The CDC has released an updated Guidance to guide our relationships with each other, with nature, and with our God.
The good news is that if you want to go outside for a walk with your immediate family, you are now allowed to do so, mask-free. (See the top item on the chart.)
But then you get to some concerning news for Christians near the bottom of the graphic on the left.
Notice that attending church at full Covid capacity gets the red light. As does singing in church. But only for unvaccinated people.
Pretty serious stuff. If this is a foreshadowing of what's coming, things will get interesting for our churches very soon.
Over the past year, in banning worship services, the precedent has been set in many places to prohibit the church from existing (since the word 'church' means literally 'the assembling,' and assembly was banned).
Now the direction seems to be shifting away from banning the church, altogether, and toward targeting only the non-vaccinated.
Passport, Please!
This guidance definitely is going to raise some eyebrows. Will the non-vaccinated be excommunicated from assembling themselves together? Will there be vaccine passports to enter a house of worship?
During the Dark Ages, papal proclamations became 'truth' by nature of the fact that they came from 'the authorities.' Insist that Jesus and His Word are your authorities? Insist on obeying reason and conscience? You are excommunicated. Or worse.
Today we have another emergent priest class known as the public health authorities who declare truth and right on matters of every individual's health choices.
Whatever these health authorities proclaim ex-cathedra becomes "the science" by nature of the fact that they've been anointed (by somebody) as the scientific and health authorities over us, our children, and our churches.
Those who insist on the rigor and dialogue of true scientific inquiry, utilizing the scientific method to identify error in the conclusions of the authorities, are targeted as a clear-and-present danger to the social monopoly of the new priesthood .
You're not allowed to arrive at contrary conclusions about your health from either reason or conscience. You get censored, ridiculed as 'anti-science,' and judged to be a selfish person.
But it appears that this won't end at the mere censorship, libel, or slander of dissenters.
The graphic published by the CDC is openly moving us toward a two-class citizenry, with freedoms earned through compliance... ‘but for the selfish, anti-science people’, freedoms withheld. As CNN's medical analyst stated just this week, "the moment of freedom for you is when you get vaccinated."
No more equal protection under the law. Rather, second-class citizens, you become.
It comes as no surprise to the informed reader that, throughout history, when an unpopular group (sometimes referred to as the 'other') is first identified and demonized through propaganda, then persecuted by the actual restricting of their freedoms through mob or state enforcement... it usually does not end well.
And now a demonization campaign has begun and a Guidance issued, which suggests that the Unvaccinated Person might not be able to enjoy the freedoms that the rest of society enjoys.
Just this week it has begun - prohibitions on in-person buying and selling. No-buy-no-sell for the unvaccinated in that Alaskan village. (No, the vaccine is not the mark of the beast; but there are other matters of conscience and religious liberty that precede the final mark of the beast crisis, which we should be deeply interested in. Especially when they look like quite the dress rehearsal for Revelation 13 - declaring people non-essential, demonizing people as the cause of pestilences, freedoms of speech, assembly, the exercise of religion selectively restricted for the demonized group, and now an embryonic no-buy-no-sell).
How will our churches handle this emerging crisis? As people who dissent from the Covid dogma are further marginalized and vilified, how would Jesus have your local church engage with the 'other' - those dirty, dangerous dissenters?
Though their numbers are dwindling, many churches have adopted a default lock-step alignment with the health authorities, submitting to their edicts. Many churches have even refused to allow entrance to those who conscientiously object to putting their children in masks.
But it's hard to imagine any church going along with this latest CDC Guidance with its implications for prohibiting Unvaccinated Persons from singing and/or attending worship over their medical choices/convictions.
It's hard to imagine even the most ardent hold-outs, who've most enthusiastically venerated the public health authorities, putting the above graphic on the screen during announcements at church and saying...
You may have heard about the most recent CDC guidance. I hereby announce that we are still in line with them, and so we request that if you've refused the Covid shots, please neglect the assembling of yourselves together, per CDC guidance. We ask vaccine refusers to please stay away; you're frankly not welcome here until you get your shots. We'll use the honor system for now. But if you do insist on coming, we ask that you at least refrain from joining the vaccinated in congregational singing; please stay quiet if you haven't been vaccinated.
Assuming all but the most fringe, authoritarian (and practically apostate) churches are DEFINITELY NOT willing to go with the CDC down that road, maybe it's time we just collectively and formally break from the habit of looking to the secular authorities of man to govern our conduct as the church of God.
Maybe this eye-opening moment of demonizing the minority can draw us together to draw the line in the sand right here, right now.
We say directly from the pulpit that we respect duly constituted authority and the laws of the land (including the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment). We say that we recognize and submit to government authority in its proper sphere, and that we, therefore, plan to retain and exercise our legal and God-given prerogative, within that proper social order, to welcome the marginalized to come to the cross of Jesus Christ, to express the free exercise of their conscience.
Simply put, we say with one voice that we will never ever require or even encourage people to refrain from worshiping their God over their vaccination beliefs.
We will never scan QR codes or check vaccination papers as a condition for admittance to worship because we are missionaries, not tyrants.
If we are ever asked to be an accomplice to the blatantly authoritarian effort toward forced medical intrusion into the temple of the living God (the body), we will politely decline the invitation to be merged into, and become an arm of, state enforcement of such discriminatory and invasive measures.
And all of this because we believe that neither church nor state is allowed by God to use coercive measures to violate the inalienable, God-given freedom of informed consent to what is put into your body - a self-evident truth if there ever was one.
Maybe we usually don't say these things out loud because they're so obvious that they go without saying.
But at this unprecedented time, the self-evident, the obvious, needs to be stated. And quickly. By more people. More loudly, yet lovingly. Regardless of our varying opinions on the various Covid debates.
Because medical despotism has been on the march and doesn't appear to be stopping.
If we are subsumed into the Covid Cult, there goes our identity and mission. If we endorse forced vaccination - even through our silence - there goes our credibility to teach and advocate the doctrine of freedom of conscience.
We are so blessed to have been entrusted with a beautiful, hope-filled, and attractive theology about the character of God. And that Doctrine of Doctrines will either be taught more clearly than ever or be completely contradicted, by how we speak and act when conscience is on the social chopping block.
And as such, souls are at stake.
Let's ask ourselves, what sort of picture of God will the world see reflected in our beliefs and practices during these dark times?
Imagine the history of this time being written decades from now. If time were to continue, the next generation would study this emerging repressive moment and would ask you, "what was it like to live during that time; what did you believe, say, and do?"
I was silent because I didn't want to make waves. I didn't want to be ridiculed. I didn't want to be persecuted.
Indeed, in a time of well-nigh universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a controversial act. But it is when the darkness is deepest that the light is needed most.
My prayer is that, as led only by the Spirit, our churches would take a bold and winsome stand—tactfully, intelligently, and firmly—for the basic and fundamental freedom for any soul to worship the Lord according to the dictates of conscience, as led by the Bible.
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Scott Ritsema is the founder and director of Belt of Truth Ministries and Media on the Brain. He lives in Lakeview Michigan with his wife Cami and three amazing children!
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