Tag: Christians

Closing Churches: For the Sake of Safety

Roger MitchellLeave a comment

Here’s one example of “foreign” policy in which we can be glad that Donald Trump did what was right. Right?

“Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre was closed by Israeli authorities earlier this month after Iranian missile fragments hit Jerusalem, with restrictions also being placed on who can enter the walled old city – home to all of the most sacred religious sites.

This has resulted in outrage among Christians, however, Israeli officials have said that Al Aqsa Mosque was also closed, and limitations were placed numbers of people visiting the Western Wall – and claimed that all of this was being done as a safety precaution.”

Apparently, after The Man leaned on TPTB over the controversy, Israel rescinded the order and allowed people to once again enter the church. In Israel’s defense, however, it must be noted that the closure was done for “safety’s sake” so that no one would be killed or wounded while worshipping God at the site, one of the most “holy” in all of Christendom. Israel, after all, pays special attention to ensuring that its citizens, visitors, and neighbors maintain good health and are free to come and go as they please.

Notice the heavy application of sarcasm in the last sentence.

“But closure of the Holy Sepulchre for Lent and Easter is basically unprecedented in recent history, and Church leaders say it violates the church’s historic autonomy under an arrangement called the ‘status quo’.”

Wait! What? Unprecedented in recent history? Well, this may be true of that particular building, but it was only a few years ago, 2020, to be exact, when churches in America were “strongly urged” to close their doors at Easter because there was a new, highly contagious, extremely lethal virus making the rounds and, if we didn’t isolate behind our face masks and bedroom doors, millions upon millions of people would have died. Thank God that Donald Trump intervened in that situation as well, protecting America’s citizens, visitors, and neighbors from almost certain harm and horrible death.

More sarcasm, a double helping. I’m on a roll here, people, bear with me.

I had started writing about the Covid Aberration in mid-March, but really got fired up when the “order” came down and countless churches, run by spineless men who didn’t know which King king they worshipped, but picked the one close to hand, especially since their 501(c)(3) tax status might have been questioned. I actually published a Letter to the Editor in a local paper, blasting the decision by churches to follow the “advice” of the State, but it didn’t seem to make much of an impact. However, for me, that was the final straw and I waded into the battle over Covid with full force and strength, and occasionally still do publish work which is not complimentary to the “defenders of the faith”.

Anyway, it seems ironic to me that Trump, who sat in the Oval Office at Easter time in 2020, who presided over the worst, most insulting scam and psy-op in recent years, and who may have actually given the order to close the churches (certainly he approved of the matter, since he has declared that as President, he can do whatever he wants, which means he could have overruled the order, but didn’t), put pressure on Israel to draw back from its heavy-handed tactics against worshippers at this time. After all, this is a “holy” time and no one should be restricted from a full recognition of their right to exercise their beliefs in the way they want to. Especially in Jerusalem, the most holy city in all the world.

Right? Of course, right!

All of this has brought back memory of that earlier time, six years ago, and the remembrance of the craven, obsequious, fearful actions of church leaders everywhere still has the power to enrage me, so I went digging in my archives and dredged up the original article to reprint. Nothing in it has been changed except for one very small editorial comment. I still stand behind my words. You can read the original here.

Corona, Churches, and Easter

April 12th, 2020 is Easter Sunday. It is considered the most important date in history by the Christian religion. It is universally celebrated as the day on which Jesus Christ rose up out of the grave in which he had been placed after his death the Friday before by crucifixion. He had been declared dead, was entombed, and came back to life immortal. This is the message that has been proclaimed for 2000 years.

Today, in America, that message will be muted considerably because churches have been ordered by the State to close their doors because of the Corona virus panic, er, I mean, pandemic.

If the State can tell churches to shut down over a ‘bug’, then this can happen for any reason at all. In fact, history shows that the more totalitarian a State becomes, the more prone it is to shut church doors. America is not immune.

In defiance of this order, churches everywhere ought to throw open their doors, welcome everyone in, and get on with the joyful worship of the One Who was dead, but now lives. Pastors and church boards ought to ‘gird up their loins’ and tell the State where to get off. After all, as the Apostle Peter said so eloquently when called up before the Jewish Court, “We ought to obey God, rather than men.”

Will this happen? Not likely. Today, in America, worship of the State has trumped worship of the King. God help us!

Note: The above was submitted as a Letter to the Editor [paywalled] to the Ravalli Republic, in Hamilton, MT on April 4, 2020 and printed April 5.

I fully expect to receive blowback because of this, but it makes me angry that the US government, our government, can simply issue a ‘guideline’ (thinly veiled threat is more like it) to churches and other places of worship, which is then taken as law by those same assemblies. It is not my intention to disparage or minimize the danger posed by Coronavirus, but I will not be quiet when a governing official (whoever that might be—elected or bureaucratic) orders a church to close its doors. No government should be able to dictate which church can practice its faith, when it can be open, when it must close, how many people can attend, who can attend, how much distance there must be between attendees, etc., ad infinitum.

Most churches today are more concerned with maintaining their 501(c)(3) tax exempt status than with proclaiming the truth. Threaten the run-of-the-mill pastor of today with ‘sanctions’ for disobedience of State rules and he will probably cave, thus watering down the message of the Good News. More than likely, he will trot out the argument that, according to Romans 13, we are supposed to obey the civil authority in everything we do, without ever considering that Christians in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia were under the same mandate and subject to the same standard.

Where will we draw the line against the encroachment of the State? If the various churches refuse to stand up to its edicts and dictates, what chance do any of us have?

We must not be quiet or we will be silenced.

Should Christians be Involved in Politics?

Roger Mitchell10 Comments

The question in the title arises from a meeting at a local church on the same subject. My wife asked me to go with her, so I did, and when the pastor asked for discussion on the topic, I gave them my opinion. After just a few minutes, I was told by some unknown person to, in essence, sit down and shut up. Which I did, then sat through an extended period in which the entire rest of the group explained all the reasons why Christians ought to be involved. None of them asked me for any further explanation. After an hour or so, I just got up and walked out. I will never go back.

Politics. Before answering the question, it should be important to understand what politics actually is. If you do not know what politics is, then you cannot answer the question. Most people associate politics with government, as in this definition, taken from Merriam-Webster:

a: the art or science of government

b: the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy

c: the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government

Now, I do not dispute the description, but the word “politics” is multi-faceted (as admitted by Merriam-Webster) and can have many different meanings and connotations. During my comments at the session, I mentioned the saying that, “Politics is a dirty business”, and asked them if Christians should be involved in dirty business. To my surprise, a lot of people nodded their heads affirmatively, which only shows that they simply do not know what the “dirty business of politics” is all about. But then, American Christians, at least the modern kind, have never been known for their acumen and understanding of the way the real world works.

I also brought up a line from Billy Joel’s song, Piano Man, which should be familiar–“And the waitress is practicing politics as the businessmen slowly get stoned…”, and explained that politics, outside the government angle, is nothing more than the manipulation of people for personal gain, which, if true, ought to provoke outrage on the part of Christians toward the practice. It was at this point that I was quite unceremoniously booted from the floor and the rest is history.

“Politics is the practice of getting what you want by manipulating other people and is always at their expense, to their detriment.” (My own description of politics. Click the link, scroll down until you find it.)

Unfortunately, politics, even in government is manipulation of some people by other people, all with one purpose (usually unspoken) in mind: control and power. Control and power. Virtually everyone is consumed with gaining power over others so that their behavior and actions can be controlled. Christians usually bring up the subject of “morality” and the dire need to make people behave the way they ought to, that is, in the manner that Christians think they ought to, because, you know, the country is diving headlong into the sewer of “immorality” and needs to be rescued. Or else, there will be hell to pay. Of course! There always is. Whether anyone else wants their version of morality or not is irrelevant. It must be done! We must get involved! We must vote! Vote! Vote! Vote for the lesser of two evils, even if that means the System as a whole becomes more evil, which mechanism is really a rear-guard action that does nothing to stop the onslaught of evil, but only slows it down a little. In the end, evil wins.

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it.” — H.L. Mencken

“Voting is nothing more than choosing whose hand holds the club with which you are beaten. It does nothing to stop the beatings.” — another of my own quotes. You can quote me on that.

Should Christians be involved in politics? If politics is a “dirty business” and the manipulation of people for personal benefit, then the answer is an unqualified “No, they should not.” This comports with the message of the Gospel of Jesus to keep oneself unspoiled from the world and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. However, as Christians, we are also enjoined to act as leavening agents to affect the world condition in which we find ourselves so that the entire structure is bettered by our actions. This seeming contradiction can be resolved in only one way–by determining where and in whom we place our trust and faith. As Christians, we are enjoined to have trust and faith in God alone, yet we continue to disregard this advice in preference to putting our trust and faith in man-made institutions, especially the modern form of government, that is, the totalitarian State, which encompasses and controls everything. As Christians, we have sold our souls for a pot of message, and it is coming back to bite us as a very bad case of acid reflux and dysentery. If we continue to gorge ourselves on this feast, it will kill us.

Belief and participation in the world system lead to death. This is a fact we must face and recognize as truth. Yet, knowing this, we still labor under the illusion that we can sway and impact “politics” in a positive way, for the better, if we join in, work with, and merge into the prevailing protocol. We think that we can “clean up” politics and The System if we just engage it and add our voice to the cacophony, yet we fail to understand that, in doing so, we soil ourselves and reinforce the message that men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.

At heart, we refuse to trust God. We would rather trust government. We would rather be practitioners of “the lesser of two evils” than turning away from evil entirely. We would rather beggar our neighbor through the application of law than to love our neighbor in service to him. We prefer to think we are holy because we go to church on Sunday morning and practice all the “accepted” perfunctory deeds that are expected, yet we do not know that our lives are as filthy rags in His sight. Yes, indeed, and I am the greatest of sinners, to paraphrase the apostle Paul.

What, then, shall be done? How, then, shall we live? Well, there is nothing to do except to change myself into and in conformance with His likeness, to become holy as He is holy, to accept that there is no other name except His by which I am saved. This alone brings freedom. It is the only path to life. Nothing else will work. Everything else will fail.

You can rationalize all you want. You can make all the excuses you want. You can delude yourselves until the chickens come home to roost. In the end, you are only deceiving yourself. There is only one way. Everything else will fail.

Everything else will fail.