Four weeks ago, I posted my last blog entry with anticipation of the fifth and final one of this series to be published the following week. That was not to be, because even as I posted the last one, I was becoming increasingly sicker. That same day I was tested for COVID. On Easter Sunday I received the positive results. The entire month of April, then, has been one of considerable illness and incremental recovery.
So, today, at last, I fulfill my promise to add one final installment to my series—“Does Christian Love Obligate Us to Receive a COVID-19 Vaccine?” Of course, everything that I have said throughout this series, but especially in the previous and this final posting, applies not only to COVID vaccines but also to the numerous protocols, such as breathing inhibiters and anti-social distancing ordered by governors, by their so-called medical and science expert, and by the white lab coat clan from the CDC, the NIH, the WHO, and state health offices who are eager to impose their regulations and demands on the ingenuous and acquiescent populace.
But, of course, my principal concern for readers is to keep in view Christian leaders and ministers who have eagerly become unwitting apparatchiks to advance the cause of government overreach and tyranny, especially Russell Moore, David French, and numerous scholars who signed the BioLogos Statement on Science for Pandemic Times who seem to have abandoned any vestige of the Christian and biblical teaching concerning the freedom of the conscience in relation to sin. So, now I offer some pastoral application of the many directives from the Scriptures that I presented in my last entry.
While this series has primarily targeted whether Christians have an obligation to receive one of the COVID-19 “vaccinations,” the principles being considered apply also to how Christians should conduct themselves concerning all the protocols being ordered by the white lab coat elites, particularly upon church assemblies. Pastors and elders who embrace and enforce their state governor’s COVID protocol demands show themselves to be something other than proper shepherds. Good shepherds not only guard the free consciences of the members of their flocks but they also admonish and encourage believers to exercise their freedom in Christ under the directives of the Holy Scriptures and the governance of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, good shepherds of the sheep rebuke others, including governors, who presume to intrude and afflict the sheep with unwarranted impositions.
All state governors who have imposed restrictions upon Christian assemblies, whether for worship or marriages or funeral services, illegally and immorally overstep their sphere of authority to displace the Lord Christ whose church is the outpost of God’s Dominion on earth. Such busybody officials inhibit the free assembly of the Lord’s people to enter bodily enter into an audience with the King where together, in the flesh, they confess the faith, read the Holy Scriptures, sing hymns, and hear the Word of the Lord proclaimed for their own salvation and eternal good.
Oh, how grievous and enormous have been the sins of numerous church elders and pastors throughout most of 2020 and now well into 2021. By closing church doors in March and keeping them shut until September last year with significantly restricted access and freedom, they made it convenient for congregants to sin by not gathering with God’s people as admonished.
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching (Hebrews 10:24-25).
By continuing restrictions on assembling for worship, they have perpetuated unwarranted fright of death from a virus that has a survival rate above 98%. We are not enduring a plague or a pestilence. Even pandemic is an excessive term. Of all people on earth, Christian leaders and ministers need to be the most reasonable, calming, and reassuring. Lamentably, far too many have conceded to the dominating worldview preached by the WHO, the NIH, the CDC, and by local governing officials who happily intrude upon God-given liberties. If your pastors and elders embrace and enforce your governor’s restrictions upon truly unimpaired, free assembling together for worship, you need to give serious thought to removing yourself from such an assembly. Church elders who impose any of the following prohibitions, which comply with a governor’s orders, have little to no comprehension of what their obligation is to guard and to encourage the Christian’s exercise of a free conscience bound to one Lord, namely, Jesus Christ.
• Preregistration for Worship Services: To attend any worship service or any gathering, families must register in advance. Failure to register will prevent access to the worship center unless some who have registered do not attend.
• Scanned Admittance: Preregistered families will be admitted to the worship center upon electronic scan.
• Remote Worship On-Site: Once the restricted number of worshipers is allowed into the worship center, late-comers will be directed to rooms where a closed-circuit video of the worship service will be shown.
• Alienation of Worshipers: Social distancing of no less than six feet is required inside and outside the building, for those outside of your household.
• Muzzled Worshipers: Masks are always required inside public buildings. The only exception would be at the time you are sitting down and eating. Those with health concerns relating to current personal health issues, or those with strongly held medical apprehensions only relating to the personal health of mask-wearing, will be allowed to be conscientiously exempt from wearing masks.
• Seating Assignments: To adhere to social distancing ordinances, we assign seating for every service. If you plan to visit the church, please let us know ahead of time so that we can add you to our seating chart.
These represent a few of the numerous and egregious restrictions various churches have accepted and imposed upon members and attendees as they obsequiously comply with the shifting but unremitting government protocols.
Reasonable Christians are correctly zealous to guard both their free consciences and the consciences of fellow believers against the pastoral binding of consciences concerning matters that the Lord Christ does not require or forbid. Hence the following scenario is not rare. Christians who carefully guard their own free consciences should inquire whether their pastor, who imposes a governor’s COVID protocol upon the congregation, also intends to receive and require any of the COVID “vaccines.” If you inquire, do not be surprised to receive a response that is incoherent and inconsistent with the pastor’s imposition of the COVID protocol upon the church. Indeed, some pastors who deferentially impose all or most of the above restrictions upon congregations personally and defiantly protest receiving any of the COVID vaccines when asked. Of course, such a posture is obviously unreasonable and self-contradictory, but many pastors fail to recognize that they have imposed their own lordship over the congregation of God’s people where Christ’s Lordship alone must prevail.
At issue is this question: To whom does the church belong? To their great shame, many pastors look upon the congregation as their own. They do not properly guard how they frame and converse about their relationship with their congregation. Likewise, if they give any thought to the role and function of the Christian’s conscience concerning things that God neither prohibits nor demands, they tend to think of themselves as the standard. Imposing the governor’s COVID protocol demands upon the congregation provides a ready-made checklist to ensure that “all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). Voila! What a great verse to provide a seemingly biblical warrant for the church’s COVID protocol procedures and requirements! Hence, concerning matters of the conscience, they have no reservation to impose their own preferences, their own interests, their own objectives, yes, even their own lordship. Concerning issues that God neither requires nor forbids, meddling pastors deal with their congregants not as individuals whose consciences are subject to the Lord Christ but as kindergarten children whose obedience is demanded not only to simplify the pastor’s role but as a test of loyalty to his leadership. For any church member to question the elders’ authority to demand compliance with the governor’s COVID protocol is to take a significant and perhaps fatal step toward excommunication from the congregation. I do not exaggerate. I know of such cases. Such pastors have forsaken their calling as shepherds. They have become self-serving. This is how false shepherds often arise among God’s people. Their first errors often entail no clear denial of Christian doctrine but imposing their own wills over the consciences of our Lord’s people. Concerning pseudo-pastors, the Apostle Paul warns:
Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears (Acts 20:28-31).
Flee from anyone who proclaims the following as David French does, that it is spiritually and morally incumbent that Christians receive a COVID vaccine because biblical reality demands it: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). That is a flagrant abuse of Scripture. Likewise, flee from anyone, such as Russell Moore, who appeals to Christians to receive a COVID vaccination not merely for your own welfare “but for the entire community.” And why? Moore tells us that it is our Christian duty. In case that sounds harsh, he adds that it is an act of love: “We can express our love for neighbor—especially the sick and elderly—by reducing the chance that we might inadvertently pass along a virus that could kill them.” Of course, Moore knows how appealing to Scripture provides gravitas to his argument. So, he appeals to a familiar miracle that Jesus performed. We do not need to gather others to assist us to carry our friend to Jesus, climb up onto a precarious roof, tear open that roof, and let our friend down into the crowded house where Jesus is so that he can heal our friend. No! “All we are asked to do is to get a shot.”
Also, do not yield to the pious-sounding appeal made by BioLogos whose founder, Francis Collins sees his work as continuing the healing ministry of Jesus. Their appeal to “science for pandemic times” is as reliable as their appeal to “science” to override God’s own account of his creative acts narrated for us in Genesis 1-2. Their alleged “science,” which is dubious does not triumph over the gospel’s governance concerning the Lordship of Christ over our Christian consciences. Do not be bullied into submission to BioLogos’s to (1) “wear masks,” (2) “get vaccinated,” (3) “correct misinformation” concerning COVID with unreliable and politically motivated claims made by public physicians such as Francis Collins, and (4) “work for justice,” namely their version of justice.
David French, Russell Moore, the BioLogos scholars, and numerous pastors, all who have embraced and enforced the statist white lab coat demands across the culture, even imposing them upon Christian churches, are seriously flawed spokesmen on these issues because they have no proper regard at all for the free consciences of God’s people secured by nothing less than the sacrificial death of our one and only Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ. We who acknowledge Jesus as Lord refuse to bend the knee to Statism, including Statism advocated from the church pulpit.
Of all Christians, theologians, leaders, writers, and especially pastors need to have a thoroughly developed understanding of Christian liberty as taught within the Holy Scriptures, along with a fully-formed Christian worldview that accounts for addressing contingencies such as rapidly spreading viruses that are highly survivable with an extremely low death rate. Furthermore, because of their positions of influence, these same individuals need to exercise considerable wisdom and caution when they take positions and comment on issues that God neither prohibits nor commands. This does not mean that Christian leaders and ministers cannot hold or express their own convictions concerning disputable matters, but it does mean that they need to do this with caution, with great care, with restraint, and act privately rather than publicly concerning matters on which their consciences are either free or bound lest they infringe upon the liberty of fellow believers by their overt actions and by their outspokenness prohibit what God has not forbidden or lest they provoke those who are weak in conscience to sin by observing their flaunting actions of freedom. Both acting to bind free consciences and inducing bound consciences to act against one’s own beliefs are sinful. Never should any minister of the gospel commit either of these sins.
When Christian leaders and ministers require all Christians in every circumstance of life to submit to the orders of a governing official, it should be obvious that those who issue such obligations have overstepped their own bounds as ministers of the gospel by surrendering to the state, the sphere sovereignty that belongs to Christian families and to Christian churches (see this discussion of Romans 13). So, again, if your pastors and elders embrace and enforce your governor’s restrictions upon the free and unencumbered assembling together for worship, you need to give serious prayerful consideration to removing yourself from such an assembly. Such shepherds are more interested in pleasing the governor than tending to the free or tender consciences of their congregants.