The political deception and corporate greed of the recent pandemic were masked and went unseen by many in the Church. Those motivators are being revealed with greater clarity in recent days. Our willingness to accept the restrictions placed upon people’s livelihood and worship was a trial run to determine the depth of our willingness to comply without question with what will be demanded of us in the future. This was a trial run – a trial run not limited to pandemic mandates, but to other issues that will be revealed in the coming days. 

The approaching mandates will become a test of leaders in all spheres of cultural influence who rightly attempted the first time around to comply with what seemed like at the time to be reasonable short-term restrictions. What was asked of leaders and subsequently required of their followers was adopted without question and allowed to run unchallenged for far too long creating unnecessary pain and suffering.

The coming test will happen at the beginning of the next go-around of mandates in whatever form those mandates take, whether financial, social, or our ability to freely speak our mind. Will unquestioned compliance once again be the automatic response in this next go-around, or will we have learned a lesson from the past? If an unquestioned response is repeated during the next attempted lockdown a deeper erosion of trust in our leaders will take place, both within the Church and within our social institutions. That loss of trust will erode our social fabric and lead us to a dark place this generation has never experienced.

“In God, We Trust” is not just a slogan we stamp on our coins. It is a way of life we must have when spiritual forces contrary to the will of God attempt to lead us down a path that will take us to a place of deeper sorrow than just the fears being used to demand our compliance.