Church, State and Chains

We must be careful when we start to combine church and state.  There was good reason why it was separated and we are already seeing problems as its being reunited. As Christians we are told to go and make disciples.  We for many decades have gone as missionaries to foreign lands to spread the good news.  We are called to love God and to love one another.  Over the years, churches, hospitals schools and orphanages were built to serve others.  The gospel message of one of truth and love.  Mercy and grace were the hallmarks of Jesus' ministry.

Government was best described to me by one of my college professors back in the day as simple as it is the organization that ends up taking care of the problems that overwhelmed the current operating systems.  For example, when we don't have private organizations to freely take care of our sick, the government created a healthcare program, when the private organizations were unable to house the poor or care for the orphan the government created a program for that, public housing, subsidies, foster care....  see how that works.  

So where is this going....well we have all seen the news stories of late, the federal workforce being humiliated or fired, the new office of faith to protect Christian values, the Christian nationalism being portrayed with pictures  of my savior and a president of just one country that has existed for a moment in His timeline...but again I digress.  We are at awkward crossroads, one that started in the 1980s and is having its hopefully short moment in history.  But let me tell you a story about a woman..

She was from Iran, she heard the gospel, she converted from the Muslim faith to the Christian faith.  All missionaries would say praise the Lord!  But wait, she is now in a hostile country to her new faith, she makes an escape to save her life, she leaves everything and everyone she knows behind and makes a harrowing escape to America's shores, that "Christian" land.  This seems like the stories of faith I have read to my children throughout the years, a modern day missionary tale.... BUT WAIT!  She is now on a plane in shackles, see she didn't legally cross the border you see to do so she would have been killed before she made it here.  See she came to seek religious asylum but she didn't speak English yet, she didn't have a job yet.... She got off the plane in a new country Panama where our president has chosen to send these illegals and even mocks them with an asmr video on the white house page with the sounds of chains clinking onto the plane.  When she arrives she is put in a hotel with nothing, alone and she is locked within this hotel because she cannot be returned to her home country along with many others each with their own stories.  They cannot leave the hotel.  They are virtually prisoners and have no information on what will come next.

Meanwhile Christians are still sending missionaries and missions items to countries where people will be given the opportunity to be persecuted if they believe from a country who not only reviles the idea of persecution but most literally is creating a country that is free from such persecution for the lucky who inhabit its borders.  What I see is the first in many problems we when combine government and church.  It was never the intention of faith...Give to Ceaser what is Cesars and give to God what is Gods.

So now what, where do we go what do we do.  We must choose to serve.  We must be those who cares for others,  We must not participate in forcing our faith upon all and allow others to see our faith through our works.  We must be willing to sacrifice, be uncomfortable, share what we have. We must not live in greed to hoard what we have for "ours" and have pride in a land mass instead of a faith in the one who created it.