Answering Your Questions on Masks in Church and Other Topics

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Technical Setup and Re-recording the Episode

Welcome to the Wrap Report. This is your host, Andrew Rappaport. And this is take two. I've got to let you folks know, we had an outstanding podcast. Bud, Andrew Smith, and I answering some questions that some of you have asked.

It was great when we were talking to one another, but it wasn't so great when we re-listened to the audio. And so we're trying to reproduce that, but now we're down a man. It's just Andrew Smith and I, and we're actually in person.

I've been down at your church preaching. And so we'll start by having you introduce yourself again. And now, unlike last time where we talked about that I was going to be coming to your church to preach, you can actually say how bad I did.

But Bud's not here with us. He couldn't make it, but we're actually recording in video. The audio may not be as good, folks, because, well, we don't have our full setup. But we'll see how that works. So Andrew Smith, welcome to the Wrap Report again.

This is, I think, number three you've been on, and second time dealing with this one topic of whether to wear masks or not because we're answering a question that came in from the episode you were on.

But just introduce yourself to the audience and anything you want to share and maybe the fact that you started podcasting again, finally. Yeah, I'm Andrew Smith, and I pastor Christ Reformed Community Church here in St. Augustine, Florida.

And just blessed to be part of a congregation that loves good preaching and likes to hear people like Andrew Wrap Report bring the Word of God as he did for Mark 6. And just gave a wonderful message on the importance of proclaiming the Gospel and depending upon the Lord, especially in these times that we live in, Andrew.

I think your message was very apt and very appropriate, and the Spirit of God, I'm very confident, used that message as he always uses the preaching of the Word of God to sanctify the saints, to encourage the saints, to rebuke the saints.

And we're glad that we're sitting in a new facility here for our church to do this podcast. And your listeners may not know, but you were the one that really strongly encouraged me to pursue podcasting.

I'd actually already started a podcast when I met you, but I had shared it with you because I wanted to get your feedback on it since you're the resident expert in podcasting. So you want to be a podcaster is the name of one of your podcasts.

And so Andrew really encouraged me to continue pressing forward. And then the last time when we recorded this, and it didn't record right, you were giving me a hard time because I hadn't done a podcast in a while.

So I did a podcast, my first one, in several weeks this past Friday, and I dedicated it to Bud and Andrew. Several weeks or several months? Maybe months. Okay. So we got some questions in from you folks.

And again, if you want to send some questions in, info at strivingforeternity .org. Info at strivingforeternity .org. Now this is a longer question, this first one, and we're going to spend a little bit more time on this than some of the others because there's a lot to this one.

So let me read the question that came in. Dear Andrew and Bud, I never listened to your podcast, The Wrap Report, but I ended up following you, Mr. Wrap Report, on Parler. Which, by the way, folks, you can follow me at AndrewWrapReport on Parler.

So I started following you, Mr. Wrap Report, on Parler and saw the recent post about your podcast episode on masks posted November 8th. Thank you so much. You said much of what I've been saying and thinking on the issue and was encouraged to hear the others saying the same things.

Over the past few months, my dad and I have been dealing with the elders at our church here, and I'm not going to name where, but in Ohio. They have taken the position that we as a church are required to wear masks.

They believe that Governor DeWine's mandate is law. The foundational basis for obeying this mandate is that they believe it is a law, which, according to a lawyer I know and what I have read in our state constitution, it is not law and is actually unconstitutional.

And according to their interpretation of Romans 13, 1 and 2, submit to the ruling authorities, we must obey. Their secondary and more often used argument, until pushed upon, they revert back to the law argument if pushed, is we need to love our neighbor and defer to the conscience of our brother or sisters.

I see that as a consistency issue by going back and forth between the two arguments. If one is challenged, but maybe it's not just me. On the basic level, they believe that if we do not submit in wearing masks for as long as the mandate is in place, we are disobeying God's law.

The church needs to submit as long as we are not told to sin, and if we don't wear a mask at church, we will be excommunicated or defellowshipped. We had to push on that as well because they assumed everyone would just go along and they hadn't thought through the consequences until I up front asked them, what will you do if I come to church without a mask?

And they said they hadn't thought that far. We offered a small compromise like sitting off of the auditorium by ourselves and arriving and leaving the side door with no fellowship, but they wouldn't take that offering.

Since this has been happening, I have not been back for several months now and have been visiting other churches so that I do not forsake the assembling of myself. My dad took the position that when we would come to worship, the veil was taken away so the word is opened and read and beginning of the service, the mask comes off.

And he was willing to compromise to put it back on when the service was over. But even that was not looked kindly upon by the elders. But mainly I wonder if I would possibly have to respond to the argument that is a violation of God's law to wear a mask.

I'll listen again to your podcast episode, but I don't know if you'll address that argument specifically. Don't worry Seth, we're doing it now. And as to leaving the church, I'm not leaving ONLY, and that's all in caps, ONLY because of this issue.

There have been other issues. There have been other reasons that have been building over the past couple of years and much have greatly incensurated in the past seven or so months because of the reaction to COVID and because of the George Floyd incident, the lack of fellowship nods toward social justice.

I love this church. We have attended it for almost 20 years. I love the people. It is with the elders that we have this argument. So it has been extremely difficult to not be able to attend or to be forced to wear a mask if we do attend or face the consequences of disfellowship.

I do know others who dislike the mandate in the church, but we seem to be the only ones that have actually stated our position and stood to it. I don't even think the other believers there know why we haven't been there.

Thanks so much again for your work on this podcast, Seth. So Andrew, let me start with you and let you start off. There's a lot here. We know because we already recorded a whole lot. I think we gave a 45-minute response to this before.

But let's see how much we can maybe recreate or come up with new. What is your response to Seth? Yeah, I don't remember everything that we talked about last time, but I do remember the email, and I do remember the first thing that I thought of was we need to begin with the question, what exactly is the goal of church discipline?

I mean, because the elders in this particular church, who I have no reason to believe anything other than the fact that they mean well. If they're true brothers in Christ and true Christians, they understand the Bible, I'm assuming.

They understand their stewardship and their responsibility, and they're trying to take that seriously. And that can be commended, I think, in principle. But you need to be very, very careful when you begin to throw around terms like church discipline and excommunication.

When you read Matthew 18, and I actually have it open right here before me, it's very clear in this passage that the goal of church discipline is the restoration of a brother or sister who has been caught in a trespass, and they have been confronted not just by one person, not just by two, not just by three, but the entire congregation along with the elders.

So to jump to a conclusion that we need to excommunicate anyone who does not follow our extra-biblical policies on wearing a mask when they have already admitted that they haven't thought through the issue entirely tells me they've also not thought through what the goal and purpose of church discipline is, which is to verify a sin that has clearly been committed that can be publicly verified, testimony given forward, and is an absolutely last resort option for a church.

So something is troubling to me when we're talking about excommunication so flippantly. And I think that was the first thing that hit me when I read the email. The other passage that came to mind was 1 Peter 5, where it says you should not have a domineering spirit over those allotted to your charge, as he's exhorting the elders, the shepherds of the church.

And when you're dealing with mask mandates, and you're dealing with coronavirus, you're dealing with a whole set of factors that people are not in full agreement on. There is seemingly no unanimity on virtually all of these issues, from politicians to medical people to religious leaders to people in the community.

So this is not a church discipline issue, because a church discipline issue is a black and white issue. And I think that needs to be said from the beginning. And then I think some of the things that you had brought up last time, which I want you to obviously elaborate on if you can remember, was with respect to Romans 13, and whether or not this is even a violation of Romans 13.

Because in some ways, I'm assuming that would be the starting place for these elders, saying that Romans 13 is being violated, and I don't even think that can be proven. Yeah, because part of what we have here is the idea that we have across the country, is we have these governors who are just saying, we're making a mandate, we're decreeing.

And yet, that's actually not a law. He says he went to a lawyer, he has lawyers and his understanding of the Constitution, and he's right. The legislature is who puts law in place. So the legislature legislates, the executive branch executes, and the courts, or the legal system, is to interpret the law.

So they interpret the law and compare it to what the law is from the Constitution, which is where we started with. And then from the legislatures of the states that would put it into law. For example, many people think that abortion is a law in this land.

It is not. It is a court interpretation. The legislature could legalize abortion by voting on it. Of course they don't, which tells you what they know of the views of America, because they know they don't want to have to actually vote on that.

Because they know they would probably be voted out next election. So the issue is that Governor DeWine has put out an executive order, which I don't even know if he did that. Some of the governors are just making mandates.

They're not actually putting executive orders even. And so the first question I'd have to look at is, did he actually do an executive order or not? If he didn't, as most of these governors are not, they're just making a mandate.

They're just saying publicly, you must wear a mask. That's not a law at all then. And I believe that that's what Governor DeWine did. He's just decreeing without even signing it into as an executive order.

But even an executive order is not a law. An executive order is the executive branch, how they're going to carry things out. But it is then up to the legislature to either adopt it as law or to veto it.

Or they can leave it alone and that's how he will execute things. But it's not law. Now some might say, you're playing semantics. Well, this becomes important when it comes to this sort of issue where you're threatening with church discipline.

Because if you're threatening someone with church discipline and you're saying, well, this is a Romans 13 issue. Well, Romans 13, if it's not actually a law, then it's not a Romans 13 issue. And if it's unconstitutional, as many of these mandates have been.

I don't remember if we've mentioned this last time, but I have a condition where if I wear a mask, I can only go about 15 to 30 minutes before I'm ready to pass out. I have asthma and different things that my blood oxygen level just can't handle dropping too low.

And so when they make me wear a mask like flying out here, I have to be watching my oxygenation levels to make sure they don't drop. And so there are some people that wearing a mask is actually the worst thing you could do for them.

It's unhealthy for them. And that's actually the reason they can't make it law. That's actually the reason it would be unconstitutional because for some people it would put their health at risk. So you're actually not supposed to pass bills or laws that would put people's health at risk.

That's where I think what you're saying is the Matthew 18 comes into a sin and someone who's unrepentant on sin. But you also picked up on the key, which most people forget. Church discipline is not for punishment, it's for restoration.

Well, how do you restore someone that's not actually... Like if it's questionable that they're in sin or not, and I think this one is because we start by looking at the law issue and say, is it actually a law and does Romans 13 actually fit?

Now, if that's a gray issue, if there's different interpretations on whether this is law or not, then you cannot say it's a sin. If it's not a sin, you can't say that they are going to be excommunicated out of the church.

And to jump to that, and we'll get to this when we get to maybe more on church discipline, is what other sins do you discipline out for? But the thing of it being a law or not, I think is a gray issue.

I totally agree. Yeah, so talk more about that. Yeah, I was just going to say, I couldn't agree with you more. And the irony of all of this, and the mask, of course we know that the Greek word for hypocrite is derived from...

Wearing a mask. Wearing a mask and this dramatic sort of display before the people. And I really think that the mask has become a symbol of spiritual superiority. And the idea that you're not loving your neighbor and you're not loving your brother as you ought to if you don't.

And I take issue with that. The other irony that I think is in the midst of this is that here you have elders of a local church who are called to be, for lack of a better term, spiritual physicians. In the sense that they bring the word of God to bear upon the people of God for spiritual healing, hope, those sorts of things.

As we preach the gospel, the healing balm of the gospel forgives, we are instruments that the Lord uses. But they're not being spiritual physicians, they're trying to be physical physicians. They're trying to do the role of medical people, which is not their field and it's not their calling.

And the purpose of church discipline is not physical protection, it is spiritual protection. And so I am far more concerned about the spiritual protection of my people than the physical protection of my people.

Now that doesn't mean I don't visit hospitals and pray over people when they're sick and when they're sick unto death. And I have a responsibility to do that, I do do that, I sympathize with that. But my primary responsibility is to be a defender of the word of God, to be a promoter of truth.

And that means truth in all realms. All truth is God's truth. So if a governor is lying or being dishonest or leading people astray for nefarious purposes, if I even think that is a possibility, the last thing that I want to do is have some sort of mask mandate in my church because I bought into whatever is behind this narrative and then use the Bible for my own convenience to prop up that falsehood and weaponize church discipline against the sheep of God.

That's not protecting them. But it has the appearance of physical protection and love for neighbor. And I'm not saying that the elders of this particular church are evil to the core and that they know what they're doing 100 and they're agents of Satan.

That's not what I'm saying. But with the responsibility of being an elder comes a great stewardship and you will give an account to God, the shepherd of all souls. And so I just fundamentally have an issue with weaponizing church discipline in this fashion, which, as you said, you verify whether or not a sin is committed based upon whether or not it is a violation of the law of God.

And here you have no clear violation of the law of the Bible or the law of the land. Therefore, church discipline does not apply. Yeah, and as we said on a previous podcast when Dr. Special was on talking masks and we're talking the science of it, the whole issue is there is debate in the scientific community over this whole thing of what's the best way to take care of this.

And the fact is, is that when we have major tech companies that are suppressing some of the science put out by scientists, put out by people that are experts in their field because they don't like the conclusion, that should scare us.

I mean, the simple reality is that a coronavirus on average is about 0 .1 microns. The masks, like you take the N95 masks that are the most protective, is going to be about 0 .3 to 0 .4 microns. So even with that, it's going to block much of it, but it's not going to block all of it.

You're going to have for every four cells that come out of a coronavirus, two or three of them are going to make it through. But interestingly, flying out here, I cannot wear an N95 mask on the plane.

I can't wear a filtered mask on the plane. They actually tell me the reason is, is because that protects you, not other people. And I'm like, well, if I'm reducing the amount of coronavirus cells that could come out of the mask, but I get rid of all of them that come in, that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

I'm protecting myself as good. And if everyone was wearing an N95 mask, we wouldn't have to worry about protecting others because we'd all be protected. But they say, no, you can't wear that. You have to wear this cloth mask or the surgical mask that you see everyone wearing, these disposable masks, which only have, the surgical masks are about 0 .7 microns that can get through.

So anything smaller than 0 .7 is going to pass through there. But some of the cloth masks that people have are 1 .4. So you end up seeing that these masks everyone's wearing is 0 .7 to 1 .4 microns of whole sizes and of coronaviruses 0 .1.

So in other words, on most of the masks most people are wearing, you speak, cough, sneeze, whatever. And if you're coughing and sneezing, it's going to be pushing it even more. But just in speaking, 9 out of 10 cells are getting through easily.

In some cases, you're getting 15 out of 20 cells getting out. So it's not really protecting against it. And this is just the science of it. Now, there's debate on that. So is the mask really helping? You look at this, and because of the way these mandates are being done, we as Christians stand up for truth.

We have to say, well, wait a minute. Are we furthering a lie in wearing the masks? Because they're using it to control people. And this is the very thing what Christians should stand up. Did we see Jesus going when the Jewish leaders would say, Oh, no.

I'm thinking through the Beatitudes where he's correcting all the things. You can love your neighbor, but hate your enemy. Did he say, oh, you know what? That's okay. You just hate your enemy. Because that's what everyone else was saying.

No, he stood up to the lie and corrected it. Now, do we have to correct it by saying, well, I'm going to put my foot down? Well, there may be a time you have to do some stuff like that with tyranny. But the reality is when we have masks, when we sit there and say that someone's going to create a mandate that could put other people's risk or conscience in jeopardy, that becomes a different issue.

Christian Liberty, Romans 14, and the Weak Brother

One of the other things other than Romans 13 that Seth said his elders switched to is deferring to the weaker brother. And so I think, again, I think they're maybe misapplying some scriptures here. But let's talk about the Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 14, with this whole idea of church liberty.

What is the argument of the offering meat or eating meat offered unto idols? What do we learn from that? And do you think, Andrew, that this actually applies? And I guess for people who are listening, this is Pastor Andrew Smith versus Pastor Andrew Rappaport.

Bud usually just calls us Smith and Rappaport and we can distinguish. Regular hearers of this may know my voice. So, Pastor Andrew Smith, does this apply properly, this idea of deferring to your brother's conscience?

Yeah, I think that's a good question. And I'm not going to say that there is absolutely zero application of Romans 14 to all that we're facing today with these issues. But, again, I think it is a very slippery slope and it can be a trap that you can fall into in this sense.

And that is when you're dealing with issues of Christian liberty, you're dealing with things, for lack of a better term, that are quote-unquote gray areas, areas of the conscience, areas that are internal, areas that are unique, perhaps, to each Christian regarding what affects one Christian's conscience and what affects another Christian's conscience.

So, again, we're moving further away, if I can use this language, from the law of God. And the further you move away from the law of God to begin making arguments and using proof texts like Romans 14 to justify deferring to a quote-unquote weaker brother, again, you're right back into that sphere of subjectivity where it's very difficult to measure how this needs to be applied and how you exactly would defer to a weaker brother.

And also, how do you defer to a weaker brother? That's an individual situation. How can you force a whole congregation to defer to a weaker brother? That doesn't seem to be the context that Paul's speaking about.

He's talking about in your interpersonal relationships with one another, not a standard set by a church where the elders determine how you defer to a quote-unquote weaker brother. So, again, I think you enter, again, the realm of subjectivity.

I think you distort Romans 14 when you begin using that argument. And the other point that I wanted to bring up with regard to church discipline is the irony of, again, there's so many ironies in this, but you're threatening to excommunicate a brother in Christ who is trying to faithfully attend the corporate worship of God's people, which, by the way, is a command in the Bible, so it's part of God's law, and he's willing to compromise.

But are you also willing to maybe discipline people out of the church who are using the virus as a reason not to fellowship with God's people and cover up their sin? Are you going the extra mile to confront error there?

And I don't know the answers to those questions, but I think that there is such a lack of consistency in the way people approach these subjects that give me great calls for concern. We're called to be thinking Christians, and it just seems like we live, Andrew, in the period of church history where no one wants to think.

They just listen and react, and it's emotional. Yeah, they just want to feel their way through things. I mean, when we think about Romans 14, the issue there is you have the instructions from Paul saying, okay, you have a Christian brother who just came out of paganism, and in paganism they'd offer this meat that's unto idols.

But those that would offer it, they don't want to just throw it away and be wasteful. They can make some money, so they sell it on the market as meat offered unto idols, and people that don't care about the idols go buy it at a cheaper price because it's worthless because not everyone will buy it.

So here you go to someone's house, and someone realizes that it's meat that's been offered unto the idols. They're new, and their conscience is telling them that's a wrong thing to do, but you know it's nothing.

The guy who bought the meat knows it's nothing. He got a good price. And the question, this actually throws many people, because the argument so many people do is, if you have a choice between offending a Christian brother or offending an unbeliever, they would think that you don't offend the unbeliever, so you have a chance to share the gospel with them.

But what Paul says is, no, offend the unbeliever. Your brother is more important. So he says, because of your brother's conscience, don't eat the meat. But the mistake, I think, in the thinking here that the elders have is as if, well, you defer to the weaker brother and leave him there.

That's not the understanding of Paul. He says you don't cause someone to sin against their conscience. But here's the issue. If these people think wearing a mask is a law, then let them wear the mask.

That would be not causing them to sin against their conscience. This man, Seth and his father, believe that wearing a mask is a sin against his conscience. They're not deferring to him. Now, if they're saying that he's the weaker brother, then they should defer to him.

But if they're saying the whole congregation is weaker, which actually is not what they're saying, they're actually really not holding to that in its context. Because they'd be having to say that the whole church feels it's weaker.

But you can't mandate to them that they're weaker. They have to feel that it's a sin against their conscience. And yet the elders are just saying this. So I don't think that backup that they have to defer to the conscience really works.

Because this is a thing where when we defer to the weaker brother's conscience, we don't leave the weaker brother there. If the elders actually believe that this is for the weaker brother, then they should be teaching the weaker brother to be a more mature believer, not leaving them in a state of weakness.

And I think that's where that argument really doesn't fit in. Now, they've tried to make some concessions, and the fact that the elders are unwilling to compromise on two different types of concessions, and yet they're saying they're appealing to the conscience, shows that they're not willing to compromise and kind of give on their conscience, who says, I don't want to wear a mask for whatever reasons, maybe even health reasons.

So, I mean, I would have an issue if I come into that church and they're telling me, you have to wear a mask for two-hour service. I would say, I can't do that unless you'd like to call the ambulance, right?

That would be a problem. And so what you have here with the church discipline, and we've been hitting on this because this is really, I think, it's the threat, it's the billy club, almost, that they're holding over this man and his father, is you will do this or else.

Now, when we think of church discipline, I just have to go to the question you kind of brought up already, what else do they discipline for? I mean, I would like to ask, and this might be a question that Seth can ask, but it's a question I would ask if I was in the places, can you show me where you have disciplined people out for violating the speed limit?

And they're going to go, well, we don't know who violates the speed limit. We could tell if you're not wearing the mask. But if someone comes to the church and says that they break the speed limit, just they're talking in a Bible study and they mention that, is the church going to start practicing church discipline on them?

What if they cheat on their taxes a little bit? Think of all the other laws that are out there, are they taking all of those, or is this the first time the church has taken a stance that we're going to apply Romans 13, and we're going to state that we're going to put you out of the church?

If they have no history of doing this with any other governmental law, and they're going to do it on one that is kind of quasi whether it's actually a law? I think that you, as elders, as pastors, we're to shepherd the flock.

And I think that the elders end up losing credibility with the congregation when they do that, because they're no longer shepherding, they're demanding. They're now, what the Scriptures would say, lording it over the flock.

And I think that becomes even more of a potential problem there. So let's just hone in on some of the areas of, again, why we see the church discipline being misused here as a billy club, or as a threat, instead of as restoration.

Why is that a problem? Well, it's a problem because it's been a problem throughout church history, going all the way back to the Old Testament, when time and time and time again, what does God judge Israel for?

Why does God take His people into exile? And one of the accusations that are brought against God's people through the prophets is the accusation of basically taking advantage of the people. And who takes advantage of the people?

The prophets, the priests, and the kings. They take advantage of the people. The leaders take advantage of the people. And what you're seeing in our own day is just what is obviously consistent with human nature and with total depravity, and that is that leadership tends to be abusive when there's not the accountability of Scripture.

And obviously most of the secular leaders in our society today are not Christians, by any stretch of the imagination. And quite frankly, many leaders in the church probably aren't Christians. And so you have basically a duplication of what was happening in the Old Testament.

You have church leaders copying off of, quote-unquote, politicians. So you have what's happening is abusive leadership, prophets, priests, kings, and it's just this sort of merry-go-round of not understanding what it means to be a leader according to the Scriptures.

I really believe that part of this is the judgment of God on this country. Judgment begins with the household of God. And I think that it is not an accident that someone wrote in to your show with a question regarding his elders and how these elders are responding to this.

And I would say judgment begins with the household of God. And when you have corrupt leadership in the church, and you have corrupt leaders over a nation, time and time and time again, God judges those nations.

He judged Israel for that. There's nothing new under the sun. And what we're witnessing here I don't think is really anything unique to church history. It's unique to us. It's unique to our context and our culture.

But it's the same God. People operate the same way. And when you don't have Scripture as true accountability, properly interpreting it, and you know this well because you emphasize hermeneutics so much, that's what the church needs today.

The church needs leaders in the church who understand what the Scriptures say. One of the other elements of what he brought in, he said he doesn't want to leave the church. And if he does leave, it's not just over the mask thing.

There's been other things building over the past years, but more the last seven months, where it seems that this church has given in. He gave hint to maybe they're giving in on some of the social justice issues.

And so it seems that this church leaders may have already kind of given into the world's thinking and the issues that we have with the lockdowns and whether church should open, George Floyd and the whole Black Lives Matter.

And it seems that there may be some other issues going on. So the masks may just be more of the same virtual signaling that the world is doing. And they want to enforce that the same way the world wants to enforce it.

So I think some aspect is this may be kind of the straw that breaks the camel's back for Seth. But the thing that we see is that these churches need to stand up for truth, not cave in just because, well, the whole world is saying it's right.

So what if the whole world is saying that Christ is not God? Are you going to give that up next? The whole world is saying we should accept homosexuality. Are we going to say, well, then throw out the Bible and just accept homosexuality?

These are leaders. Leaders are supposed to—I know this is going to sound crazy— leaders are supposed to lead, right? They're not supposed to follow. They're supposed to have convictions. In fact, that's kind of the requirements.

When you see 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, most people think that the qualifications of a pastor are only 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, where it talks about those couple qualifications of a pastor. But if you read those three books, you see a whole lot more qualifications that Paul is saying, like teaching sound doctrine, confronting false doctrine.

And we are to do that as pastors, not just teach the truth, but teach against error. If you're sitting there and caving in on the world on social justice, and you're going to cave in and take the world's definition of these things, are you really standing up against error and teaching the truth?

And if there's some of that going on, that may be even more reason he's having concern. And to say, well, you know, the mask issue is just the latest. But if you're going to put me out of the church because of my conviction, you're going to cause me to sin against my own conscience, because you're going to dictate what my conscience should be, then you're in violation of the Scripture, pastor.