Welcome to the Church of COVID
The car door slams shut. You smile at your wife, or husband, and get the kids out of the back seat. It's a beautiful sunny day, the temperature a perfect 24 degrees C. The children are excited to return to Sunday kids club. It's been a hard slog through 12 weeks of lockdown. You're excited to see your church family whom you have not seen for the last 4 months. It is a genuinely exciting day.
You approach the front door of the church. An usher smiles at you. "Vaccination passport please!" he says, not even greeting you with so much as "The Lord be with you." He holds out a device for you to scan in.
Your heart chokes. "Vaccination passport? At church? In the 21st century? In an open, liberal democracy? I now need papers to attend a weekly religious gathering with my brothers and sisters in the faith?"
This, beloved, is the praxis of the church of COVID; this is acceptable worship in the COVID era. Never mind the command of the Lord Jesus to love one another. Never mind the direction of the Apostle Paul that love bears all things, endures all things. Never mind the instructions of the apostle Peter where he told us to "love one another earnestly from a pure heart" (1 Pet. 1:22 ESV).
May it never be! This is not the Lord worshiped by the Church of COVID. These are not doctrines of acceptable worship for the COVID era. The doctrines of the Church of COVID are much simpler. Here is the Decalogue:
Thou shalt worship the Government thy God, and it only shalt thou serve.
Thou shalt make innumerable vaccine images of metal, plastic and goo, and bow down unto them, and serve them, and worship them.
Thou shalt revile the name of the LORD thy God, for he careth not who blasphemes his name and serves falsehood.
Thou shalt remember the Vaccine Day and sanctify it, thou, and thy house, and the servants, and thy cattle, and thy goods, all that thou hast shall be vaccinated every seven months or part thereof, and thou shalt rest on the Vaccine Day from all decency, humanity, kindness, charity and all manner of goodness and righteousness, and set thy hand to discriminate, segregate, vilify, and stone to the death all who breach the Day and its empty promise of peace and safety.
Thou shalt bury thy father and thy mother, for thou abandoned them in an aged care facility to be murdered by midazolam overdose, and intubation, and neglect, and all manner of deliberate medical malfeasance, which henceforth shall be named COVID.
Thou shalt not only murder, but direct others to be murdered en masse by thine own hand, especially if thou work in pharmaceuticals, or administer the Holy Substance, blessed be it, or occupy a position of influence in government or mainstream media, or are a community leader, or in any way influential, thou shall kill as many as possible by as many means as possible.
Thou shalt commit wanton harlotry, for thou shalt multiply thy gods as many as thy boosters, for thou shalt never again bear children, for thou art forever barren, therefore thou shall multiply thy harlotry with impugnity.
Thou shalt steal, especially thy neighbour's livelihood, his children, his business, his hopes and dreams, indeed his very soul thou shalt suck out with the tip of a syringe.
Thou shalt perfect the art of propaganda, for truth must never be allowed on thy lips, and thou must attend thy daily dose of lies and deception with the 11am press conference. DO NOT BE LATE.
Thou shalt eternally covet, for thy freedom, thy will to travel overseas, thy desire to attend to a game of footy or go to the pub or club, or for filthy lucre rather than thy very life, all of these must ever be thy base instinct, chasing the eternal carrot dangled before thee by thy Lord and God, the Government.
Now I could go on, but I am certain that the decalogue of the Church of COVID shall be met with several kinds of response. The first is from the True Believer. She doesn't realise that the above is tongue in cheek. She says in that whiny, high pitched nasal tone, "If you COVIDiots just got the jab already this would be all over. You're holding back my freedom. You put us all in danger from the virus." Such people shall worship in the church of COVID forever, and shall be first in line to scan their shiny new vaccine passports and virtue signal their new vaccine righteousness. They rejoice in the temporal reward over the eternal, they will never tire to please their master no matter how much they are totured. They shall endure to the end, when their oozing corpse shall be treated with the hazmat care they deserve and burnt with fire.
Another group are those who are greatly disturbed by what is happening, and perhaps even have a touch of humanity left in their propagandised husk. They think it is a mighty wrong thing for the church to discriminate against brothers and sisters in such a way, but since it is government decree and their mammon supply is under threat, they throw up their hands in despair and say, "I had no choice." To you I say, "Ah, but you did have a choice, my brother. You chose to disregard the instructions of the Lord Jesus, 'Leave all thou hast, and follow me.' You thought those words were just an hyperbole, deliberate excessive language by no means to be taken literally. And so you chose to choke out the seed with the cares of this life, you chose to do what you could to survive, rather than throwing your entire care on the Living God. But you, my brother, can be redeemed. You can lift your head, and turn again. Renewal awaits thee. Repentance shall bless thee with teary eyes and a croaky voice, for there is hope yet for you to leave once and for all the Church of COVID."
The last are the outsiders. Those who've already wept bitterly for months on end. Those whose voices never ceased to cry, you never halted to warn, you never ran out of breath to blow the trumpet. No-one listened to you, but you kept going all the same. You are a shining star in the blackness of night, you are the blazing sun over the darkening thunderclouds. You rejected the church of COVID and called it for what it was from the beginning. Idolatry. You were not ashamed to be counted among the maligned, the victimised, the demonised, the enemies of the Empire as its gaping maw yawned open to devour all and sundry. Even as you were chewed up and swallowed and digested in bitter, nauseating acid of the beast, you kept the faith, you did not deny The Name. And for you, beloved, there remains a crown of righteousness that fadeth not away.
Welcome to the church of COVID. Are you scanning in at the door, or are you crying out from its rooftop?