I’ll do it. Thanks for the exhortation.
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Another key area of playing politics with Covid was public health authorities endorsing cops killing unarmed black men as a greater public health threat than Covid.
They also made sure to use the opportunity very early in the crisis to make sure to call Covid hawks rubes and racists for wanting to avoid Chinese New Year celebrations in light of the brewing epidemic.
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I’m thinking about every stimulus bill or recovery bill.
Are you with Todd Friel that if the civil government says we must wear pinwheel hats we must submit?
It seems to me that gives the civil government almost unlimited jurisdiction over our every area of our lives apart from some little cultic element.
What does it mean to have the goal of utter destruction of the Christian faith?
It seems to me that this argument on the surface could have been used to justify Daniel not praying for thirty days. It’s only thirty days Daniel. It doesn’t destroy your whole religion not to pray publicly for thirty days. Don’t revile Daniel just be patient and wait the thirty days. Surely God will understand besides no one is saying you can’t pray quietly in your heart.
How does one morally obey a tyrannical command? Isn’t a tyrannical command unlawful or immoral by definition?
You missed this part: “assuming we can morally.”
I covered that here. You seem to suggest we are under moral obligation to obey tyrannical commands.
I say no we are not. We may go along with some things out of wisdom. But I’m under no moral obligation to submit to something like the covid vaccine
First, I think it’s worth noting that the topic under discussion was supposed to be private sector. I don’t think anybody had suggested a moral requirement to get vaccinated for such reasons. So far as I can tell we aren’t discussing the private sector at all anymore, so I’ve moved us to the vaccine mandate topic you started.
You think that any time a command is given that is tyrannous that the only moral thing to do is to disobey? Absurd. You contradict this idea yourself:
It is precisely for this reason that I’ve been opposing you and others saying things like “Resistance to tyranny is obedience God.” You claimed I was misunderstanding in the past, but now here you are saying that it’s impossible to obey a tyrannical command without being immoral in the process. If you are confused into thinking precisely what the words mean, in spite of your claim that it means something else, I think it’s fair to say that I can take the statement at face value.
As to your second question:
It seems, given the immediate context that you are simply restating your previous question—meaning it is immoral to obey. If so, as I said above, this is wrong. I would ask you to demonstrate such from Scripture. If you mean it is immoral for the magistrate to be tyrannical, of course, but then your second question doesn’t build on your first question and I don’t understand why you’re asking.
It’s actually quite easy for most people to see how a law forbidding prayer is tyrannous and that obeying it is immoral. It’s equally clear that a law requiring your niece to marry the king is tyrannous. It’s a lot less clear that obeying is immoral in this case. It’s also clear that it is tyranny for a soldier to require a man to stop his work and carry his equipment for him. We also know quite clearly that obeying is not immoral. Or tax collectors collecting too much. Tyrannous. Giving them what they demand? Not immoral. Trying to avoid giving them the extra? Also not immoral.
It seems you cannot abide any answer besides “every tyrannical command must be disobeyed” or “every tyrannical command must be obeyed.” My answer was that it depends on the command, but that we ought to start with the understanding that submitting is better, if possible, for the reasons laid out in the Magdeburg, which I plan to talk about more later.
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I may have been unclear in my question so let me restate the question, how it is a moral duty to obey a tyrannical command. I am not arguing that you may not out of wisdom go along with some command that is tyrannical but I am arguing against the argument that we have a moral duty to obey a tyrannical command.
That is not what I am arguing and if my question was poorly worded to reflect that I apologize. I am arguing against the notion that we must submit to tyrannical commands out of a moral duty. Yes you may do so out of wisdom. You may even think its better. I may disagree depending upon what it is. I am under no moral obligation to submit to unlawful commands as such. Now there may be other obligations I may have to deal with that may lead to a submission to these commands. Wisdom is needed here.
It is my opinion that if I have been unclear you have as well. You seem to be arguing that yes I must submit to vaccine mandates by civil government or by corporations, and lets face it we live in a corporate/government cooperation so that the lines are very blurred there. As I mentioned to your father, the constant calling other reformed people beligerants, revilers, and such along with the defense of the official narratives and saying that submission is better, leads many to suspect that your position is simply “wear a mask, get a vaccine, and shut up.” It seems to me that if the long term negative effect of the defy tyrants crowds is to create an antagonistic attitude towards all authority, the long term negative effect of your messaging is to put our children and grandchildren under increasing tyranny without any will to fight it.
For example when you mentioned you didn’t know of any bills passed except those limiting mask mandates, those bills would only be passed because of people have had the will and rhetoric to fight it. The fact that courts have awarded victories to pastors like John McArthur or others for standing up is because they had the will to oppose it both with their speech and their actions, speech and action I have heard people here be very critical of.
Therefore if you think its wise and best in your situation to submit to vaccine mandates, go ahead. I won’t judge you. I’ll defend you. But I will also defend those who believe that its best and wisest to fight this tyranny now using all the tools at their disposal including using their speech and public platforms.
Baloney. If you want to pretend that Kroger’s employee vaccine mandate is actually the government requiring the whole country to get vaccinated, that’s on you. In the meantime, whether you want to do it is up to you. You can get it or quit or try to fight it out with HR. I’ve never said you must “submit” to it. I’ve simply said I can’t think of a reason to recommend quitting. I also posted an article explaining how one man did successfully fight against it at a university.
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If you want to believe that these large corporations are not in bed with the civil government so that they can do mandates without the civil government and politicians having to feel the heat, than I guess thats on you too. My point is not that corporations are the civil government but that we live in the age of soft tyranny. Its CS Lewis: Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
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Applying Occam’s razor yields the simpler explanation that vaccines have popular support. The more popular an establishment is, the more likely it will align itself with views that have widespread support. That’s why big corporations in the US have the stances they do on climate change, LGBT issues, and so on. No conspiracy is needed to understand why corporations align themselves with popular political views.
This is exactly the sort of soft tyranny you referenced. The CS Lewis quote is an appropriate lament.
Your boss is not the civil magistrate and cannot throw you in jail. The fact that you cannot distinguish between the two topics: vaccine mandates for citizens vs vaccines required for employees of some businesses is problematic for having a discussion with you. How to handle them is completely different. I find it bewildering that the moment I start talking about one, you change the topic to the other.
I’m not denying that corporations and the government work together. That would be like denying what Ben said—that this government is working together with the people, and it is giving us what we want.
We’ve said for a long time that it’s going to get harder and harder to work for large multinational corporations as Christians.
Working for Kroger while they sponsor the pride festival? Sucks, but oh well. Working for Kroger when they require a vaccine? I’m a Christian! This is tyranny! I must resist!
I’m not opposed to people opposing these decisions in companies. I myself have said HERE that I oppose them. But that’s not enough for you.
If you want to know why I’m so worked up, here is what I’ve said publicly about this topic:
And here is what you accuse me of saying:
Then, you ask “How does one morally obey a tyrannical command?” And after I answer that question, which actually made sense in the context of the conversation, you turn around and say that actually you were asking “how it is a moral duty to obey a tyrannical command.” That question makes me lose my patience because it doesn’t make sense in the context of the conversation, it isn’t what you actually asked, and it is a false characterization of what I’ve said, and last but not least, I’ve already answered it implicitly anyway (emphasis added):
Why should I answer that question? Ask somebody who believes that. I’ve been very clear in this conversation that I don’t.
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So we’ve had some lively discussions with our neighbors a couple doors down from us, about COVID19 vaccines. They were in favor of them and we’ve been hesitant. They are fully vaccinated and we are not. We are all still friends and our kids play together regularly though not much in the last few days.
Today my wife got a text from the mom that she was hospitalized for COVID19 but was just released. She’s asking for prayers and of course we pray for her.
The reason I bring this up, is because it exposes a fallacy in the justifications given for mandates, that it’s not just about your personal safety but the safety of others. That is just pure nonsense. Her vaccine isn’t protect my kids or my wife. And though it may help her recover quicker than otherwise it doesn’t mean that she hasn’t already spread the virus because she thought she and others were safe because she was fully vaccinated.
Obedience does not require us to believe lies or to be silent about them. Sure authority deserves respect, but the natural order which God created and acknowledged by the WLC, is that those in authority sometimes dishonor themselves, or lessen their own authority, by unjust, indiscreet, rigorous, or remiss behavior.
The duplicity that those in authority with regards to COVID engage in is well beyond the pale.
There’s a reason this idea is prevalent. With something like measles, where you can truly prevent it from spreading by getting enough people to get the vaccine, you do help protect others by getting it. There has been significant doubt about whether this would be possible with a Corona virus, and it’s looking like that it indeed is not possible.
Even so, if Covid is endemic and a vaccinated person can get Covid, that still doesn’t give us enough information to judge whether the claim that it helps protect others is true or false. If people are less likely to spread it to others if they get the vaccine, for the same reasons that kids (might) be less likely to spread it… then it would protect others in general. There are many ways that this could still be true, though I’m not aware of any definitive study.
I don’t think it helps to call it a lie, though. As with so many other things with Covid, we don’t know. And it’s going to take quite a while for the idea of herd immunity as it was hoped for to dissipate as a “fact.”
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Maybe it is the nature of written communication but it is not my intent to mischaracterize you. Even after the quotes you just shared I am still confused as to exactly what your position is. Why? Because when I asked you if I had a moral duty to submit to vaccine mandates you answer was something like submitting is best. Your quotes simply say you don’t think they should mandate it. It doesn’t speak to my duty if they do.
Would you help me out and make it abundantly clear to me. Can you give a simple yes or no. Do I have a moral duty to submit to a covid vaccine mandate?
I am not asking if I may submit to it but if I must.
A mandate from whom? For what reason? For what disease? In what circumstance? Are you a minor?
Pretending like there are simple universal answers to these “simple questions” is a big part of the problem.
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Well we are talking about Covid Vaccines. I am not a minor. I am an adult. The disease would be covid. The civil government.
The president saying “everybody should get vaccinated”? Former president Trump telling people to get vaccinated? The surgeon general saying “everybody should get vaccinated”? A judge telling you as a condition of your parole that you need to get vaccinated? A law passed by Congress? Does it include exceptions? If so, do you meet any of those exceptions? A law passed by your state legislature? Exceptions? Meet them? A mandate by your governor? What state do you live in and what does the law say about whether he has that power?
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Yes I get that there might be different forms it might take. I am trying though to get to a broader principle. Does the civil magistrate have the God-given jurisdiction to mandate a person to inject a chemical into their body?
In answer to your question, yes. I believe in chemical castration for rapists, for example.
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With all due respect I didn’t say the vaccine was a lie, just the justification for mandates.
And…I seem to remember the claim that those who say the vaccine is compromised by HEK293 are lying because the origin is not conclusively from a voluntary aborted fetus. If that’s the standard, then it’s not a stretch to say they are lying.