I'm (Not) Dreaming of a Woke Christmas

Good afternoon, and welcome to The Dividing Line. I'm Rob Bernanski, sitting in for Dr. James White today. And it is great to be back here with you again this afternoon. And it's also great to be able, in this studio, which is so filled with Star Trek memorabilia, it's a wonderful privilege of mine not only to be with you, but to share my Darth Vader cup with you all, to bring a little bit of Star Wars into The Dividing Line studio on this Tuesday afternoon.

So for all of you Star Wars fans out there who, and I don't want to debate James on whether Star Trek or Star Wars is better. Obviously, Star Wars is better, but I think James would beat me in the debate, even though he takes the wrong side on that issue.

But for all the Star Wars fans here, Darth Vader, the Darth Vader cup is here to at least give you one episode of The Dividing Line with some Star Wars memorabilia. I want to thank those of you who sent me emails and sent messages from last week's program, the encouraging notes.

Masks, Conscience, and Christian Liberty

And some of you sent me some questions about some of the things that I shared, especially about masks. And I thought I'd answer a couple of those here on the show this afternoon. A gentleman named Aaron sent me a question.

And he said one question that he and his friends had was, how are you getting away with not wearing a mask into stores? Are you just depending on your wife to do all the shopping? Or what is the secret?

And my wife, she appreciates this time in this sense, because she says when I go shopping with her to the grocery store, her grocery budget gets ruined because I buy all kinds of things that were not on the list and that she thinks I probably shouldn't be eating anyway.

So she is perfectly fine to take over all of the shopping. And so she does most of the shopping anyways. I don't typically do any shopping. If I go to the store, I don't wear a mask. And if they ask me not to come in, then that's fine.

I don't need to go in if they don't want me to come in. But most stores don't enforce that. Most stores haven't said anything to me about it. Best Buy is the only place I've been that did not let me in.

And I didn't even want to go in. I ordered curbside pickup, and they couldn't figure out how to get my phone case out to my car. So I went up to the door. And they said, well, you can't come in. I said, I don't want to come in.

I just want you to come out and bring me the phone case. And so eventually, they figured it out and got that out to me. But a lot of these places have the curbside pickup now, and you don't have to go in.

And I did convince my wife to let me go shopping with her to Costco one time, because my wife wears a shield. She doesn't want to cause a scene. And so she wears a plastic shield, and it's clear. You can't see it.

It's just connected by this little chin strap. And so she didn't want me to walk in with her, because she didn't want there to be a scene if I walked in without a mask on, and she's wearing the shield.

And I had to go to the Tire Center at Costco. So I said, that's fine. I'll go to the Tire Center. And then I'll just meet you in there in a few minutes. So I went into the Tire Center, and it was packed.

And I thought, I'm not waiting in this line. So I figured it had been enough time, and she was probably in Costco at that point. And so I went into Costco. And as I'm walking in without my mask on, I look over to my left, and my wife is being lectured by the little old lady there at the door, checking masks and memberships, because the lady couldn't see the shield.

Her vision must not have been good enough to see the shield. So I walk in. Nobody says anything to me. And my wife, who's wanting to avoid the scene, is off to the side and being talked to by the lady in Costco there, because she thought she tried to walk in without a mask.

And so that was pretty funny. And she says to me, you walk in without a mask. Nobody says anything to you. I have the shield, and I get pulled over. But I went into Costco the other day and bought a Christmas tree.

And they've cracked down on masks, I guess. But nobody said anything to me about it. And there's restaurants that don't care. I'll go eat at those places. And our grocery stores here, for the most part, don't care.

But like I said, I don't do a whole lot of shopping, because my wife, she does a great job at making sure the groceries stay stocked and takes care of that. But if you have to go shopping, then you can do that.

And I'd just say, I'd rather fight with somebody about the gospel of Jesus Christ and whether or not I should be allowed in their store with a mask on. So if they don't want me to shop there, that's fine.

I can get whatever I need somewhere else and move on. Another question that I got, somebody asked about masks and 1 Corinthians 8. Caroline sent me an email asking me about this. And comparing not wearing a mask to provoking those whose consciences were sensitive to eating meat, sacrifice to idols.

And she asked, can the church now call it a sin not to wear a mask? And the context of 1 Corinthians 8 is very different than what we're dealing with here. This is somebody who, if they see you eating meat, sacrifice to idols, is going to be tempted to engage in idolatrous worship, something that is in their past that is clearly sinful.

And wearing a mask is different than that. I suppose a case could be made. I haven't heard it made yet, but a case may be able to be made that if somebody was convinced in their conscience that they needed to wear a mask and you not wearing one would cause them to sin and not wear one and ignore their conscience, then potentially it might be the biblical thing to do to wear one around them so that they're not provoked to sin.

But most of the time, the people that get upset with you for not wearing a mask are not tempted not to wear one. They're not weaker brothers. They are being judgmental and critical. So that really doesn't apply.

And I would refer Caroline, anybody else who has that question, to the Institute of the Christian Religion. And if you read Calvin's chapter on justification, he goes over justification by faith alone.

And then immediately the next chapter is on Christian freedom. And he talks about the importance of Christian liberty and maintaining that to uphold the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And he makes the argument that if you capitulate on Christian liberty, you are essentially giving up the doctrine of justification and becoming legalistic.

And he talks in that chapter about how if there is a legitimate weaker brother, Calvin says we should go out of our way to ensure to guard that brother's conscience. But if it isn't a weaker brother, if it is, as Calvin calls it, a Pharisee, somebody who wants to impose their standard on you and has no temptation whatsoever to do the thing to break their own conscience, and they're just trying to bind your conscience with their laws, Calvin says that Christian liberty would indicate that we must, in front of the Pharisee, do the very thing they forbid us from doing.

And so in that situation, if somebody is going as far as to say you not wearing a mask is sin, Calvin would argue in institutes that you have an obligation not to wear one, not to wear one, to preserve Christian liberty.

And you know, it's interesting, that question came, and then the same day that we had the program last week, and I don't know if it was before the program or after the program that this article came out, but the Gospel Coalition published an article saying are masks a conscience issue?

And so I thought, well, that was timely in light of the discussion that we had last week about masks. And you know, he says in this article that navigating the mask conversation can seem like walking on ice, thin ice with roller skates, and perhaps blindfolded.

And he says, part of the issue relates to the fact that public officials have sent mixed messages about masks. And we've talked about that last time. There was a time when some health officials questioned the effectiveness of face coverings, but now most support their usefulness.

And again, that's a mixed bag. John MacArthur on Sunday just cited a document that 10 ,000 medical professionals have signed, encouraging us to change the policies on how we're responding to COVID with lockdowns and masks and all of that.

And so there are certainly public officials that are calling for face masks, but there's thousands and thousands of medical experts that are saying the exact opposite of that. And many states have mask mandates for public worship gatherings.

I'm not qualified to offer a defining medical word on masks, but I want to offer some thoughts on the implications for Christians who refuse to wear a mask because they say it violates their conscience.

All right, and then there's this long discussion of what the conscience is. And then it gets to the real meat of the issue is wearing a mask a matter of conscience? And he says, no, because one, masks are not fundamentally a moral issue.

And he compares a COVID mask to wearing an NFL helmet or a welder using a welding mask. Obviously, these are very different situations. They're not real comparisons that are two things that are alike.

And of course, as we talked about prior to March and prior to all of the government intervention and these mandates, a mask was, nobody even talked about masks because people wore them when they needed to, and then they didn't other times.

And so if you played football, you wore a mask. If you were a welder, you wore a mask and they weren't moral issues, but they've become a moral issue. So he's sidestepping that issue. Then he says, this is not how the conscience works.

If you want to walk outside, go to the supermarket, go to the library, et cetera, you need to put on a mask. If someone maintains based on conscience that they won't wear a mask to come to church, but then they wear a mask to buy groceries, they would be inconsistent.

Well, that's not necessarily inconsistent because you may have a conscience violation that says the government doesn't have the right to tell you how to worship. And going to the grocery store is not worshiping.

And so there's a legitimate Christian argument that could be made that says, I can submit to a government decree in the sphere of the government, which would be the grocery store, but I'm not going to submit to an illegitimate government decree that governs the worship of the people of God.

And so the conscience very well could consistently say, I can wear it to the grocery store, but I'm not going to wear it to church. There's no inconsistency with that. And then he says it causes disobedience to the clear teaching of scripture.

So I didn't realize scripture had any clear teaching about masks. Well, he's going to go into some other areas that are tangentially related. He talks about gathering for worship and the church is commanded to gather for worship, which is very interesting coming from the Gospel Coalition and Nine Marks and all of those folks who for months told us not to gather for worship, but now all of a sudden it's a mandate where we must gather for worship.

And so speaking of inconsistency, I think we see one right here in the Gospel Coalition. A believer should make every effort to prioritize the Lord's day gathering. I remember when John MacArthur got criticized severely by these folks for saying that very thing.

No biblical understanding of conscience would support forsaking this assembly. I can't even believe really that this paragraph is in this article. Just the lack of self-awareness of the things they've been saying about the gathering is staggering.

But no biblical understanding of conscience would support forsaking this assembly. Was that true six months ago? So yeah, Christians should gather for worship. That's why we didn't ever stop gathering at Desert Hills and that's why we continue to meet and gather.

I think the real question for the Gospel Coalition and those who are writing these types of things is why did you? Why did you? If there's no good conscience reason. Submission to the authorities. Christians are commanded to submit to and honor the governing authorities and failure to do so is a sin against God.

Disobedience to the government is reserved for when the Christian is commanded to do something God forbids or forbid something God commands. And of course, again, we talked about this. Romans 13 taken out of context.

The government does not have absolute authority, tyrannical authority over its citizens as long as it doesn't violate an explicit command of scripture. The government has a certain limited sphere of authority.

And so this is a misunderstanding of Romans 13. Submission to the elders. And again, this is a misunderstanding of the elders authority. Do the elders of the church have the authority to impose restrictions on gatherings that Christ has not imposed?

Can the elders of the church require you to wear a hazmat suit to come to worship? Can they require you to wear a clown suit to come to worship? Well, no, they can't require that because Christ hasn't commanded it.

And he says the solution, if you disagree with your elders on wearing a mask, the solution would be to either submit to the leadership of the church or find a church where they could worship according to their convictions and joyfully submit to the elders of that church.

And I would say, yeah, do that. Find elders who aren't going beyond the word of God and leave the church that you're in that is requiring you to do something that Christ doesn't command and find elders who are following the word of God and not adding to it or taking away from it.

And so you're not violating your conscience there if you tell elders who are going beyond scripture and lording their authority over you that you're not gonna submit to that. You're gonna go to another church where the elders understand biblical authority.

Love for neighbor is commanded. Of course, this is gonna come up and it says for many, wearing a mask is one reasonable way to love other people and protect them. But I know people that medically are not able to wear a mask.

So do we love them? I know people who were told they couldn't come to church because their doctor told them not to wear a mask and their church told them they weren't allowed to attend without wearing a mask.

Where's love for that neighbor? Love for neighbor has to be a two-way street. Love for neighbor can't be used as a club to beat people into submission to obey your preferences. And that's what this article is arguing that it is.

Christian's love requires a willingness to follow Jesus and set ourselves aside. That's a two-way street. We all need to do that. It's not just one side of the argument that needs to do that. Every Christian needs to be willing to set themselves aside.

Wisdom toward outsiders. And here they talk about churches that have become super spreaders in the community. That is very rare. I don't remember what the number is lately, but the last time I checked the Arizona Department of Health Services, I think there were a total of three COVID cases directly linked to a religious gathering.

And so that's an insignificant number really in the scope of how many, I mean, that's tiny. So three is virtually statistically zero. And so wisdom toward outsiders, again, wisdom toward outsiders falls within a biblical paradigm, not by what the outsiders tell us is wise or think is wise, but based on what scripture tells us in wise.

And the article ends by saying, I do not believe that conscience is a valid reason for refusing to wear a mask to church. Christians should save the conscience for conscience issues. Instead, call this what it is, civil disobedience.

Now there's a couple of things about this ending. First of all, this is such a weak, pathetic ending to an article. When he says instead, call this what it is, you know what word I expect to find at that end of that?

If you're gonna stand up for this article, if you're gonna put yourself behind this is sin. Let's call this what it is. If you think it's violating scripture, then it's not civil disobedience, it's sin.

And so here is somebody coming out and banging the drum and masks aren't a conscience issue, but they're not willing to stand behind that. They're not willing to come out and say it's sin, it's civil disobedience.

And what's confusing to me about that is that I thought civil disobedience was virtuous. I thought that's what the gospel coalition was all about because here we have two of these guys from the gospel coalition back in June.

Maybe you remember this, David Platt and Ron Burns. You probably know him better as Thabiti Anyabwile, but his real name is Ron Burns. And here they are breaking quarantine orders and rallying for these BLM causes against racism and against police brutality.

And isn't this civil disobedience gospel coalition? I thought you supported this. And so shouldn't, I don't know, that article is very confusing to me. And we find here that this is such a rich paragraph in this article, just before the march, Anyabwile, also known as Ron Burns, preached virtually to his congregation.

He preached virtually. Well, why didn't he? I mean, if you're gonna go to a march, if you're okay being, look at all these people. I mean, there is no social distancing going on in this photo. Look at how close these people are.

If you're okay with this civil disobedience, and if you don't need any of the social distancing, I mean, some of them have masks on, but a lot of the people that would probably go to Ron's church anyways would wear masks.

So why are you preaching virtually? And then why all this civil disobedience? And so we have these articles here, are masks a conscience issue? You know what? Masks are a conscience issue. And as we said last time, I don't have a problem if people wear masks.

There's people in my life that I know and love, and they're convicted in their conscience. They need to wear a mask in obedience to the government mandate. And I fully support them following that conviction.

I have no issue with that. We don't need to even discuss it. They wear their mask and I don't, and we love one another and we recognize it's a difference of conscience. It's not something to divide our fellowship, but you have these articles that want to add to the law of God, want to burden you with something that is unbiblical and force you to do something that Christ has not commanded.

And there's just the hypocrisy in it and the weakness of it. It's not sin, it's civil disobedience. And civil disobedience is actually virtuous if you're marching for a leftist progressive cause. After you've preached virtually to your church that you're not letting meat in person because it's ostensibly too dangerous, although it's not too dangerous to go out and march for one of these leftist causes.

So, you know, I believe it was Ronald Reagan who said the scariest nine words in English language are I'm from the government and I'm here to help. And so now we've got these mask mandates and a friend of mine sent me this from Wichita, from Sedgwick County.

Mask fatigue is a real thing. And the government has solved a problem, so they think, by mandating masks. But now we've got this problem of mask fatigue that is plaguing society. And did you know, this is from Sedgwick County, this is a government document here.

Did you know improper breathing while wearing a mask can cause anxiety, headaches, increased heart rate, dizziness, and tiredness? Combat mask fatigue by taking quality breaths. And, you know, prior to 2020, I knew how to breathe.

It was amazing. I did not have, no, the government did not have to teach me how to breathe prior to this year. But apparently now, because of the government saving us all from COVID with masks, now the government has to teach us all how to breathe.

And so Sedgwick County has taken that responsibility and you've got to do these five quality breaths before you put on your mask, immediately after putting your mask on. I don't know, that seems dangerous because that's a lot of carbon dioxide that you're just gonna be breathing right back in after putting your mask on.

And then again, after taking your mask off, and, you know, it reminds me of what Jesus said to the Pharisees, you load men down with heavy burdens and you yourselves are unwilling to lift a finger. How many of these government officials are going around without masks on, meanwhile, they're making everyone wear a mask and now they make you, you know, they're telling you, now you've got to go through a whole process just to put your mask on and take it off.

And then of course, take mask breaks, when safe? Well, when's that? When is it safe? I thought we were supposed to be wearing our masks all the time, I mean, in the car, out in public and at our home gatherings when we have more than three people and those types of things.

And so, you know, this is what it's come to. This is where we are. We're now as a society, we don't even know how to breathe. The government, we have become so incompetent and so dependent on the government that we have to have a document now to help us learn how to breathe.

And so that's masks. Masks, you know, cause anxiety and stress and all of these things. And I think, you know, as believers, there's a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of deception. Deception, by the way, is far more deadly than disease.

And there's a lot of deception that's going around about this. And one of the reasons I don't wear a mask is, I think it's important for me with the way I view this to stand up against this deception and say, no, this is just simply a narrative that isn't true and we're not gonna give into that.

And again, like I said, it's a conscience issue. And if you believe that you should wear a mask, then by all means, wear your mask to the glory of God and just allow people like me not to do the same thing to the glory of God as well.

Christmas, Wokeness, and the Ruining of Joy

All right, so it is the Christmas season. And I don't know about you, it is my favorite time of year. And just like everything else in life, though, there are people out there who are trying to ruin Christmas and not surprisingly, I suppose, some of them come from the Gospel Coalition yet again, because we can't celebrate Christmas anymore without bringing in wokeness to it.

We have to make space for a multicultural Christmas. And this article is so riddled with guilting people for enjoying Christmas. It's really, it's sad. The story of Christmas, it begins, takes place in the first century and not a single character is Caucasian.

Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. Right away, race injected into the Christmas story. I think there were some Gentiles in the story in Matthew 1. And so that's the distinction that the Bible makes, by the way.

You won't read about Caucasians in scripture, you'll read about Jews and Gentiles. And other things like that. But being biblical isn't the goal here of an article like this. Yet the American evangelical celebration of Christmas can have a distinctly vanilla flavor.

Nativity scenes have a white baby Jesus, holiday feasts are filled with Anglo-American foods and church services feature only European hymns. And so now next time you go to the nativity scene, you can't enjoy that anymore.

While you're having your holiday feast and eating your Christmas cookies, you're gonna feel guilty now because it's an Anglo-American food. And when you're at church for that Christmas Eve service, if you are blessed enough to go to a church that's actually gonna have a Christmas Eve service, you're gonna be now wondering, well, who wrote these songs and where do they come from?

And you're gonna feel guilty if you don't have enough diversity in your hymns. And so this wokeness, it ruins everything. And now they're trying to steal Christmas, to ruin Christmas. Of course, people of European descent can and should integrate their specific ethnic expressions into their Christmas celebrations.

We appreciate the permission to do that. But many non-white Christians in the United States struggle with the lack of diverse Christmas celebrations, wondering if there's space for them to celebrate what they can perceive as a white holiday.

Growing up, we had Christmas celebrations every year, and we had people from all over the world and from every ethnicity come to our house for Christmas Eve. And I don't ever remember thinking or hearing that this was a white holiday.

I remember Christmas being, and it still is, being bashed as being a Christian holiday. But being a white holiday is not something that I've ever heard associated with Christmas until the woke monster got hungry and hadn't devoured Christmas yet and decided it was gonna come for Christmas next.

My family is an interracial family, and the non-white parts of my family, they've never said, you know, this really feels like a white holiday. You know, I don't think that's ever entered their minds, but thank you for the opportunity and thank you, Gospel Coalition, for now making us have to think about wokeness even as we enjoy a Christmas cookie and a cup of hot chocolate.

Hot chocolate, is that from Europe? Rich, does chocolate come from Europe? I don't think so. South America or something, right? I mean, so are we diverse enough if we have hot chocolate at our Christmas Eve celebration now?

It's exploited, okay, it's exploited, okay. So we can't, it has to be fair trade hot chocolate. It has to be fair trade for us to be woke enough. All right. And then there's all of these fresh perspectives and different ways of celebrating Christmas around the world.

And you know what? I actually think that's interesting. I actually, I think it is interesting to read about how other cultures celebrate Christmas, not under the banner of wokeness, but just under the banner of, I think different cultures are interesting because I like to learn about new things and different things.

And if this article were written as, hey, here's some really cool traditions that people around the world have about Christmas and wanted to share this with you, I would say this was, that's pretty neat.

You know, there's some pretty interesting stuff in here. But when it is brought to this type of guilt and shame and, you know, you can't eat your Christmas dinner anymore without feeling guilty because of the type of food you're having.

I mean, that is, this is what happens. This is what is happening in our culture. Christmas gets ruined by social justice and wokeness and, you know, we've seen how it has attacked everything in our society.

You know, I think one of the funniest parts of this article, though, is one of the celebrations where they suggest that we should fast during Christmas because Mary was probably so overwhelmed that she fasted.

And I don't know, the lady who wrote this, I don't know if she's ever been pregnant, but I can tell you that for all of our children, fasting has never been on the list of my pregnant wife's things to do, you know?

So that's not typically what you see pregnant women doing. But, you know, here we have yet another example of how, you know, unbiblical paradigms come in and ruin everything. And it's happening across the culture.

News story this morning, a Minnesota resident received this passive-aggressive letter saying their Christmas lights promote systemic biases against our neighbors. And this is what the letter says. The idea of twinkling colorful lights are a reminder of divisions that continue to run through our society, a reminder of systemic biases against our neighbors who don't celebrate Christmas or who can't afford to put up lights of their own.

Christmas lights now are a sign of oppression. It's not just your food or your hymns or, you know, the other ways that you celebrate Christmas. It is now, or your white baby Jesus in the nativity scene, now it is your Christmas lights that you put on your house.

You know, my family, one of our favorite things to do is to go out and look at Christmas lights, drive around and look at Christmas lights. And, you know, it never occurred to me that I was out celebrating a symbol of systemic oppression for people.

I've never gone to one of these houses, you know, you've seen these houses that show up on TV shows and they just have hundreds of thousands of lights. And I've never gone to one of those houses and said, well, I just feel so terrible now because I only put three strands of light at my house.

And this just reminds me of how inept I am at decorating my exterior for Christmas. And, you know, you go out and you enjoy these things, but this leftist culture, it ruins everything. It ruins everything that it touches.

Yeah, Rich. I was gonna say, every time I go to that house, I'm really happy to go to that house. I love going to that house. Especially given that it's better him than me.

Yeah, and you don't have to clean it up either. No, you do not have to spend months putting it together.

I certainly don't have to spend all that money doing it. Better him than me.

I enjoy it. Yeah, and, you know, if you don't celebrate Christmas, you know, if you're not a follower of Christ, I hope that the Christmas lights, God will use that to remind you that Jesus is the light of the world and that you need to repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ.

And so, you know, as a Christian, I make no apologies for that. If you're not a Christian and you're offended by my Christianity, well, you know, okay. You know, the gospel is an offense to unbelievers.

And so if my Christianity offends you, I sort of expect that. You know, I remember John MacArthur when I was at the Master's Seminary said, you know, the unbeliever has been living his whole life as an offense against a holy God.

And so if the gospel offends, let it offend. And, you know, I know that Christmas lights aren't the gospel, but if what you're associating Christmas lights with is the gospel of Jesus Christ and you're offended by that, you should probably be more worried about the fact of how offended God is by you than how offended you are by someone's Christmas lights, because that is a whole lot larger of a problem for you than the fact that somebody puts some twinkling lights up on the roof and a frosty the snowman in their front yard.

And so, you know, again, as believers, I think we just have to push back against all of this, these things that are coming into our culture and trying to suck the joy out of walking with Christ, suck the joy just out of life.

Paul said to Timothy that God created all good things to enjoy, that God wants us to have joy and enjoy the things he's made, enjoy his creation, and enjoy our families, enjoy our friends, enjoy being together with other believers and churches.

And here we have everywhere we turn, all of these things are under attack and the joy is trying to be sucked out of all of these things. And it's not surprising then, when we find a study like this that came out yesterday from Gallup, that the mental health rating of Americans is now at a 20-year low, a 20-year low.

And my wife said, well, what happened 20 years ago that could have been as bad as this year? I don't know. You know, we hadn't got to 9 -11 yet. Maybe everyone was recovering from Y2K panic back then.

I don't know what was causing people to be so distressed 20 years ago. But we're at the lowest point in two decades according to a new Gallup poll. And 76 of American adults say they have a healthy mental and emotional wellbeing compared to 85 in 2019.

So we've dropped 9%. Only 34 of Americans say their mental health is excellent down from 42 last year. 18 said it's fair. 5 said it's poor. And typically it runs between 81 and 89%. Oh, well, here we find that they've conducted this survey since 2001.

So 20 years ago, no one knew what their mental health was collectively. And so it's just that it's the lowest it's ever been since they started running this survey. And they find some interesting interesting facts as to why some of these changes have happened.

And it says those who seldom or never attend religious services have the lowest excellent rating, the lowest excellent rating. And so Gallup, which is not a Christian organization, but they can draw the connection between gathering for worship and mental health.

Well, what's been shut down all year? It's the church. What have people been doing? They've been home. They haven't been going to worship. Many people haven't been at all. And so is it surprising that mental health is on the decline?

Not at all. How does politics factor into this? I thought this was interesting. It says Republicans saw the greatest drop in the excellent mental health category, dropping from 56 to 41. Independents also dropped double digits from 44 to 32, while Democrats who reported 30 in 2019 saw only a single point drop.

And you look at that, you go, well, look at that. The Democrats, the leftists, they only went down one point this year. But look where they started. They don't have that far to go. They're already down to 30%.

And Republicans, people generally on the right, conservatives, 56 mental health rating going into this year compared to 30%. So Democrats have closed the gap to 12 on the mental health side of things.

And I think about the old saying, misery loves company, and I don't know. But you see how that's happened this year. It's gone from people's mental health is plummeting. It's still, the Democrats are still the most mentally unhealthy people in the United States of America, according to Gallup, 29 excellent mental health compared to 32 independents and 41 of Republicans.

But this is a real serious issue. We're seeing this happen across the nation. And the real pandemic in the church seems to be anxiety. It seems to be anxiety. It doesn't, I mean, COVID is real. I understand that COVID has, a lot of people have died because of COVID.

And I'm not trying to make light of that or minimize that. I understand that there's a real virus and there's a real disease out there that has damaged people's lives and people have died from that. But the real pandemic that is causing damage at a massive scale is anxiety.

It's this whole, this issue here of mental wellbeing. And we see that with the church's not meeting and fellowship being put on hold and all of those things, people are, they're suffering. They're suffering spiritually.

They're suffering mentally. They're dealing with anxiety. And it's interesting because as believers, we have the answer to that. We have the answer to that. And we see in scripture, and we talked about this at Desert Hills a couple of weeks ago, but in Ephesians chapter three, verse eight, Paul says that it was given to him the task to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ.

And we see in our faith, in the word of God, that there are unlimited resources for us as believers. And so when we look around at the world and the anxiety and the declining mental health and all of those things, none of that should surprise us.

When we have a year like we've had where everything has been thrown upside down, we look at the way the world is gonna handle that. And yeah, they're going to struggle with that. They're gonna not know how to handle that.