Argument

Leviticus 11:19 ESV

“…and the bat.”

What a difference a year makes. I was preaching through Leviticus just last year and didn’t feel compelled to mention these small words. This year I am reading through Leviticus giving early this morning and it is an overwhelming reality, weighted with sorrow, fuming with frustration, and spinning with my eyes as the give a brief eye roll to the irony of the cause of our situation. A small insignificant act, done daily for the past millennia in China has led to a world a blaze in fear. As entertainment venues have persistently shut down, I, like most, have found myself watching more documentaries than normal. One of these noted the social upheaval that followed two thirds of Chinese and half of Europe dying in the plague. Yes, there is a reason it is called THE plague. The social changes that developed because of such apocalyptic loss were drastic and are still felt today.

Pausing to digest that knowledge, I began dwelling on all I have heard from other sources about the intent of governments and individuals to use this as a means to engineer their own social changes. I have seen the posts railing against the Wisconsin Supreme Court for their ruling, not because it was legally unsound but simply the individual felt they court had the right to do what it wished and should have chosen differently. Quite simply the person reposted without bothering to look into the primary sources. We see this from the perspective of how many have simply chosen not to read the Governor’s order but simply take the word of whichever news outlet they currently are listening to.

Peter saw the sheet come down, the first Jerusalem Council understood that Gentiles don’t have to become Jewish and can eat what they wish. Bat and pig are both open to us, which I praise God for. As we watch this world’s upheaval, we must not become punch drunk taking whatever comes because a politician or “expert” has said so. Christians are people of the book, a primary document, we study it, memorize it, and meditate upon it, WE quite frankly THINK. “The pastor said so” is not enough for heaven or for love of neighbor. For all I don’t care for some of our Governor’s policies I love the wording of the exemption she put in for gun owners and religious services under the section labeled “Preserve Constitutional or Legal Rights”.

We do not have the rights by the jurisdiction of the state. We “are endowed by our creator” with the right to meet together. For all that I believe meeting in mass is not a loving act at this moment, I completely support those institutions as having the right to do so, not because the governor says they can or even the federal government saying the can, but because God has given this right to those assemblies. At times, through out our nations history, we have CHOSEN to lay our rights down for the love of our neighbor, it is ours to lay down, and ours to pick back up when we see it as needed.

If we are to keep this great REPUBLIC we have, we must make better arguments, neither trying to win them by social force nor by bowing to peer or corporal pressure when it is thrust upon us. If we are to keep our heads in this revolution then we must keep our heads.

Deo Volente

And I will perpetually lay down my right to eat bat, even as I hold to my right for pulled pork!