Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford medical professor and likely next NIH director, delivered a sermon at the height of the pandemic that draws surprising parallels between biblical leprosy and our cultural response to COVID-19.
In his address at First Presbyterian Church Mountain View, Bhattacharya shares his experiences treating leprosy patients in rural India and explores how stigma shapes our perception of disease. The sermon examines biblical accounts of leprosy—contrasting Elisha’s distant healing of Naaman with Jesus’s revolutionary choice to physically touch lepers.
“From the beginning of the pandemic, society divided people into ’essential’ and ’non-essential,’” Bhattacharya observes. “When someone gets COVID, what’s the first question we ask? ‘Where did you get it?’ We treat contracting the virus like a moral failing.”
This sermon from February 2022 offers insights that remain relevant today as Bhattacharya faces Senate confirmation as the next NIH director. His perspective on stigma and disease provides a unique framework for understanding how faith might inform our public health approaches.
Likely the new director of the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya preaches on the Bible and COVID in 2022.
Consider COVID-19 with Behe. If God created all things, then in this sense He designed us all. Still, creation is not design and design is not creation.
Is there beauty in a deadly coronavirus? These beautiful images of the virus are scientifically accurate watercolors by David Goodsell.
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