I grew up in Colorado. We moved there the same year the Rockies had their inaugural season, and I’ve rooted for the home team ever since. Though I moved my family to Northern Idaho, and have lived here happily for nearly four years now, I have kept a close eye on my home state. I’d like to make a few observations, and hopefully light some fuses.
God’s sense of humor and irony is uncanny. When He tells His stories and picks which characters will do what He makes no mistakes. Some people who like to put fancy terms on such phenomenon call this Nominative Determinism. The Bible is full of this irony (i.e. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joshua, etc.), but so is history. Trump won an unlikely victory. Jeff Flake proved to be a flake. Rosa Parks. William Wordsworth. Anthony Weiner. Usain Bolt. Or less famously––but it’ll serve my point––one bloke was caught robbing an Ice Cream Shop and his name was Conor Fudge. This WaPo article contains a collection of these “Perfect Fit Last Names”: “Mrs. Just taught political science, a Mrs. Deutsch taught German and a Mr. Francois taught French.” My dad once told me that he went to school with a fella humorously named Dusty Rhodes. All this to point out that I think Colorado’s current Governor is no exception to this divine sense of irony.
He is the first openly gay governor, governing the state which first issued marriage licenses to gay “couples.” His name? Jaren Polis. You probably don’t need to be a Greek scholar to know that Polis is Greek for city. More on that irony later.
But first some history/context. Colorado was first (along with Washington) to legalize pot. It was one of the first in line to force the issue of GQBLT “marriage” on the entire nation (despite the State constitution being amended by Colorado citizens to ban same sex mirage). Gov. Polis recently signed the “Red Flag” gun law, which allows the police to confiscate a law abiding citizens guns simply because someone thinks they might use them illegally; in order to regain possession of their arms, they must prove that they aren’t a criminal; ah, that great paragon of the progressives’ framework of justice: guilty until proven innocent. A bill is currently working its way through the Colorado house which would mandate that abstinence not be taught as part of sex education in public schools.
Of course, we must not overlook the token instance (which is becoming all too common throughout our country) of the Drag Queen being invited speaking to 10 year old school kids, without the school informing parents of this––ahem––”guest”. Most recently––as if Coloradans’ minds weren’t addled enough––Denver is working on legalizing psychotropic mushrooms…
Now, why is Polis’ name a perfect fit for the character at the helm of this state during this remarkable slide into debauchery, greed, perversion, and human pride? Because the City of Man will always descend into the lowest depths of hell while it thinks it is attempting to build a tower into the heights of heaven. The Polis of Man has been the Governor of Colorado for a long time now.
Coloradans for decades have not wanted the inconvenience of going to church on Sunday mornings. After all, the mountains beckoned. Or the Broncos game kicked-off at 11am, and the guac can’t eat itself. I recall driving to church with my family as a young boy (way back in the 90s mind you), and often seeing the soccer fields full of families who had gotten up early to take partake of the sacrament of extracurricular activities. For all the natural beauty of the staggering Rocky Mountains, you’d think Coloradans were blind to the Creator whose majesty outshines those purple mountains.
But the problem lies close at home for those who claim the name of Christ. Colorado is home to some of the world’s largest evangelical organizations. Yet we might note that the net effect on Colorado has been negligible. Why is that? Is it because despite the presence of these mega-organizations, the focus has been on building their empire abroad rather than the often harder work of building the empire of Christ in their own neighborhoods, communities, and state?
It is easy to think that because an evangelical organization’s acreage has grown, that so has their fruitfulness in their own homes and churches and neighborhoods. But are the leaders of these organizations leading their children to faithfully walk with Christ? Are their pulpits full of men who preach with boldness the whole council of God? Are they courageous enough to resist the rot of secularism, or have they capitulated to the gender pronoun confusion? Have they made a stand, not merely politically, but in their places of work, worship, and recreation? Trinidad, CO has been the sex-change capital of the world, but all too many Colorado churches have been doing sex-change operations in the pulpit for years now. Men enter the pulpit to become simpering effeminates, or worse, women enter it brazenly pretending to the office of prophet. The Apostle John might say something like, “I hold this against you, you tolerate that woman Nadia Bolz-Weber.”
The church in Colorado has all too often been at best a whimpering spectator to all these atrocities, at worst it has been a shameful accomplice. Faithful Christians in Colorado ought to start causing a ruckus. The sort that Elijah caused for Ahab. The sort that Paul caused for the Ephesians. The sort that Jesus caused for the Temple money-lenders. The sort that Luther caused in Wittenberg. The sort that Whitefield cause for New England.
The City of God, the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ is a foregone conclusion. It will come, and nothing the Polis of Man endeavors to do will stop the onward march of Christ’s Kingdom of peace, purity, and joy. The Polis of Man will not stand, for it is built on the shifting sands of individualism and the envy which refuses to give God the glory. The Polis of Man has been the governor of Colorado for far too long, long before the current Governor was even out of diapers. And unless faithful Christians determine to play the man and oppose this parade of worsening evils, the Polis of Man will govern Colorado for generations to come.
May God bless the faithful in Colorado with resilience in their battle against darkness, and may they take courage in the fact that they fight a war that is already won.