New Warhorn Media post by Tim Bayly:
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Do you know, I would make it part of Reformed pastors’ on-the-job training to meet regularly with their Fundamentalist/Baptist opposite numbers. On the principle that iron sharpens iron, I am sure it would benefit both of them.
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I thought your “Dear Boomer” piece was the best piece I had read this year. I usually don’t comment if I agree and have nothing to add.
I can get my civil liberties defined and defended by Joe Sobran and Nat Hentoff. I can read Alex Berenson for contrarian analysis of viral statistics. I can read and sign the Great Barrington Declaration. Since the election concluded, I can read some sensible things in the New York Times about long term immunity and oh look, here is Nick Kristof writing about the dangers of closing schools for a year. Wow.
I don’t really need a pastor to do the Christian kitsch version of those things. I do appreciate pastors acknowledging now and then that some plays are being run by enemies of the church. After a point though, it wears thin. One of the reasons I am not a regular Cross Politic listener is that I can get the genuine article elsewhere.
All of us will die and face judgment one day. What a gift to be reminded of this.
I also agree with you in judging the motive of those who have held back from preaching about mortality due to political signaling.
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Thanks for being persistent on this. It has been a tremendous help to my conscience. I became convinced months ago that through COVID-19 and the various other calamities of 2020 that the Lord wanted to teach me and many other believers meekness under His hand. That COVID indeed was God’s gentle discipline and that we ought to humble ourselves under the hand of the Lord, and that in due time He would lift us up.
I have certainly wavered in that commitment, but I’ve only had peace from God when waiting, quiet, and soul-searching have been my response. But my peace has definitely been disturbed by all the uproar. It’s simple to wear my mask, try my best to follow the guidelines, and pray earnestly and daily about it all. But then many men whom I respect and have learned much from tell me that makes me a coward, a statist, and an idolater. That I’m rolling over in fear of man, disobeying God by obeying tyrants, offering incense to Caesar, and disqualified from ministry.
This bugs me so much. I don’t want to do these things. I don’t want my children to live a much more difficult life than I have and don’t want to fail to do my duty at an important time. I can easily see my bent to do so. My conscience bugs me enough about the responsibility I know God has given me, so I’ve found that I’ve just had to shut it all off. COVID has been isolating in so many ways.
That doesn’t entirely calm my conscience (am I closing my ears to God?) but I feel the peace of the Lord. I have grown much this year, and my family has as well. I know that God is close in this, even closer than the mask that I have to wear on my face much of the day. I’m hungry for eternal life in a way like never before, and to hear Jesus’ voice in all this noise. I think that’s the fruit of meekness and not political resistance. I have a hunch that all the agitation is just a lack of meekness and forgetting God. God doesn’t want us to suffer; it must be the Democrats’ fault.
All of you, thanks for your work on this this year and for giving us some space.
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