Living For Christ During a Pandemic

12/11/2020

I just tested negative for Covid-19 . . . for the fourth time. Every time I feel I am about to do something where I need to ensure I am Covid free, I get a test. The rest of the time, I stay at home, minimize my contacts to immediate family, wear a mask, use hand sanitizer, and spend many hours on Zoom.

Why?

I'm not one to tempt God. I have Christian friends who are attending church services indoors without masks. I ran into one yesterday who told me that God would protect her and that she refused to live in fear. I held my tongue. The truth is that, unless God specifically calls you to do something that would kill you or kill others, you shouldn’t. There is no honor in foolishness. Even Jesus avoided direct conflict with the Pharisees and other religious leaders at times. He didn’t do this because he was living in fear. He did it because it was not his time to die. When I was in college there was a girl who never studied for tests, declaring that she was free in Christ and that God would give her what she needed. She failed. When Satan told Jesus to jump off the cliff, he responded that we are not to tempt the Lord our God. I think this is what people are doing who use God for cover while living unsafe with this virus simply because they don’t want to be inconvenienced.
We are called to obey the governing officials. Romans 13:1-2 says, “"Obey the government, for God is the One who has put it there. There is no government anywhere that God has not placed in power. So those who refuse to obey the law of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow." Pretty clear, right? This is the position our pastor has taken. He has taught on it extensively. I think he is correct. I saw this morning that a very prominent pastor in California just died of the virus. Was he not also loved by God? Why wasn't he protected?
We are called to live for others and not for ourselves. My family needs me. My wife needs me. I’m not ready to die of Covid (which is a possibility for someone of my age and health issues). In my retirement, I have devoted myself to working with my grandkids, helping them not lose ground in school through this unusual time. My being with the kids allows my daughter (a teacher) to do her job while her husband (a firefighter) does his. Along with this, God is using me to work with the high schoolers at my church and to mentor a college student who has become a very dear friend. I have also been able to support and help my son and my mom and her husband through some situations. What I am trying to say is that I feel a responsibility to do what I can to stay healthy for the sake of those I am helping and serving. I owe it to them. Also, since people can infect others while being asymptomatic, the loving thing to do is to wear a mask for the sake of others. This seems to me a Christian thing to do.

This is a very unusual time in our history. At this point, the virus is winning. It is fueled by those who have believed the misinformation that it is some kind of overblown hoax, or that masks don’t work, or that God will protect them. If we all worked together, being safe, even for a short time, we could stop the virus in its tracks.
We have a vaccine coming. Life will become normal again some time in the near future. In the meantime, it is important that we all live life in a way that protects others. We can do this in the name of Christ--Not out of fear, but out of love.

3 Comments

Mary DeSantis

2/26/2022 07:14:16 pm

Dear Mike,
In your blog post titled “Living For Christ During a Pandemic,” dated December 11, 2020, you wrote:
“We are called to obey the governing officials. Romans 13:1-2 says, "Obey the government, for God is the One who has put it there. There is no government anywhere that God has not placed in power. So those who refuse to obey the law of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow."”
Of all your blog posts, this one stunned me. It seems to me that your advice is not based upon an understanding of U.S. law, and as such, is seriously misleading. Because you are a pastor, you have influence over many people, and I was led to comment on your opinion.
I'm sure you are aware that the United States government was established "of the people, by the people, and for the people," as Abraham Lincoln succinctly put it in his Gettysburg Address. For Lincoln, those words were not mere flowery prose; they were distilled from the legal documents that our nation was founded upon.
The U.S. Constitution is a charter of rights and duties bestowed by the citizens—We the People—upon elected representatives. Rights can only be bestowed by people who have the authority to grant them, so who gives We the People that authority? Answer: Our rights are God-given. That is the premise that undergirds this nation and the structure of our government.
“We the People of the United States…do ordain and establish this Constitution…” —Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
Those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States did so from the point of view that the citizens are the sovereign rulers of our nation. We are each born with unalienable God-given rights, and our government was instituted for the sole purpose of protecting those rights.
The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It contains a short list of powers that We the People have consented to grant to our elected representatives in order to establish a functioning government and provide for the national defense. Whatever powers were not granted in the Constitution to the federal government or to the States, were reserved to the People from whence those powers originated. (Check out the Tenth Amendment.) That means that We the People are sovereign, and the government derives its powers from us… not the other way around! The government has no authority to grant or revoke any rights or privileges. Over the course of time, those truths have been forgotten.
In a political structure that is unique to the United States, the three branches of government are deliberately separated in order to prevent any one branch from having too much power. For example, the legislative branch is not permitted to enforce the laws they pass, and the executive branch is not permitted to make the laws that they will enforce. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, certain of our government officials violated the Separation of Powers rule of government; to wit, President Biden and some of the states’ governors have mandated lockdowns, mask wearing, and vaccinations. Because the law of the land prevents the Executive Branch from enacting legislation, the mandates and guidelines ordered by those officials cannot be construed as laws… and indeed are not.
A constitutional analysis of the legality of our government’s pandemic policy concludes that, while it is right and just for our leaders to call for lockdowns, masks, and vaccines in order to avert a national health crisis, all such “mandates” are illegal and unenforceable. What everyone has been calling “mandates” are actually merely guidelines, and it is grossly deceptive to imply that such unlawful guidelines have the power of legal directives. According to the law of the land, it is entirely up to the individual citizen to decide whether or not to follow what can only be construed as “advice” from elected officials.
As we have seen, most people took the advice of our leaders to heart, and that is greatly to their credit. We can always rely on grassroots America to do the right thing!
God gives all rulers their power (as Jesus told Pontius Pilate), but He does not always ordain just and righteous governments over mankind. All we have to do is look at China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran to know that. In Jesus’s day, the Roman Empire was ruled by a cruel and insane dictator. When Jesus was born, his parents had to flee with him into Egypt because Palestine’s King Herod ordered the Messiah’s death. When Daniel fasted and prayed to God, the Angel Gabriel had to fight for three weeks to get through the forces of the Prince of Persia with the answer. The Prince of Persia is the name given to Satan, indicating that the Kingdom of Persia was ruled and influenced at that time by Satan.
What should Ch

Mary DeSantis

2/26/2022 11:38:08 pm

-- Continued from previous post --

What should Christians do when their government is controlled by the principalities of evil? Were Christians right to obey Hitler's commands when he ordered the destruction of the Jews? Absolutely not! God ordains governments to rule mankind, but they are not always godly governments. When ungodly laws are imposed upon Christians, we are NOT to follow them! God would never expect us to adhere to human laws that violate His laws.

Fortunately for us in the United States, God has ordained We the People to govern ourselves, and our Founders were wise enough to structure the government so that its elected officials cannot become tyrants unless We the People allow them to overturn the Constitution. Remember, the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, not the other way around.

Therefore, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when individual citizens weighed the facts and decided whether to get vaccinated or not, whether to shut down their business or keep it open, whether a mask would create more health problems than it would prevent, they were not breaking the law of the land. On the other hand, every government official who tried to force the citizenry to close their places of business by imposing fines and jail time; who punished citizens who chose not to wear a mask by denying them access to public places; or who vehemently pursued the public humiliation, segregation, and social ostracization of “non-compliant” citizens; were themselves violating the law of the land! And, as you quoted in your blog, “those who refuse to obey the law of the land are refusing to obey God.”

No other nation in the world has a government with separated powers, and that is why the governments of democratic nations such as Canada, Australia, Austria, Ireland, and England (to name a few) were able to enact laws to force autocratic pandemic policies upon their citizens. In each of the aforementioned nations, the Executive Branch (Prime Minister) is the head of the Legislative Branch (Parliament) and has the power to enforce the laws they enact. No checks and balances, as we have in the United States.

Christians in the United States who wish to adhere to the exhortations in Romans 13:1-2 can, with a clear conscience, choose not to follow unlawful mandates from the executive branch of government at the federal and state level. Unless Congress enacts a governmental policy, it is not the law of the land; and conversely, if an elected official violates the law of the land, we are obligated NOT to obey his/her illegal orders.

Don’t construe this legal treatise as anything more than a cold analysis of the law. It is not intended to support or condemn individuals’ decisions regarding their private medical choices. I hope, however, to dispel the notion that people who oppose vaccine mandates are somehow disobeying the Bible verse which compels them to obey their government. Far from it. They are exercising their God-given rights as members of a Constitutional Republic in which the people are the government.

I urge every Christian in America to read the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Knowing the law is the first step in obeying the law. If we do not know our rights, we will not know when they are being infringed or violated. If we fail to hold onto our God-given rights, we will lose them. It is our God-given duty to uphold the Constitution that God has instituted for our benefit and protection.

—Mary DeSantis

Mike Apodaca link

2/27/2022 02:16:35 pm

Hi Mary,

Thank you so much for your thorough and thoughtful response. I am aware of all the history you advanced and I am thrilled to the liberties afforded us in this American experiment.

When I wrote this I do not believe the Supreme Court had made their ruling. And I agree, they are a co-equal of government in our democratic system.

The emphasis of what I wrote was that in general (as I read Romans 13) we are to have an attitude of obeying the government--even when it is inconvenient or when we do not want to. Paul basis this in God's establishment of government for our good. The response to the epidemic (although far from perfect) was to reduce sickness and death--something we should agree with. Unfortunately, we still have nearly one-fourth of our population that remains unvaccinated. And we will soon cross the tragic line of one million deaths related to COVID,

Of course I do not mean that we obey any government when it oversteps its bounds and tells us to disobey God or to do evil. If the government mandated that all believe in evolution or that we must abort all girls, then we would have to object (as the apostles did) saying that we had to obey God rather than men. And, I guess this is my point. What does it say if Christians disobey a mask mandate? That we are selfish? Thoughtless to the risk to infect others if we are infected but asymptomatic? Or that we simply disrespect our government? We need to save our protest for when it makes the greatest statement for the kingdom of Christ.

Thank you again for responding. I really appreciate it.

Living For Christ During a Pandemic

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