WHEN THE STATE DISPLACES GOD
The state is increasingly usurping the role of the church:
The recent images of a Canadian pastor being dragged away by the police for daring to hold church services should forever remain burned into our memories. The pastor was born in Poland and lived under Soviet rule as a child, so he knows all about life under totalitarian regimes. As one article reports:
Canadian Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who kicked police out of his church after they tried to shut down a worship service during Holy Week, and his brother, Dawid Pawlowski, have been arrested for holding an “illegal” in-person gathering as per COVID-19 limits set by a new court order. Referring to the Pawlowskis of Street Church in Calgary, Alberta, Calgary Police Service said in a statement that its officers “lawfully enforced” the court order by arresting the two men after church.
A video posted on YouTube shows that Calgary Police Service sent at least five police vehicles to arrest the two from on the street. The brothers knelt on the road and refused to walk on their own during the arrest. A voice can be heard telling the officers, “Shame on you guys, this is not communist China. Don’t you have family and kids? Whatever happened to ‘Canada, God keep our land glorious and free?’” www.christianpost.com/news/canadian-pastor-arrested-for-holding-church-service.html
I have written before about this brave pastor. In an earlier piece I offered this quote of his: “I grew up in Poland under the boot of the Soviets, behind the Iron Curtain. What I see right now, I see everything escalating and moving to the new level. They’re acting just like the Communists were acting when I was growing up when the pastors and the priests were arrested, and some were murdered. Many were tortured. That’s why I say what I say, because I see a repetition of history.” billmuehlenberg.com/2021/04/08/signs-of-hope-scenes-from-the-resistance/
Those who have grown up in communist countries have every right to be alarmed at what they see happening all over the West. That is a major theme in the new book by Rod Dreher, Live Not By Lies. See my write-up about it here: billmuehlenberg.com/2020/12/30/a-review-of-live-not-by-lies-by-rod-dreher/
One of the major takeaways from the covid scare over the past year is this two-pronged reality: In the West we have had far too much statist overreach and far too much Christian capitulation. We see this occurring everywhere, and it does not look too good.
Plenty of churches are still in lockdown, or greatly reduced in what they can offer, while pubs and brothels and sporting events and hardware stores and so on are fully up and running. And most Christian leaders are not saying a thing about this.
One of the real sins of any age is when men and/or the state usurp the prerogatives of God, and seek to act as God. A key way of doing this is to determine what worship is, and where and when it can take place. The state may seek to prohibit all religious worship, or certain aspects of it.
During the past year under the guise of ‘keeping us safe’ the state has taken almost total control of most churches. Whenever that happens the people of God should be rising up and asserting the importance of fundamental human rights, including religious liberty rights.
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New Life Narrabri 