Christ, not Caesar?

Oregon Muse writes in his Morning Rant in the Ace of Spades blog,

John MacArthur is the head pastor of the large and influential Grace Community Church in Southern California. On Friday, July 24th, he posted a statement on his blog announcing GCC's intention to resume meeting for worship despite California's imposition of tighter lockdown rules announced by chief petty tyrant Gavin Newsom. He gives theological and biblical reasons why this is permitted...

The state is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. There are rights (and responsibilities) that exist prior to the formation of any state. If you truly understand and believe this, there is no way you can ever be a socialist. Not consistently, anyway. Once you start yammering, like Bernie Sanders, about health care being a "human right" or housing being a "human right", you're just announcing that you have no idea what human rights are.

I'm not sure what they're going to do if Newsom (or the local constabulary) decide that they need to be taught a lesson. Presumably they've got legal help lined up and ready to go.

So what we have here is a protest movement. We already have one that's been going on for a couple of months, but this one is new.

But unlike the BLM/Antifa protests, here are some of the things the GCC elders and congregation are not doing:

a. Stomping around
b. Yelling
c. Throwing stuff
d. Breaking windows
e. Defacing public buildings with graffiti
f. Vandalizing and looting private businesses
f. Pulling down statues
g. Turning urban neighborhoods into filthy, crime-ridden shitholes.
h. Assaulting and even murdering police officers
i. Leaving behind giant piles of trash for somebody else to clean up.

Pastor MacArthur's blog post is uncompromising, yet respectful. So I would say that GCC has the moral high ground here. What they don't have, unfortunately, is any elected officials who have their back. Unlike BLM/Antifa, who have their BFFs Ted Wheeler, Jenny Durkan, Andrew Cuomo, and Gavin Newsom running interference for them. The GCC elders and their congregation are out there by themselves. May God protect them.

Another aspect of the GCC protest (can we call it that?) is that it has a definite demand that can be met, i.e. leave us alone and let us worship, as is our natural life. This is not true of the rioters and looters who simply want to riot and loot and throw stuff. I'm guessing most of them are rootless millennials, with no families or children and therefore no stake in the future, who really don't have anything better to do with their empty lives.

What it boils down to is that the Democrats have refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election and this is just them turning the knob up to 11. So their response, interestingly enough, is to set blue cities on fire.

By the way, has any elected Democrat office-holder of national prominence publicly condemned the rioting and looting? I haven't heard any.

But I digress:

After publishing the original statement, Pastor MacArthur added an explanation of why he came out with it now:

"But we are now more than twenty weeks into the unrelieved restrictions. It is apparent that those original projections of death were wrong and the virus is nowhere near as dangerous as originally feared. Still, roughly forty percent of the year has passed with our church essentially unable to gather in a normal way...Major public events that were planned for 2021 are already being canceled, signaling that officials are preparing to keep restrictions in place into next year and beyond. That forces churches to choose between the clear command of our Lord and the government officials. Therefore, following the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, we gladly choose to obey Him."

Shorter GCC: Gavin Newsome is asshoe and we're no longer going to put up with him jerking us around.

Well, perhaps Pastor MacArthur's didn't say exactly that, but, I'd say my, shall we say, dynamic interpretation caught the spirit of it.

Anyway, read the whole thing. I think it's quite good. MacArthur is a well-known, respected pastor and I hope other churches will be inspired by his example.