Short Take: Believers are being told staying home from church is about “loving neighbor”.Your reply?

This particular charge is been brought up often enough Christians really want to love our neighbor. The best way to love our neighbor is to not gather together to get each other. Six of only interact with them to get them sick. How do you respond to that particular criticism coming mainly from within the Christian community to say let's not get together because want to love our neighbor better. The short answer is this very shortsighted definition of what it means to love your neighbor to say it will.

You can only show your neighbor love by suspending your public worship services, I think, neglects what has been one of the most damaging and hurtful effects of this long quarantine and that is there a lot of people who have been sick or died not from the virus, but from other causes who died in seclusion in nursing homes and hospitals because their families weren't even permitted to visit them while they were dying. And when they died.

You couldn't have a funeral because you couldn't have a public gathering and there are there are thousands of stories like that across the country from people who have been hurt more by the quarantine then they have by the virus and what about love for them as well. What about love for people whose fears have been stoked by the media and the government and the answer to those fears is the preaching of the gospel and that's the church's job and and yet the church is being kept from being the church by draconian governmental decrees love for my neighbor takes all of those things into account the fact is, we been meeting at Grace Church now for more than eight weeks there hasn't been a single outbreak of the virus. You were there. The shepherd's conference.

There was one man who was at the shepherd's conference who died from COBIT 19 was an elderly man who apparently as they traced it contracted the virus before it came to the conference. We had it while he was here that caught it from others in his family and then died shortly after. Sadly, but he was he was here and all over the conference. I hugged him and greeted him and I don't think there's any known case of anyone who caught the virus from him. So we know there were people at the conference who were exposed to the virus, but no outbreak of serious sickness or death as a result, and we met eight weeks at Grace Church and is just none of the dire consequences that we keep hearing our our possible, is it possible that eventually there will be people I Grace Church to get the virus and get sick. Yeah, but that that's been possible with every virus that ever come along and the cover 19 thing especially if you're if you're younger than that I am I'm 67 anybody younger than I am really doesn't face a serious risk of death from this virus.

There are people younger who have died from it, but it isn't like the sort of the Spanish flu epidemic was 100 years ago isn't even in that realm. When you asked what is the church's responsibility and in the midst of this, it's the church that should be ministering to people who are living in fear and and troubled about the future and troubled about eternity and yet the church is forbidden to meet together that is that is not a command I can I can submit to it monitoring craft and truly loving my neighbor said before, anyone who thinks that the second great commandment love your neighbor as yourself is completely fulfilled because you're wearing a mask and socially distancing. I'd I don't think you really understand the implications of that that commandment