Thanks, I will rephrase, too. Does anyone truly think the government will ban gatherings of more than ten people any longer than what the government thinks is necessary? As for how long we should submit to the mandate, the answer is until the mandate is lifted. Submission for a limited period of time is not submission.
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Of course not. The government does not profit by these closures of public venues at all.
But at what point does what the government believes is necessary come into contradiction with what the church knows to be necessary concerning itself? If your answer is, ânever,â then the only final outcome of that will be a state run church.
With respect, I think youâre oversimplifying it. Submission to a two-week period to allow the government time to triage and assess an unknown situation is one thing. Giving the government a blank check to ban gatherings for as long as they see fit is another. I hope the distinction is plain enough to see. Surely, your position is not so simple as to submit in all things, at all times, without re-assessing the situation as things develop. Or maybe it is?
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With regard to Codyâs reference to Daniel, and the critique that followed:
It is important to note that, yes, that the government is not preventing us from meeting as an explicit affront to Christianity. We arenât being prohibited from gathering because of the reproach of the gospel, or because of the churchâs testimony to a wicked generation, etc. No, this is an âequal opportunityâ ban on mass gatherings of any sort. There is no targeting of Christians. This is important to acknowledge before we get too carried away crying foul about persecution and what not. We get it.
But I think Cody struck something important here:
Worship.
We arenât being targeted here as Christians, that is true. But our worship really is being targeted, whether those in authority realize it or not. Because while they arenât saying anything explicitly against Christ, they are nonetheless communicating that as far as the running of the world and the good of civilization is concerned, Christ isnât relevant to the conversation.
Why is it that (most of us) take issue with government schools? Is it that they explicitly preach against Jesus, or target Christians specifically? Sometimes yes, but usually, no. The problem is with the so-called âneutralâ worldview of secular culture, which â while saying nothing about Jesus â communicates that whoever Jesus may or may not be, he has no relationship to understanding math and science. Religion is this thing we do in a corner, irrespective of what actually goes on in reality. Religion is just a social gathering. This is the fundamental false worldview that brings most of us to dissent against sending our children to government schools, is it not?
Itâs a similar dynamic at play here. When a governor prohibits the entire populace from mass gatherings, it is true that they arenât explicitly preaching against Jesus. So no, itâs not âpersecution.â But it does communicate something about their worldview. It says that whatever Christians may or may not be doing on Sunday morning, itâs not important. And regardless of what conclusions we come to as individual churches, we cannot ignore the worldview clash. We canât just fail to take tension with the fact that the government telling us that our worship isnât important.
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If you are shifting the question to If the government one day arbitrarily decided to ban gatherings for an indefinite period of time, how should the church respond? then my reply is that discussion of abstract hypotheticals is not profitable.
If we are sticking with the original question concerning the ban on gatherings during an epidemic, you have acknowledged that the government wonât do that any longer than it thinks necessary, so how is it a blank check?
Well, let me play the devilâs advocate for a bit.
There are currently exceptions for all sorts of things that are considered âessential.â Why isnât church considered essential? Would it have been in the past?
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Well, let me try to be original here and not repeat your own words back to you. 
As to why church isnât considered essential, from the governmentâs point of view, man does indeed live by bread alone. But when the government gets really serious about social distancing, then only a small number of people are allowed into a grocery store at a time. We are already seeing stores voluntarily adopt that in our neighborhood. So the essential businesses that remain open donât have many people gathered together at one place. Along those lines, I suppose a church could hold a very extended worship service in which people were cycled through nine at a time with six foot distancing maintained at all times.
Tim, I think this is a really important point. It is easy to observe this by listening to people teach about authority. Whether Romans 13 or Ephesians 5, sermons on the topic of authority and submission turn into sermons on the lack of authority and on rebellion. Your paraphrase of Romans 13 is very on point: Romans 13 contains no exceptions to the authority that God granted to the sword-bearers. We should let Romans 13 speak to us in its open endedness. Let us lay aside our rebellion and really think about what it means to be in subjection to the governing authorities. Let us commend ourselves to a God who has promised never to leave us or forsake us as we do so.
My wife and I were talking earlier and she mentioned how everything on FB is fear-based manipulation. People complaining about seeing people doing things they arenât supposed to do, followed by a link to a horrible news story, followed by âthatâs whatâs going to happen here if you people donât stop.â
Suddenly it occurred to me that itâs because there is no authority. I said so, and she said itâs just like parenting today. Thereâs no authority. No punishment. So all youâre left with is attempting to manipulate. Of course, your kids learn your threats are empty and stop listening to your warnings. Weâre seeing the same thing in society now as mentioned above.
Yeah, weâve lost trust in our authorities, but not necessarily because they are wrong, but because they refuse to wield authority and suffer the buck to stop with them. Itâs more helpful to tell your 3 year old not to enter the street and discipline him when he does anyway than it is to keep telling him that heâs going to get hit by a car if he goes in the street, show him videos of kids getting hit by cars, pretend to hit him with your car, etc. I think the same is true of us.
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Probably we need to define what is âessentialâ in various contexts. Letâs consider the situation of a church during an epidemic or natural disaster or bad storm in which the government has not given any orders but it is safest for people to stay at home. Should a church tell its members that if they are willing to venture outside their home under such conditions to get earthly bread from the store then they certainly ought to be going to church to be fed with bread from heaven?
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It is interesting, and not in a good way, to see how easily people yield to totalitarianism. Maybe thatâs not even the right word. Your comments have a âstream of consciousnessâ going so my thoughts may be somewhat disordered.
I had a friend who was a missionary to the Netherlands years ago. Iâd asked him how the land of Kuyper had degenerated into the land it had become. It was his opinion, and if I recall his words correctly, that the churches failed to become safe places during the rise and reign of national socialism. They slowly yielded to the dictates of the magistrate and their witness was ruined.
Is this how it happens, a little here, a little there? We are to submit to the magistrate are we not? The process happens over quite a bit of time. Have we not seen this with regards to the role of women, sexuality and other issues?
Perhaps we should not be too harsh on those men who we may think are casting a cynical eye on the role of the magistrate.
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Dear Jason,
Sorry, Iâm waaay behind in this discussion.
You asked:
True, but letâs remember Calvin submitted to much he disagreed with, including in worship. When he stood his ground, it was over the civil magistrates attempting to control the Lordâs Supper. He put his life at real risk when he refused to submit to their demands to control communicants. Today, pastors cower in front of fathers of households who demand to commune their children. Themselves. Their wife. Themselves. Their unbaptized children, even. So now we have the civil magistrates leaving us free to control who communes but telling us to stay away from assemblies for a few weeks so we donât die, and weâre supposed to rebel? Sorry, dear brother, but I canât see anything at all similar between Danielâs prayer, Calvinâs standing between the civil magistrate and the Lordâs table, and the Apostles continuing to preach when commanded not to, and public health decrees today.
As to the hypothetical question above, if someone is beating his wife and the elders suspend him from the Lordâs table and he commands his wife and children to leave their church with him and start attending another church, the wife should disobey her husband and stay under the authorities she and her husband vowed to submit to as to Christ. Concerning your second hypothetical, Iâd agree that the husband (in consultation with his elders, pastor, and wife) should pray and decide which to submit to.
Love,
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Thank you for taking some time to respond.
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Wonderful discussion.
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I had a friend who was a missionary to the Netherlands years ago. Iâd asked him how the land of Kuyper had degenerated into the land it had become. It was his opinion, and if I recall his words correctly, that the churches failed to become safe places during the rise and reign of national socialism. They slowly yielded to the dictates of the magistrate and their witness was ruined.
Yes, what was true for the Netherlands would also have been true for the Lutheran witness in Germany (with the exception of Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoeller IIRC). The Catholics seem to have made a better job of resisting the Nazis.
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Dear Ken,
By Godâs grace, your family (and esp your little one) are at very little risk. Praise God for that. Your clients are another matter, and thatâs sad. But to get to this matter above, look at the link I ran ion Twitter and FB and make your own mask. It will help. Trust God. Love,
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Tim, which Reformed men specifically are you criticizing? It would be helpful to see who is saying this and evaluate their words. Right now this is kind of a vague âstudies showâ discussion.
If Iâd been inclined to name them, I would have done so. Iâm never one to avoid naming names, if you donât know. So just search for words such as âpanicâ and âparanoiaâ and âlegitimateâ and so forth. But again, why donât you address context and do a compare/contrast with past fathers in the faith, as we have suggested? Love,
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I just think itâs helpful to put up some specific text, rather than âsome people are saying stuffâ and then dropping the hammer of judgment on heart motivations â something that we really canât know. I am all for judging and examining specific words that have been uttered, but I do think itâs unsound ground when we start looking across the Internet into a heart and saying âhereâs why youâre doing that thing you just did: itâs because youâre rebellious and you hate authority.â
Itâs the difference between saying âJohn MacArthur makes over $300K. I am sure that presents certain temptations and challengesâ and saying âJohn MacArthur makes over $300K because he is greedy and bound to the things of this world.â The second statement sets a vector that preempts other possibilities and steers the conversation off a cliff. The second statement is also, arguably, slander.
So with some of these âReformed men.â Maybe thereâs a genuine conviction there. Maybe not. Maybe these individuals have really agonized over such decisions, and want very much to honor God, and think that theyâre doing so. I donât know, because I donât follow Facebook or Twitter, and havenât read what any of them have written in context. I also havenât sat in their session meetings and listened to the different counsel and rationales offered. But I have sat in our own session meetings, and godly men really, authentically wrestle with this. We had 7 elders with 7 varying opinions (though we are not in your reticle as Governor Kemp has not locked down Georgia. But if he did I would advise our church to adhere to that.).
Iâm happy to do the legwork in reading the Fathers. There is usually a common mind that one can eventually suss out. My issue here is in the way that we argue things. We can win arguments but sort of lose them at the same time. I am thinking of Francis Schaeffer in this case and the sorts of things he wrote in The Great Evangelical Disaster many years ago. Itâs worth a read.
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If you havenât seen the stuff, then you donât need to worry about it. If you have, youâll know and be able to judge for yourself whether any motivation is discernible.
Regardless, we live in a culture that is awash in despising authority, and reformed types are not exempted from that judgment.
If the conversation starts with an assumption that we have to make a decision, based on our judgments of the risks and rewards, rather than whether the command we have been given is contrary to Godâs law and must be disobeyed, then we are despising authority, full stop. And thatâs much less a judgment of motive than it is a judgment of fact. Countless people today have no intention of despising authority. They have simply been taught that they make their own choices as they make their own truth. It would never occur to them that they are despising authority. Nor do they hold the man any ill will. Even the office isnât despised by them. They just have so little understanding of authority, much less regard for it, that it would never even occur to them that there is any moral obligation on them when an authority speaks.
Until they stand before a judge. Or an officer commands them to move or stop. And all of the sudden, they feel the authority, and generally they hate it.
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