Well, the Bible is not nice, and the licensing and regulations that we have were one of the things that Christ took care of. Literally. He drove them out.

This annoyed the elite. For these people paid rent: I would expect, akin to a mall. that you paid much more to buy and sell in the temple — and you passed the costs on, for the animals for sacrifice had to bw certified clean, and yours were.

Then Christ healed. He ensured the robbers were gone first.

	And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

	And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

	“‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies
		you have prepared praise’?”
	
	And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

	In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

	When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

(Matthew 21:12-22 ESV)

It is quite good to have few regulations. We are in the process of building a new church because the regulators have informed us that the current building does not meet earthquake standards and the repair bill is two megabucks: we can pull it down and rebuild the relevant part for well under that. My congregation meets in an old hall, owned by a school, that is exempt. We bring in food. We feed and care. And we don’t want the government managing us.

I am shutting down my profitable wedding videography company at the end of the year for many reasons, but the three big reasons are 1)inability to find a reliable second shooter, 2) tax shenanigans, and 3) unwilling to make myself and my family a target because I run a wedding related business and I am publicly religious. I pay my taxes to the state online as is required, but they don’t pay them to the county like they are supposed to, so I am constantly fielding letters and calls about not having filed and paid my taxes properly even though I have. The last time I spoke on the phone with someone they claimed I had never paid my sales taxes the entire time I have been operating. My photographer friend also got nailed by an obscure money grab, where in the last couple years they have changed the law that specifically photographers (I am in a grey area as a videographer for this) have to charge sales tax on their labor, not just the items they sell. So instead of charging sales tax (which is very high here) on a finished album that is worth $200, they have to charge sales tax on entire wedding packages (closer to $3000). She now owes thousands of dollars in back taxes. I can’t afford that if they decide that this also applies to me – six years of back taxes would be a lot of money to have to come up with.

It’s not worth any of that to continue in this field.

You see, there is a warning with the fig tree. If something has no utility or beauty or truth, it will not survive. There is a quasi Darwinian selection of ideas and philosophies — those that fail do not make it to the next generation. History is made up of the people who turn up: the future is made up of the children of today.

And those memes that deny our biology and call it wrong lead astray — apart from being bad theology, for our basic biology was called good at creation.

Here God does intervene as surely as Christ did in the temple. Let us pray that he intervenes more: that there is true repentance, and the nation is again aspiring to be faithful, honourable, beautiful, true, and useful. That we may be Holy, as God is Holy.

For our elites preach chaos and destruction, and blame the people when they turn from their evil. In this time, be cautious, for the very moves to gain some freedom from the regulations of this elite the elite will try to shut down, accepting the risk they will wither as the fig tree did.