You've Probably Got a Virus
I sometimes wonder how doctors explained puzzling illnesses before the discovery of viruses. So often I’m told, “It’s a virus, so there’s no use giving you antibiotics.”
Viruses are more mysterious than bacteria. Compared to the sizable bacterium, viruses are minuscule, less than a hundred-thousandth of an inch long. Whereas bacteria are complete living organisms, which given appropriate nutrients, reproduce themselves, viruses are the ultimate parasitic form of life. They reproduce themselves by entering another organism and commandeering its reproductive mechanism.
When a virus visits a cell, it literally eats it out of house and home. Viruses penetrate the cell using a protein corkscrew as a weapon. Once inside, the virus uses the cell’s reproducing equipment to copy itself until all the cell’s supplies are used up. At this point, the cell wall bursts open to release hundreds of thousands of new viruses, which promptly go to work repeating the process in other cells. The challenge is to develop antiviral drugs which will tackle viruses as effectively as antibiotics attack bacteria.
So next time your doctor says “It’s a viral infection,” be thankful that in most cases the body still wins the final battle against these lean, mean intruders.
Viruses are opportunistic cells. They can live outside of a host but in order to replicate, they must enter a living cell. There, they plunder the cell’s protein for raw materials and commandeer its energy and fabricating abilities for their own purposes. Under these conditions viruses multiply rapidly. After using up the cell’s resources, they break out to infect healthy cells and continue the process. Viruses bring death at a cellular level, and sometimes even to the organism as a whole.
The vexing thing about viruses from our perspective is that they are both exceedingly small and incredibly powerful. Furthermore, they always use these advantages at the expense of the host organism, contributing nothing to its welfare in return. Viruses infect humans and animals, plants and even other micro-organisms such as bacteria. They are so tiny that they can only be seen with an electron microscope, yet powerful enough to deliver a lethal dose of disease, like smallpox. And except for a few recent artificial applications (for example, research attempts to harness viruses for beneficial uses as biological insecticides), viruses have always been judged as a destructive force.
Parasitic organisms get a bad name - and for good reason. They take what they need to provide for their own survival - a protective environment and resources for growth - at the expense of their host. In ancient Greek times, professional dinner guests were often given this epithet! Today, we often think in terms of computer viruses - those feared files which run their own program to the destruction of our software. In any event, viruses are bad news.
When we consider our spiritual health, we can note that although we aren’t as bad as we could be, we aren’t as good as we could be either. We have to acknowledge that we harbor evil in our hearts and lives. And if we think that, because we are no worse than others and better than most, we are therefore off the hook, we are mistaken.
In fact, we give asylum to spiritual viruses - moral and ethical rebellion against God. This spiritual revolt against the Sovereign of the universe brings about spiritual illness - separation from God. Spiritual death results.
The insidious nature of these spiritual viruses allow us to carry on with life without conscious awareness of the state of our spiritual health. Sometimes the realization of our true condition hits home forcefully during stressful times. In other situations, there is a growing sense that something is wrong, that the promising remedies we were promoting to ourselves don’t bring the satisfaction and health that we were expecting. Today, check out the status of your spiritual health.
David Humphreys and Debbie Hughes
© August 2004
