This letter errs by assuming Doug Wilson or his acolytes esteem Scripture, when they do not. They have only one point of reference: Douglas Wilson. They hang on every word he says no matter how crazy. Consequently, if you cannot appeal to this point of reference, you cannot communicate with them.

*   *   *

Discomfort and Christ

Christ Church and its congregants have a constitutional right to peacefully protest the city’s mandate about wearing a mask in public. They do not have a right to break that law without paying the consequence. That may be why they broke the law — the single purpose of civil disobedience is to be arrested — and as a result, get what they believe to be an unjust law revoked.

Since wearing a mask has been noted in several medical and scientific journals (not just the CDC and the WHO) as helping control the spread of COVID-19, I don’t consider following that law unjust — uncomfortable, maybe.

But discomfort is built into following Christ. He did, after all, suffer the discomfort of death on the cross. By comparison, wearing a mask seems little discomfort in the light of Jesus’ teaching from the Old Testament (Lev 19:18), “You shall Love your neighbor as yourself,” which He repeats in Matthew 22 as the second great commandment.

Jesus also says in Matthew 22, “Pay unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s,” implying that we should follow the law if there is no conflict between a particular law and God. Paul expands on that in Romans 13:1 when he says, “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities.”

In saying that they follow Christ’s teaching, they have not just a right, but an obligation to love their neighbor and to follow the law. If the picture of the faithful in the Daily News (Sept. 26) represents Christ — utter disregard for the law and disdain for the teaching of Jesus to love their neighbor — I would have to question my faith in Christ.

Thank God I know that Jesus is bigger and better than the Christ that these folk display.

D’Wayne Hodgin
Moscow

*   *   *