The borough has no business overseeing a group of people reading and discussing a book together on private property—even if that book is the Bible. — Randall Wenger, Chief Counsel for the Independence Law Center

Because that Book is the Bible

A Christian family in Pennsylvania must stop holding a Bible Study in their home.  The local government is also forbidding “worship events, religious retreats and religious fund raisers.”  According to pafamily.org the 35 acre property has been used in this way for decades.  Wikipedia describes the borough in which the property is located as “one of the wealthiest municipalities in Pennsylvania.”  It is a suburb west of Pittsburgh.

I suspect the objections of the local government have more to do with traffic based on the regularity of the gatherings than they do with religion.  The pafamily.org article pointed out that the government is attempting to “impose zoning restrictions such as those applicable to ‘places of worship.’”  The article compares the Bible Studies to other sorts of gatherings like “parties, political fundraisers and book clubs.”

I love the way the rich family’s lawyer put it in the quote I published above, “The borough has no business overseeing a group of people reading and discussing a book together on private property — even if that book is the Bible.”  You gotta love public relations.  The truth is precisely opposite this statement.  The community DOES have a right to call a spade a spade.  It sounds to me like the town has a good argument.  The 35 acre property is the site of regularly scheduled religious gatherings.  The local government is not trying to stop the gatherings.  They are enforcing local customs related to where the town is designed to accommodate all the vicissitudes of “places of worship.”

I could be dead wrong about all of this.  Maybe the town is indeed out to get this family.  Or maybe the town really does hate the Bible enough to go though all of this.  But I doubt it.

And all of this legal wrangling and chatter about rights, zoning and freedom misses the point entirely.  It’s just more propaganda designed to cause all of us to equate the idea of God with the concepts of freedom, debate and democracy.  The truth is that this family should be honored by everyone for teaching the Bible.  Instead of dragging them into court everyone in the town should be demanding that their love for Jesus Christ be examined, studied and brought into the town square for all to see and admire.

It’s not “even if that book is the Bible” … It’s because that book is the Bible that a Christian nation responds in this way … and not by making God and His book the subject of just another court case or curious subset of man-made rights.

Individuals are not the arbiters of God’s presence in a society.  Private property rights are not the guarantor or protector of religion in a society, culture, nation or neighborhood.  Individual action, belief and courage are a necessary ingredient of religious faith.  The need for this kind of faith in a society often ends in martyrdom.  Look at the first three centuries after Christ’s death, burial and resurrection in pagan Rome.  The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

This legal wrangling is not martyrdom, obviously.  This is quibbling.  And it is designed by satan to distract America from the decision that it must make before it is too late, and God’s judgment falls as His response to the radical injustice our empire is forcing on the world.  The world will not tolerate forever the usury-based-sodomizing-fornicating-capitalist-monetary-system America has become.  It cannot.

America and the West must make a decision.  Obviously George Soros is not going to be able to create his Open Society utopia.  The West must answer the question of eternity.  And that question is not, “Is there a God?”  No.  The question America must answer is “Who is God?”  Not the individuals of America.  The nation must decide.  Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and life.  No man comes to the Father except through me.”  Additionally, He commanded his followers to “make disciples of all nations.”

If Christianity isn’t becoming the religion of neighborhoods as well as nations then Christians are not doing their job.  In Town Halls, as well as private homes, we must move into the future swearing … in the name of Jesus Christ … because that book is the Bible.

Selah