Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Should We Wear Face Masks? Here's What We're Called to Do

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Should we be wearing face masks? It's become a contentious issue and been espoused with moral and political implications. How should Christians respond? Hear what https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Keith) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick) are doing and what they advise other Christians to do too. Interested in more content like this? Scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/should-christians-stay-in-or-get-out-and-serve/ (Should Christians Stay In or Get Out and Serve?) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. So what team are you on? Team mask, team no mask, which side are you coming down on? Are you angry at those who wear masks because you think they're giving in to fear? Or are you angry at those who don't wear masks because you think they're being selfish and putting their rights above others? everybody has a team these days. Patrick, what team are you on? How long have you know me? I never like picking teams. I'm always the guys like, well, you know, I could be on this team or that team. I don't want to pick.

Christina and I went on a little trip the other day and we had a chance to get away for our 30th anniversary and every state we were in out west required mask. Every city we were in required a mask for being inside. A lot of people even wore them outside where they weren't required. But when we landed back at Kansas City Airport and drove home, what we realized was there was a mask war raging in our own hometown of Columbia, Missouri, not unlike the war that's raging across the country. Yeah, so if you don't live in Columbia and you're listening, I'll tell you what's happening here. We've kind of gone back and forth as far as mask policies go, but we recently had a city-level ordinance put in place, which requires people to wear masks indoors when they are less

than six feet apart. It requires people to wear a mask outdoors when they are less than six feet apart unless they're exercising. Now, Keith, you ask me what team I'm on. I don't want to pick a team because we'll get into a second, but I can't tell you what my preferences are. I'm a guy who I hate touching my eyes, so I won't wear contacts, which means that for me, wearing a mask is kind of a pain because I'm constantly fogging up my glasses. It's itchy. It's scratchy. It's hard for me to wear. And so I was kind of like you. I didn't want to wear a mask as much as possible. And yet, on the flip side, I don't want to be someone who's rude to other people who doesn't care about what their preferences are. So I've tried. I want to be wearing a mask for their sake, but I feel really

caught personally. I mean, my preference is, yeah, I don't want to wear this, but I see the reasons to go the other way. Why would anyone want to wear a mask? I can't imagine that anyone would choose to do this to be sucking in your hot breath, bad breath smelling it. I had no idea how bad my breath was. I did. My wife did. Okay, come on. Why did you? Hold on. No, no, no, no. My wife is a lot to know that way, Brent. Am I close talker? I don't know. Well, I don't know. I call it a mouth bra. And so I'm in sucking in cotton. Okay, maybe we can say that man to you.

No, we're for sure keeping that off. We are? Yeah, we are. That's the real key. People need to know who you are. I'm just sucking in that cotton. I absolutely hate it. I'm with you. I want to be able to see. There's nothing more annoying that I'm trying to have a conversation. I already can't see people's face. By the end of it, I can't see anything because my glasses are fogged up, but I can't see people if I take them off. What am I supposed to do? But even more than having to wear a mask, what I really hate is arguing about absolutely everything in our country. Everything that happens in our culture has become an argument with Team Red, Team Blue, Team Mask, Team No Mask.

David French, this journalist said that America is having about one of the dumbest, arguments it could possibly have right now, and that's over wearing masks. Yeah. Why have we become so politicized? What does the mask war itself say about our cultural moment? Can I just go back one second and say that upon coming back from this little mini vacation, we were getting emails from people who were saying, well, I won't serve in crossing kids. Now that we have to wear masks, I refuse to wear a mask. We were having people show up at church on Sunday, and of course we're following the city ordinance. I mean, what other choice do we have? And they were upset with our staff members because they were asking them to comply and wear a mask and they yelled out of them and walked off. Now, I don't want to act

like that's a ton of people, but it should be zero people. Even a few people is a few people too many. And we're experiencing the same thing as we're trying to do small groups. We did a survey recently and it became apparent to me that there's a whole group of people who say, I'm not going to go to a small group. I'm not going to be in a meeting where people are wearing masks. I simply refuse to do it. And yet on the flip side, we have people who say, I will not go to a small group if there's anybody there who doesn't have a mask on. So people are incredibly passionate on both sides. Can you imagine not serving in a place that you love to serve, say, crossing kids? Can you imagine not going to a church that you love to go to growing in your faith? Can you imagine not being in a

small group with people you care about because they will or won't wear masks? Really? Is that where we are? I think you're underlining a question of priorities. What do we put first in life? That's something we're going to talk about a little bit later on, but I want to go back to the question of why has us become so politicized? What does this tell us about where we are culturally? And I think one thing it tells us is that we have, right now in 2020, come to a place where absolutely every issue is going to take on political shading. It almost doesn't matter what it is. We can turn Harry Potter into a political thing. We can turn masks, into a political. We can turn anything into a political cause these days. Why is that the case? I think it actually has a lot to do with the basics of how human psychology works. Whether you're

a Christian or not, most people would agree that we are designed, whether it's by evolution or by God or by both, we are designed to be in groups with each other. We're designed to thinking groups, to be a part of groups. And everybody's had this experience. I mean, I love going to football games in person and try to get out to one NFL game every year because there's something is just so exciting and exhilarating about being in Arrowhead Stadium, one of the loudest stadiums in the NFL, and everybody's cheering, everybody's yelling, you're getting into the chance. I realize I'm just tapping into the hive mind, right? This sense of, hey, we're in this together. And that's great when you're in it together, when you feel like you're all on the same team, but it becomes a huge

problem when culturally, all of a sudden, we're all on different teams. Since 1976 to 2008, Most Americans have gone from not living in areas where there's a lot of political polarization to living in areas. 27% of people in 1976 lived in counties where people had disagreements politically. Now, 50% of Americans living counties where there are people who have differences of opinions. And so that tells you that right now in your daily life, you are constantly living in a politically polarized environment. And it's not just true where we live.

It's true of the media we watch. It's true of the people we follow on social media. there's plenty of opportunity to have your beliefs reinforced and rarely challenged. You called it a hive mindset. I've heard people refer to it as tribalism. We are in our tribe, and that's the team we belong to, and then we justify whatever we need to to hold to the tribe's beliefs. In other words, this idea out there,

in other words, most of us think that we look at the data, look at the information, and come to our convictions, beliefs based on study, based on being open-minded and approaching each issue individually. But that is not at all how we work. We identify with the team, and then we have our beliefs because that's the team's beliefs. And we go to great lengths to justify those beliefs. What Keith's saying isn't just an idea. This has been proven time and time and time again in psychological studies. We think that we start with reason, and then we make a moral choice. but the reality is that we start with a moral intuition and then post hoc after the fact come up with a case to align with our moral intuition.

And that moral intuition is more often than not shaped by the group that we identify with. A great example of this, and Keith brought this up in a few of our conversations, is if you give a paper, a policy to someone and you say to that person, this policy was written by a Republican, and that person is a Republican, they are far more likely to be for that policy than if you tell them that it's by a Democratic. Let's say you take that exact same paper and you give it to a Democrat and you tell the Democrat this was written by a Democrat. Well, they're far more likely to buy into it than they would if you told them it was a Republican. In other words, they don't really care what's in the policy. They care who wrote it. They care whether or not this fit in with my tribe. And they can, after the fact, come up with reasons to justify their moral intuition, their group intuition. I am going to be so risky as to actually give an example. And I know that not all examples are

perfect, but here it goes. Back when Bill Clinton was president, Republicans or conservatives were very concerned about his private morality. They said his affair with Monica Lewinsky disqualified him from office. And Democrats said, no, what happens privately in a person's life does not affect his or her ability to be a president and to lead well. Now fast forward to Donald Trump, and it seems as if both sides have completely flipped positions. Now Democrats are saying that the private morality of Trump should disqualify him from office, and Republicans are arguing that private morality should not disqualify him from being president. It's mind-boggling, but it is exactly what Patrick is saying that we have a tribe, we have a team, and then we justify our positions based on the team that we're

on. Okay, so how should Christians respond to these issues that have become so charged so polarized. How should we respond to them in relation to our faith? I think that as followers of Jesus, we need to always be thinking my Christian identity comes before my political identity. In other words, I should care more what God thinks about things and what maybe even the people of God think about things than my particular political group. I'm not saying that you can't advocate for one party over the other. What I am saying is that we should not be answering the Mask Wars question, based on our political agenda. In fact, you can just ask yourself this question. Right now, my perspective on masks, is it tightly aligned with my political party? If the answer to that question is, yes, it doesn't

mean that you're wrong, but it may mean that you had a moral intuition shaped by a group, which you came up for reasons after the fact. And it may mean that you need to say, you know what, I need to pull back my perspective, and I need to ask, what does Jesus think about this? What would Jesus do if he was in the middle of the mask wears. And I'm going to let that be the primary thing that shapes how I'm going to respond to this. Yes, because as much as it drives me crazy, that our culture is arguing about every issue, including, but not only masks, it is much sadder to know that Christians are arguing about this. And Christians are even arguing with other Christians about whether we should wear masks. There's not a sense of empathy. There's not a sense of caring about another person,

and putting other people's interests above your own. And I say that to people on both sides of this argument. Our model is Jesus, who gave up his rights, laid aside those rights, humbled himself, took on the nature of a servant, died a humble death on a cross. He had power, and he voluntarily relinquished that power, for us on our behalf to serve the weaker, to serve the undeserving.

Does that answer the question of whether you should or should not wear a mask? Of course not. But what it says is that we should be motivated by love and servitude and thinking of others above ourselves and empathetic toward people who have different positions or who are in different situations that we're in, that we should not be trying to gather power to assert our rights and privileges, but that whatever power we have, we should be used. choosing it to serve others because our model is Jesus. Because catch this, remember, they call us Christians, which is after Jesus the Christ, Jesus the king, the Messiah.

Romans 15, 2 to 3 says, each of us should please our neighbors for their good to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself, as it is written, the insults of those who insults you have fallen on me. Paul's point here is radical. in today's world. And it's what Keith was just getting at. Jesus actively made the choice to not put himself first. Pause and think about that. The creator of the universe, the one whose glory and majesty and beauty transcends all things, decided, hey, you know what, I'm not going to put myself first today. If he can say I'm not going to put myself first, the one who deserves to say that, how much more so should people who follow him be saying, I want to please my neighbor? I want to put their welfare,

their interest, their comfort above my own. That's what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Now, I get that when we get down to the specific issue of Max, that you can build a case for either side. I get that it's confusing. I get that the experts flip-flop. I get that we find out new information all the time. I get that there is information you can read that says that masks are not that helpful and information you can read that says that they are vital to ending this pandemic. I get all that. I'm not trying to say that I have an answer. I'm not even going to venture an answer because I'm not a scientist. I'm not a medical health expert. I'm not an epidemiologist. I don't know. But what I do know is that Christians cannot be self-righteous Pharisees

toward those who think about this issue differently than them. Let's say you're a non-mask wearer and that you think all of this is ridiculous. You can't label everyone who thinks we should wear a mask as somebody who's given in to panic porn, somebody who is scared to death and fearful and trying to defeat the president by shutting down the economy. And if you're a person who thinks that we should wear masks, you can't look at everyone who doesn't, as someone who has no regard for their fellow human, someone who is irresponsible, and some conservative Neanderthal who's only about trying to promote capitalism. You can't look at other people who make different choices than you do and come to the most

negative conclusion about them. That is self-righteous Phariseeism. Pharisees assume that my group is the right group. All other groups are. the wrong group. That's what it meant to be a Pharisee in the time of Jesus. They also assumed that their actions, their decisions were the thing that made them righteous, that made them right and better than other groups of people. When you go back to the early church, there was a funny little thing that happened. There were Jews and Gentiles all living in one place together. And the Jews all agreed that eating pork, eating pig, was offensive to God. And eating any meat that had been sacrificed to an idol was offensive to God. The Gentiles, on the other hand, had no compunctions about this. Why would that be an issue? Who

cares what we eat? The idols weren't real anyways. Why would that matter? Why do you care? Now, we look back on the media and say, that is such a stupid argument. Why were they fighting over that? I suspect that about 10 or 15 years from now, people are going to look at the mask wars, and they're going to be a little bit flabbergasting. And I say, why did either side care so much about this? Why did they make this into such a big deal? But Paul's advice to the church in Rome was that people who are strong in their faith, and by which he met the people who said, hey, we can eat anything. They had a strong conscience. They were open to lots of things. He said they needed to actually slow down and work alongside those who were weak in faith. They needed to say, you know what,

when I'm around someone who doesn't want to eat pork, I'm not going to eat pork. I'm going to set aside my rights and my privileges. Romans 14 says this, except the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. You just stop there. Don't quarrel over disputable matters. One person's faith allows them to eat anything, but another's whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt, the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does. For God has accepted them. We could take this and just map it right onto the mask wars right now. Christians are going to take a massive step forward if we stop judging each other.

We start putting other people's interests ahead of our own. And if we are in the strong category, maybe that's the people who say, you know what, I don't think we need to wear masks. my conscience isn't bothered by that at all. We need to still be respectful of people who were in the weak conscious category. I say, you know what? My conscience is held by this. I do think that it matters that we wear masks. So I know what you're thinking right now.

You said, well, hold on, hold on. You just called people who don't want to wear masks, those with strong consciences, and those who do want to wear mask, people with weak consciences. What I'm not trying to get into is saying who's right and who's wrong is if you have the strong conscious, you're in the right place. I'm trying to speak specifically right now to the person who has the attitude that we don't need to wear a mask, and I'm telling you, if that's you, you need to set down your privilege, your right of I don't want to wear a mask for the sake of the person who you think has the weaker

conscience. I'm not saying I think it, but you might think it. And if you do, then you have to set down that privilege and say, you know what? If you don't want to eat pork, I'm not going to eat pork. If you want to wear a mask, then I'm going to wear a mask with you. And I'm not going to make you feel bad. I'm not going to judge you. And I'll say on the flip side, if you're in the category of people saying we should wear a mask, you should not be judging people who don't. Paul says that it goes both ways. So here what I'm saying, and I'm not trying to say who's right and who's wrong here. What I am trying to say is that we should treat each other with that mutual dignity. One thing that I think Christians too often forget is that we are called to work for

the benefit of our whole community. We are called to not just care about ourselves or our families or our businesses or our churches, but that we are called to care about all of our city, all of our state, country, whatever you want to think of as our community. And in Jeremiah 29, it says to seek the welfare of the city. And the city that it has in mind is Babylon, the pagan nation. So Old Testament believers were called to work for the good of Babylon. How much more should we as Christians work for the good of our own local community? And if Christians are seen as people who are self-righteous or selfish, or working for their own good, then I think that's going to turn a lot of people off to Christ. It's going to give them the excuse they already want to say,

I don't have to consider Jesus because, look, his own followers don't care about us. His own followers don't care about anybody but themselves. So when you wear a mask or don't wear a mask, understand that your attitude about it reflects on your king. And I think if you thought that I'm not just going out there representing myself, I'm not going out there representing team mask or team no mask. I'm going out there and everything I say and my attitude toward this and my willingness to compromise and my willingness to put other people's interests above my own says something about Jesus to the watching world.

Okay, so let's talk about what that looks like practically for just a second. Let's say you are someone who believes we should be wearing masks. My challenge to you practically then is to, first of all, assume the best about the person who says that they don't want to wear masks. They are not saying it because, like he said earlier, there's some sort of Neanderthal, their science deniers, or whatever the reason is that you've got in your head why they're saying it. They're selfish. They might be not wanting to wear masks because they say, I think that we have some personal liberties in life. And I get worried when government starts trying to set limits on those personal liberties. And by the way, that is a very legitimate concern.

If you know anything about history, you will realize that is an incredibly legitimate concern. Now, that's assuming the best. You might disagree with it, but it's a legitimate concern. Absolutely. Government overreach is something I hear quite a bit, and that very well may be true. Now, I understand the other side then says, but in a pandemic, don't you want the government to exert strong leadership? But I think your point here is that instead of attributing the most ridiculous arguments to the person who behavior, differently than me. Why don't I give them the benefit of the doubt believe the best about them?

Maybe they have a medical condition and they can't wear a mask. Yeah. And it goes the other way as well, just practically speaking, if you think we should not be wearing masks and you see people in masks, don't go assume, oh my gosh, these are just cosmopolitan elites who bought it into the fear and the panic and that's why they're doing what they're doing. No, why don't you look at them and say, hey, maybe this is someone who's really conscientious. Maybe it would sit on their conscience incredibly heavily if they got someone else sick. Maybe they just care about their community and they're trying to do what's best for their community, not what they personally want. That's assuming the best about someone, and it's giving them the benefit the doubt, the best argument that they could have.

In our local community now, the government has made it somewhat easy for Christians or churches in that it has passed a city ordinance requiring masks to be worn indoors, and maybe your community is considering something similar. So as Christians, we need to be. to think through. What is the right response to government laws? Legitimate government laws should be followed or obeyed by Christian citizens. It's really pretty clear, isn't it? That's what Romans 13 and other passages assert. And remember, the culture that Paul wrote this in was first century Rome. So it's not as if there was a Christian leader passing Christian approved laws at the time. So let me try to give a quick recap overview of where we've come. We started off by asking the question,

why are we so polarized? Keith and I came out of the shoot, and we were honest where we were at in our personal perspectives. Neither one of us, I think, are people who love wearing masks or love the idea of wearing masks at all. That's just us being honest about our personal preferences. And we think that Christians need to set aside their political identity instead to follow Jesus, to stop being Pharisees, to stop judging other people to assume the best about them and why they're doing what they're doing, to represent Jesus well in our community and to seek the welfare of our community. And I think for all of those reasons, if you're around Keith and I, you would know that despite our desire not to wear masks, we've both made the choice to wear masks where our civic government is telling us we need to

wear masks. We've both made the choice to wear masks when we're around people who are uncomfortable not wearing masks. We've both made the choice to set aside our personal preferences and instead try to represent Jesus well in our community and love our neighbors even by protecting them, even though that might not be something that we personally love. That's where we've landed on this. Our heart is for the church. Our heart is for Christians to represent Christ well. Our heart is to love our neighbor. Our heart is to use whatever rights we have for the benefit of others. We don't have a dog in this mask war. I'm not participating in it. I refuse to participate in the mask war. I'm going to follow the government directives, and I'm going to do my

best to love my neighbor. That means doing things that I'd prefer not to. So maybe we leave you with this. Why don't you just ask, why is this such a big deal to me? Is this something worth arguing about? How would Christ approach this issue? What will represent Christ's best in my workplace, in my community? In other words, what if you thought about masks, a Christian and not as a Republican or Democrat. What if you thought about masks as a Christian and not just a citizen in the community? What if you thought about masks in terms of what helps other people, not just what do I prefer? Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily.

Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.