Regarding John McArthur's Church Service

It is gross and unseemly to see so many pastors and theologians squabbling over John McArthur’s resumption of church services. If you have not read it, you can read his letter here about why his church is going to defy California’s orders.

McArthur makes a biblical argument for resuming church services. He does not even cite the First Amendment other than to note he is not using it as a defense.

Naturally, everyone has an opinion and some pastors were critical of McArthur. Some accused him of grandstanding. Some think he is going to harm his community.

Why not shut up and pray? You all know my strongly held opinions on these matters. Let me add one more — were I in McArthur’s congregation, I’d opt out of in-person appearances as I do not feel comfortable. Given the pictures of the crowds from his Sunday service and a packed house, I do worry for his congregation that they were so eager to get back together that there could be a problem. Time will tell. But McArthur is the shepherd to a flock and he knows best how he needs to shepherd that particular flock. Your church might be different.

Undoubtedly, California has sent mixed messages to churches about how to operate and has, in some cases, treated them differently from other businesses. I understand the concerns McArthur’s congregation has.

If you are a pastor somewhere else, feel free to do differently. But I see no need to be a schoolmarm about it.

Part of what I think is happening, frankly, is that a bunch of pastors and theologians squabbling over this have various evangelical ministries and nonprofits now. McArthur has Grace to You. There are others out there. They’re all feeling their way along in this and there’s quite a bit more No Grace For You than grace right now.

But the bottom line is that what is good for McArthur’s church might not be good for yours and vice versa. There’s no need to throw stones.

Dr. Fauci

I am perturbed by some conservatives insistence on attacking Dr. Fauci for pulling his mask down in the stands at the Nationals Game.

It’s like people haven’t heard Fauci, they’ve heard caricatures of what he has said. He wore the mask on the mound and he wore the mask in the stands. He pulled down the mask to drink water and then covered up again.

He sat between his wife and best friend. He had a COVID-19 test the day before that was negative. But the cameras timed it perfectly. In one shot you cannot see the water bottle, which has led to water bottle truthers speculating he was lying. In a second shot, you see the water bottle but he appears to be talking.

Just a week ago, people were blasting progressives for Karening people without masks and now conservatives are taking a hand full of photos and condemning the man.

This is not a serious movement if that’s the case. It’s a movement of grievance-mongers as bad as the left.

I have heard the justifications that Fauci is a hypocrite or going against his own advice or wore it on the mount and that was ridiculous. The man was drinking water. This is stupid.

The real outrage should be over just how badly the man threw a baseball. There’s the outrageous moment.

Kudos to Fox News and John Roberts for interviewing Fauci and asking him about the mask incident.

The Hypocrisy Continues

While I think it is ridiculous to shame Fauci for drinking water, I think the media has some serious issues with hypocritical coverage.

The protests and protestors seem to be able to get a lot of media coverage without questioning their participation in spreading the virus. But the moment a church meets there seems to be willful, malicious coverage from the press about the potential to spread the virus.

The media has largely refused to even consider the hypocrisy out of Nevada of allowing casinos to open and not allowing churches without limiting capacity arbitrarily.

John Roberts got this wrong at the Supreme Court and the dissent got it right. But the media continues to give passes to favored sides who gather closely without masks. That makes everyone else treat this all less seriously.

Frankly, I think it is safe to say at this point that the viral spike in June had nothing to do with governors reopening the states and everything to do with people just saying “F it” after hagiographic coverage of Black Lives Matters protests that were not socially distanced with everyone wearing masks. If the media that blasted the small business owners in April for protesting was going to praise the Black Lives Matters protests, a lot of Americans decided they were just going to do their own thing.

I know Trump is to blame for everything and everything that is wrong is Donald Trump’s fault, or so Chris Cuomo would say. But it still baffles me how much the media in this country now lacks self-awareness and refuses to acknowledge its own complicity in this stuff.

Tom Cotton

Tom Cotton did not say that slavery was a necessary evil. You’d be forgiven for thinking he believes this given how the media reacted. Cotton was explaining the views of the Founding Fathers in an interview.

As he correctly noted, the Founding Fathers, not Cotton, viewed slavery as a necessary evil that would have to be dealt with after independence from Great Britain. His precise quote was, “As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”

That is an accurate statement. But the left has decided to attack Cotton and attribute the views of the Founders to him. If we cannot even explain the views of the Founders without getting attacked, we are in for a world of hurt.

But it has been clear since the very moment the New York Times decided to slander history with its 1619 Project revisionism that this would happen. The leftwing radicals who hate the country cannot stand by and let the truth be spoken. They cannot allow us to defend honest history, so they have decided to attack anyone who speaks the truth.

This is becoming a consistent pattern with the left. They cannot win the argument on the merits so they’re sending the mob. The mob has come for Tom Cotton, but he is not going to cave, nor should he.

We, however, should help set the record straight against the liars.