Response to Thomas Coutouzis - Buy His Book!

Well, I'm in shelter-in-place self-quarantine here in New Hampshire, and it's been on for about seven days, but I went to Walmart the other day to buy some food, and I'm eating some barbecue-flavored pork rinds.

What a time to be alive. All right, well, a few weeks ago I did a video about theonomy, and I said that there's a difference between obstinance and actual real argumentation. You know, I don't respond to obstinate people.

It's just that simple. Well, that's actually not true. I do respond to obstinate people sometimes, but it'll usually be like a little winky face or a heart emoji or something like that, something stupid, because I think stupidity deserves stupid responses.

Anyway, but not everyone who has a challenge, not everyone who disagrees with me, is obstinate. I said in the video yesterday that some of the people that are advocating and supporting police officers arresting pastors for having church, they're not lightweights.

They're serious people that I think are heroes in the faith, even though I think that they're failing miserably on this issue, they are still heroes in the faith. And today I want to talk or respond to a challenge from one such person that I respect very greatly.

His name is Thomas Kutuzis. He's the author of this book. He actually sent me this book, Agonizing for the Faith. It's a biblical exposition of Jude, and if you have not read this, I highly, highly recommend it.

It is a very good book. Jude is a very good book. And this guy's exegesis of Jude and expositing of Jude is very helpful. This is not an obstinate person, but he's disagreeing with me here, so I'd like to talk about it in just a minute.

Romans 13, Loving Your Neighbor, and the Government's Authority

He starts off. He says, Seriously, guys, I see the mocking of Romans 13 and loving your neighbor going on in my feed. Riddle me this. Would you approve of the government shutting everything down if this was an Ebola outbreak, or should we continue to meet in church?

Now, first off, let me just say this. I hope this is obvious, Thomas, and I hope this is obvious to everybody that follows my channel. I'm not mocking loving your neighbor or Romans 13. I think loving your neighbor as yourself is critical.

Obviously, Jesus said it was critical. It's important to understand. Romans 13, likewise, especially for me, I'm a theonomist, Romans 13 is a critical passage to understand. So I'm not mocking those things.

I'm mocking, obviously, a certain interpretation of them. I'm mocking an interpretation of loving your neighbor as yourself that seemingly is kind of flexible and bendy, and it depends on the situation, and there's sort of like arbitrary lines being drawn, and I'm mocking that arbitrary line.

I think that's important to mock that, because that's really, love your neighbor, the commands of God are foundational, they're principled. They're not flexible, depending on the death rates and stuff like that, and I want to illustrate that point.

I want to drive that point home, because if love your neighbor as yourself means you shut down church whenever the government says so, whenever there's lives at risk, then we have to shut church down forever.

That's just how it goes. Anyway, but this is an interesting question. So riddle me this, would you approve of the government shutting down if there was an Ebola outbreak? And I think this, so this is the thing, Thomas, and I hope you don't mind if I address you directly, like, this is why I'm mocking the tweets the way I do, because out of the two of us, I don't know your position, but the people I'm criticizing, let me say, they're the ones playing this game on degree.

So if it's a lot of death, then we shut down, but if it's not a lot of death, then we don't shut down. But where's that line? See, that's the important thing. For me, I'm not playing that game. To me, it's about principles.

To me, it's about spheres of authority, God-given spheres of authority, God-given government. That's what it's about. It's about the foundations. It's not about degree. So between the two of us, Thomas, you're the one that needs to answer the question about the Ebola outbreak and about the flu and about the common cold and about the risk of driving to church.

You need to answer that question, because for you, it's a matter of degree. For me, it's foundational. It's principle. And so I responded happily to this question. This is an interesting challenge, I think, for some people, because I think there's a lot of conservatives out there that are against socialism, for example, but only by degree.

It's only if there's a lot of socialism, then they're against it, but a little bit of socialism might be okay. For me, it's not like that. It's about principles, Thomas. And so the answer is, if there was an Ebola outbreak, should the government have the authority to shut down churches?

The answer is no. The answer is no, because God doesn't give them the authority to shut down churches, whether it's peacetime or wartime, whether it's pandemic time or healthy time. God doesn't give the government, the civil government, that authority.

He does, I think, give that authority to individuals and to churches. And see, the spheres of sovereignty hold, even if there's difficult circumstances. And I would argue, especially when there's difficult circumstances.

So my answer is no. They don't have that authority biblically or constitutionally. But that being said, only a fool would not shelter in place in the middle of an Ebola epidemic. Only a fool would not shelter in place.

And that's the point. You see, I'm not talking about advocating anarchy or chaos. What I'm cultivating here, what I want you to cultivate, is a healthy, biblical understanding of what self-government looks like.

Let me say this again, because I think I've said this a number of times. I think maybe some of you have missed it in my rage against this idea of laughing about people who say, you should arrest pastors for having church.

That's preposterous, commas. You have to understand that's preposterous. But in case you missed it, my church isn't meeting. I'm sheltering in place. I've made the decision for my family. I'm in a risk group.

I'm in a risk category. I have chronic asthma. There's a better than most people's chance that if I contract COVID, I will be ended. I will be done. You will never see me again because I'll be six feet under.

You know what I mean? So I've made the decision because I have a healthy understanding of what self-government is. It's important. It's important. Most people don't understand that God has given the self the authority to govern many, many of their affairs.

He's done that. That's a sphere of authority that comes directly from God. The civil government has a sphere, the church government has a sphere, and then there's a family government as well. Those each have individual spheres and you can't cross over in between.

That's ungodly. That's unrighteous. That's not biblical. And so in your example, Thomas, of an Ebola epidemic, I think a godly Christian, a person should shelter in place. And the thing is, this is why it's so important to maintain these spheres of sovereignty because let's just say there was an Ebola epidemic in our country and it was in New York, but it wasn't anywhere else.

It was in New York City, but nowhere else. And so I would say that the individual would have enough wisdom, a Christian individual would have enough wisdom to say, if I live in New York, I'm not going out.

I'm not going out. No matter what, I'm staying inside. And then someone that doesn't live in New York, where there's no Ebola outbreak is going to go about their business pretty much normally. And that makes sense.

You see, the government oftentimes will overstep its bounds. And when they do that, they have unintended consequences because the government is heavy handed. It's ham fisted. It's ham fisted. This is why we want to have local governments that have most of the power, because when the big government comes in, they usually make mistakes.

And so they'll say something like, everyone shelter in place, nobody leave. And it ends up screwing over people over here where there's really no reason for them to be doing it. New York is the one that has to shelter in place.

And so what I want to do is I want to give self-government a more serious look biblically. And by the way, we all already do. See, this is the thing. I don't want people playing arbitrary games with the death rate.

And that's my point, Thomas. That's my challenge in my tweets, why I'm mocking so many people's interpretation of love your neighbor as yourself, because I don't want big government. And the Bible doesn't, more importantly, it's not about what I want.

The Bible doesn't give big government the authority over your affairs. Here's what I'm saying. This is what a self-government, a Christian wisdom-based, self-governing people does. This is what they think.

So right now, the coronavirus epidemic is serious, but not as serious as Ebola. That's why I use the example, right? So right now, if I need food, I'm going to the grocery store to get some food. I even got some delicious pork rinds here.

But if there was an Ebola epidemic and we needed food, I might consider maybe not leaving the house, even if we needed food and maybe trying to work it out for a few weeks. And if I'm going hungry, then that's fine, because depending on the severity of the epidemic, it's going to change my behavior.

What we don't want, though, is we want, we don't want bureaucrats and autocrats and people from on high telling me what I need to do with my own authority, my own family, because they don't understand my situation as well as I do.

You know, if there was an Ebola epidemic, I might not go out and get some pork rinds. But if my kid needed an inhaler and he's going to have an asthma attack and die, yeah, I'd risk going out. I'd risk going out to get that.

I know what's right for my family in a lot of cases, and that's why when you look at biblical government, we've got rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of ten. And you know, the people, the people, the smaller the government, the more authority they have in the immediate situations and things like that.

This is what I'm talking about. It's not about anarchy. It's about maintaining spheres of authority. This is important. This is an important thing. It's about principles for me, Thomas. It's not about playing these games with the death rate where it's like, well, I guess if the death rate is past this, that's why I'm mocking it because you don't have an answer to that.

Why do this for coronavirus but not the flu? Well, coronavirus is more dangerous. Okay, great. Well, where's the cutoff point? Aren't small amounts of lives important too? That's why I'm mocking it because it's not a principled position.

It's not a principled position. It is primarily a emotional position where something seems scarier than you give the government more authority than it has biblically. And I'm not willing to do that. So whether it's Ebola or something even worse than Ebola, the government still doesn't have authority that God doesn't give it because all authority comes from God.

That's all. That's all I'm saying. And so if you want to go out in an Ebola epidemic and put your family and your life at risk, that's sinful, that's evil and all of that. But you have that right. You have that right to do that.

And I have the right to protect my house, my castle. So if you come to my door in the midst of an Ebola epidemic and you're trying to infect my family, I will shoot you down. And I have that authority.

So that's the thing. So, you know, again, it's not the reason why it might appear mocking to you. And there is a bit of mockery as well is because the position that so many people that I've been criticizing have held is untenable.

And it's arbitrary. The line is arbitrary. And it's not like that for me. I know you think that this was a hard question for me to answer regarding Ebola. It's not. Because it's not about death rates.

It's about God's authority and how he doles that out to his ministers. That's what it's about for me. The last thing is you asked me to not mock the other position, to not mock the other side position.

You say, I'm saying this as an aside to our current conversation. I disagree with you. You disagree with me. That said, I don't go around mocking your position on Twitter every day like you have been doing.

It is fine that you disagree. Can you at least be charitable and less sarcastic? No. The answer is no, Thomas. And Thomas, I wasn't, I didn't even know you held this position, I don't think. And may have interacted with a tweet or a thread that you've been a part of.

I don't know. But the reality is I cannot. And the reason why I cannot is because I reserve my mockery and my ridicule for positions that are especially heinous, in my opinion, or especially preposterous or especially bombastic.

It's not flamethrower all the time with me. It's not mockery all the time for me. It's not less. It's just not sarcasm all the time for me. But the reality is, Thomas, I don't know that I don't know that you're holding this position.

But the reason why I went on a little bit of a tirade yesterday and today is because I saw conservative pastors applauding that a pastor was arrested for having church services. That is ridiculous, Thomas.

You have to understand that's ridiculous. Somebody told me yesterday, Thomas, that if their elders held church service, they would applaud their arrest. Something has gone wrong, and I'm going to mock that mercilessly, mercilessly.

If you want pastors, faithful pastors that in their particular context are taking proper precautions, but they understand that they need to meet for church. The government says, no, they're going to meet anyway, because in their minds, that's the government asking them to sin.

If you're going to say the government should arrest Caesar, my Lord should arrest them for having church. You're putting those people in the category of wrongdoer. You're putting those faithful brethren that are just looking to dispense the means of grace and all of that.

You're putting them in the category of those that need to have the wrath of God for having church. And to me, I'm not saying you're doing this, Thomas. I'm saying this is why I was mocking this stuff so mercilessly.

To me, that is outrageous, outrageous, and it deserves the full brunt of the mockery that it gets. Anyway, I hope this video is helpful. God bless. Again, Thomas is not an obstinate person, not at all.

He deserves respect, and I hope that this video was respectful. Again, if you're interested in the book of Jude, buy his book on the book of Jude. It is very good.