So, if you didn’t catch it, back on September 8, the Governor of New Mexico, Lujan Grishom, basically outlawed firearms with the exception of hunting and sport-shooting in most of New Mexico’s major cities. And, again, if you didn’t catch it, this ban, which was to run for 30 days, was issued, not by the Governor herself, nor by the duly appointed legislature of New Mexico, nor by the mayors or city councils of the several cities. No. If you’d been paying attention over the past several years you might have been able to guess what agency or department was the actual issuing agency of the constitutional rights violation.
It was, of course, the NM Department of Health. Because being shot by bullets affects your health. Therefore, all the Secretary of Health has to say is that there’s a public health emergency and then he has a justification—even if it be the thinnest and weakest and most transparently vacuous, impotent, dishonest, and illegal justification—to abridge your constitutional rights.
Does a public health emergency constitute due process? Who knows? Well, I guess a Federal Judge knew…and he said that, no. No, a public health emergency does not constitute the due process necessary to violate someone’s constitutional rights. And so Judge Urias issued a temporary restraining order.
Now, it would be easy to look at this story as yet one more example of Liberal Constitutional Violations. It would be easy because it, on its face, is a violation of the Constitution, both of the United States—if you’re into that whole 14th Amendment stuff—and more relevantly, I feel, the New Mexico Constitution which is more robust than the US Constitution when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms.
This little piece of news is a phenomenal example of the brazen contempt that Progressives have for the Constitution and how cynical they are in their use of it. They will raise a hue and cry about the non-existent constitutional right to murder your baby in utero; but they will come up with any and every justification imaginable to violate your First, Second, and Fourth Amendment rights—and the Sixth Amendment has been ignored for a very long time as having a speedy trial seems to not be in the interests of people who get paid by the hour…but I’m sure that has nothing to do with it!
Anyways, it is also an example of a much more sinister and newfangled means of violating civil rights and that is using public health as the pretext, and a pretext it is, to do things that would be patently unconstitutional otherwise…incidentally they are still patently unconstitutional, but the public health pretext gives the patina of due process.
And by the way, prepare yourselves because the Covid restrictions are and will return. You know how I know they’re returning? Because our vaunted fact-checkers have stopped fact checking this. Back at the end of August the fact-checking was tut-tutting those who said that mask mandates were coming back; then it turned out that they were and are coming back. I mean, not that fact-checkers have any shame whatever. I mean they’re continuing to trot out the “no evidence of Biden corruption” line. I mean, at least 61% of the American public as of September 7 thought that there was evidence. And in a country where trials are done on the basis of a jury of your peers that I think says something…not sure what it says, but it says something.
So, yes. Prepare yourselves for a bunch of jumped-up petty bureaucrats to try to claim that the sniffles mean you can’t have your civil rights. And when I say the sniffles, I’m not trying to say that Covid isn’t deadly for people who die from it. What I’m saying is that according to the Washington Post over a 28-day global study 3,100 people died of Covid but over a million people contracted it. Which means that the mortality rate of infected people is .31%. I mean, that’s not nothing. But, according to people this is a bad time for Covid and there 8.1 Billion people in this world. And 3,100 died over a month. Which means that, by global statistics you have a 38 in 100,000,000 chance of dying of Covid this month—which isn’t nothing. But it means it’s pretty unlikely. By the same measure, there are approximately 1.3M deaths per year in car-wrecks. Which means that you have a global chance of dying in a car crash of 1,337 per 100 million. Which means globally you are 35 times more likely to die in a car accident than of this new strain of Covid.
Do I think that these data are particularly relevant? Not really, global averages don’t mean much—but it’s the only data I can find! Nobody seems to have published US Covid mortality rates since March. So, again, I’m not minimizing Covid. I AM saying that by the data I’m able to find, comparing global apples to apples you are 35 times less likely to die of the new Covid variant than a car wreck. But considering our roads are safer and while our healthcare is better, human bodies are more or less the same, let’s compare global Covid deaths to US car-safety.
According the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, annually in the US there are about 42,939 deaths in car crashes. Or 12.9 per 100,000—which would work out to 12,900 per 100 million. Now, divide that number by 12 since we have a month’s worth of data on the new Covid strain, and you get about 1,000 per hundred million. Since the global Covid mortality rate is 38 per 100,000,000 you are, according to WAPO and IIHS numbers, about 26 times more likely to die in a traffic fatality as you are from this current strain of Covid.
I’m not saying this to say that Covid isn’t serious. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use prudence to protect your health and safety. What I AM saying is that if we’re going to abridge and abrogate civil rights then we ought to think about a 30 day moratorium on driving cars and not a mask mandate. Getting rid of cars would certainly reduce traffic fatalities! I mean, it would cause an enormous host of other problems, like starvation and impoverishment, but hey—you have to do something.
And if you think I’m being ridiculous when I say, “hey you have to do something”—I mean, I am being ridiculous—but that’s the logic that Governor Gresham used in an interview with CNN’s Poppy Harlow.
Poppy, and credit to her, asked her hard questions and the Governor’s response was, and I am paraphrasing, well gun violence is bad so I had to do something. So, like anything? You can just do anything you want? One bad thing that’s hard to solve gives you carte blanche to employ any response you feel like it? The governor ADMITTED that this was not well calibrated to actually stop criminals from carrying weapons. And it’s unconstitutional on its face. But she felt like doing it. So she did it…or at least tried.
And this is the logic that has been employed over and over and over again by power-hungry politicians. They see a problem that is, indeed, a legitimate problem and then they assume that the badness of the problem justifies the illegality of their remedies!
Covid is bad—that doesn’t mean that the solution is a violation of civil rights. Gun violence is bad—that doesn’t mean that trampling 2A rights is a solution. And this habit of people just doing whatever they want and twisting and manipulating the constitution has actual real implications on theology. Because this tendency for leaders to use weasel-words and try to massage arguments to give pretexts to do and teach whatever they want is an old trick in the bad theology playbook. And it’s one that Christians need to be aware of. Christians need to know that there are theologians and pastors and Christian leaders who will massage a Biblical text to say whatever they want it to say to give the justification to do whatever they want to do!
And there are, in the same way, theologians and pastors and Christian leaders who will just say whatever they want and then find a verse that they think will say what they want it to say.
Let me give you an example. My kids just started a Bible Quiz program. And it’s a good program and the book of knowledge for them to learn is good. I’m not bashing it or saying it’s trash. But there are problems. I noticed as I read through it that towards the back there’s a Question that asks what verse of the Bible forbids drinking alcohol. And of course, my instinct was to say—none…none verses of the Bible forbid alcohol consumption. But the Q and A book listed Proverbs 20:1 “Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise.”
Now, if you don’t want to drink alcohol, that is entirely OK. God lets all of us make all kinds of decisions. But let’s not for one second pretend that this passage of the Bible forbids drinking alcohol. If it did, Jesus would have been a sinner because Jesus drank alcohol. Shock, gasp, if you have pearls clutch them now. Yes, Jesus drank alcohol. He didn’t just make it at Cana in Galilee for people who were already drunk—though he did do that, too. But Jesus drank alcohol and He promises that He will drink alcohol again.
Matthew 26:29, at the Last Supper, when Jesus passes around the cup of wine he tells His disciples, and I’m quoting God, here: “I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
This is incontrovertible. If words and grammar are things, then this means, conclusively and irrefutably that Jesus drank wine. Which means Jesus drank alcohol. And you can pretend that the Greek word for wine meant grape juice, just like I can pretend that I’m 6’4” 180 pounds and lithe like a panther. Neither thing is true, but if we’re gonna live in fantasy worlds, I’m gonna make the most out of this.
Now, here’s the deal. NOBODY disagrees with Solomon. EVERYONE agrees that alcoholism is bad. EVERYONE. EVEN ALCOHOLICS agree that abusing booze is bad! But the statement, that being led astray by wine and beer is unwise is not the same as forbidding alcohol consumption. And here’s the thing. The Bible actually commands people to drink alcohol! Timothy is commanded to add wine to his water for his tummy, and we are commanded to eat the bread and drink the wine when we celebrate communion.
So, this one Q and A in an otherwise very helpful book makes a lot of claims. This claim twists the plain meaning of one verse, ignores several others, and makes Jesus a sinner. And if you think that kids don’t pick up on the hypocrisy you’re fooling yourself.
Now, if you make a personal choice to not drink—cool, great, good for you! And honestly, I will do my very best if I’m around you to not wound your conscience! I will not imbibe if I’m with you. And if you want to do grape juice at communion, I think that makes some HUGE errors in the symbolism, but in the end it isn’t something I’m going to be contentious about.
And I know that this is simply a brief example, but I thought it was a pretty appropriate example. Because as a pastor and theologian I constantly read bad and manipulative arguments and claims about what the Bible teaches and what Christians should and shouldn’t do. A very good pastor friend of mine showed me a message he received the other day. It was a message from some random stranger who said that his church was a false church because it didn’t use the King James Version and because they, he assumed, were also a registered 501c3 that my friend, Pastor Carter and his church, Bridging the Gap was a compromised Church.
Friends, Pastor Carter is a good man and his Church is doing good work, serving Christ and serving the community. But some coward—and he is a coward because he sent this letter through his child’s facebook account!—this coward attacks my friend and says that he’s a false Christian and his church, again, a church I KNOW is doing good work is a false church, it makes me angry.
It makes me angry that there are so many Christian who don’t know the difference between God’s Word and my interpretation of God’s Word. It makes me angry that there are so many Christians who think that their way is the only way and that everyone is stupid but them. So many see everything as black and white and that they and they alone –or at least their clique—have eyes that see clearly and are here to help all the rest of us fools see the light.
Well, if you are one of those people, why don’t you do us all a favor and shut up. You don’t have all the answers. There have been other smarter, godlier people who have disagreed with you and there are better, smarter, godlier people who disagree with me, too!
Now you might say, but Lukey, don’t you have strong opinions. Sure I do. I can be pretty hard core on things. And of course I think I’m right about everything I believe—but I don’t think everything I believe is right.
I don’t know of a single belief I hold that’s wrong. But I certainly know that some beliefs I hold are wrong. The problem is that I just don’t know what beliefs I hold are wrong. I wish I did know. If I knew, I’d change what I believe. But I don’t. So I strive to be wise, always praying for wisdom so that I might have insight into the Word and have prudence to know how to interpret God’s Word. Because the simple, painful truth is that the Bible does not interpret itself. People have to do that. And people disagree. Sure, Christians agree on all the major stuff—but there’s a LOT of stuff that isn’t major.
Friends, we need to learn how to read, and how to read rightly, and how to read what’s actually in God’s Word and not just what we want it to say. We need to learn to interpret the world God made, and culture, and art, and humanity, and science, and stories, and all sources of truth. We need the wisdom to integrate all truth so that we might live wisely and prudentially and most importantly godlily.