Public Square: Health Care Mandate - Christians Made It Possible

I'm troubled by Church leaders not speaking up about an underlying concern in the recent and on-going controversy over President Obama's healthcare mandates that require religious organizations to provide contraceptives and abortifacients against their teachings and conscience.  There's plenty of reaction among Church leaders and religious freedom advocates to this being an assault on the First Amendment and a threat to our religious liberties.  While I believe that there are reasons to be concerned about these things, there's a more fundamental issue that we don't seem to want to address: we did this.

At the core of the Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius' defense of this mandate is an argument that Christians in America have made possible.  The basis of her argument divides the activities of religious organizations into sacred and secular.  In other words, the mandate distinguishes religious activities such as worship, Bible teaching, and evangelism from non-religious activities such as running hospitals, providing child care services, and feeding the homeless.  The greater threat of the HHS mandate isn't forcing religious organizations into acting against conscience, it's reinforcing the status quo of American Christianity.  We Christians created the distinction between being the Church and going to church.  Whether for good motives or bad, Sabelius is making use of what we created.

We have avoided challenging those who profess Christ to live their lives as fully committed steward-servants of Jesus.  Instead, we've allowed (even encouraged) people to retain their lifestyles, world views, and worldly habits while asking them to make a little room in their busy lives for some religion.  We've made going to church (i.e., attending worship services and, maybe, a Bible study) an acceptable standard for being a faithful Christian instead of calling on those who would follow Jesus to be the Church by denying themselves, taking up their crosses daily, and going after Him.  The very things that Sebelius describes as unrelated to religious expression are the things that Jesus lists as evidences of a living faith (Matthew 25:34-36) and the Bible describes as true religion (James 1:27).  We can rant and rave about our government officials acting as they are, but we've set the stage for this.

By all means we, as citizens of the United States, should respond to this controversy in the public forum and work to preserve our religious freedoms.  But let's not let the Kingdom of the Left issues overshadow the greater Kingdom of the Right opportunities.  This should serve as a call for all Christians to live out the Faith in such a way that it is clear to everyone who we are in Christ.  It is a wake up call for us to refuse to be satisfied with going to church and to rededicate ourselves to being the Church.  After all, the issue at hand shows us just how desperately our nation needs us to be the Church.