It is always sad when you realize someone is on the road to hell. There is a sense of foreboding in it. For Christians, we should be fearfully in prayer for others — even our enemies as the Lord tells us. There is no better time than Holy Week to be reminded of that.

A great case in point is Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He is in need of a lot of prayer — prayer that he not wind up in that awful place. We have all known that for a while. With all his billions, Bloomberg not only has his priorities mixed up, he’s convinced that the regulation of his fellow man will get him past the pearly gates.

The final paragraph in this New York Times article about Bloomberg’s new anti-gun effort is most revealing.

But if he senses that he may not have as much time left as he would like, he has little doubt about what would await him at a Judgment Day. Pointing to his work on gun safety, obesity and smoking cessation, he said with a grin: “I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”

It is always, with the totalitarians, a desire to use power to curb the behavior of man. While people of faith in a higher power believe it is only that power that can truly shift the hearts and minds of men, the totalitarian believes the state can do it. Bloomberg believes the state can rid the world of the deadly sins. Bloomberg, in other words, thinks he is God, or at least plays him in the New York Times.

God will not be mocked. God cannot be bought off. Saving lives is not saving souls. And Bloomberg will get no pass. Much like the folks who spend extra to get to the head of the line at King’s Dominion or Six Flags, Bloomberg seems to think he can spend his way past St. Peter.

At the same time, he seems to think we should be thanking him for using the power of the state to control other’s behavior. He seems to think taking away the freedom to make decisions for ourselves is something we would thank him for. Only a self-deluded totalitarian would ever think that, which is what Bloomberg is.

As Mark Hemingway noted on twitter, C.S. Lewis has already rebutted Mike Bloomberg. Lewis wrote,

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

The richer a person is, the harder it becomes to pass through the narrow gate. Those of us who’d laugh at Mayor Bloomberg should instead be praying for him. There but by the grace of God go us. If Mayor Bloomberg does not change his heart, he will soon crave Lazurus’s big gulp. But he’ll find that big gulps are banned in Hell too.