[Publisher’s Note: Please understand that my words are directed at those who have canceled church merely because the government told them to. I do not mean to apply these words to those who canceled services due to what they believe to be a providential hindrance due to illness rather than a government mandate]
If the title offends you, good. You offended God by canceling worship Sunday. It’s time for you to be offended for a change.
Christians pay our taxes. We serve our communities. We give more to charities than any other demographic in the world. No one has founded more hospitals where coronavirus is being treated in this country than we did. They have our name, Baptist and Methodist and Presbyterian scrolled across the front of those buildings. We are the ones funding and mobilizing medical relief groups all across the world. We have nothing to be ashamed of. Our love for neighbors is proven by our orphanages, nursing homes, food pantries, non-profit day-cares, and mercy ministries.
Damn the logic that insists we close our worship services in order to “prove” our love for neighbor.
Why are there not calls for us to love our neighbor by shutting our food banks? Or our orphanages? Or our disaster relief agencies? It’s because there wouldn’t be charity in this country if it wasn’t for those of us give a tenth of our income every week to support the army of community services now being mobilized to help our country. It’s because the community couldn’t survive without us.
I will not be lectured by frothing pagans and Quisling Christians who drop mere pennies in the Salvation Army coffers at Christmas time about loving my neighbor by canceling worship of the One, True God. Neither will I be enticed to not notice there is one greater command than that, and it is to love the Lord thy God.
I’m not blind. I see the streets are not bare. I see that the pot dispensaries are not closed. Planned Parenthood is open. The liquor stores are doing gangbusters business. The grocery stores are crowded. There is a line at the post office. Most people – yes, most people – are still working. But I also see the church parking lots are vacant.
Jesus wept.
Our governors (with few exceptions) did not cancel church by line-item. Most, either for political expediency or conviction, left wiggle-room for “essential services” and for “caring for others.” You Christians, you gutless wonders and sunshine patriots of the soul, you feckless ingrates self-designated as something other than essential. You self-designated as not providing care.
I understand why the heathen rage at the continuance of church services; they don’t go to church anyway. But what I cannot fathom or tolerate is how you potluck-swollen, paunchy, professional desk-sitting pastors decided to portray yourselves as something other than essential. This is the time when we as Christians are called to shine, and you pusillanimous yellow bellies turned out the lights.
God forbid.
Do not lecture me with your Romans 13 and your 1 Peter 2. The government gets to “punish the wicked and reward the good,” no doubt. But the government does not get to define what is wicked and what is good. God does. He has already established a law that our laws hinge upon; the laws of nature and nature’s God, as our founding document calls it. If the government calls church-goers wicked, then we have the words of Peter and John in Acts 5:29 that “we will obey God, rather than men.”
Do not lecture me with your Mark 12:17. We shall render to Caesar every single thing that is due him and more. But with God as my witness, I will not render unto Caesar that which belongs to God. Sunday is the Lord’s Day. It belongs to Jesus Christ. He is a King worthy of honor and worship and by the swing of his scepter nullifies any earthly decree that challenges his Word.
By shuttering your doors, you worship your Lord and Savior, the Civil Magistrate. You bow at the altar of Caesar and lick his sandals, of whom you are not even worthy to step down and untie. You are baptized in statism and have received their mark upon your forehead. You have your god; you call him governor. Spend your time in state-mandated exile to rewrite your worship songs to the tune of Yankee Doodle. Replace your Bible with your governor’s executive orders. Replace your communion bread with government cheese and your sacraments with stimulus checks.
Planned Parenthood has sued every attorney general with the guts to close them. Abortion clinics have defied orders. And you, you lily-livered jellyfish, have gone quietly into that good night with a merit badge from your county’s civil scout-master over the rugged cross of your savior.
I see you cowards. I see you dash into the grocery store for your bread, apparently forgetting that man cannot live by bread alone. I see you lick the stamps at the post-office, unconcerned about contracting any bug in a government building, but terrified of what you’ll contract at church. I see you walk your dogs on the street, brushing shoulders with passersby, but terrified to greet your fellow churchman on Sunday.
Forgive me if I don’t see the seriousness of your commitment to quarantine. And yet, you cite the government talking-points about social responsibility, as you run into the gas station for a Twix.
Those most likely to throw stones at Christians who still gather are professing believers, who by their guilty conscience, suppress their cowardice in unrighteousness.
You people could still meet on Sunday. Do you not have a parking lot? A loud-speaker? Can you not raise your voice? You probably can’t, being too used to your Brittney Spears mic and sitting on your hip preacher stool. Are you aware you can still worship outside? No, you’re too used to your climate-controlled sanctuaries and plush seats. Caesar has called, after all, and you must worship him.
Obey your gods, peasants. I am a Citizen belonging to a Kingdom far greater and want nothing to do with your wooden idols. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
