While quarantines at Covid-19’s house take time, people become restless. State governments are thinking of ways to open up. The stock market jumps a few percentage points to the slightest whisper of a vaccine. And the pastors begin to ask, “When can our churches be seen again?”
However, sometimes a darker question arises: “If the government continues to say that we cannot unite, when are we going to, as churches, engage in civil disobedience and unite anyway?”
Only this week, in three separate conversations, have I heard pastors ask this question.
That is why it is a biblically difficult issue: the government and our churches have a legitimate biblical claim on the territory of encounter. You can call this skill overlay.
Governments have the power, if not for another reason, to preserve human life (see Genesis 9. 5-6), and are bound by God to do so. If the temporary ban on all meetings of a certain size achieves this purpose, they must do so.
At the same time, churches have the right to come together, probably as property of the natural right to meet freely, and certainly as a religious right to meet. Our vertical obligation to worship God as churches create this horizontal right for others and our governments.
Imagine two overlapping circles, where one represents the Church’s judicial obligation and the right of assembly, while the other represents the government’s jurisdictional obligation to protect life. Our pandemic moment puts us in the midst of overlapping these skills. This is, like I said, what makes this moment difficult.
If the government has reasonable grounds to ban all kinds of meetings, to protect life, churches should act as obedient citizens and obey the government. They shouldn’t just “walk with the government on their own,” as one friend told me. They must be subjected in a positive way. To submit to this is to submit to God (Romans 13:1-2).
Why should government authority be the first thing?Because preserving life now allows the freedom to meet later. You can’t meet like a church if you’re dead. For this reason, Paul tells us to pray for kings and lead a peaceful and peaceful life, so that people may be saved (1 Timothy 2. 1-4) First, peace and security. Then the work of the church, at least typically.
However, if you’re very careful, you’ll get my two titles
First, the government must have a reasonable argument. A totalitarian state that completely prohibits freedom of assembly probably does not have such a reasonable argument, so one reason for civil disobedience would be when it is extremely obvious to common sense and why the government does not have a legitimate basis for banning meetings.
To be sure, to determine what reasonable argument or legitimate basis requires cases to be judged one by one, and Christians may disagree on this point; however, stopping a pandemic that kills more than 50,000 U. S. citizens in a month seems very reasonable.
Second, the government cannot deal with religious groups in evidence. If you allow sporting events, concerts and political conventions, you cannot prohibit churches from meeting. If a government treats churches differently, again, the church may have a biblical justification for disobeying.
At the moment, I see no reason to think that the government will treat churches in this way and, again, has a strong reason to ban all meetings in order to fulfill their fundamental role of preserving life. As a result, churches must submit to government restrictions on meetings in the near future. Moreover, before considering disobedience, Christians must exhaust all ordinary means of legal recourse.
And there is one more reason to obey the government’s ban on meeting now: I think it helps our testimony, it shows its concern for the community and its love for its neighbors, this shows that we also care about its well-being, not just ours. .