Quite a lot of self-identified Christians seem to believe that their faith requires them to live by the assumption that The Authorities (however defined) must have good intentions - perhaps because they are supposedly (in some way) 'ordained by God' to hold their positions of authority.
And some Christians also believe that it is immoral for anyone to assume that those in-charge-of large institutions (whether international agencies like the UN, national or local governments, churches, medical and scientific institutions and the like... are evil by motivation; are engaged in active, strategic evil.
It was, until 2020, sometimes allowable to assume that the leaders of large corporations were indeed immoral. But this is now apparently forbidden - since Big Pharma and the Silicon Valley Tech Corps are the biggest of big corporations, and it is no longer permissible to regard them as evil - on pain of severe sanctions.
Such are the tests of these End Times.
To remain Christian we are called-upon to make a distinction between this-world and the-next; between the reality that while resurrected Heavenly Life is in full accord with God's purposes; in this earthly mortal life evil may triumph at any and every level - including that of the Authorities of this-world.
This ought to be very obvious, but is not; because of the breadth and depth of corruption; which is unprecedented in world history - so comparisons between Now and The Past can be grossly misleading.
All past societies were predominantly religious (in one form or another) until about a century ago (the Russian Revolution) - and until about fifty years ago the Godless societies were in a minority.
Nobody else has ever lived in so thoroughly Godless a world; nobody in the past experienced a whole world in which religion has been so pervasively subordinated to worldly concerns as we find ourselves in since early 2020.
A nothing-but-materialist world to such an extent that the religious and spiritual dimension of life has precisely zero effect on actual policies and strategies: all world religions have been subordinated to this-worldy agendas in a very extreme and obvious way...
Yet this has hardly been noticed.
Suddenly it has been declared (for instance) that watching stuff on a TV monitor is spiritually the same as participating in religious rituals.
Holy places, shrines, churches, temples can be closed... and nothing significant is lost.
Missionary work and evangelism (which many sacrificed-for greatly and even gave their lives to do in the past) are simply set-aside.
Pilgrimages that were essential and transformative in 2019, became inessential and worthless in 2020.
A pastor visiting his flock can be replaced by masked people communicating by phone.
The priestly laying-on of hands for blessing and healing, the human-divine touch, is (it turns-out) merely an optional-extra with no objective value.
Thus (pretty much) all the leaders of all the religions (including Christian churches) have gone-along with this overturning of however-many centuries of core religious belief.
Such scale of apostasy cannot be undone. One cannot suspend wholesale all the most sacred activities - around which religions were built - and the 'restart' them as if nothing has happened.
And this plain fact is obvious to the devil, even if apparently invisible to the religious leaders.
Here-and-now we live in a post-religious world.
The pretense of all denominations has been revealed, has been enacted - with the enthusiastic assent of religious leadership.
After 2020; we cannot assume that The Authorities are working on the side of God; when they have so comprehensively allied with the agenda of Satan, and have not repented.
If we, as Christian individuals, really believe that our religion is true - then we must be ready to go it alone, in an ultimate sense - which entails judging and rejecting the spiritual authority of The Authorities.
