Romans 13 and Race Protests

Welcome to another Theology Throwdown. This is where all of the Christian podcast community podcasters get together. We discuss different topics. Tonight, we're going to be discussing something that's not controversial at all in any way, shape, or form.

We're going to talk about, well, Romans 13 and what should be the Christian and the church's response to government shutting down churches and not maybe opening up as quickly as we would like. We'll also be discussing things about race and some of the protesting going on and who knows what else because we never actually know where this is going to go.

Introductions to the Christian Podcast Community Panel

So let me let everyone introduce themselves and their podcast and how folks can get a hold of them. To start off, I'll start with Andy.

Well, my name is Andy Olson, and I podcast at EchoZoey .com. I do a monthly show, usually roughly an hour, and I'd like to find some knowledgeable guests on a variety of topics to just talk about things that affect the church.

I try to do timeless topics that you can pull out in 10 or 15 years and won't be obsolete anymore. And we do positive theology, so we'll get into the root doctrines of the faith, and then we'll also talk about heterodox issues and heresies and false teachings and cults and all things related to theology, both positive and negative.

You can find me at EchoZoey .com, which, if you're watching, is on the lower third there.

All right, Colleen, how about you introduce yourself, your podcast, how folks can get a hold of you? And I think you even have some products that are new for sale.

Yes, my name is Colleen Sharp, and I host Theology Gals podcast. You can find us at TheologyGals .com. And the products that Andrew is referencing, we just released kind of a series of books, not to sit and read, but journals and...

I'm kind of hearing an echo. Yeah. Someone's end. I'll mute Keith. Okay. Maybe I can't mute Keith. You gotta mute yourself. Okay, okay, I don't hear it anymore. That's good. So we released a sermon notes notebook, two sermon notes notebooks for children, one for kind of mid that can read, and then some that are for learning to read.

And there, if you look at our social media, you'll see pictures of what the inside look like. They're based on something I made for my own children when they were young. And then we also have catechism and scripture memory books, three of those.

Those are also available on Kindle. And then we have a Bible reading journal based on a Bible reading plan my co-host put together, and a Bible reading and prayer journal. So there will be a post on TheologyGals .com with links to all of those.

All right, and next up we'll do Keith. And Keith has probably got what we were talking about before we went live. Colleen was mentioning... Colleen. See, my realtor is Colleen, and I keep getting screwed up now.

For so many years, I pronounced your name right. Colleen was mentioned before we went live about how everyone here has such a variety of types of shows. But I'll say this before Keith introduces himself.

I think his show actually has the most variety within one show because he's got a radio drama. He does answering questions. He's got like everything in one podcast. So Keith, how about you introduce yourself and how folks can could find you and what your podcast is about?

Although you'll have to unmute. I don't know if I muted you that time now. Okay, there I am unmuted.

Sorry about that. I had some noise in the house here a moment ago. Yeah, this is Keith Heltzly from Quest for Truth. My co-host is Nathan Caldwell. It occurred to me I've never really announced his name on our thrower down here.

He can't make it though. As Andrew was saying, we do an audio drama once a month. And I sometimes do interviews, not very often, but usually have a casual approach and conversation to various topics that are going on, such as you know, virus and people going crazy out there.

Then once a month, we do an in-depth Bible study. And so it's all, you know, as the title says, Quest for Truth. We try to figure, you know, maybe we're talking to people who are fairly new to the faith.

We try to keep it at a low-level conversation and we try to avoid big words. But that's just what we're about. We try to put a lot of different variety into it.

All right, next up will be Anthony.

All right. Well, I am Anthony Russo and I am the host of Grace and Peace Radio. You can find me at graceandpeaceradio .com and my show is typically under a half hour, let's say, and the tagline is applying God's Word to everyday life.

Really, what I try to do is just that, just apply the Word, think of different issues, different items that we go through as Christians and help us to try to think biblically, because really that's what I try to do in my own life, right, is Lord, what does your Word say about this particular topic?

So I'll discuss that. I try to break it up. I have some interviews at times and I also try to make it evangelistic so that if anybody is listening and they don't know the Lord, well, hopefully they'll hear it and they'll get saved and that would be great.

So Grace and Peace Radio, I hope you check it out. Would love to have you as a listener. So thanks.

All right. Next is probably the guy with the best voice here, and that's Daniel Minnick.

Well, thank you, Andrew. I'm glad you like my voice, even though I probably would say that I have a face for radio, but my name is Daniel Minnick. I am the host of the Truthspresso podcast, where you get your espresso fix of truth.

And at Truthspresso, we cover topics ranging from deep theology to deep economics to politics. And I would invite you to listen to Truthspresso recently. I've actually convinced my wife to come on and we're talking through the topic of abortion right now.

And my wife is a certified nurse midwife and worked as a pediatrician. She's also had years of experience working in a crisis pregnancy center and doing sidewalk counseling. So she knows a lot about the politics and the medical issues surrounding the topic of abortion.

And I hope you enjoy those episodes where you get to hear my wife and I, and also I'm really looking forward to in the coming month to be able to get into topics of Jehovah's Witnesses and church history.

Because maybe your book is going to come out soon, Jehovah's Witnesses. Just saying, just not putting any pressure on you, but you know, next week. Yeah, the episodes with you and your wife were really good.

Next up is the one person who I think has not missed a single throwdown, even when we've had scheduling conflicts, but Eve Franklin.

It's so much fun to be here, even if I don't have anything to add to the discussion, just to listen sometimes. I am a co-host of the podcast, Are You Just Watching?, in which we take one movie or TV show a month and discuss it from a Christian worldview.

And we don't bash movies. We just try to pull things out that allows us to share the gospel and talk about theology in a way that is usually unintentional. And I also have authored a book called Are You Just Watching? and that you can get that on Amazon.

And it is basically a really a guided journal where you can help yourself learn how to watch movies critically. All right, and.

Podcast Longevity, Episode Counts, and Show Variety

I think either Eve or Andy, I'm not sure which one of you have been podcasting longer because both of you have podcasts that go I think beyond 10 years. And I just did. You're at 11 or 12, I think. Well, it's over 12.

I just did.

145, I think was my last episode.

And it's monthly, so 145 months, which would be 12 years. I'm noticing. And Eve is monthly too, huh?

Yeah, except we missed a few months in a couple years. So when we went through like a near pod fade when Daniel Lewis stepped down, so I think there was one year I only got three episodes out.

Oh, wow. Keith has been podcasting quite a while too because he has his other show. Oh, that's right. I don't know how long you've been going, Keith. He's muted, but he has an all-time radio.

While we're waiting for him to unmute, I did want to mention that even though I've got more calendar time, a lot of you guys have more episodes by far. Oh, definitely.

By far. Well, but I was cheating. Okay, so I have my daily podcast, which has 500 episodes, but it's Monday through Friday. Granted, it's only two minutes long, so it doesn't take as long to record. But that one is Monday through Friday.

Right now, I'm just kind of doing some older shows as life has been hectic. I have my Andrew Rapport's Rap Report, which is my hour-long show, which right now, anyone who has listened to or watched the Snatch Them From the Flames Home Edition that Justin Peters and I did, that's the latest episodes we're going to go through.

Except I am going to do something special. I already have it recorded actually on Joseph Smith's birthday, or the day he died, I mean. Do you want to do an anniversary on the day someone dies? Well, okay.

But that's what we did. I talked about Mormonism and the, let's see, I got Apologetics Live Thursday nights. Answering any Apologetics questions you have, just go to apologeticslive .com. The links to join or to watch are there, along with a link to subscribe.

I host this one for, with you guys, and so that's a real privilege. And then Colleen and I do one called So You Want to Be a Podcaster, where we, it's really, we do that for all of us here at the Christian Podcast Community.

So with that, let's get into the discussion. Some of you... Hold up, hold up, hold up. How many episodes is that? How many episodes total? Yeah. I don't know. I got over 500 on Wrap Report. I got 100 and...

You got homework for next week. 30 some for the Wrap Report weekly one. Apologetics Live, I don't know, probably close to 100, I'm guessing. Theology Throwdowns, not that many. I think we're at Eve could probably tell me, we're probably at like six or seven.

So that one's easy. But, so it's a few, but you've been podcasting longer, so...

Yeah, I can't hold a candle to the number of episodes you've done.

Do two minute ones, and then you can do more. All right, so so let's start with the topic for tonight. We wanted to do two different topics really, is we'll start with the issue of Romans 13, and what churches should do with the whole, this whole government shutdown.

Government Shutdowns, Romans 13, and Church Closures

I don't know how many of you guys are allowed to go to church. I started saying before we went live, but I'm not allowed to. I was actually in this weird state where we thought, my church is in Pennsylvania, I live in New Jersey, and our governor was saying that, you know, we were not allowed to travel unless it was essential.

And so there was a point where there was talk that we might be able to open the church in Pennsylvania, but my governor wouldn't have allowed me to drive to church. And that becomes an interesting Romans 13 issue.

I know what I was going to do. I was driving to church to preach, and I would tell the officer who pulls me over, I think it's essential.

So, but... President Trump agrees with you though.

This was before President Trump announced that, which I was, once he did that, I was like, okay. Now our building, our building, because we're a church plant, is different than maybe some of you guys.

We rent a building from the community, and so it's a government, it's a senior center, and so when they shut down, our building was shut down. We had, we had no choice as far as the building. We've been creative with using Zoom, and we're, we try to see if we can get together, though social distance, but we try to do fellowships and things like that where we can.

We're actually talking about the idea of just going to the building, since it's public property, and now public parks are open in Pennsylvania, and we're thinking of actually just setting up, like maybe just setting up church outside on nice days, and having church just outside.

So how many of you guys are, have church that's open right now, that you're back meeting again? Yeah, people can't see you raise your hands.

We, we just had our third in-person Sunday of services yesterday, which would have, what is that, the 7th of June? So we had our, our governor in Kentucky was actually taking the court over the closed doors.

All right, Keith, I see you're muted. Did you, you, you, you meeting back at church yet or no?

Yeah, I was gonna say, we have our church did open this last Sunday, for extenuating circumstances where we couldn't make it, but they just started going this past week. All right, and then I think Andy and Anthony.

I thought I moved to a quieter, quieter part of the house. Oh, okay.

Anthony and Andy, you guys said you guys are meeting?

Yeah, I'm here in South Carolina. This is Anthony, and we've been meeting, I think when Eve said about three weeks, I think here in South Carolina, we've been doing about three weeks as well. We have, we have every other pew in the church blocked off, so don't sit there.

But other than that, it's,.

We're pretty much at business as usual. Yes, we have the six-foot poles in the, in the seats in every other pew, so that family groups stay six feet apart. They actually put the poles in there, and we're supposed to all wear a mask.

So I tell you after about the third Sunday, most people are getting rid of those because it's really hard to sing with the mask on. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think anybody at ours wears a mask.

It's different states. So anyone here other than me not in a state that's not opening up to churches? Ours is kind of easing in,.

So they're doing small gatherings. I haven't even kept up with it because my mom and I are both high risk, so we're going to continue to do online. Was that my, oh, I think my husband is. Oh, okay. I just hung up on my husband.

I'll send him a text message. So, well, they just, they just, one of the things they just released about the virus is that they think it has something to do with the blood vessels. I have an autoimmune disease that attacks the blood, and I get blood clots really easily, and so, they, apparently the virus is causing blood clots, and so, anyways, I'm going to go talk to my husband now and let you guys talk.

Daniel, how are you? We rent as well.

Oh, Go ahead. Say Andy or Daniel. Well,.

We'll go with Andy since he's open, and then we'll see where you're at, Daniel. Sorry, I didn't hear that.

Yeah, so we rent as well, but we rent from a Messianic Jewish synagogue, and we here in Minnesota are, they're saying 25 of capacity, and our congregation is small enough compared to the facility that we don't have any problems with, you know, the 25 might be kind of pushing it, but we got a lot of people that don't feel comfortable coming back, so it wasn't really a problem, but this last Sunday was our first, and they're looking at, by next Sunday, I think they're looking at moving on to phase three of the reopening, so we should be able to go to 50%, so we're doing okay there.

The synagogue has, it's kind of interesting because this, here, what do you think about this as a Romans 13 issue? So, the government is saying we can come back, but then the landlords, the synagogue is saying they would, they really want masks worn, and they're wearing masks, and they're even providing masks, but the elders don't want to require it, so they finally decided, well, we'll tell people that we want you to wear a mask, but we're not going to enforce it, and then when I got there on Sunday, we had like maybe 10 of the people there were actually wearing masks.

Yeah, so it's not really Romans 13 in the truest sense, but it is an authority,.

Right? Sort of. That to me kind of falls under the category of what is it, if you're asked to walk one mile, walk two? I know I'm misquoting that terribly, sorry.

And we've gone over some of that as a congregation and, you know, that the First Corinthians 10, putting the others ahead of yourself, it too, as well, that, you know, I'm like, I don't like masks at all.

I just can't, I can't breathe very well in them. I think that I had the disease come through my house about mid-March, so if that's great, then I should be immune and not prone to spreading it. Of course, I haven't been tested, but but as far as loving your brother, yeah, I mean, the thing to do would be if they feel more comfortable with you wearing a mask, then the loving thing to do would be to wear a mask.

Daniel, how about your church situation?

Probably about the same situation as Colleen's. It's in the same state, but so far we haven't been able to meet. We also rent a facility, a school, and our church is growing too big for that school. And so we actually bought some property.

We're trying to build. Hopefully next year we might have a facility that we can own so we don't have to rent. But the Sunday before, this last Sunday, there was a drive-in service that we finally got to have.

Outdoors, and unfortunately, I was not able to attend that one. It was online this last Sunday, but we're hoping that this Sunday we're working with another church. Then we're hoping that we might be able to meet in that building.

We'll just see how that works, and I'm not sure what the capacity will be, but that'll definitely be different.

Whether Churches Are Being Singled Out

So let me ask this for each of us. We have church that, you know, we live in states where some of the states have locked down. They have said that they're not specifically targeting churches. However, I'll give a scenario in New York City.

Maybe this will spark some conversation as far as who agrees, disagrees that whether the church is being targeted. In New York City, Mayor de Blasio stated before Resurrection Sunday that churches that do not close that he would, he threatened with closing them permanently if they did not close for Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.

And the argument that people made was that was just, hey, everyone is being closed, and it's not specifically targeting churches. However, for Ramadan, Mayor de Blasio sent people into mosques to tape off where people can kneel, sit down, and kneel for prayer.

He also set up dozens of places around New York City where people could get halal food for Ramadan. Now, that was very interesting to me because I don't think there's anything stopping them from cooking on their own, but the city provided food.

The city workers went into mosques to map out areas when churches were not allowed to gather. And I do find something interesting there when they talk about separation church and state, and yet it was city workers.

And didn't he shut down some kind of a Jewish funeral or something?

He did. He tried to, and in that case, there was the Jewish funeral that they had in New York looked very much like the protests going on right now. But that was bad, and I think his comment at that was that people that were going out and doing the funeral and people that were protesting for opening the government, that that was risking his health and everyone else's health.

So, yeah, let's discuss this. Are there cases that we see that it at least gives an appearance that maybe the government is picking and choosing which religious organizations can open? And is there a point where we say we're going to rebel against Romans 13, if that's the case, to be able to meet?

Romans 13, Romans 14, and Christian Conscience

I think that the New York situation is unique. I haven't felt, and maybe Daniel can speak to it because we're in the same state, but I haven't felt in Colorado, even though our governor is extremely liberal, and I'm unhappy with him on many levels, but I don't, I think when they've done things here, they do things like when they start easing down on the lockdowns, it was, you know, groups no more than 10.

No one was really singled out in that. And I know that we're in a different situation with riots now and whatnot, which I think is another discussion, but I think New York is is unique. I mean, every, I'm sure a lot of people have seen the the stuff that the New York mayor has said that has sound, sounded somewhat anti-Semitic and and by his actions.

So I, I'm not sure. I think it would depend.

Yeah, I would agree with Colleen, like it doesn't seem like Colorado has been that extreme. I mean, I know we have that restaurant that opened on Mother's Day and that made, you know, basically worldwide news about over that issue, but it, yeah, it does seem like actually no matter where you are, at least in my mind, there is that in there is that inconsistency of even the idea that people who are trying to worship and practice, you know, proper sanitation, social distancing, wearing masks were flatly forbidden to do that.

And even without just the religious discrimination, you have this so-called essential work of you know, people flocking into Walmart's and other department stores. And to me, it seems inconsistent there where there's a lot of people who won't even, aren't even wearing masks there, but that's okay.

But somehow, you know, you can't have more than 10 people in a place of worship that can accommodate that amount of space, but you, you know, you have department stores that have, you know, thousands of people in and out during a day touching things and not wearing masks.

It just doesn't seem very consistent to me in that regard.

Do you guys think that Romans 13 even applies to this situation?

I was going to bring that up. I was going to say, I think in a lot of ways, we're more governed by Romans 14 as a church than we are Romans 13, especially with the controversy over, you know, there's such a wide variety of opinions as far as what this virus is doing and what kind of a threat it is and how people feel personally threatened by it.

And so I think we're governed more by Romans 14, which is, you know, to let each person be governed by his own conscience. And when they start reopening churches, let people continue to stay home. You know, we're working as a church.

We're scrambling right now because we've never done live streaming from our building. And so trying to get the equipment to work with that, so that people that, because we've got a lot of older people in our church that feel like they're in that vulnerable population that want to stay home.

And even one of our preachers, we've got two preachers and the younger of the two's got some asthma issues and some respiratory issues and stuff, and he doesn't feel comfortable coming back. So he actually pre-recorded his sermon last week.

But we're governing our own body by Romans 14 and letting people decide on their own how much risk they want to take and if they think there's a risk at all.

Interesting because my pastor actually preached on this. He had been before COVID going through First Peter. And when COVID, the lockdown started, he switched to a series on, you know, just Christian living and in times of stress and stuff.

But then when he finished that series, he decided to go back into First Peter. And it was very interesting because the next passage that was on the agenda for First Peter was you know, the part that's actually very similar to the Romans 13, which is the First Peter 2 -13, the subject, for the Lord's sakes, to every human institution.

And he dealt with that in one sermon and then everybody kind of got riled up because it was, you know, some of us had just attended a protest at our state capitol the day before. And it was interesting to find out that he then followed it up with the next Sunday saying, pointing out the fact that we live in a democracy or a republic, however you want to talk about it, where the government is by the people and that we elect our politicians and that it is necessary as free Americans to defend our constitution and to to stand up and be vocal when we see things going wrong.

And not in a violent way, but because it behooves us as good citizens to you know, defend what makes our country great. And I thought it was interesting that he balanced that out, that we don't live under an emperor.

We don't live under a king. We are, as a nation, we govern by the people. And so it is necessary for us to to have the Christian attitude of submission, but at the same time be willing to speak out when our voice needs to be heard.

And I like the way he balanced that. But in our state, it has been an issue because back before the federal court ruled against our governor, we had a, I think it was actually the mayor of Louisville, had his police ticket people going to a drive-in church.

So they were just staying in their cars in a parking lot, socially distanced, and they had troopers come and take everybody's license plates down and they fined them, I think it was I think it was like a thousand or five hundred dollars per person, not per car, but per person that attended that service for being there.

And so it has been an issue in our state. I mean actual follow-up with punishment kind of stuff. But I don't think that's right. I think it should have been suggestion and let people weigh the risks so that like in Andy Olson's case with his church that people could make the decision whether they wanted to come and risk it or not.

You brought up what I wanted to bring up, which is even the question of how do we apply Romans 13 and understand what it is that the what are the powers that be that are ordained by God, especially in the United States of America, because it seems like we need to understand some of the history of our own nation to understand like who really has power and what power do they have because we have a federalist system.

We have you know, we have counties, cities, counties, states and the federal government and as you mentioned the constitution and you know the bill of rights and you know, like so like you did mention democracy and that we elect leaders, but then like are we to understand that once you elect a leader that anything that leader says is law or are there, you know, powers that are are there you know constitutions that actually limit the powers of the elected officials and then you know because when the President Trump says something does that take precedence over you know what a governor says and does the governor have the authority to like declare an executive order and is that law?

So I think that's that's probably a discussion that we could have to understand exactly what are the powers and how do we apply them from Romans 13 in our constitutional republic?

That's a big issue that I've been weighing on in so many different areas and there's a lot of rabbit trails I could go off on this, but one that I've been pondering is is that I'm thoroughly convinced that there's rampant voter fraud all over the country and and a lot of places where Democrats hold a lot of power it's because they've stolen that power through the ballot box.

And and where I'm coming at least theologically on that is that God ordains everything and he is sovereign over all of it. And you know, he's put some rather nasty people in power in different empires throughout history and through different means.

And if he's ordaining some rather nasty people here in our own country and doing it through voter fraud one way or another he's ordained it that they're in power and but we do have such a sticky system where no one person really has total power like like an emperor would and so we but we've we've got a system that we work through and and if we don't like what the governor says or what the president says we go to the courts and we have them try to mitigate the situation or we go to the legislature and have them change the laws and and I think we just got to keep all of that in view that God has ordained all of that in our country.

I know uh, I was I was really unclear about this myself. I mean when things started out My take was Okay, look, you know we we close church for when it's bad weather. We don't want our elderly slipping into falling on the ice or whatever the case may be.

So I was I was good with it for a few weeks I I understood because at the time initially it was you know, two or three weeks. We we gotta flatten the curve flatten the curve. So I was good with it as things went on and then especially the one day when My wife and I were sitting Uh eating our takeout at the dairy queen looking at a very full Lowe's parking lot on one side of the highway and a very full home depot parking lot on the other side of the highway.

That's when my thinking kind of shifted and I started saying. Especially when the numbers weren't quite adding up and that sort of thing I started thinking okay This is this is ridiculous is what I began to think.

And that's when I started thinking that okay, we've got to we got to do something here. You know, like this doesn't this doesn't add up now i'm not a pastor, so There's a little bit of armchair quarterbacking that can go on so I needed to be sensitive to that and not Not be the pastor because if the church had opened up I wouldn't have been the one that would have been fined or arrested or whatever.

So I had to be careful about that um I did kind of wonder too at what point Would especially as we saw that this wasn't the plague. At what point do we go into house church mode? You know at what point do we say look we're going to follow our Chinese brothers and sisters and get into house church mode so I kind of wrestled with all of those things and then Uh, i'll just say as far as my research even for this episode.

One of the things that really helped me out was I read uh martin lloyd jones's exposition on romans 13, which is About half the book. It's really excellent. I definitely definitely commend it. I learned a ton so Those were just some of the issues I had to work through.

One of the things he points out and daniel kind of touched on this is it's the powers God has instituted the powers. I mean, yes, the people also are put in there in under the sovereignty of god, but ultimately it's those powers and um the offices I think particularly when the churches or when those offices are not.

When they're violating what god Decrees when god decrees that we worship him and he created the church in that situation. We then have the god-given right to violate those laws and policies of men. To me, but again I'm, not making that as a decree.

I don't want to sound like i'm armchair quarterbacking any pastors.

In any states or any areas, but well here let me throw a different angle at it.

My my view actually is I don't know if romans 13 applies the way People have been using it. What do I mean by that? Well the law of the land of the constitution States quite clearly that the government cannot Create a law to impede our religious freedom and yet they did and so the question is is the law when and remember this wasn't a executive order from the president it was Something that he recommended for two weeks.

And and people now in hindsight, everyone's forgetting this but go back at those during those two weeks. As anthony mentioned it was to it was to flatten the curve. Why? So the the hospitals weren't overrun.

It wasn't a cure like everyone's talking now as if like staying home is the cure. No, it was never a cure it was to not overrun the the hospitals, but What we end up seeing in this is The there these rules of where you have to be restricted to a certain number of people and all that the question is Is that really unconstitutional?

In other words by me saying I can gather and meet i'm actually just honoring what the constitution says. I'm within the law. Because the other law is unconstitutional. It just hasn't had a chance to get tested yet by the legal system.

But and and in some of these cases as eve said when it is tested It's it's ruled that. Yep. We we meet. And so I actually wonder when everyone uses romans 13 if it applies because I think That i'm following with the constitution and this law of of restriction is illegal itself.

So which one are you obeying in that sense? Well, how about in this.

That it's my pastor and elders that have authority over me and i'm going to go with what wisdom that they have. That that's where i'm at with it. I i'm not going to debate All of this that you guys are talking about because i'm not going to place any judgments upon the decision.

That my own pastors and elders have decided and I don't feel like i've faced any religious persecution. Um, I feel like our state maybe our country said here's some. I mean they said yes. You need to do this and if if my pastor and elders said we think this is religious persecution.

And it's far more important to obey god then. And they would probably tell me to stay home though, because they know that i'm also high risk. Um, so that that's where i'm at with it. I'm going to trust My own pastor and elders.

We're in uncharted territory. We're Figuring out how to navigate this. It's not black and white. There's a lot we didn't know going into this. We knew china wasn't telling the truth. That's about all we knew we knew italy had a rough time and so a lot of it was guessing and That it could be really bad here and overwhelm our hospitals and decisions were made based on that.

I don't feel like it was it's been religious persecution because my son can't go to prom either. So, I don't know what kind of persecution that is or graduation. Um, so i'm just at the point i'm going to trust my pastor and elders the ones that have spiritual authority over me to make wise decisions for our church and congregation.