You Live in a Police State

John Whitehead is right, but to what extent is this situation the fault of the Christian Church?

John Whitehead is a voice crying in the wilderness.

I sure hope more people start listening: “In a Cop Culture, the Bill of Rights Doesn’t Amount to JMuch”

Here is how he begins:

“In a democratic society,” observed Oakland police chief Sean Whent, “people have a say in how they are policed.”
Unfortunately, if you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police officer, and that officer is never held accountable for violating your rights and his oath of office to serve and protect, never forced to make amends, never told that what he did was wrong, and never made to change his modus operandi, then you don’t live in a constitutional republic.
You live in a police state.
It doesn’t even matter that “crime is at historic lows and most cities are safer than they have been in generations, for residents and officers alike,” as the New York Times reports.
What matters is whether you’re going to make it through a police confrontation alive and with your health and freedoms intact. For a growing number of Americans, those confrontations do not end well.

My stream-of-consciousness reaction to Whitehead’s essay:

Police are absolutely culpable for going with the flow, and ignoring the true role peace officers are supposed to play in the American system, but I’ll be quick to add that they face an impossible job in today’s culture.

Civil government largely uses and compensates law enforcement to keep the masses in line, so that office-holders are free to rape everyone for their own benefit. Meanwhile the welfare class is similarly placated with checks and SNAP cards—bribes intended to keep them anesthetized and voting the “right way,” but with zero motivation to get out and earn their own way by serving the community; it is a dead-end with no hope of ever escaping economic malaise, except through criminal activity.

Police are caught between a seething, hopeless populace, and an amoral upper-class that seeks to keep itself further and further removed from the boiling cauldron. Ferguson, New York, Baltimore, and numerous other cities provide evidence we’re reaching the breaking-point, where men with badges are overreacting to some incidents, based on real dangers they face in other situations, and civil officials are feeling political heat to provide “justice” which is, in many cases, nothing more than unjust vengeance for the perceived crimes and indifference of others.

Without a spiritual awakening, America is on the verge of rage the likes of which very few can imagine. The Founders were correct that no foreign enemy could take us down, but that the seeds of our collapse would come from within. That bitter harvest has been planted and nurtured through a Century or more of officially-sanctioned, protected, and indoctrinated skepticism.

The Church has thrown fuel on the fire by her grave failure to be a preserving and illuminating force. When the populace sees no God in Heaven, unwittingly they place Satan on the throne, and Hell is the inescapable destination. How will they see God, if we don’t take risks to reveal Him to them? If we don’t put ourselves in harm’s way to administer the antidote for these converging dangers we are in for a dark and bumpy ride into the Abyss.

[See also, “Thanksgiving: Time to Reflect How Easily Liberty Dies.”]

Yes, police and politicians bear blame for their failings, but Christians are yet more culpable for not obeying the orders of the King to be “salt and light.” We are physicians who hold the only cure, and have withheld it. We forget that we ourselves bear the scars of the same illness, and have only experienced healing by the mercy of God. How can we keep such a blessing to ourselves?

Unless… we don’t truly possess the cure, either. Examine yourself. Will you be among those who wonder why you’re on the Lord’s left hand, being banished even though you say you knew and followed Him?

Pray, Christian… and get busy. Night is falling. The police, the politicians, and everyone else in America needs the Church to arise and be God’s ambassadors of grace, reconciliation, mercy, and peace.

If we don’t do that soon, John Whitehead will have many more sobering essays to write.

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