Knock knock at the door and everyone looks up from the dinner table. Forks hover in midair while the kids share furtive glances and Dad pushes his chair back from the table. Mom sets her drink down and the fear in her eyes is but a small twinkle, a pinprick starting to grow into a full panic.

               “You kids expecting anyone,” Dad asks, but shaking heads are his only answer. “What about you, love,” he turns towards his wife.

               “Not that I know of,” she says voice tightening, “Could be the neighbors though, maybe Chips got loose again and they want to know if we’ve seen him?”

               Dad sighs, “Maybe. Maybe someone form work coming by to check on us or that new Pastor at church?”

               The knock comes again. More insistent. More authoritative. Now the worry begins to spread from Mom to kids, unspoken yet heavy. Who could that be? Why would someone knock like that? No one we know would sound so, so…angry.

               “Well, I guess we’ll see who that is then, “Dad says as he stands with a grunt.

               Mom’s hand snakes out and grab’s his arm, “Don’t…just, just sit here and wait. Whoever it is will go away.”

               The knocking comes again, loud, but not quite as loud as their beating hearts. They all know the stories. They’ve heard of people disappearing. Around church and at work, they’ve noticed families and friends missing, but no one knows exactly what happened. Houses dark and empty and pews left unoccupied. Some have disappeared, others they know are buttoning up and staying home, hoping to stay hidden and safe. Mom hoped they were safe, here in their home of twelve years, around the dinner table on a Tuesday night, but now she is beginning to see how self-deceived she’d become.

               “I don’t think they’re going anywhere, dear.” Dad’s face is soft and resigned, his shoulders slumped. Seeing his family stare at him and that fear setting in, he squares his face and frame. Breathing in deeply, “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry everything will be alright. God will protect us.”

               It’s dark outside, but he can see at least one figure silhouetted through the frosted glass window of the door by the porch light.  He sees the shadow raise its fist and bang on the door, shaking the frame. He hears a voice deep and authoritative, but can’t quite make out the words. But he knows, he knows now what this is…it’s not his neighbor, it’s not the new young pastor at church, it’s the thing he’s come to fear the most. The dark force here to break up his family and take them to “work camps” or worse. They’re here to disappear them.

               Dad pauses, caught in indecision, fighting the desire to turn and run back to the kitchen and grab his family hoping they make it out the back door and flee into the night. Or maybe he should run to his bedroom and grab the shotgun from the closet. Fight his way out. Shaking that idea away, he thinks maybe he should just ignore it…they can’t just break down the door can they? He thinks he heard somewhere that as long as you don’t open the door they couldn’t come in and get you, especially without a warrant. But things have changed, things have definitely changed.

               Before he can come to any decision the door comes bursting open with a tremendous crash and blinding lights. Suddenly men are yelling, Dad can’t see with the flashlight beams in his face, but he can hear the roar of half a dozen men. He can smell the sweat, gun oil, and axe body spay as he is surrounded by four masked men with guns drawn.

               “Get down,” they yell, “Get down or we will take you down.

Dad starts, “Wha…”, but before he can utter another syllable he takes a knee to the back of his legs and is forced face first into the carpet. As someone jams their knee into his back and then wrench his arms behind his back, he notices a little army man figure under the couch. He wonders how long it’s been there, it’s an unusual thought, but it’s an unusual experience. He’s snapped back to reality hearing the cries of his family.

               “Please don’t hurt them,” he wheezes, the knee in his back grinds harder and his breath leaves him. He feels the zip ties biting into his wrist and tries to turn to see his wife or kids.

               “Don’t fucking move,” a voice yells on top of him and pushes his face back to the floor, the carpet rubbing his cheek raw.

               He can hear his wife sobbing and his son keeps shouting, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

               Another angry chorus of voices ordering his family to get on the ground followed by more angry grunts and toppling of chairs and furniture. A plate crashes to the floor shattering, its sharp crack setting off a new round of yelling. Dad’s just thankful to not hear gun shots.

               How could this happen, he thinks, I had one job…keep my family safe, but I failed. He begins to pray, trying to block out the chaos, but he can’t breathe and he thinks he might pass out soon. He’s been doing so well at holding it together, keeping his fears from his family, and holding back the outside world, but here it is, undeniable and terrible.

               The masked men pull him to his feet and he’s finally able to turn towards the kitchen. He sees his wife, hands zip tied behind her still laying on the floor, broken plate by her head and food splattered on her cheek. She’s crying, sobbing to the point of hyperventilation actually. They pinprick of panic is a full blow wild fire now, threatening to overwhelm her mind.  

               His son and daughter are pressed up against the wall by two hulking men in baseball caps, balaclavas, and khakis. It would be absurd if it wasn’t so horrific. His son is bucking against his captor, but the man just pushes him into the wall and tells him to “Shut the hell up or I will shut you up”. His daughter is in the corner, a masked blonde woman keeping a loose hold on her, as she just stares. Eyes blank and body slack. Scenes from a war zone, Dad thinks, as the men search the rest of the house, breaking picture frames and throwing items around without care.

               Dad has seen this before, but only in movies. I mean it’s the 21^st century, this kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Police don’t just bust into your house and whisk you away like its 1930s Germany. But they do, apparently now they do.

               Suddenly its dark as a bag is placed over his head, he can smell the onions from dinner on his own breath and he’s pushed along stumbling toward the door. His wife screams again and his son starts asking “what have they done”, but Dad knows it doesn’t matter now. They haven’t really done anything. Tried to have a life. Tried to have a family. Tried to live the American dream, but it’s no dream. This is no dream.

               Blindly he bounces off the door frame and cries out in pain, “Keep moving,” his captors command and grab him roughly by the shoulder guiding him towards whatever vehicle is waits outside. Though shut out in the darkness of the bag, he can feel the eyes of his neighbors and wonders why none have stepped out to defend them. Why haven’t the same people they called friends, went to barbeques with, sat in church pews with, why haven’t any of them come to stop this? Tried to help? Dad knows they’re scared, I mean he was scared. He saw it on TV and felt bad, but what could he do. That was somewhere else and someone else. But now, it was him and it was here.

               He couldn’t even feel angry at his neighbors, he would have done the same. Hiding behind the curtains, peeking through, and holding his family tight. Hopefully someone was filming this travesty. Though, what difference would that make? It wouldn’t be the first or even fiftieth video of someone getting snatched up by the government and sped away to unknown destinations. Just another sad story to grab five seconds of attention before scrolling to the next influencer. Amazing how fast cynicism sets in when you have been kidnapped by the same authorities you used to trust with no idea of what comes next.

               They force him into what must be a van, his shins banging against the chrome bumper. Quickly his family is forced in beside him. At least they’ll have a few more moments together he thinks. An image of Jesus at the last supper pops into his mind and he begins to recite the Our Father out loud.

               “Shut that shit up,” comes a rough voice, “Ain’t going to help you were you’re going. No God there,” he says with a humorless laugh as the doors bang closed.

               Dad finishes and whispers, “Are you alright?” He knows the answer, but what are you supposed to say in a situation like this? “We’re here dad,” his son says and he can feel his wife pressing her shaking body into his.

               “We’ll be ok. Don’t worry it will be ok. You’ll see,” he lies and they all know it, but love him for it just the same. “This is still America, they can’t kill us. We’re going to be alright.”

               Quietly, his daughter whispers, speaking for the first time since telling them about her science project at dinner, “Can’t they? Can’t they…”

——————————————————————————————————————–

I remember hearing stories like this during my youth group years in the late 90s and early 00s. Martyrdom and the END TIMES were big topics of conversation and imagination. We imagined a time when jackbooted thugs would persecute Christians, dragging them from their homes and churches and locking them in concentration camps unless they renounced Jesus Christ. We had book and movie series based on this apocalyptic vision of the near future and we worried about fascist dictators in the White House and the oncoming “Globalist Government”.

               I was reminded of this fact while watching the documentary show Shiny Happy People’s second season recently. Luckily, I wasn’t involved in a youth group that went too far into the end times panic of the time, but it was still there and still a definite part of the evangelical culture. I read a few Left Behind books and even saw at least one of those horrible movies.

               Now believe it or not, I am not here to debate eschatological theology with you or even judge the evangelical culture that pushed a certain viewpoint of fear to young kids. Instead, what struck me were the clips of Christian kids acting out these end times scenes where evil government forces break in and lock up Christians to fulfill their religious persecution. Watching those scenes I saw another parallel, this one with our current and ever increasing war on undocumented people in America.

Those imagined scenes were mirror images to many that we have seen in ever growing frequency over the last year. I was convicted by this and by the fact that the majority of evangelicals and American Christians in general, support this kind of treatment.

We can debate immigration policy and we can debate how to handle our current situation in America and whether people are “bad” because they came here “without following the proper procedures”, but what we shouldn’t have to debate is how we treat them and the fact that we don’t need a force of masked, plain clothes paramilitary snatching people away from their families and off the streets while looking for work or attending a soccer match or at court hearings trying to do things “the right way”. Believe me, I know there are plenty who would still debate the things I hold as sacrosanct, but for the life of me, I can’t imagine Jesus supporting these types of actions or justifying them in his name.

You may disagree, which breaks my heart, but I hope that by imagining yourself in the short scene above your heart might be moved. Art breeds empathy and stories help us see things in different ways. I hope in my poor words that a seed might be planted and little more love grows into the world.

If we keep moving on this trajectory our end times fantasies may become reality, but instead of being the persecuted Christian, we might find ourselves to be the evil fascists persecuting our brothers and sisters while selling our souls.