LogFAQs > #959866428

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

So now passages that aren't teachings don't have to be explained as to why they aren't relevant.

But earlier you said this:
"If you're not going to hold other passages to the same standard, you need to present justification for why those aren't relevant such that Christians aren't hypocritical for failing to follow them."

The "other passages" you referred to were in regard to sacrificing a sheep and how altars are built. Neither of which are anything I would call a teaching.

They're explicit directions. That's as much a teaching as anything else in there. It's not a teaching that's particularly relevant or useful for everyday life, but deeming them as such is exactly the kind of subjective interpretation I'm talking about.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Yes, that's why I brought it up. Would you like to say anything about that?

There's not much to say about it. The basic message is to make an effort to be kind to people that you and/or society don't like. That's generally a good thing. That doesn't, however, entail being a doormat to people that are actively seeking to harm you, or otherwise putting yourself in unnecessary danger. You'll notice Zacchaeus was previously making efforts to incorporate Jesus into his life, climbing trees and whatnot (I might be thinking of a different tax collector that nobody liked, but it's the same message). He wanted to be Jesus' friend, so Jesus befriended him. Jesus did not befriend him in spite of outright hostility, which is what would need to happen for this situation to be analogous..

You seem to be approaching this issue (both here and in similar topics) under the belief that people entering places that require masks without masks are making an innocent mistake. That's very much not the case in the vast, vast majority of instances. Everyone that has paid even the remotest amount of attention to the world around them for the past two years knows masks are expected in public places. All of these places have explicit signs posted indicating their mask requirements. Anyone not wearing a mask at this point is not doing so out of ignorance or a hapless error. They're doing so because they have made a choice to deliberately disregard public health recommendations. To actively choose to do something that disregards the safety and comfort of those around you is a voluntary act of hostility, no matter how much these people dinsgenuously try to paint it as simply "exercising their rights." They do not become victims when people act to protect themselves from that decision.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I said the church is called to welcome them both. There is no threshold that would make one welcome when the other is not.

You then proceeded to walk that back because welcoming an active shooter into a church is very obviously insanely idiotic. Unless you're going back to saying it's unreasonable and hypocritical for a church to shut its doors on such a person (which is not an expectation that anyone has any reason to have and I don't know why you would ever say something so ridiculous), there is a distinction being made between the danger posed by an active shooter and the danger posed by somebody ignoring public health recommendations during a pandemic. That distinction requires justification, and because the situations are logically analogous, that means identifying and justifying a threshold of acceptable risk.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I say risk hasn't been proven.

The mere existence of the pandemic proves the risk. Literally every human in the world is at risk of being infectious unless proven otherwise. That is an objective fact. I don't understand why you're struggling to grasp this.

Let's try a different approach: Do you genuinely believe that it is possible to get the Covid-19 pandemic under control by waiting until somebody is confirmed to be infectious before expecting them to follow infection control precautions?

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

All of those assumptions were wrong. You didn't answer the question. You twisted it into being about something you wanted to answer instead.

All of those assumptions are necessary to create a situation analogous to this one. If none of those are true, the answer is no, but that answer isn't particularly relevant here. What we have here is a person who is refusing to take Covid precautions, who has been explicitly told not to enter the church because of that (which every "Mask required" does to everyone without a mask), who has been given the option of attending the service virtually, and has instead chosen to brazenly trespass in the church instead.

To make that analogous to a personal meeting with me, the hypothetical person would have to have refused precautions, been told not to come to me, been given a remote option for communicating, and insisted on instead coming in through a door that I would not open for him (roughly, "forcing his way into my house"). You may notice that that is an exact list of the assumptions that I made in answering your question, all of which are prerequisites for the answer of "yes, I would remove him by force if necessary" because they are prerequisites for a situation in which somebody is trespassing in a manner that endangers me. Naturally, I wouldn't jump straight to punching him, but if telling him to leave failed (and, realistically, if he's come in despite being told not to, it's probably going to), I would be justified in escalating the situation to remove the trespasser. Interestingly enough, that's exactly what happened here. Imagine that.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

No, hypocrisy can occur on a moment to moment basis.

There isn't a single person on this planet that hasn't committed a hypocritical act at some point. Acts of hypocrisy are instantaneous, but judging somebody as a hypocrite requires a pattern of hypocritical behaviour.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

That would be a moral judgement. One that I think is contrary to the book which serves as the basis for christian morality.

That book predates germ theory by a couple thousand years. It's inevitable that you're going to have to take some liberties in interpreting it during a public health crisis if you want to ensure the safety of those involved. Fortunately, new technologies like the Internet make it possible to welcome people to church without needing them to be physically present, so there's no need to humour those that insist on showing up and endangering people unnecessarily.

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