Twenty-three months. That’s how long our federal law enforcement was weaponized against a Catholic school teacher for exercising her First Amendment right to protest.

Christine Crowder did not breach the Capitol on January 6, 2021. She did not damage property, assault anyone, or engage in any illegal activity. She simply attended a political rally and an anonymous tip led to two years and likely millions of tax dollars spent to investigate the Christian teacher. Though I am not Catholic, I am a devout Presbyterian, but I can to read the writing on the wall.

This incident took place during the Biden administration when the president weaponized the federal government against believers under the guise of combatting “White supremacy.” Not only did these actions by the Biden administration blatantly violate the First Amendment, it sent a chilling signal to Christians that the legal protection of our faith that built America is negotiable.

Now we are seeing the repercussions of the Biden administration’s attacks on Christians. The weaponization of the federal government against traditional Christians emboldened those who hate them to target them.

We saw this with Sunday’s attack on Cities Church in St. Paul church during a worship service. Peaceful Christians gathering to thank God our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and our Father in Heaven were interrupted, accosted, and trapped by ravenous leftist demonstrators led by disgraced ex-CNN reporter Don Lemon and local Black Lives Matter (BLM) leaders. These people, calling themselves protesters, acted on outlandish information that would make the KGB blush: that one of the lead pastors of the church was the acting director of the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office.

These Rainbowshirts justified the illegal interruption of a Christian worship service by claiming to be “protesting” ICE. Simultaneously, while claiming their actions were an expression of free speech, they simultaneously accused the church leaders of being against the First Amendment’s freedoms of assembly, speech, and protest. However, their obscene outburst — likely planned by Lemon and his BLM friends — trampled over another key pillar of the First Amendment: the freedom of religion.

The semantics employed by Lemon and the anti-Christian mob are a trick that not just Christians, but every American should pay attention to. What they are doing is delegitimizing a critical part of the First Amendment while lionizing the parts that are convenient to them. These individuals do not respect the First Amendment or the Constitution; they view them as tools to impose their ideology.

By prioritizing certain pillars of the First Amendment while failing to mention the others, Lemon, BLM, and the people with them try to deceive others into believing those protections are not as secure or don’t exist at all. This type of disingenuous, destructive, and, frankly, stupid “protest” is the weapon these individuals use to silence dissent and scare people into submission. These individuals are even willing to use violence and intimidation disguised as “direct action” to achieve their goals.

Being a Christian means being an adoptive child of God, and that is dangerous for Lemon and the radical left mob. It means that we serve a power higher than their own manmade ends. We can’t be controlled, so they resort to intimidation tactics to force people to capitulate to them. Christians need to recognize this and hold firm in this adversity. The Apostle Paul warns Christians in Ephesians 5 to “[l]et no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” Paul further warns to “not become partners with them” as Christians were once in darkness but now walk with the Lord. We are called to “[w]alk as children of light” and to “try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” while not taking part in “unfruitful works of darkness.” Furthermore, Paul calls on Believers to expose these works of darkness as “when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.”

So, as a Christian, I say this: these individuals idolize government as their god while giving our Father in Heaven no heed. God warns against idolatry in the Old and New Testaments, while Lemon, BLM, and their comrades demand people to join them in worshipping government –– hoping people forget God and that our rights are given by Him, not granted by government. This great deception is what allows ideologies like socialism and communism to flourish: as people are convinced God doesn’t exist, they look to fill that void.

Christ warns Believers of the brutal reality of our world: that, before the world hated Christians, it hated Him first. That warning is a clarion call today, especially as we see things like what happened in St. Paul. As our society moves further from God every day these threatening scenes become more common.

It is saddening that I, and many other Christians, must enter our houses of worship while looking over our shoulders. It is infuriating that the federal government’s wanton actions under the previous administration gave these bad actors permission to do what they are doing now.

Still, as Christians, we must endure. But that does not mean we don’t call out the darkness when it comes knocking on our doorstep