian culture does seek to preserve life, but we do so knowing the limits of our control, knowing that a provident God guides all events, and knowing that earthly health is a temporary, limited good. People die all the time, and the only real liberator from the fear and control that surrounds this fact is the Christian hope of salvation and resurrection. In the absence of that, we are back to pagan control, widespread anxiety, and public manipulation. Right now it is important for believing Christians to continue to place our hope in God and his promise of salvation as the essential bearer of perspective about all the forces that are colliding around us. Health is a good, data can be useful, science rightly viewed can point us to the divine, and government under God’s laws is of great value. If Covid does begin to usher in a needed check on the runaway powers of ideological science, media, and political quests for control it is because God has allowed this pandemic all for the purification of what, in the right perspective, are otherwise good things. Even with the damaged credibility of the Church these days, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the Church remains the bearer of God’s revelation which was given to the world to purify and to save in every generation. We need to present his teachings, anew and with vigor, to a world that right now lacks perspective, and seriously needs to hear them.”