The governor of Colorado effectively closed all restaurants and bars beginning March 17th.

Is anyone okay with the government telling Americans to close their business, possibly putting them out of business, possibly resulting in bankruptcy and home foreclosures, destruction of decades of work, robbing employees of essential-to-their-survival tip income, shackling them with the trauma of forced unemployment, of crushing economic crisis for those least able to survive them?

Is anyone okay with the government destroying our First Amendment rights of the free exercise of religion and the right of peaceful assembly?

Is anyone okay with being told, "It's for your own good. It’s for the greater good.” Because maybe you will catch something that might possibly, maybe, end up being as deadly as the flu that kills 35,000 Americans on average every year. The flu that killed 80,000 in 2017/2018 and life went on and no one blinked.

Is anyone okay with the government deciding how much it is okay for us to weigh, eat, or drink, since it is, they will say, “for your own good?”

Is anyone okay that the government can tell us we cannot go to church?

Is anyone okay that churches across the country closed?

I'm not. Not even a little.

Did those church elders who closed our churches ask for volunteers to work on Saturdays to disinfect and make safe our place of worship for those of their flock who wished to worship together? I would have been there all day long. How many others would have been? We'll never know.

Did those church elders who closed our churches ask their parishioners for ideas on how they might make their church the place that welcomes, does not require but welcomes those who would worship the God in whom we trust? To worship, from our knees and in community, to sing hymns that glorify His name?

Did those church elders who closed our churches take the time to educate and reassure those who would seek the community of the body of Christ how their church is where they can come when everyone else pushes them away?

Were those church elders who closed our churches there on any of those Sundays when the sermon spoke to issues surrounding the collision of Church with Culture and how we must be willing to stand for Truth?

I lack the words to effectively express my sorrow, my shame.

We are called to be the light in the darkness.

Instead, we snuffed out the flame.

And I’m not okay with it. Not even a little.

Mike Kirkwood, essayist and social commentator, has authored What If…, a collection of short works and Fathers, a novel about how the failed search for truth over the last 50 years brought America to where it is today.

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