On the brink: the criminalisation of Christianity in Canada
by Joe Boot, Christian Concern:
The Lord Jesus Christ declared, “if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). And the apostle Paul wrote, “It is for freedom, that Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1)’ so that we would not be burdened by the slave-yokes of men. As Christians, we are charged to live as free men, because we are slaves of God, but we must never use our God-given freedom as a cover-up for evil. Rather, we are to serve the kingdom and purposes of God (2 Pt. 16-17). The scriptures teach us as believers that we are first to fear God, love one another and honour those in authority. This perspective led to the birth of freedom in the West as the Church declared the universal kingship of Jesus Christ and became the first truly free institution, limiting the state. In the anglosphere, we have been the blessed beneficiaries for generations of this legacy.
Scriptural lessons
Today, as the gospel of Christ has been increasingly abandoned in Canada and throughout much of the Western world, it is entirely logical that those historic freedoms would come under serious threat. Only in Christianised cultures deeply influenced by the gospel have people ever lived in freedom, and freedom has in that sense been the historical anomaly as we look down the centuries of recorded history.
Back in the time of the primitive Church, the Jews enjoyed a brief immunity from religious persecution because years earlier Julius Caesar, seeing their commercial skill and wealth as beneficial to the empire, had declared Judaism a ‘religio licita’ (legitimate religion), exempting them from pagan rites and the veneration of the emperors as gods. But as the early Church became distinguished from Judaism, it did not enjoy these temporary imperially granted privileges and was severely persecuted.
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