INTRODUCTION
A worldview without Christ is a worldview that demands replacements. Ever since the stem was plucked, every son of Adam has had his own personal Tower of Babel to build. When an entire society rejects God, all hands must be on deck in the hopes that their tower will make the biggest explosion on the day of 2 Peter 3:10—a towering inferno, if you will. The situation isn’t made any easier by the fact that society is now left with the exorbitant task of pirating the moral authority of the God it rejects.
And this rejection is not a one-time thing. Because the mercies of God are new every morning, His enemies’ rejection of these mercies must also be new every morning. So when the common grace of God’s patience catches up with them (2 Peter 3), they must cover up the Heavenly source of the law written on their hearts (Romans 1); and this means they must replace it, reinvent it, and reestablish it. Perhaps this is a good place for the “improvise, adapt, overcome” meme, except instead of Man Vs. Wild, it’s man vs. God.
This theme of “replacement” is what brings us to the subject at hand. A recent article from The Atlantic has put the word “amnesty” on our minds. Now to be clear, “amnesty” is a perfectly valid legal term, and it can be a valid social term as well. The article uses it strictly in the social sense and is very forthright about this; but unfortunately, critics of the article are prone to be met with gaslighting by a world that jumps at any opportunity to take a word down their own path.
So I am not saying that amnesty, in and of itself, is a bad thing. I am saying that before broadly applying it to our duty to love our neighbor, there is much Biblical examination to be done; and the proposed application in the article is very broad indeed.
THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMEN
Twenty years into a century that hit the ground tumbling amid the replacements of human life, gender, and marriage, COVID-19 replaced God’s commandment to love our neighbor. A new commandment they gave unto us: that we fear one another. And just like that, bullying and totalitarianism became the world’s most accessible badge of honor.
These are the ills alluded to by the article’s title, “Let’s Declare A Pandemic Amnesty.” But therein lies its first misgiving: there’s nothing new to declare. This amnesty, albeit one-sided, has been in place from day one.
So naturally, I was already skeptical when I began to research the article’s author, Emily Oster, who is a professor of Economics at Brown University. Some of that skepticism was alleviated by the lack of pronouns in her Twitter bio, and this was the start to a series of more pleasant surprises.
Dr. Oster is no blind follower. She did her share of questioning the establishment during lockdown, and took her share of abuse because of it. Most notably, as she mentions in the article, she advocated for the reopening of schools at a controversially early stage.
Predictably, followers of pop science berated her with accusations of wishing death on children and, ironically, teachers. These are the people she is now offering amnesty; so, right or wrong, she practices what she preaches.
15 DAYS DOWN MEMORY LANE
Dr. Oster begins the article by reminiscing on her masked hiking trips with her family, during which they went all to great lengths—literally—to avoid being close to passersby. She then points out that, although this all amounted to nothing, they were in no way wrong to err on the side of caution in a season of uncertainty.
And in this particular example, she’s right. There is nothing inherently sinful about masking, social distancing, compounding sanitizer use, or even unidirectional aisle navigation. It’s not even initially sinful to request that others in close proximity respect those decisions.
Then, after recalling the Los Angeles County beach closures, Dr. Oster concludes that we need to let such mistakes go. In an otherwise well-written article, this is a moment of thematic whiplash. The author seems unaware of what a drastic leap it is to go from personal choices to state mandates. When I see someone wearing a mask and minding their own business, I keep my opinions to myself—if I think about them long enough to keep them at all. But when a glorified gang forced everyone to dress, walk, talk, and act according to their fancy, that wasn’t even on the same spectrum of error.
This is where we find a sizeable gap in the article’s coverage. Beach closures are the only mention made—and a tame one at that—of the countless mandates and proposed mandates by which the godplayers held people hostage, starved those trying to feed their families, and lived by double standards while doing it. These were not honest mistakes or “tough calls” made in a dilemma. This was a reign of terror on the part of its institutors, and negligence on the part of anyone who had the power to trump these orders, but didn’t.
THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
Technically, news anchors are not tyrants. A tyrant holds a position of authority, and news anchors hold only as much authority as we allow them to. They can support or decry the police force depending on whether it’s April or May of 2020, but either way, they’re not the ones who arrested a man for paddleboarding alone on a lake during the aforementioned beach closure.
The same is true of neighbors. Neighbors may annoy, manipulate, or burn down a church for contesting lockdown. But they were not the ones going by the pronouns “Your / Honor” and sentencing people to jail for opening a hair salon. (Citations can be found at the end of the article and in the video description.)
However, these people can very much be complicit in tyranny, whether neighbors following Cuomo’s urge to report social gatherings, Forbes telling us not to do our own research, or the Atlantic itself accusing Georgia of human sacrifice for reopening earlier than other states. These sins against man were easily measured; but even the affirmation of tyranny was a sin against God.
It’s not because of a mere factual error, though. It’s because they didn’t heed the Word of God, which clearly warns us of the wrong ways to go about such situations. Yes, there were plenty of uncertainties, but turning to Scripture first would have given them the only qualified foundation to respond.
“Judge not” is a favorite Bible quote for misuse among worldly people; yet when they threw it to the wind, they demonstrated an actual application for it. Imagine that two shoppers were in the toilet paper aisle, and one judged the other for standing a mite too close. But little did he know, the lady next door didn’t even go shopping. She ordered her toilet paper on Amazon, because that’s even less of a risk. Just like that, the judgmental shopper is a hypocrite, because he too could be putting more effort into minimizing risk. This is what happens when we replace God’s standards with man’s arbitrary attempts at morality: we judge exactly how Jesus told us not to judge.
Proverbs 29:25
The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.
2 Timothy 1:17
For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
1 Peter 5:6-7
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
Fear of the virus wasn’t enough to cultivate a trust for the state in everyone, so the state had to become the only thing people feared more than the virus. This laid the snare into which society dove: a spirit that embraced fear, relinquished power, and abandoned love and self-control.
The more people committed to this spirit, the less humble they became, deeming themselves adequate to bear the world’s anxiety upon their shoulders. Under the pretense of protecting themselves and others, they insisted that punishment had to do with love; but they were consumed by the goal of being perfected in fear, and fear cast out love.
Some may ask: isn’t it good that they at least now acknowledge that this was a mistake? Well, it’s a small step in the right direction. It’s refreshing, even. But it’s only a practical admission of guilt. “I could’ve done better.” “I messed up.” “My bad.” This is not what repentance looks like. Instead of serving them excuses for their behavior on a silver platter, our response should be to sit there quietly and wait, in a manner that innocently asks, “And?”
If they continue into Biblical repentance, praise God. But, unlike forgiveness, credibility is not a free gift. And after all the havoc they wreaked by their sin, we would be utterly foolish if regaining their credibility was even remotely easy for them. When we tell children the story of the boy who cried wolf, are the villagers the bad guys?
BIBLICALLY DEFINED FORGIVENESS
Luke 3:3
And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins,
Luke 17:3
Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.
Ephesians 4:32
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Revisiting our theme of replacement, we must remember that forgiveness is not just anything we decide to make it. After sin entered the world, God invented forgiveness, and it doesn’t just come out of nowhere. By definition, it is a response to repentance.
If someone does not repent, we are still not permitted to bear a grudge or help ourselves to vengeance, as these cannot coexist with the spirit Christians are called to have before God. But reconciliation without repentance is not only unnecessary; it is unloving.
Matthew 18:15-17
Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.
Funny, isn’t it, how some of the people in question here are, in fact, tax collectors? But I digress. A kind and tender heart desires and hopes to forgive, but it does not seek to stretch the definition of forgiveness into something premature. Forgiveness without repentance is not how God in Christ forgave us, and therefore not forgiveness at all.
So what should we call it? William Booth called it a “chief danger that confronts the coming century,” and that was over a century ago. The modern world, on the other hand, wants to use the balmy word “amnesty.”
It is well-known to all who take their eyes up from their phones that our society’s endless redefinitions are not sustainable. The more we reject God, the more tyranny we will need to replace Him; and this repentance-free version of “amnesty” enables this. If you thought 2020 was bad, do not repeat the sin of accepting the world’s solutions.
BATHSHEBA AMNESTY
Imagine, if you will, the moment right after Nathan the prophet confronted King David. Suppose David, in response, told Nathan, “In retrospect, I can see that I was wrong to violate literally the entire second table of the law; but the thing is, being king during this war is stressful. Besides, why was Bathsheba bathing on that rooftop? And I know the whole Uriah situation wasn’t ideal; but I was scared and had to think on my feet. I don’t see the point in continuing to rehash this, so let’s just move on and let bygones be bygones.”
God would not have accepted this response; but He did accept David’s actual response in Psalm 51.
Psalm 51:14-17
Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
The God of my salvation,
And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,
And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.
For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;
You do not delight in burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.
CITATIONS
https://cbsnews. com/losangeles/news/paddleboarder-arrested-in-malibu-for-refusing-to-exit-water/
https://bbc. com/news/world-us-canada-52557297
https://theatlantic. com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georgia-reopening-coronavirus-pandemic/610882/