Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 333 | SCOTUS Stands Up for Religious Liberty

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

Andrew Cuomo has attempted to use the COVID pandemic to lock down churches and synagogues in clear violation of the First Amendment. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has gotten involved and ruled in favor of religious liberty. But this is the typical problem with leftists like Cuomo — they believe the Constitution is a living document that changes with the latest political trend. Supreme Court of the United States | Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of New York https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20a87_4g15.pdf -- Today's sponsor: Boll and Branch: Visit https://BollAndBranch.com and use promo code 'ALLIE' for $50 off any sheet set -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. We didn't talk about that on Monday. If you haven't listened to Monday's episode, make sure that you go back and do that. It's a really interesting conversation that I had with someone named Rachel Beauvard about how tyranny doesn't necessarily just come through the government. It also comes through these major corporations who we have given.

specifically the Republican Party so much power in the name of loving free markets, not realizing that giving so much leverage and preferential treatment to these companies has actually led to a limitation of our freedoms. And we talk about the solutions to that and how conservatism and libertarianism need to tweak themselves to realize that tyranny doesn't just come in the form of government interventionism, that it looks like a big tech oligarchy, that it looks like major corporations discriminating against particular viewpoints. And so go back and listen to Monday's conversation. I think it's super eye-opening. That's the feedback that I've gotten from a lot of you. Today we are going to talk about the recent SCOTUS case, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York,

versus Andrew M. Cuomo, governor of New York. We're going to talk about what that means what the decision was, why there are a lot of people that are pushing back on it who don't like the decision and why this is such a victory for religious liberty and why people everywhere, no matter your political stripe, no matter your ideological leanings, should be happy about a ruling like this. So first, let me back up and give a little background on this case. So there was an executive order that was issued by Governor Andrew Cuomo. in New York. He zoned New York in different colors based on the threat of COVID, according to him,

his administration and whatever quote experts he is consulting, red, orange, yellow zones that were based on the level of COVID spread and also the risk in that area. And he placed different restrictions on these zones that corresponded with the perceived risk. risk. So according to what color they zoned you, you would have particular restrictions on your establishment. The diocese of Brooklyn fell into one of these restrictive zones and decided to sue Cuomo over the order, which they argued, according to SCOTIS reporter Amy Howe, effectively bars in person worship at effective churches, a devastating and spiritually harmful burden on the Catholic community. So the diocese went to the Supreme Court on November 12th, asking the justices to block the attendance limits after the lower courts declined to do so.

Scotis decided to take up the case in conjunction with a case covering the same issue and that had to do with synagogues that were filing the same complaint. The argument is that this order effectively violates the First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion of these religious institutions. and that that is proven not just by the restrictive nature of this order and the zoning restrictions, but also it's discriminatory nature. So other businesses and smaller buildings had fewer restrictions than these synagogues and these churches, which were in many cases large buildings, which held a lot of people. It didn't make any kind of logical sense for them to have to abide by the restrictions that were placed on them by this executive order. So the institution sued Cuomo to receive injunctive relief.

Injunctive relief restrains a party in this case Cuomo from following through with an act that would cause irreparable harm. And so that's what they were seeking, an injunction from the Supreme Court. The harm in this case is the violation of the First Amendment rights of the churches and synagogues and what the diocese argued was spiritual harm as well. Scudis ruled in favor of the dioces and the synagogue stating that, quote, The loss of First Amendment freedoms for even minimal periods of time unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury. And quote, even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. They also go on to explain the favorability offered to some businesses, secular businesses, that was not afforded to these synagogues and these churches, based on no science, based on no data and not meeting any kind of constitutional standard. Quote, because the challenged restrictions are not neutral and of general applicability,

they must satisfy strict scrutiny. And this means that they must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. Stimbing the spread of COVID-19 is unquestionably a compelling interest, but it is hard to see how the challenged regulations can be regarded as narrowly tailored. They are far more restrictive than any COVID-related regulations that have previously come before the court, much tighter than those adopted by many other jurisdictions hard hit by the pandemic and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus at the applicant's services. The district court noted that, quote, there had not been any COVID-19 outbreak in any of the

diocese churches since they reopened and it praised the diocese's record in combating the spread of the disease. The majority's argument goes on to say not only is there no evidence that the applicants have contributed to the spread of COVID-19, but there are many other less restrictive rules that could be adopted to minimize the risk to those attending religious services. Among other things, the maximum attendance at a religious service could be tied to the size of the church or synagogue. The majority decision was made by five justices, justices Gorsuch, ACB, Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas.

Those are our five consistently conservative justices, although I will say that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have disappointed conservatives in the past. Gorsuch did very recently. That's how it goes for conservative justices, though. They rule according to the Constitution, not the latest ideological dogma of our side, unlike liberal activists, which they believe that the Constitution is a living document. So they will always fall on the side of the popular opinion among Democrats at the time. That is not how conservative justices make their decisions. They interpret the law according to the Constitution, which means that there will be some disagreement between what conservatives think the interpretation should be and what these conservatives justices believe

that the interpretation should be, which means that we are going to be sometimes disappointed by these conservative justices, whereas Democrats are never disappointed by a decision. that a liberal justice makes. These are our five conservative justices. Chief Justice Roberts, though he was nominated by George W. Bush, is at best a swing vote, if not an all-out liberal justice. He has ruled with the liberal justices on a variety of monumental cases. So anytime someone tells you that we have a six-three conservative majority on the Supreme Court, that is actually not accurate. I remember when ACB was confirmed, the Washington Post reported that we have a six-three conservative majority just because a justice was nominated by a Republican president doesn't necessarily

mean that they are conservative. You have to actually look at their judicial record. And again, it doesn't ever seem to go the other direction. When a Democrat nominates a liberal justice, they fall in line exactly where liberals want them to and where they predict them to. Whereas when a Republican nominates a justice, sometimes you just don't know how conservative they're going to be. that is certainly true of Chief Justice Roberts. He has ruled with the liberal judges on a lot of big cases. So they just voted, though. So he voted against the slim conservative majority in this case.

But we do have that 5-4 conservative majority, which means that no matter what you think of Trump, his presidency was, is insanely consequential because three of those five justices were nominated by him. And not only nominated by him, but the confirmation was made possible by Mitch McConnell, which just shows once again how important that Senate majority is. Like we are talking about decisions made by the Supreme Court that were made possible by President Trump that wouldn't have been possible. His nominations wouldn't have gotten confirmed. without a Senate majority led by Mitch McConnell.

And so I'm just reminding you Georgians out there who are discouraged or dejected because you feel like your voting process in Georgia is not fair. The best way to ensure that we lose this majority in the Senate, the best way to ensure that Trump's legacy is stymied is to not vote. Because, yes, maybe you're right that there are some fishy things going on in Georgia, but a really good way to guarantee that you lose is if you don't vote. And I know some people are saying, well, I'm going to teach Mitch McConnell and those establishment Republicans a lesson.

That's not what it's doing. They don't care. That's not what it's going to do. You're not teaching anyone a lesson. You are, on behalf of the entire country, you are deciding to lay down your sword and to refuse to fight for things like religious liberty, which are being particularly. because of the providence of God, because of the leadership of President Trump and Mitch McConnell. No matter what you think about it, that's exactly what's happened.

And so it is more important than ever, Georgians, that you go out and vote for Republicans in these Senate races. So this decision protects religious liberty, which is obviously a huge win. This is finally indecisively declaring that, hey, just because we're in a pandemic, that doesn't mean that we can suspend people's First Amendment rights. That doesn't mean that we can't have any restrictions ever at all, but this decision is saying that the government cannot put an unbearable burden on churches and other houses of worship in a way that restricts their worship, especially one that specifically and unfavorably discriminates against places of worship.

And Justice Gorsuch explains this reasoning very well in his concurring argument. I'll include the link in the description, I really encourage you to go read his concurrence. He says this, quote, government is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis. At a minimum, that amendment prohibits government officials from treating religious exercises worst than comparable secular activities, unless they are pursuing a compelling interest in using the least restrictive means available. In New York, people may gather inside for extended periods in bus stations and airports and laundromats and banks and hardware stores and liquor shops. No apparent reason exists why people may not gather, subject to identical restrictions,

and churches or synagogues, especially when religious institutions have made plain that they stand ready, able, and willing to follow all the safety precautions required of, quote, essential businesses and perhaps more besides. The only explanation for treating religious places differently seems to be a judgment that what happens there isn't as, quote, essential as what happens in secular places. Indeed, the governor is remarkably frank about this. In his judgment, laundry and liquor, travel and tools are all essential, while traditional religious exercises are not.

That is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids. We may not shelter in place when the Constitution is under attack. That is a great line. It is time, Justice Gorsuch says, past time, to make plain that while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops, but shuttered churches, synagogues, and mosques. The dissenters to the majority, Roberts, Kagan, Breyer, and Sotomayor, they made these arguments. Roberts wants to delay this, to punt this to December or just never rule on it.

Here's what he said in his dissent, quote, I would not grant injunctive relief under the present circumstances. There is simply no need to do so. After the diocese and the synagogue filed their applications, the governor revised the designations of the affected areas. None of the houses of worship identified in the applications is now subject to any fixed numerical restriction. So he's saying this is this is pointless. It's been rezoned. And now these houses of worship do have relief without us having to do anything. The problem with that is, and Gorsuch addresses this and his concurrence, the problem with Roberts's argument is that the executive order has not been repealed. It's still in place. And so those zones could change at any moment. So even though temporarily those houses of worship were moved out of the zoning, they could at any time be re-included in the zoning and would again have to request. injunctive relief. The other justices, in addition to Roberts, basically said, look, you can't, you can't question the governor. We shouldn't be questioning the governor in an emergency. This is his authority. Justice Breyer wrote a dissent arguing that the Constitution and

trust public health decisions to government officials. Justice Sotomayor said this, quote, free religious exercise is one of our most treasured and jealously guarded constitutional rights. States may not discriminate against religious institutions, even when faced with a crisis as deadly as this one. But she says those principles are not at stake today. The Constitution does not forbid states from responding to public health crises through regulations that treat religious institutions equally or more favorably than comparable secular institutions, particularly when those regulations save lives. And so I'm a little bit stunned by this argument because it seems completely disconnected to the fact of this case. First of all, the virus does, in fact, kill people,

but 99.9% of people, it does not. And so she is not providing any factual evidence here that the regulations that have been set in place and that have been placed upon these religious organizations are actually saving lives. It is debatable at best that there is a compelling interest of the state to impose such restrictive regulations that effectively shut down businesses and churches, and as Gorsuch argued, there is definitely no defense of the discrimination against these churches and synagogues, which Sotomayor seems to just believe in this statement is not happening. And I'm not sure how you can even make that case based on the facts of the executive order. So this was absolutely, according to my amateur opinion, but according to the majority

of the court as well, a constitutionally sound decision. There is no asterisk by the First Amendment saying that these rights are completely suspended during a pandemic. The court had refused to rule in similar cases in California and Nevada earlier in the year and agreed that the governors should be able to restrict worship services as they see fit. That was a mistake. That was when Ginsburg was on the court. In Nevada, casinos had fewer restrictions than churches. And Gorsuch dissented in that case when they refused, when the court refused to step in

and offer any kind of relief to this church, which is called Calvary Chapel in Nevada. He said this, quote, The First Amendment prohibits such obvious discrimination against the exercise of religion. The world we inhabit today with a pandemic upon us poses unusual challenges. But there is no world in which the Constitution permits Nevada to favor Caesar's Palace over Calvary Chapel. I love how Gorsuch always tries to work in witty alliterations and just, clever, clever little quips like that. Gorsuch was right then. He is right in this case. The court, like I said, has changed since making those decisions about Nevada in California

with ACB replacing RBG, which has been a positive change for our constitutional rights, namely religious liberty. This decision helps ensure that the government does not have the power to effectively suspend or inhibit our right to worship as we see fit or to discriminate against worshippers by halting our activities in a way that, in a way they do not for other institutions in the name of saving us from a crisis. That is excellent news. The power to crack down on worship has been is right now and will be abused in the name of public health as long as tyrants are allowed to do so. And so thankfully, the court protected religious people from that kind of dictatorial action.

And as we've seen the same government officials who are willing to uphold one part of the Constitution, the right to peaceably assemble, peacefully protest, and in some cases recently, not so peacefully, are not willing to honor the other part of the First Amendment, which honors free exercise of religion, despite the fact that these houses of worship from everything that we know are taking all the safety precautions, our conservative church in a conservative area is taking all of the safety precautions necessary to be able to gather it together. I guarantee that is the case for the vast majority of churches in this country. Remember, you as church leaders, you as congregants care more about your fellow

church members. If you care more about the people in your church than the state does, I guarantee you that when given the freedom to make good choices that mitigate risks, that could possibly, potentially, rarely, but possibly take people's lives, churches are going to do that. And I think that's the case for the vast majority, if not all churches in the country. But in particular, according to the lower courts, the lower courts observation, especially these religious institutions in New York, they were doing everything to take every precaution that they could. And there was no evidence whatsoever that they had been spreading the virus by meeting together how they were. So people like Paul Krugman at the New York Times who tweet things like this are speaking from a place of lunacy, of misunderstanding, and it seems like malice towards religious people. He says, quote, the first major decision from the Trump Pact Court, and naturally it will kill people. The bad logic is obvious. Suppose I adhere to a religion whose rituals include dumping neurotoxins into public reservoirs. Does the principle of religious freedom? give me the right to do that? Freedom of belief, yes. The right to hurt other people in tangible ways,

which large gatherings in a pandemic definitely do? No. Go read the replies to this tweet and the anger from many liberal journalists and activists on Twitter. This is the sentiment, it seems, of a lot of people, at least that I have seen on the left, that this is a deadly, awful, terrible decision. Let's back up and break down a little bit of what Paul Krugman says. Number one, again, there is no evidence, none, no evidence that what these houses of worship are doing is killing people. There have been no reports of spread from these churches and synagogues and many reports on how well they are taking precautions to mitigate risk. Remember, these churches and synagogues, they have a special interest. They have a particular interest in mitigating the spread of this and protecting their congregants.

they are not flouting rules for the sake of rebellion. That's number one. Number two, going to church or the temple is in no way comparable to dumping neurotoxins in a river. It's not the same thing. It's not comparable at all. Again, there's no scientific or logical rationale to what he's saying. You might have an argument if you can prove that these congregants are going to church sick

and then they're going out and they're coughing on people and getting everyone else sick as well and that those people are dying. But do we have any evidence of that? No. Do we have some evidence to the contrary? Yes, we do. Just a reminder that 99.9 to 99.5% of people survive coronavirus. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't take it seriously.

That doesn't mean that we should be completely reckless and careless and that we should think that it's a hoax. I'm not saying that. But let's be a little bit realistic when we're talking about the possibility of suspending people's First Amendment rights. Number three, the First Amendment is not just the freedom of belief, as he says. And that is what I want to focus on because I think that this is something that needs to be discussed. This has been a trend in leftist circles for a while.

Demeaning religious liberty is a dangerous excuse for bigotry, is a dangerous excuse for harming people. And thus attempting the left is attempting to limit it to just believe. the privately held belief that you have in your mind. That's all the First Amendment protects. But that is not just what the First Amendment protects. They want to limit religious liberty to the thoughts that you hold in your head. But everything else, anything that becomes public, must be regulated and must be controlled by the state. That is the argument that some people on the left are making.

There's a real resentment against religious liberty. And so the attempt is to try to limit it as much as possible. But let's read the first clause. of the First Amendment. Quote, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Exercise. Not just privately held belief, but exercise of your religion.

That is religious expression. Of course, you cannot break the Supreme Court has ruled on this. You cannot break generally applicable laws to exercise your religion. You can't murder people. You can't assault people. you can't steal things. You can't deal drugs in the name of your religion, but the government cannot inhibit you from worshiping, and they especially cannot inhibit you from worshiping in the name of public health while allowing secular institutions to function as they see fit or in less restrictive

ways. What I have observed for a while, but especially in the past week or so, looking at some of the pieces that have been written up about this and the liberal reaction to this decision is that the liberal perspective seems to be unable to separate its preferred outcomes from constitutionality. So the sentiment is, like, what I see as good should be forced and what I see as bad should be banned rather than something like, you know what, I don't agree with churches meeting right now. You know, I really wish they wouldn't meet, but I understand this is their constitutional right. and I'm glad that we have a right to religious liberty, and I support that First Amendment right, even if I do not agree with the decision to meet together. This is how conservatism

thinks about decisions. I don't like, for example, a lot of things that people say, I don't agree with a lot of people's religious beliefs, obviously, but I would rejoice over a Supreme Court ruling that protected the speech of someone who offended me with their words. That is the difference between the leftist view of judicial decisions and the conservative view of judicial decisions. The conservatives are concerned with the principal protected more than with our agreement with the particular policy that it is ruling on. But because liberals, for example, believe that abortion should be a choice, they want Obamacare, they support gay marriage, they believe all the Supreme Court decisions defending these things were good and sound decisions.

despite the fact that each of these cases were made by activist just justices who think like they do, whose arguments are not actually supported by the Constitution. I am neither Catholic nor Jewish, but I believe in their right to worship. I can see how this is a win for not just religious people, but also non-religious people. The right to worship or not to worship is we see fit is a right that has been time and again protected by the court, and it has in this case as well. I am against tyranny as a rule. I am against religious discrimination by government as a rule. So it doesn't matter whether or not I am Catholic or Jewish or whether this was a Muslim making this case. I am for

religious liberty. Liberals, it seems, are incapable of saying, I don't agree with this particular position, but I respect the Constitution. And I am thankful that this right protects me too. Brett Stevens at the New York Times explains the importance of liberals seeing this from another perspective in an op-bed that I thought was really good. He says, quote, imagine slightly different circumstances in which, say, a conservative governor of a red state had used pandemic concerns last summer to impose draconian limits on public protests, and that he had done so using color-coded maps that focused on denser urban areas and that seemed to apply most restrictively to predominantly black neighborhoods. Now imagine this governor had at the same time loosened restrictions on large gatherings, such as motorcycle rallies, business conventions, and football games, on the grounds that these were essential to the economic well-being of the state.

Any objections? The point here isn't that the interest of public safety and respect for executive authority must always and fully give way to the assertion of constitutional rights. They shouldn't and don't, nor is the point that the behavior of religious communities during the pandemic has been beyond reproach or beyond the reach of justifiable legal sanction. It hasn't. That's his opinion. The point is there are no second-class rights, and the right to the free exercise of religion is every bit as important to the Constitution as the right to assemble peaceably, petition government for redress, and speak and publish freely. That goes in circumstances both ordinary and extraordinary. As Justice Samuel Alito put in a speech this month that caused some gnashing of teeth, quote, all sorts of things can be called an emergency or disaster of major proportions. slapping on that label cannot provide the ground for abrogating our most fundamental rights. And so he is attempting, and I think effectively, to have liberals look at this a different way. If you discriminated

against people for exercising another part of their First Amendment rights and say those were people who were exercising political activities that you as a liberal agree with, would you think it's okay for the governor, say it's a Republican governor to discriminate against those people while showing favor to the groups that he views essential, you would think that was wrong. And so it's important for liberals and conservatives, but I just think that it seems like in these cases liberals have a harder time thinking past just the initial, while I disagree with what the churches are doing and thinking about the constitutional ramifications of decisions, I think that it's important for you to be able to see the different perspective of that

and realize that a decision like this protects people of all different stripes. who are making all different kinds of decisions that have to do with the First Amendment. And that is why no matter your political background, we should be happy about a decision like this. I also think that there is some confusion that I have seen, especially among liberals, but maybe among some conservatives too, about this phrase, the separation of church and state. What I've realized is that the people who say this the loudest and the most often are usually the least understanding of what it means. First, as most of you guys know, this is not a phrase.

in the Constitution. But I don't think that a lot of conservatives say that's not in the Constitution, they just leave it there. But we should emphasize that this is an important American principle. It is meant to protect the state from the establishment of a national church, of a national religion, or the forcing of religious beliefs and practices on the populace. That's very important. And this principle protects the church from the state. This is a first amendment principle, even though the words aren't directly in the Constitution. So what many of our liberal friends, it seems, don't realize is that second part, that separation of church and state is to protect the church from the state, not just the state from the church.

And protecting the state from the church does not mean that the Bible, that the belief in God cannot influence lawmaking. I know that that's frustrating for a lot of people, both on the left and the right who consider themselves secular. But the Bible has always influenced our lawmaking. Laws against murder and theft. Laws guaranteeing due process were based first on the Bible. God is the moral lawgiver. There is no basis for morality and therefore no basis for laws without the moral law that he has given. Yes, our founders understood this. Anyone who says that we started as a secular nation is wrong. No, we were the reason that we were started, the reason that our founders believed in freedom is because we believe, they believed that we were

given certain unalienable rights endowed to us by our creator among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The belief in God is necessary for the construction of the republic, of the kind of republic that our founders established. The belief that, that there is an authority that is higher than the government that gives every individual rights that therefore can only be recognized by the government, not given or taken away arbitrarily by the government. And so the belief in God was absolutely necessary for the foundation of our country. It's absolutely necessary now for the protection of our rights. What many leftists seem to mean when they say separation of church and state, like you'll hear people on the left say this about

abortion, for example, that we shouldn't restrict abortion because the separation of church and state, that is a complete lack of understanding of what the separation of church and state actually means. What it seems, what they seem to mean is that they do not want any religious type of thinking to be welcomed into the public square. They want complete separation of religious views. and religious talk and religious influence from the public square. And that is not what the separation of church and state means. And that's not going to happen. It can't happen in a society in which the First Amendment exists. Thankfully, we do still live in a country with religious liberty, and we should be

thinking the Lord for that. We are the exception in the history of the Christian church. Most Christians throughout time. I know I've said this a lot recently, and still today have no freedom of religion. They don't even have a concept of the freedom of religion. Many Christians, millions of Christians around the world have only ever been able to be Christians in secret for fear of persecution, imprisonment, torture, martyrdom, Western, and especially American history over the past couple centuries, has provided a small bit of relief for God's people to worship freely. And that is, that is a right, that is a freedom that has also benefited people of other faiths as well. That is a gracious gift that we have been able to enjoy.

That is not the norm for religious people, especially Christians throughout the world. We should be taking advantage of that religious liberty while we still have it. We don't know how much longer it's going to last. I mean, there are people, obviously, that don't like religious liberty, that resent religious liberty, that think it's nothing more than an excuse for harm. if those people get more and more power, cultural power, governmental power, then we could be looking at the effective end of our religious liberty. So right now, while we still have it and while we do still have a conservative Supreme Court,

before literally God forbid Joe Biden and a Democrat-controlled Congress tried to pack the courts, we should be taking advantage of this religious liberty as much as we possibly can. It doesn't seem like we should be using this time to sit on. on our hands and insist that loving our neighbor means shutting down our schools and staying home indefinitely. John McArthur tweeted this, caused a little bit of controversy. It's divine providence at work as the Lord uses the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the hubris of Governor Cuomo, and the determination of Donald Trump, and the convictions of Justice Barrett to protect the freedom of his church. And of course, anyone who believes in the sovereignty of God agrees with that statement.

That doesn't mean that we are saying, hooray, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and we're going to rub it in the face of people who are sad about her death. That is not what we're saying. But the sovereignty of God is in control of all things. And he has used the series of events over the past year, as terrible if some of them have been, to protect this very sacred right of religious liberty, which, like I said, is a unique right that we should be thankful for and taking advantage of. God is still, and always has been, never for one second stopped being completely in control of everything that is going on, even and especially in 2020. Daniel 221 says this, he changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. Psalm 135, 6 says, whatever the Lord pleases he.

does in heaven and on earth in the seas and all deeps. There is a lot of bad that's going on right now. There's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of reason to be worried, to be scared. But let's take a second to rejoice in a consequential decision, protecting religious liberty. Praise the Lord for his sovereignty in that. Remember, as we've talked about before, when God is doing one thing, he's doing a million things. And they're not necessarily trending on Twitter. The vast majority of them are not. They're not always making headlines, but he is on his throne, no matter who is on the court, no matter who is in the White House, no matter who is in Congress. Therefore, our peace does not waver in our responsibility to be good stewards, to be righteous, obedient ambassadors, and the

aroma of Christ does not change. Just as there is not an asterisk by the First Amendment, our constitutional rights in the time of a pandemic, so there is not a big asterisk. by the command that Jesus gave us to go and make disciples, to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, to be generous and to be hospitable. Again, I'm not encouraging recklessness or carelessness. I'm not saying that we shouldn't heed the danger of the virus at all, but our obedience as Christ disciples, as servants of the Lord, as children of God, as children of light, as Ephesians 5 calls us, is not suspended in times of crisis. It is actually elevated, I would argue, in times of crisis that now more than ever,

we need to show the world what it looks like to be light in the midst of darkness. Okay, that's all I have time for today. We will be back here on Friday.