How To Be a Christian in the Face of Coronavirus Hysteria

Christian Faith and Preparedness in a Time of Coronavirus

This video was actually inspired by a YouTube comment that was kind of negative towards me, but still I think there's a good message in it. All right, before we begin, just want to let you know I am currently wearing my No Despair shirt.

If you want a way to support my YouTube channel, but get something, you know, tangible in return, this is a really good way to do it. These shirts are awesome, they're good conversation starters, and they're ready for the political season, No Despair 2020.

Get yours today. I will put the link in the description of this video. And actually, this shirt is what I want to talk about today. It's actually, there was a YouTube commenter that was a bit of a negative comment towards my content.

This person really does not like theonomy at all. And, you know, honestly, I don't even care about the term theonomy. All I believe is the general equity of God's civil law, you know, being required for civil governing authorities today.

And that doesn't mean that it's a general equity that is just, like, totally disconnected from the specificity of the law. But the specificity of the law died when the body politik of Israel died. But there are general principles there that we can easily ascertain in some cases, and in some cases they're more difficult.

Like, it's very easy to apply the general equity of God's law when you're looking at what the penalty for murder should be. It's very easy to do that. But there are other things that are a little bit more complicated.

Trusting God Without Becoming Passive

Anyway, that's not the point of this. The point of this was regarding my video last week on coronavirus. And this person, kind of in a little bit of a snarky way, said, look, Adam, nobody needs your shirts.

What they need is storable food. And she went on a little bit of a description about why it's so dangerous, the coronavirus, and all this kind of stuff, talking about martial law and all kinds of things that are like worst case scenario type situations.

Now, I can't argue with that. I mean, obviously, if you have to make a choice, and one of the choices is to buy one of my T-shirts, or the other choice is to have a preparedness plan in case there's a supply chain issue or something like that, or think people lose their minds about coronavirus or something like that, let me just be very clear, if that's your choice, don't buy my shirt.

Because the reality is that, especially Christians, right, Christians should have a lot of faith in God. Christians should be trusting in God for his provision. In fact, the Bible says that, you know, God provides for the birds of the air, right?

God provides for the flowers of the field, right? So clearly God will provide for us because we are his people. He loves us and we're worth a lot more than birds and flowers and things of that nature.

And so we should trust God and have faith. And so we shouldn't get, there should be no despair. That was the whole point of my video last week. But that doesn't mean you just sit on your hands and don't do anything.

That doesn't mean you put your head in the sand like an ostrich and just not, you know, ignore all of the warning signs and things like that. Actually, that's not a demonstration of faith. If you just say, well, you know, God will protect me, so I'm not gonna do anything.

That's actually not faith. That's actually being lazy. That's actually not very intelligent. And it's not a virtue to be foolish. It's not a virtue to just sit on your hands. On the contrary, you know, I think that every Christian should have a certain amount of set aside finances, set aside food, just in case something were to happen.

Because listen, we're Christians. We believe that these kinds of things can happen. There are natural disasters. There are all kinds of different things. We live in a hurricane zone. Even if you don't live in a hurricane zone, there could be an earthquake and it could disrupt supply chains and things like that.

This doesn't mean that you panic, but it does mean that you have, you're prepared for it. Like if you couldn't go to the grocery store for a whole month, could your family survive based on what you have in your house currently?

That's a question that you should ask yourself. Not because I think something's gonna happen and you should be in despair and you should be wringing your hands full of anxiety, no. But I think it's very smart to be prepared for anything that happens.

And I think personally that that's one way we can demonstrate our faith in God and his provision because he's given us brains. He knows that we know that things aren't always gonna go the way they've always been.

We need to really resist the urge to just assume it's all gonna be okay all the time because we know from the Bible and from history that things aren't always good at all times and things like that. This is a really good way to think about this.

Faith, Planning, and the Wisdom of Proverbs

Online buddy of mine, I've never met him, I hoped you one day, Eric Kahn, he said this on Facebook the other day. He says, those who trust God's promise of provision have the calluses to prove the reality of their faith.

Soft hands looking for freebies aren't the hands of faith. This is, what he means by this is that you're putting effort in to making sure that you have that provision. Ultimately God provides, right? Like ultimately everything I have was given to me from God but I'm still working for it, I'm still planning for it, I'm still setting aside extra so I don't spend everything I get.

I set aside some of it for a rainy day and this is the same thing with food. I have a certain amount of stored food and I've added to that a little bit in the last week or so if you want me to be totally transparent.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not scared of coronavirus. I don't think everyone's gonna be dying in the streets or things like that but what I do wanna be prepared for is for people to panic. I think people have a tendency to panic especially when they're not prepared and so I'm thinking, well, what if there's a couple weeks where the supply chains are messed up and grocery stores are out of stuff?

I wanna make sure I'm positioned well with my family that that's not gonna be too much of a big deal for me and so that's something that I've done and you're smart about it. You don't just buy emergency rations or MREs or something like that that you can never use if nothing happens.

You buy food that you use, you buy beans, you buy rice, you buy canned meats, things that you, well, not everybody uses canned meats but I do, things that you're gonna use over time and so you can kind of rotate it out.

Now look, there's plenty of YouTube channels that show you how to prepare for emergency situations. I'm not that but I think it's a smart idea. Again, you don't go crazy, you're not wrought with anxiety, you're not fearing every single thing that could potentially happen.

No, you're trusting God but you're also a man of action. This is something that people were criticizing Mike Pence over and Mike Pence is a professed Christian and this idiot here. Mike Pence and his coronavirus emergency team praying for a solution, we are so screwed.

You see, this is the idea of a moron, right? This is an idiot who doesn't understand anything about faith because the reality is that every good Christian ought to pray for God to act and to have mercy on us and to give us wisdom but we don't stop at the prayer, right, we pray to God and then we get to work.

We start applying the gifts that God has given us whether that's in our intelligence and our brains or our ability to make plans and things of that nature. That's basic, I mean, anyone who doesn't understand that is just an idiot or is professional at not understanding things and some people are.

They make money on not understanding. The book of Proverbs puts this very succinctly in a very, I mean, this is how the Bible is. You know, basically it talks about, well, let me just quote it. It says, the heart of a man plans his way but the Lord establishes his steps.

As a Calvinist, we can easily understand this. Look, I make plans and I try to position myself and my family so that we can survive in tough situations and good situations and things like that. I'm not just preparing for it always to be a time of plenty.

I'm preparing for there to be times that there isn't plenty and stuff like that and so I'm making my plans but I'm trusting God to establish those plans, to establish those steps and to, you know, to protect my family for the things I can control and the things I can't control because ultimately, I can't control anything.

I think I have prepared my family for the worst case scenario but, you know, there's a good chance that I haven't and so I trust God to make up the difference. Nehemiah does this exact thing. I mean, Nehemiah prays first and then he acts.

This is from Nehemiah chapter one. I talked about this a little bit today. He finds out that Jerusalem has been broken down and the people are full of anxiety and fear and they're not being treated fairly and stuff like that and he's so broken up about it and so he prays.

He weeps and he prays to the Lord. He prays to the Lord who keeps his covenant with his people and then he goes to the king and asks the king for, so what he does is he prays and then he takes action.

He asks the king to let him go back to Jerusalem to rebuild it and to reestablish it and stuff like that and the king lets him and I think that the king let him because God answered his prayer. So he prayed first but he doesn't just pray and then, you know, hide in the closet and just hope that something happens.

No, he prays and then he demonstrates his faith in Christ by going to the king, the king of Persia, I think it is, and saying, hey, can I go to Jerusalem and rebuild it? Like, can you think of the audacity of that request?

And yet he does it and he gets granted his request. The reality is, look, obviously you don't need one of my t-shirts, that's very clear. I'm asking for people who enjoy my YouTube channel to support this channel so I can continue to do it and I think that this is a really cool way to do it.

Some of y 'all support me just as it is and I respect that and I'm sure there's a certain segment of y 'all that wanna support me but wanna get something in return tangible, something that they can kinda wear or use or things like that and I think my YouTube channel is beneficial in and of itself, but hey, I'm a little bit biased.

But yeah, these shirts are just a way to do that. So if you wanna support this channel and have something interesting to wear, a conversation piece, something to help you in your evangelism or anything like that, this might be a way to start a conversation like that.

No Despair 2020. You can talk about why you don't have despair, even in the light of coronavirus, even in the light of the election nonsense and all kinds of different things, climate change even, if you believe in that kind of thing.

Why don't you have despair? Shouldn't you have despair? You see, I think it's very unusual for someone to be walking around and not have despair over all the things that is happening. And so you wanna say, hey, why is there hope in you?

See, that's the thing. The Bible says that you should always be prepared to anyone who asks to give the reason for the hope that you have within you. So in other words, I could, let me just reword this.

It's expecting that people are gonna come to you and be like, dude, why don't you have despair like the rest of us? Why aren't you full of anxiety about all these issues? What's the reason for this hope that you have within you?

Because despair is the absence of hope. So I think this sure, I think it's a cool message, No Despair 2020, but this could help you spark up a conversation with someone, I think. But anyway, that's all I wanna say.

I mean, I think the YouTube comment, I'm pretty sure she was trying to insult me or kind of, I don't know what she was trying to do. Maybe not insult me, but definitely critical of my content. But yeah, I mean, obviously if you have to choose between buying one of my T-shirts or starting a stock of food, I mean, you can start small.

I mean, start setting aside some food for a rainy day. If that's your choice, clearly do that. That's what you should do. You should take care of your family in that way and add to it weekly and things like that.

You might wanna consider stocking up on a few things just in case coronavirus has extended issues with supply chain or just anything that potentially could happen. Personally, I'm not that worried about coronavirus.

However, I am a little bit concerned about the hysteria that the media is pumping through all of their outlets that they can. And so I wanna prepare for the hysteria. See, even if coronavirus doesn't do anything, but people get hysterical, there's still something you should prepare for there.

So certainly prepare, stock food if you want to, stock up on medicines, acetaminophen, whatever you wanna do, all that kind of stuff. But there's no reason to be wrought with anxiety or to freak out. Let's not get hysterical, but at the same time, let's demonstrate our faith in God's provision by taking what we do have, what he's already giving us, and making a plan, making a strategic plan for the next, I don't know, few weeks, few months, however long this kind of stuff lasts.

Market Panic, Opportunity, and Keeping Your Wits About You

Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. I hope it explains a little bit more what I'm talking about. God bless. One more thing. The other thing about these times of panic and financial stuff and things like that is there's always opportunities.

And so for a Christian, you gotta keep your head about you. You gotta, again, trust God, not get wrapped up into the hysteria and the anxiety and all the emotional stuff that's happening because don't get me wrong, I mean, I had emotions about what happened last week in the stock market just like a lot of people, but you gotta look at the facts and keep your head about you and trust God.

I was looking at the stock market like this. You ever see that meme with that black guy? He's like peeping out behind the trees like, you know, like, I just can't wait. So here's what I was looking at.

So basically, I've been waiting for an opportunity to sell some of my, I've got some index funds and stuff like that in the US stock market. Been waiting for an opportunity because they've been going up like crazy.

And what I wanted to do for a while is buy some gold mining stocks and stuff like that because I think that's, I personally, listen, this is not financial advice, but I personally think that there's some value there.

And then, so I was gonna do that. And then I saw that the gold stocks were actually going down too, which is very unusual because usually when the stock market tanks, gold stocks go up. And this time, gold stocks were going down with the stock market almost, and sometimes a little bit more.

And I saw some explanations as to why that happened and stuff like that. And it all made sense to me. But I saw this as a huge opportunity because I had made a lot of money with the US stock market, you know, in my IRAs and stuff like that, not like money that I had right, you know.

Anyway, so I'd made some decent money with that. And so then I bought in to the lower gold stocks as well. And it's an opportunity. Now, is that gonna pay off? Well, I don't know. I think it probably will in the long run.

I mean, imagine, could you imagine if Bernie Sanders gets elected president, what that's gonna do to gold stocks? I mean, that's just, I'm not a financial advisor. I'm not telling you what to do. But you see, you gotta, and again, I'm not saying I'm right, but you gotta keep your wits about you.

So when things are going down, I could have very easily gotten very emotional about this and said, well, I gotta change my plan about getting gold because the gold stocks are going down. So clearly that's not a safe haven.

No, what I gotta do is I gotta remember what I actually believe and what logically I believe. And I could be wrong about this stuff regarding gold stocks. I'm not saying I'm right. But what I'm saying is, like, don't get, you know, wrapped up in the hysteria, right?

Don't let your emotions take over what your plans were. And that's not to say that your emotions can't play a factor, but you don't wanna think with your emotions, if that makes sense. Anyway, I hope this was helpful.

God bless. Again, not a financial advisor.