By Kerwin Holmes, Jr.

Let us decide, in the midst of famine, the manner which we may choose people over food. If any wishes to choose food over people, then let him starve.

— some well-meaning intellectual with good intentions sometime down the road

To say that we live in strange times is to make an understatement. Yet, to say that we live in foreign times is to lie. We are squarely upon native soil and right on cue.

Over a full month ago, I wrote a post cautioning the course that most of the West, and particularly the United States of America, is taking concerning the present panic. I titled the blog post as I did because, to be frank, I was skeptical about the veracity of the threat level, but keenly concerned about the panic and aware of our intrinsic mortality. Still, we had been presented very little evidence and already folks were eager to hand over their inalienable rights to establish at the most some psychological comfort for personal and communal safety (not necessarily in that order).
Now, it turns out that we were wrong. Several authorities warned us along the way: statisticians, physicians, and the like. But we were told to listen to experts who know better…medical experts (aka physicians) who stay in their own lane and do not venture to educate us about other topics like economics…except when they do (both of those men are professional physicians, by the way).

But what has astounded me, in addition to the manner in which people have rolled over to allow the State to decide whether or not the State should jettison this or that inalienable right out of the window for the “good” of the population, is the manner in which the nominal leaders in “Evangelicalism,” or Big Eva, have responded.

When churches were being shut down and fined during Holy Week, all while grocery stores and abortion mills remained open to the public, they largely did nothing at all.

When even arguably heretical pastors were caught up in arrests, actions that threatened the religious freedoms of us all no less than if these had been Muslim imams– which may have prompted their acute response– they did largely nothing at all.

When the intelligentsia (not to be confused with the intelligent) opined that Christians were largely to blame, they ran interference to placate the accusers by subtly agreeing, rather than girding their loins like men and shaming such idiocy into oblivion.

When Christian congregational mobile applications were taken down from app stores and when books and media material were removed from the public eye, they did largely nothing at all.

When mothers and fathers and the elderly were arrested or prosecuted for trying to live life freely and even to provide for their families, these same men who claim to be advocates of justice did largely nothing at all.

Yes, and some of them even shamed their fellow Christians beforehand who were suspicious and rightfully alarmed at how their government was overreaching (I know of no other way to interpret a comparison to Arius). Oh, they will say, everyone knows and knew that the measures these governments take to shut down these “non-essential” activities and businesses are of perfectly sound reason.
And we, we have already spoken about how important it is that governments choose which way the civic moral compass swings.
It is rather intriguing how a viral body population may distinguish the parking lot of a Wegmans from the parking lot of a Southern Baptist congregation– particularly on Easter Sunday! A packed grocery store full of weird-looking Wilsons is a lot safer than the assembled worship gathering at the standard pew. An open abortion mill leads to less death than the Eucharist.

I remember in my public education that we read several books that impressed upon us the importance of moral courage and fortitude in the midst of public aggression and disapproval. These weren’t tacky books about “You’ve got to stand out!” and “You’re a special snowflake!” (political cliche intended). These were books like Number the Stars, The Giver, Animal Farm, The Wave, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , and To Kill a Mockingbird.

The heroes in these novels were heroic…some of them even based upon true characters of history whom we will never know. And one thing bound them all that, by the grace of God, I caught onto early in my life:

They were inconvenient. Some still are.
They did not appear for themselves at opportune moments in time.
They suffered and their lives sucked because of their righteous stances.
They were not polished. They were not nice.
They did not always live to see the fruition of their good work, and often their good work was met with inevitable tragedy.

So here I am, asking myself, what of these men, these leaders of Big Eva?

Well, eventually, they sounded their great alarming ram’s horns concerning the recent and tragic death of Ahmaud Arbery. I wish that I could say that they did this as a final last straw in their forbearance at the face of the previous list of grievances.

But no.

They did this, so it appears to me, so they could get their merit badges. And like good boy scouts, they got them and shamed the others in their merry troop who did not get the same awards. They assumed or implied or even cried out racism– all of this before the trial and the evidence presented therein. And they sound much like the crowd. They proved that they cared by their voices, and the crowd was placated by their signals.
Their a priori prejudgments (also known as prejudices) may turn out to be correct. But their Christlike form so far is not.

Well, if those are the rules, why not go for even more badges, then?
Why not speak out about the rest?
Are we not also your people? Brothers? …brothers?

We have often wondered what we would do in the midst of tyrannical overreach. Many of us have read one or more of these books.
Be no longer a wondering mind.
Take notes and observe for yourselves. Take heed lest you too fall, as you recognize the boundaries between heroism and resignation. I too am vigilant of my own person, and admittedly, I am presently of the mind reflected in these writings. And this is what part I may contribute immediately.
Let us pray. Let us search the Scriptures. Let us learn our local civics.
Let us reason.

Concerning the censorship and purging of media by Big Tech of anything right of the CCP (so it seems), it is evident that our basic medium of interaction has moved beyond the page-turner tech of the past for the question to be entirely relevant. But one is still left to wonder:
At what temperature does paper burn?