It appears that my point that the line of argumentation is empty is still being lost in this discussion. Perhaps the communication problem is mine. My desire is that we push these discussions into more Biblical and more precise language. Both sides of this issue have done a pretty poor job of responding to this issue. And, I don’t claim to have the answers, but I can see that we as the church have not yet come to a clear, Biblical position. Submission to faithful elders is definitely part of that, but only part.
As to your comment on comfort - your feelings and my feelings about the comfort of masks are irrelevant.
As to your point about disregarding the laws of the state authorities - there may be good warrant for doing so if those laws are unconstitutional. I am certain you also would be willing to disregard some city, state or federal laws if they infringed on rights that you deem vital. Sure, masks are not at that point, but where is that point? We (the church) need to be figuring that out ahead of time for the next liberty challenge.
Finally, the point of bringing up vaccines is that your line of argumentation could be used by someone else who IS completely comfortable with requiring everyone to be vaccinated (“it’s just takes 10 seconds, you hardly feel it, and it saves way more lives than masks”). I am not saying you support forced vaccination, but I guarantee some people will. If they can use your own argument against you, then you will have a problem.
We all need to step back from the heat of this particular mask issue and dig deeper into our theology. Covid is forcing us to do that, but we are far from done.
I will read any further responses, but probably done commenting on this topic since I don’t think I have anything further to add at this time.
Please pardon the delay in response, my wife and I welcomed our second child into the world on Monday
John, what I’m hearing you say but which I don’t think you believe is that power grants authority. Might makes right, so to speak. But I don’t think you are a Darwinist, so I’m guessing you are more in line with Pastor Tim in that governments are given certain responsibilities and therefore God-given authority to carry those out.
I agree with Tim there. Where we disagree is what sort of authority the government has. Tim, you quote Romans 13 regarding punishing evildoers and rewarding those who do good. I agree. But your next line regarding protection does not have a biblical support that I’m aware of. What texts do you have in mind for that?
I’m not suggesting national defense is an unwarranted thing. But this is nowhere near a national defense situation.
In regards to your comment about the government being like a husband, I simply disagree. Perhaps under a monarch that metaphor would work. But in a democratic republic that is not how it works. I’m sure you’ve heard the closest thing to that would be saying the Constitution is the “husband” who should be submitted to. I believe that is much closer to the truth. It is not that I hate authority. I just don’t think governors have the authority many think they do.
I hope you can see those of us who are bucking these mandates aren’t doing it because we view ourselves as not under authority. Rather, we have a very high regard for the authority of the Bible and the Constitution and that is why we resist.
Scripture’s commands and the husband’s vows could as easily be used to obstruct or contravene a husband’s authority as any constitution is used to obstruct or contravene the political authority. Love,
Who has authority and how do we know if they have it? If only those who punish evildoers and reward the good have authority, then Pontias Pilate had less authority than any man in history. Yet our Lord affirmed his authority as from God. Why?
If you were to act on the plain meaning of the Constitution on a topic such as, say, gun control or interstate commerce, do you suppose that the Constitution would rouse itself to protect you from the arm of the state?
John, I agree that authority comes from above. Where I think we disagree is what kind of authority is given from above.
I agree that Pontius Pilate had God-given authority to punish the evil doer and reward the good. Did he do much of that? I don’t know, but he certainly had the authority to do it.
I’ve been meaning to circle back to this conversation to address one thing:
If the civil authorities God has appointed have no duty or right to protect, then the vast vast majority of laws we have are invalid. Not just speed limits but police officers are immoral, along with any product safety requirements, all workplace safety rules, all drug classifications, all building codes, all other traffic laws, right of way laws, and the whole department of defense. An officer of the law (if such could exist) would have no right to prevent a murder (such as an abortion), but would have to watch it happen and then and only then they could take any action.
In short, it is far more extreme than the most extreme libertarianism.
Biblical evidence for the duty of protection is abundant as well, starting with requirements of parapets on roofs, Lot’s protection of the men in the square, condemnation for the nations that didn’t protect the weak and innocent, etc.
Based on that study results, we should now be advocating that everyone stop washing hands since “hand washing and gargling showed significant increases in OR for seasonal influenza.” If you parse the data, hand washing was a bigger negative than wearing masks was a positive. Of course, the authors did not title their report “Ineffectiveness of hand washing on seasonal influenza,” because that is unlikely to get published and you certainly would not have linked to it. In this study, vaccination and mask wearing both had very small effects. Vaccination only reduced infection rates from 21.4% to 19.3% and mask wearing only reduced it from 21.4% to 19.5%. Not hand washing reduced infection rates from 21.4% to 16.8% - much bigger impact. Let’s not be throwing out small studies on Japanese school children which show only a small impact as if that in anyway resolves the discussion.
