Church members are not always acquitting themselves or representing Jesus well online. Yes, churches have added social media clauses into their personnel policies, but the vast majority of social media users in your church are not on your staff. They need guidance, too.
The wages of sin is death. That is apparent, if we have eyes to see. Adultery destroys marriages. Gluttony degrades one’s health—mentally, spiritually, and physically. Covetousness constricts the heart, making one increasingly unable to love. Lying destroys trust, and therefore destroys relationships. This much is plain. It is easy to see sin for what it is when we see its effects down the road, when the marriage is irrecoverable, the heart attack has occurred, or the job has been lost.
As a fellow minister of the gospel here in Southern California, I want to articulate why I believe cooperating with the current restrictions is not necessarily a cowardly desertion of our calling, but may instead reflect the path of wisdom, responsibility, and love. My motive in writing is not to attack MacArthur, who is my brother-in-Christ, but from sincere concern about the impact of his views on other pastors and churches.
Drawing on earlier work by N.T. Wright and McKnight, Bates rightly urges that the gospel is the true story of Israel that reaches its climax in the life, death, resurrection and ascension/enthronement of Jesus of Nazareth, who is Messiah, kyrios, and Son of God.
As pastor theologians, we can no longer afford to ignore the pain and suffering caused by systemic racism, particularly, anti-Blackness. The murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, and the recent protests have made this abundantly clear. As those charged with leading the people of God and serving as theologians for the church, we have a responsibility to engage these issues with humility, compassion, grace, and truth. But I have found that many of us ask “what can I do?” The answers are many.
According to Paul, ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us’ (Rom. 8.18). But let us not misunderstand: this does not mean that our current sufferings are merely compensated by the future glory, but rather, it is through our sufferings that we are enabled to participate in the sufferings of Christ, which are revealed to us as God’s glory.
Governmental authority has been given by God to promote order and punish the guilty. There is no list of exceptions; no list of peoples exempt from the cause of justice; and none who take up justice apart from the authority of God. When private citizens take the law into their own hands, they usurp the authority of God.
Bonhoeffer’s call not to take for granted the physical presence of the believer points beyond that loss to another, deeper loss that reveals an important theological truth about the gathered church. We are not merely missing our friends, we are also missing God.
Christian theologians, most notably, St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas, pick up the ancient philosophical notions of eudaimonia/happiness and reflect on them theologically. In short, they agree with Aristotle that true, Christian, Biblical happiness is connected with goodness/virtue and wisdom. What they add to the Hellenistic philosophers is that the triune God is the source of all goodness and wisdom, and therefore, the source of all happiness. One cannot be happy without God. Not in any real, true, and lasting sense anyway.
We extract the sick from their communities and place them in sterile hospitals, with frequent noises and interruptions that prevent the sustained silence through which God often speaks. The protocols being implemented by many hospitals in light of Covid-19, with extreme restrictions on visitations, will only compound this isolation.
Visiting the sick helps to close the isolation gap, reminding the suffer that they are not alone. It reminds the frail that their community is not comprised of impatient doctors and harried orderlies, but the body of Christ, a community that shares each other’s burdens.
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