The secular left has long railed against the implicit dangers of being forced to live under a Christian theocracy. Cautionary tales such as “A Handmaid’s Tale” have painted a bleak and oppressive future for those forced to live under the tyranny of imposed Christianity. Instead, they celebrated the introduction of the “enlightenment “period as a remedy to throw off the superstition and oppression implicit under those duped into a nonsensical belief in their “sky daddy” religion.

While there were several precursors that chiseled away at the Judeo-Christian grounding that held sway in North America, the 1960’s caused us to ramp up to hyper-drive. Speculation about what a truly secular society might look like has long ago moved from the realm of the imagination to the director’s cut. Secular humanism need not be held out as a utopian ideal for some illusory future where all live in perfect harmony. The secular left holds the deed to the culture and they will decide who they will permit inside and what rules they must abide by if they want to remain.

While much needs to be said about recent events and what that says about the true nature of the secular left, I want to focus for now on the church’s complicity in or, at best, surrender to the culture. This indictment clearly does not apply to the remnant church who has been standing fast in opposition, but as Elrond expressed to Gandolf in “The Fellowship of the Rings:” “Our list of allies grows thin.”

I’m fully aware of how arrogant this sounds and I want to be clear that I am not claiming to be a prophet or prognosticator. I can say confidently that I have spent the majority of my adult life seeking truth and testing the veracity of scripture by studying the teachings. I realize I can be short-sighted and overlook many truths that far more seasoned and devout believers are better suited to address. This is why my posts also contain an open invitation for Christ-followers to challenge my biblical scholarship and comprehension. My fear is that the thinking of former stalwarts of the faith have been corrupted by an apparent lack of discernment regarding false teaching and accepting propaganda as true or largely accurate.

This toxin has been absorbed by the corruption of language, the perversion of information dissemination and the mainstreaming of lies through various guises, tools and vessels. Much of this I’ve addressed in previous posts and there is little point in revisiting them. I have decided instead to offer a 30,000-foot view of real-world trends to which many believers appear ill-equipped to respond. Most of what I will be arguing is akin to Scrooge’s experience with the ghost of Christmas past. I am not raising spectres of what will be, but identifying that these become increasingly likely as we continue on our current trajectory. I welcome challenges that do not rely on simply placing our trusting in people, institutions or the inherent goodness of human nature. If this is your foundation, you have already given yourself over to deception.

1. Facts don’t care about your feelings. If you recognise that this truism is famously attributed to conservative podcaster, Ben Shapiro, you already likely have a leg up on many of your peers. Shapiro is a youthful practising Jew who is routinely and curiously denounced as “anti-Semitic;” violently protested against and blocked from speaking on many college campuses for spreading “hate.” Anyone who listens to him knows him as one who respectfully and cogently presents Judeo-Christian values and challenges false narratives and politically correct double-speak. Shapiro is one of many moderate and sensible voices who are stifled and marginalized because of radicalized propaganda generously ladled out to those attending post-secondary institutions. Our children and young people are being taught to be dominated by their emotions rather than reason and logic. This is because the secular claim to virtue is based on stated intentions that do not comport with commensurate results. This same appeal to the psyche is being used to batter believers as intolerant, unloving and guilty of all the heinous charges of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia and general bigotry. When we Christians fail to challenge these false worldviews, we are left to defensively flail against the charge without ever making the affirmative case for Christ or giving a sufficient counterargument against the premise. We are actually funding and handing over our progeny to these indoctrination factories where they learn to hate us and to hate God.
2. The foundations for truth are being eroded – creating a void where dangerous and nihilistic replacements are injected. It is not surprising to any believer that our society which now is identified as “post-Christian” similarly is known to be “post-truth.” We know this when we hear the increase in the refrain of those claiming to be speaking their truth. Truth is not subjective and scripture clearly establishes this fact. The secular left doesn’t even manipulate truth standards to merely accommodate their perversions as add-ons. Instead, they use this ploy of being “tolerant” and “values-free” to rewrite the terms of reality where God’s mandate of “you shall not” is outlawed in favour of malleable versions of “did God really say?” “Your truth” only counts if it is at odds with biblical teaching and conforms to the mutating standards of the state. To test this, simply try to express a view outside of the prevailing secular orthodoxy at your job or in your school and see what happens. It takes a compromised or passive church to fail to stand up against such obvious perversions of reality.
3. We have allowed the protection that was supposed to be granted under the “separation of church and state” to be used as a bludgeon to keep Christian influence out of the public sphere. The American Declaration of Independence was a profoundly Christian document that affirmed the biblical notion that rights come from God, not government and that all are equal as God’s creation. When Christ said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar and to God what is God’s,” there is no basis for assuming that this meant to allow to state to dictate the parameters of their power uncontested and save what’s left for God. When Christ stood before Pilate who proclaimed that he held the power of life or death over him, Jesus brought him back to earth by stating that whatever power he thinks he has comes from God. Pilate abused his powers as a state representative in calling for Christ to be tortured and crucified. This is why believers who insist our first duty is to submit to earthly authorities (such as extending to them the right to dictate if we may worship, how we may worship, in what numbers, what we must wear, whether or not we may sing and what proximity we are allowed to have to one another), are relinquishing freedoms God has granted us. Since no church would mandate that attendees must wear masks, socially distance, and/or shut down altogether as our Christian duty apart from any state mandate to curb what is statistically on par with the flu, you are disobeying the command to not give up meeting with one another.
4. The persecution of Christians is already happening – the only unknown is how far we can anticipate it will spread. Yes, I know it sounds absurd to even speak of what we are facing as persecution in light of what is happening in many Islamic, socialist, communist, and similar states with dogmatic constraints against Christianity, but I will remind you this is about trajectories. In Canada, we can now face lawsuits for misgendering (failing to accept someone’s gender dysphoria as reality), parents can lose their children for not affirming their young child’s false subjective sexual identity, clinicians can be charged and lose their licenses if they counsel someone wanting to change their homosexual desires or correct their gender dysphoria – and this is just in the last few years. Hate speech laws and Human Rights Commissions are constructed to punish Christians for holding to and defending core biblical teachings. Mandatory trainings are implemented to get the believer’s mind right on the prevailing views of political correctness, GLBT ideologies, race, sex, and identifying the principles they must betray to affirm what God calls sin. Children are encouraged to be activists, but only for the purposes of challenging Judeo-Christian values. Despite the secularist’s abject ignorance about what Christianity really teaches and promotes, there is no mandatory training advocating for Christ-followers. We are the disease their methods seek to cure or eradicate.
5. The church is ceding basic freedoms bestowed on us by God to the state and are failing to advance, let alone take the lead, on limiting those powers. This is an extension of the earlier point, but reveals a brazenness that, especially under the Wuhan CCP virus, the government is utilizing to take it’s abuse of power to the next level. Imagine a third world or communist country where the spread of a virus statistically similar to the flu is used to eradicate small businesses, close schools, limit gatherings for weddings, funerals or social events, keep people from visiting or having close contact with one another, close churches, to track its citizen’s movements, implement curfews, keep people from walking or going to parks – all while expanding the scope of government and pushing people to buy from government approved box stores. They further make allowances for abortions, purchasing alcohol and cannabis, and to purchase lottery tickets. Now imagine that these leaders who use the police to impose massive fines and threaten imprisonment for being together or engaging in public worship violate the rules they impose on their “subjects.” A couple of questions: First, as an outsider, would you consider that this might be construed as oppressive government control? Secondly, does the fact that other formerly free countries are joining other repressive regimes to do this nullify the tyrannical aspects of these measures?
6. Many churches are losing their witness by attempting to incorporate some hybrid version of the gospel based on the very ideology we are tasked to expose and denounce. Increasingly I am seeing devout Christians and friends duped into adopting the language of the left and trying to adapt the message to show comity and compassion. Many have incorporated concessions to or offered overt support for the language of social justice, and critical/critical race theory, white privilege, socialism, etc. into the gospel. These are the very divisive ideologies responsible for nullifying the true gospel message and lead countless people to turn away from the freeing truth found in Christ. Each of these counterfeits distort and undermine the prospect of leading others to discovering biblical truth. It would be no different than guiding people to Buddha, Allah, Vishnu, or new age spiritualism to find Christ. There is nothing biblical in promoting false gods as co-regents equally deserving to sit on the throne. There is a very different destination for those who choose these alternatives and the church is paving the way for this eventuality.
7. Many believers are oblivious to the threats because they see nobility in keeping away from social media. There is no doubt that if we lived in a country and at a time where truth mattered, unplugging could be deemed virtuous. What it means in this post-Christian times is that the prevailing narrative shaped by all the above is the only message being absorbed. Like the fish who doesn’t know how polluted the water is that they’re swimming in because it’s all they see, deceivers and the deceived are the only ones whose message is being heard. Sources that are engaging in this form of “social distancing” are oblivious to the fact that stories they can and can’t hear are being pre-selected as well as the prism through which the narrative is told. The same ones who are remaking our society through our institutional transformation and the cultural defenestration of God will tell you that social media is where conspiracy theories are propagated. They are also the ones telling you that preborn babies are a clump of cells and that there are over 100 genders. In our current reality, this is folly on a par with hiring a blind man to be your chauffeur.

For those who are convinced that Romans 13 does mean that submission to government is the path believers should follow, I put to you the following questions:

1. Does politics have the same duty to stay out of the church as the church does to stay out of politics? If not, then are you not elevating governmental authority over God’s and biblical authority? If so, then don’t we have the duty to evaluate what the state is demanding before complying?
2. When government dictates that children must learn principles in contravention of the teachings of scripture then should we cede this ground to the state in order to follow Romans 13 and remain out of politics?
3. Is the protection of vulnerable and innocent life a political issue or a social issue? If government claims the right to override biblical moral standards, does staying silent make us virtuous or cowards?
4. If the government deems the Bible to be hate speech or defines certain teachings (i.e., homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, divorce, the roles of men and women) as forbidden, does the church have a duty to steer clear of these teachings? If yes, what does it mean to preach the whole word of God? If not, isn’t this an admission that there are limits on the authority of the state?
5. Is there a line which government may not cross regarding the CCP Wuhan virus? Is so, what is it? Where is the scripture to support that as the point of departure? Should we comply with mandatory vaccines? Is there a period of duration or expiration date for compliance where the church can determine they’ve gone too far? If so, why are we not already past that point?
6. Does fear of fines or do irrational fears of death provide sufficient justification to submit to the ruling authorities? What does this say about the faith of the Christian who allows such fears to prevent us from serving God based on his calling for us?
7. Is it possible to effectively follow the great commission (or even the duty to love others as we love ourselves) if we are willing to remain in seclusion while people are remaining in isolation and dealing with depression, substance abuse, suicidal ideation and all the other consequences of obeying these mandates?
8. If the motives of the government are pure, what is the innocent explanation for the following:

• Conflating cases with deaths in order to stoke fear
• Failing to break down the statistics based on severity of cases, hospitalizations, those who are asymptomatic, age of those dying and hospitalized, how many deaths to those with comorbidities, distinguishing between those who died from instead of with the virus, giving statistics and correcting false positives, identifying where people are contracting the CCP virus, giving details on the efficacy of masks, contrasting places with heavy restrictions with those applying less draconian measures,
• If masks work, why do they mandate social distancing
• If social distancing works, why do we need masks
• If both work, why do we need shutdowns, curfews and vaccines
• If masks and social distancing work, why must those willing to risk their safety not permitted the autonomy to go without a mask
• How does only permitting people to shop in box stores reduce the spread while maintaining the same rules in small businesses don’t
• Why can’t businesses and consumers determine for themselves if they will stay open and what rules they want to abide by on their own
• How is it that women have the right to “control their own bodies” by taking the life of the innocent child inside them, but no one has the right to not wear a mask, social distance, visit or refuse a vaccine
• Why does government and the media not discuss the economic impact of staying locked down especially since rates of employment are recognised as essential to the thriving of individuals and societies as well as a safeguard against poverty
• Why is there no clear determination of the goal of the restrictions and how we will know when we have met them
• Where is the evidence that when cases go up under restrictions it is because people are not sufficiently following the mandates rather than simply confirmation bias

Churches who are going along with the mandates are already granting that the government has the authority to say when or if the church can meet, what they must wear, in what numbers, how far apart they must stand, and whether or not they are permitted to sing. How does a church that has surrendered so much to the culture and allowed the government to make decisions that far outstrip the authority they have the right to exercise suddenly stand against real oppression?

My point has been that whatever trends and adjustments to our circumstances do not happen in a vacuum. I have made the case that the restrictions being imposed for the Wuhan CCP virus are happening at a time where Christian values are increasingly being marginalized and an imposed secularism is perpetually slathered onto our children, into our institutions and are undermining our interpersonal relationships. We have lost our effectiveness because even notions that historically have been recognised as common sense are being expunged and bled out of the collective conversation and consciousness. The Bible not only is the source of all truth, but it comports with reality. The complacent church has allowed bad actors to create a completely new reality which is merely lies piled on top of lies.

As the saying goes, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. The western church is seeing our freedoms and ability to influence erode as the Bible is increasingly under threat of being censored as hate speech. What we need to understand is that many who have fled oppressive regimes are sounding the alarm that conditions here are moving dangerously apace with the conditions they risked their lives to flee. We naively trust that those in power won’t overly abuse their power and are genuinely concerned about the welfare of the country. I can tell you after hearing from many of the leading voices of the left, they hold us in contempt and see their vision as worthy of sacrifice – not theirs, of course, but ours.

I don’t want to pretend these are easy times or that my bold proclamations are far easier to say than to do. Also, know that I don’t claim that I am some model of strength in the face of adversity. My objective has not been to condemn or jump on a soapbox. What always preoccupies me is what is true and what does Christ demand of me and of his church. My feeling is that we are seeing the chickens come home to roost on a people who have failed to put on the armour of God and ask what God demands of us. If your honest answer is to hunker down and wait it out until authorities deign to give us to all clear, I will simply say I beg to differ. For the most part, the state has demanded that the church surrender as they take control over our institutions and our freedoms with the direction offered in response to each successive demand is to simply surrender more.