If you haven’t read it, Bernie’s previous post on this
subject, Reading the Tea Leaves, may be found here.
There remains among many the rosy view that life for the
church in North America will continue as it seemingly always has done. There
certainly was a time in the not-too-distant past in which church attendance was
commonplace, prayer at schools or before city council meetings was far from
unusual and the public square welcomed, if not encouraged, Christian ideals and
ideas. In those days, only a generation or so ago, a politician was respected
for his or her beliefs rather than derided. Today — in Ontario at least —
the political litmus test for a candidate is whether or not they marched in the
last Gay Pride parade.
It isn’t even worth discussing what happened or why it
happened — but those halcyon days where faith and unbelief could co-exist
peacefully are very much gone.
In 2015, true Christian belief essentially disqualifies any
political office seeker. The noble concept of freedom of religion has been successfully conflated with the
secularist’s dream of freedom from religion.
Virtually any public display of Christian faith is met with virulent opposition
and eventually shut down. The familiar scenes have played out again and again
in the public school system, post-secondary education, political institutions
and in the business world. The examples of aggression in the public square
toward the expression of Christian values are multiple and repeated.
I take all the above as a given but if someone’s of a mind
to argue, feel free; that’s what the comment button is there for. The
premise of an antagonistic society is my starting point. Here’s the upshot:
It would be foolish to ignore the signs of what is to come.
The respect Christianity seemingly had for a time has long ago turned to
indifference and today is expressed as outright opposition. The next step is persecution.
Make no mistake — it’s coming and coming soon to a city near you. Peter promised it and, as Christians of this generation, we’ll have the privilege and opportunity
of living it out in the days ahead.
A Simple Illustration
When you can feel the raindrops hitting your skin and the
sky overhead is an unbroken and ill-portending shade of gray, it requires no
particular gift of prophecy to say “we should get indoors unless we want to get
soaked”. So I claim no gift of prophecy whatsoever but it really doesn’t
require one to say this:
· The coercive public media will increasingly be
used to shame, disarm and discourage specifically Christian expression.
· The legal instruments of government will
increasingly be used as tools to shut down, silence and eliminate specifically
Christian beliefs.
· The force and authority of the judicial system
will increasingly be used to punish, imprison and ‘re-educate’ specifically
Christians.
It is more important now than it has been to live out Christ’s
instruction that we are to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves — perhaps
with an increased emphasis on the “wise” bit.
Wise as Serpents
What does Christian wisdom mean in this context? I humbly
submit it means at least the following:
Corporately, we
ought to use the buildings we have. Use them well, fill them often and enjoy
the time we have in them. But I wouldn’t suggest we spend a penny of the Lord’s
resources on building any more of them, because we won’t keep them much longer.
Not in North America anyway. We cannot keep our buildings without real and
faithless compromises we cannot afford. Faithful Christians will shortly be
driven out of public buildings if they remain consistent with biblical teaching
on women’s roles, homosexuality and sin.
Corporately, we
ought to stop applying for government grants, loans or exemptions of any kind.
All we’re doing when we do that is providing a ready mechanism for state
control and an easy reference point when the government decides to move against
the church with the force of law. The source of the church’s ability to move
forward financially never was tied to taxpayer largess — after all, the
One we serve owns it all and can provide whatever He wishes. So we ought to
give the government absolutely everything they ask for, in full and in detail
seeking nothing in return. Hold nothing back that is legally required to be
submitted to government review; beyond that, volunteer absolutely nothing at
all.
Individually, we
need to break the indefensible mental connection of “tax receipt” and “good
stewardship”. They are not, and never have been, synonymous things. Here’s an
idea that long predates my radicalism: When you give, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. That’s an important principle that somehow gets lost when held up against the
promise of a nice refund cheque at year end — sent to us as long as we
fill in our names and donation amounts on the dotted line and tell the
treasurer, the auditor, the tax authorities and the government what it is we do
with our money.
Individually, we
need to begin evaluating our ‘church choices’ on things other than the
convenience of the scheduled programs, the location of the building or the
amenities provided for attendees. A local meeting should be evaluated on our
ability to serve our brothers and sisters effectively there and on the
faithfulness of the leadership to biblical principles. Part of that will mean
that we become far more comfortable with opening our homes to other church
members and perhaps most especially to the lost. Soon enough, our homes will be
the only place we can meet and the only place we will be enabled to speak
freely, so we might as well begin getting accustomed to doing it now. The
church never was a building and our buildings are increasingly becoming anchors
that limit and control us in a way they never should have.
Bring on the Tinfoil
Hat
Now all the above may sound a bit like I ought to be wearing
a tinfoil hat. Let me make clear that I am not advocating a David Koresh-like
retreat. Christians need to be engaged with the media, engaged with the
political system and, yes, engaged even with the legal system; Christian voices
need to be heard despite the impending costs. That is vitally important,
perhaps especially when it means persecution will surely follow. But it’s
important to engage in a way that is effective rather
than short-sighted. It is important to engage in a way that ensures that when
Christians suffer, they are suffering for righteousness’ sake, not for
selfishness’ sake. If we are to make the sacrifice of suffering, let us make
sure that sacrifice counts for eternity.
What does the true church, the persecuted church, look like
in just a few years in North America? I hope it looks a bit like China does
today — a largely-dead state church which lines up fully with government
desires and an outlawed but highly active house-church movement that remains
true to the faith. If that’s the model, the near-future North American church
will consist of believers who increasingly meet in homes, not buildings. I pray
it thrives on tighter, deeper fellowship and sharing than we see today. I think
it will be composed solely of those who have counted the cost and considered
the cost of belief more than worth paying, even when the price is very much
higher than it is today.
Are you ready?
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