Individuals endangering others by exercising their faith

The thing is (even aside from the virus), that if Jesus walked into almost any church in "Christendom," He would probably say, "When did I tell you to build this?" Every church in our denomination, afaik, has hit the pause button on face to face gatherings. But our local church is giving Zoom lots of traffic until we can resume our transition to house churches. So, it's not a show stopper for us even though it's a painful adjustment. The Great Commission doesn't say to go into all your pews and hope people show up. It says to go into all the world and make disciples. I'm praying that this tragedy serves as a reminder.

 

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We probably have more churches per square mile than average and they're all closed.

I'll leave the political underpinnings alone since this is the adult section of the forum, and tensions are already somewhat elevated.

 

Catholic masses cancelled until further notice

 

I've always encouraged extreme privacy and personal isolation during worship.

 

The editorial in the local paper a couple of days ago (Florida) was "Governor finally gets it right" for imposing a State wide "stay at home" order.
But then he failed a few sentences later in the same order when he exempted religious gatherings.

I think that this was a blatantly political decision, pandering to the "Christian right".
But if you think that through......he really isn't doing them any favors by letting them congregate and spread the virus around among themselves.

That was later clarified to say that those gatherings must conform to the previous rules, which included no groups of more than 10 and keeping a 6 foot distance.

Let's hope that most of the "real" ministers will have some common sense and not have traditional gatherings with unlimited numbers in attendance.

 

'wherever two or more are gathered...

 

The real ones definitely are and will be more wise than the guy who was in our news this past week. The guy at the River of Tampa Bay has some ideas about health for the Christ follower that are completely unbiblical and that led to his presumption that God want's His followers to always be healthy and wealthy. Wrong!

 

Zoom is OK (apart from the security problems) if church is only about giving and receiving information, but it's rather difficult to feed people with the Body and Blood of Christ (the "medicine of immortality") via Zoom.

 

Yeah these kind of loopholes really tick me off. Why even have a lockdown if there are wide open loopholes like this? Churches are particularly bad because it is really, really tough to social distance...hence the word 'congregation'.

 

Funny.
But HIGHLY inappropriate.

I live in Florida and it is real things like that which have now caused the WHOLE state to be under "travel restrictions", even though about 30% of the counties report ZERO cases or an extremely low number. I am in that 30%.

 

LIQUOR STORES DEEMED ESSENTIAL BUSINESS; CAN REMAIN OPEN - New York State Liquor Store Association

 

gun industry essential in blue massachusetts

 

Here I noticed a couple of neighbors discussing a car. The one with the car is maybe mid-seventies, pretty frail. They're more or less bumping shoulders as they walk around it, jawing.

 

clueless, about 20% of the population i figure

 

Pot shops are listed as essential here. That is because the previous medical marijuana system, originally separate, was rolled into the subsequent recreational pot system, which need to remain open for medical.

And for almost everything, stores that have both essentials and nonessentials in the same retail space, can remain open for all of it.

 

They still need to keep manufacturing for and supplying military and police? And police commonly buy their arms and ammo in regular gun shops?

Many civil rights have remote or on-line paths for exercise when the in-person form is restricted for disease control. But exceptions include abortions, guns, and (some places) voting.

Abortion physically requires in-person service. Gun purchases must be done in person under long-standing gun control law, mail-order was prohibited long ago. While voting can be done remote, only a few states have switched to all-mail-in voting (and with great turnout success here in WA as the pandemic was emerging), the non-mail states are simply not in position to ramp up to it for this election season.