“They don’t have a right to object. That is the rule and that is the regulation, and they have to comply with that.’ Governor Andrew Cuomo (Democrat, New York), in forcing nursing homes to take COVID-19 patients, resulting in thousands of nursing home deaths, NBC News, 4/25/20. On May 17, when questioned about his decisions, reports RedState, Cuomo said: ‘Older people, vulnerable people, are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen…[W]e can’t keep everyone alive”.¹

“We’re all in this together” is a government slogan oft repeated by its witless mouthpieces: movie stars, professional athletes, entertainers, and elite cultural dilettantes. Unlike waitresses, hair stylists, restaurant and hotel workers, officials who slammed businesses shut still receive a check squeezed from the taxes of those they put out of work. Where is the “we” in all this suffering? Is it government of the people when officials can strike at any moment, like a cobra, destroying the lives and businesses Americans labored long and hard to build? We?

“Question Authority” was the de rigueur bumper sticker pasted on the Volvos of Bay area liberals when I was a policeman² in California.

Having metamorphosed from the larval to the adult stage of the liberal life cycle, they now are the authority and chief dispensers of government Kool Aid. Those who once urged Americans to question government authority now wield the club of censorship beating down voices that…question authority. Citizens who dare to exercise their Bill of Rights, they arrest. “Drinking the Kool Aid” is a phrase with horrific antecedents and it is instructive to reprise its origin.

[Disclaimer: I am not a doctor nor a theologian. Observations with respect to denominational practices are for elucidation only].

Jim Jones, a self-avowed communist, grew up a bright charismatic young man in Indiana. His Marxist views were well known but proved no impediment to the Methodist Church’s District Superintendent ordaining him a minister. His support for racial integration in the 1950s was another matter. Methodist leaders asked him to leave so Jones formed his own church, the “Wind of Deliverance”.³ While attending big-tent revivals, he learned the lucrative connection between experiential based religion and fundraising. Jones adopted those methods.⁴

In 1965, Jones renamed his church the Peoples Temple and moved it to San Francisco where he adopted the name “The Prophet”. By the mid-1970s, Jones was rich and hobnobbed with powerful state politicians and mover and shakers. Newspaper journalists learned from ex-cult members there was a dark side to the Peoples Temple and began investigations. Reports of embezzlement, stealing church member’s money, and drug use, began circulating in newspapers. Fearing legal consequences, in 1977 Jones moved his cult to Guyana, South America where he established Jonestown as a socialist agricultural commune. He ruled it with an iron fist. He confiscated drivers’ licenses and passports and meted out punishment for rules infractions including beatings and interning people in dirt holes. Family members stateside heard these stories and pressured their Congressman to investigate. On November 14 1978, California U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led an unofficial delegation to Jonestown. Four days later, his work finished, Ryan, his entourage, and 14 defectors, headed to the local airstrip. Jones feared what they would reveal so he ordered the Ryan party assassinated. His hit squad attacked at the airstrip murdering the Congressman and four others. When Jones learned the others escaped, he knew they would head straight for the police. He decided mass suicide was the only answer. His lieutenants mixed up a concoction of Flavor Aid and cyanide.⁵ They filled cups for the obedient and syringes for the reluctant. When the Guyanese police arrived, they found 913 dead cult members, 276 of which were children. Jones was dead by an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head.⁶ Over time, the term “drinking the Kool Aid” came to mean people who accept, embrace, and believe what political organizations, union leaders, the media, and so forth, tell them uncritically, rejecting evidence to the contrary. For them, propaganda is gospel.

This past Saturday I entered an almost empty Ace Hardware store. By the time I made it to the checkout counters, the store was packed out. I stood in line behind a sullen faced middle-aged man wearing a black United Auto Workers Union Ford T-shirt. Once at the counter, he told the teenaged Asian girl behind a plastic shield, to spray the counter before he would touch it. When she asked a colleague where the bottle was, he became angry. “You don’t know where it is means you are not spraying down the counter between each customer,” he barked angrily at her. He was wearing no mask. I wanted to yell, “Drop the Kool Aid and leave her alone you Coroniac!”

I am stunned by the willingness of Americans to drink the government’s Kool Aid with respect to edicts that have eviscerated the economy and imprisoned people in their homes. Even churches have fallen in line without questioning the efficacy and legality of these diktats. Who is asking how executives, be they mayors, county executives, governors, or the president, acquired legislative powers to make laws to which are appended police enforcement? Who is asking if government is violating the Bill of Rights? Who is asking if government lockdown edicts are constitutional? Even so-called reopening policies reflect ingestion of government’s Kool Aid.

Great Clips Hair Salons require online appointments. They have removed waiting room chairs. Once there, patrons must wait in hot cars until summoned by a stylist. Ten people may have their haircut at one time but they cannot permit two or three to wait in the lounge, masks or not? Many doctor, dentist, and physical therapy offices permit only patient entry. If chauffeured, drivers must remain in their cars, in the heat, unable to find a bathroom mask or no mask. A young man I know passed his driver’s test. In order to complete the process at the license bureau, he had to book an appointment online. The problem is they are booked for over a month. However, they allow “walk-ins”. This requires people to line up and wait until the end of the day. He waited five hours, in 90+-degree heat, outside. His father waited two hours in his car. The closest bathroom is behind a dumpster. This is safe? “Customers”, when they finally make it inside, are required to wear a mask. Clerks behind the counter are and were not. Rumors several people died and those waiting in line simply stepped over their bodies remain unsubstantiated. Government requires people to have a driver’s license and then makes no provision for them to do so under less than inhumane conditions. They do not care. They are the government.

A Baptist pastor with whom I am acquainted sent an email to church members detailing protocols for reopening. He admonished members to trust and obey his and the leadership team’s decisions. He based protocols on the “wisdom” of local political officials, upon whom he “leaned” along with the word, prayer, and “discernment and discretion to lead G-d’s church each step of the way”. He removed 100 chairs from the church auditorium to enforce “social distancing”. Considering this church is typically packed out, members arrive early to save seats and even rows for habitually tardy family members and friends, where will they sit? Coffee is no longer available in the Coffee House. Why? Does Red China’s Virus contaminate the boiling hot water? More likely, Church leaders cannot trust adults to obey County edicts limiting human gatherings to ten or less. Apparently, “science” has determined if 10 people or less congregate, they are safe but add one more, and they all die. A “Welcome Team” will be at the entry door, armed with clipboards, taking down names of attendees. Why is that, so the church will know whom to contact if someone later tests positive? Who does the contact tracing, the Church or government officials? The pastor did not say. Forget nursery and Sunday school classes. Canceled. The ten-people rule? Where will they go, the auditorium?⁷

This Church prohibits all forms of physical social interaction including handshakes and hugs. Does this include family members who live together, arrive together, and sit together? They do not say. They banned early entry. Would be seat-savers must line up, six feet apart, at the one entry door. Ushers will ensure proper government mandated distancing. Only one person may enter at a time. What is the rationale for six feet as opposed to seven, or eight, or twelve? When I move up in line, taking the place of the man who was in front of me, won’t I enter the wake of his exhalatory backwash? Social distancing applies to potty breaks as well. Ushers guard bathroom doors to ensure members, standing in lines inevitably long, maintain proper separation. Worse, they allow only one person in at a time. One person at a time? Bathroom guards had better collect cellphones, makeup, and magazines or it could get ugly. Ushers wipe down bathroom doors and knobs between each use but not toilet handles or sink faucets. For Diabetics who often most go frequently, these protocols are untenable. Church dismissal is single file with each person maintaining proper distance. The pastor writes that Romans 13: 1-2 requires people to obey their secular rulers (city, county, state, and federal). Remarkably, the church requires no one to wear a mask. This is truly odd. He adds that Ephesians 4 requires members to preserve unity by supporting and obeying these reopening rules. ⁸ One wonders, who made them, the DMV?

Policies like those of hair salons, doctor’s and government offices, and churches are feel good window dressing. They calm Henny Pennys and placate politicians who revel in fashioning red tape and hoops through which people must jump. If the pandemic remains that deadly, why reopen at all? If infections reappear, does that mean these measures failed? Then what, close forever? If to ask these questions engenders anger in response, is it because those imposing draconian protocols share no interest in their efficacy and legality? Where to begin with respect to Biblical support for unquestioning obedience and asking no questions. We begin with the New Testament Bereans.

Acts 17 finds Paul, formerly Saul a Pharisee, on a missionary tour through Greece and Asia Minor. On this mission, Paul visits various synagogues where he discusses and debates with local Jews over who Jesus is. When it became unsafe for Paul to remain in Thessalonica (modern day Greece), the brethren sent him to Berea. The Jews in this Greek town were renowned for studying everything they read, including the Scriptures, and testing their veracity.⁹ I will follow this model.

In Romans 13: 1-2, Paul writes, “Everyone is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For these is no authority except from G-d, and those which exist, are established by G-d. Therefore whoever resists has opposed the ordinance of G-d; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves”.¹⁰ Is Paul referring to ecclesiastical or secular civilian authorities considering the latter were pagan or heathen. English and European Kings fastened onto Romans 13 to claim a divine right to rule. This meant no one could question the monarch’s rule. Manegold of Lautenbach (1030-1106), a theologian, priest, and member of the Church Canon, addressed Romans 13 writing that people choose their rulers. Their function is to “protect the good, destroy the wicked, and administer justice to every man”.¹¹ Justice refers to administration of G-d’s Law. By entering into a compact (covenant) with a ruler, the people also enter into one with G-d. The people and their governors are under equal obligation to obey the terms of the compact. Should the ruler violate the terms of the pact, the “people are justly and reasonably released from its obligation to obey him. For he was the first to break the faith that bound them together”.¹² Manegold argued the king’s authority within the pact is derived from “the consent of the people” and not from conquest or divine right. English bishop John of Salisbury (1115-1180) contended that if government disobeys the law, secular or divine, it becomes the duty of people to oppose their ruler as “resistance to tyranny” is obligatory.¹³

Thomas Aquinas also addressed Romans 13 noting Paul referred only to those authorities who “derive their authority legitimately from G-d” and not those who come to power through illegal means (conquest, coup, and so forth). G-d is not the author of disorder, anarchy, and lawlessness. If a legitimate authority commands people to commit an immoral or illegal act, they are obligated to resist.¹⁴ In 1579, French theologian Philippe du Plessis Mornay wrote Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (vindication of resistance to tyrants) in which he argued “governmental leaders are bound by the same laws of G-d as anyone else”. Kings rule as “delegates” of G-d. Their authority is limited to administering G-d’s law and justice.¹⁵ Mornay agreed with Paul that government is ordained by G-d but, as an institution in general rather than an endorsement of any specific form of government. Absent the personal rule of G-d on earth, without government, mankind tends toward anarchy and lawlessness ultimately leading to rejection of G-d. However, people are to oppose tyrannical government because it provokes resistance, which may spark rebellion resulting in anarchy.¹⁶

America for the most part was a Judeo-Christian nation at the time of the Revolution. Her various denominations, Baptists, Catholics, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and so forth, agreed Romans 13 means people are not to “overthrow government as an institution and live in anarchy nor does this passage mean they had to submit to every civil law”. The template by which people determine if resistance is legal is to ask; is the intent simply to overthrow unpopular rulers, or is it to restore an aspect of G-d’s law wounded by the actions of their rulers? If resistance is to “bad laws, bad acts, or bad governments”, then it is justified.¹⁷ Americans resisting violations of their Bill of Rights would not be in violation of Romans 13.

No executive at any level of government has the right to legislate. This is the proper and constitutional role of City Councils, State Assemblies, and the federal Congress. Any law that includes punishment and deprivation of rights must be subject to a veto by the people. The diktats of executives violate the legislative process and as such are immune from consent of the governed. No level of government has the authority to violate, let alone suspend Constitutional rights. In the lead up to the War of Independence, America’s religious leaders, in pulpits, militias, and in the Continental Army were at the forefront of resistance to tyrannical British rule. They carried Bibles and rifles. Today, in the face of harsh rules fastened on the necks of Americans, they are nowhere to be found.

Finally, in Ephesians 4, Paul declares that the Church has unity because it is one body through Christ with one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one doctrine. He is calling for unity in faith and doctrine. Obedience to that one faith is what demonstrates unity, not obedience to the edicts of secular authorities passed on by church leaders having no bearing on theological doctrine. Religious leaders must be prudent when using Scripture in support of secular civil law. Family and friends ask me if we will return to “normal”. Considering the amount of Kool Aid Americans are consuming, this is a good question.

“Lockdown U.S.A. bears little resemblance to America. It is a grim, oppressed place, with empty streets and closed stores and snitches. Masked pedestrians, few and far between, trudge to permitted destinations, following one-way arrows painted on sidewalks and in grocery aisles. Tattles and scolds socially regulate their fellow citizens on proper maskage, calling those who question this depraved new normal ‘murderers’ and ‘granny killers’.¹⁸

1¹ Rush Limbaugh, “Teachable Moment: This Is What Socialism Looks Like” The Limbaugh Letter 6 (June 2020), 10.

2² The Word program attempts to change any word designating one of the two sexes (gender refers to femininity or masculinity of nouns) to some ambiguous trendy hermaphroditic word and I have to change it back. Considering how hard it is to teach people there are but two sexes, it’s the science, after all, my computer is probably hopeless.