Steve Fielding is Right

Steve Fielding is Right

We Greens hope for the balance of power in the Senate. We believe we can improve the legislation from either of the major political parties. We Greens are also thankful, that with less than 2% of the vote, Family First and their policies of hatred are unlikely to elect any Senators.

We Greens also note that the ALP prostituted themselves to gain Family First’s preferences. This enabled the Howard ilLiberal government its destructive control of the Senate and the election of the strange Family First Senator Fielding.

We Greens do not apologise for our drug policy. We are firmly opposed to the drug trade too. We reject the war on drug users. However, we cannot understand how drug addition is treated in jail. We believe it is a medical condition that is best treated by medical, not custodial personnel.

We Greens believe in economic growth but not at all costs. Economics growth is important. However, of equal importance are peace, non-violence, environmental sustainability, social justice and participatory democracy. We do not apologise for putting people first. But we Greens are surprised that a man who worships Christ puts mammon first.

We are surprise that Family First believes that anti-family Work Choices [sic] legislation only needs modification. We Greens think it is evil because of its fundamental view of work as a form of paid slavery! Forcing workers to work at their employer’s convenience is anti-family!

We look forward to working with the strange Family First while it occupies its undeserved seat in Parliament. We pray that the ALP will not fall for that deception again. We hope that, like Senator Wood’s political group, Family First will disappear without a trace.

A Green Watermelon

Biblical Sanity from 1892

I have read the Byrt biography of a great Baptist, John Clifford (16 October 1836 to 20 November 1923). In 1892 he wrote a pamphlet called The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Byrt’s report of the books contents has given words to my thoughts about scripture for ages. The Bible is a human document, written men about there experience of the divine. The reason it is holy is that it shows us the word of God, that being Jesus Christ. One quote is even more appropriate today than it was back at the late 19th century.

I have found that ninety per cent of the difficulties of [youth have] with the Bible are not due to the Bible at all, but to the [human] theories […] about its composition or inspiration, its theology or interpretation (p.97)

The Book is G W Byrt, John Clifford: A Fighting Free Churchman (London: Kingsgate Press; 1947) pp.192.

Since I posted this I have bought a copy of the original book. It is John Clifford, The Inspiration and the Authority of the Bible (London: James Clark & Co, 1899 3rd Ed), p.4.

My Reply

Another reply on Bill Muehlenberg's Culture Watch. This is a reply to Muehlenberg's reply to my post.
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With all due respect Bill Muehlenberg, there is evidence that I did read you comments. I quoted your essay in the middle of my reply. However, I believe you misread my response.

The soccer score line title flavours your essay. My point is that fashions come and go and being triumphant over an election victory is transitory. All things change over time! On this my life experience has re-enforced Qoheleth’s teachings. As you know, Qoheleth is the Hebrew title for the writer of Ecclesiastes.

Nor did I make a positive Biblical case for neither socialism nor Marxism. You might have concluded such from my negative framing of my questions. Your reply made Biblical assertions about capitalism, Marxism and socialism. I am not so brave as to draw any such conclusions. The Biblical references were illustrating the American journalist conclusions about the welfare state could be question within the context of Christian ethics.

I must disagree with you on the Acts. My view is that Luke believed that the Church had replaced the Israel as the people of God. Given this, what happens in Acts 4 and 5 is not emergency provisions or a voluntary society but the permanent expression of the new Kingdom of God. I am aware with the potential anti-Semitic problems with this interpretation of Luke. I also agree that other texts could be brought to support a “capitalist” interpretation of a Christian understanding of the state.

However, Luke 16:1-8 is not one of these. Under the Western Australia Criminal Code the ‘manager’ could be charged with s.378 stealing as a servant and s.407 fraud. I would be surprised if Victoria did not have similar laws. The basis of capitalism has always being the appropriation of wealth and calling it private property. Or are you taking the line that property is theft?


Some other replies to your article have argued that Christianity leads to conservatism labelling Christian socialism as an oxymoron. Like the Great Methodist Christian socialist Donald Soper, I wounder how a conservative can be a Christian. Christian socialism is the oldest of the modern Christian political movements. From them came the trade union movement and the Labor Party. Both Rudd and I claim that tradition for ourselves but with different policy outcomes. Unlike Rudd, it leads to the mistake of joining the Communist Party in the mid-eighties and my current membership of the Greens from the mid-nineties. Marx derided Christian socialist as ideal socialists. Marx advocated a ‘scientific socialism’.

I have always thought that the compassionate conservative as the great modern oxymoron. Will Wilkinson is right, welfare handouts are demoralising. However, begging for charity from the wealthy is both demoralising and ineffective. Australia prior to Medibank Public or the current state decay of Australian teeth illustrates the ineffectiveness of charity! It is interesting that the Old Testament did not help the poor or disposed by either method. The second harvest was for the poor to take. This suggests that the Biblical Israel had different views about private property.

Muehlenberg Again!

Bill Muehlenberg’s blog has provoked me to the word processor again! In a triumphant piece on the French presidential elections entitled Conservatives 1, Socialists 0, he berates the progressive political groups again. So I gave him the following reply

And what if the Socialists win the next election? Success and the proper way are transitory this side of glory. Whatever is the shape of the great eschatological event, sin will continually dominate all human affairs. The divine counter balance is in John 3:16; Christ came because God love the whole world. My interpretation is that means Christians and everyone else.

One silly question, when has a good society be determined by its economic performance alone. Why is the Stefan Bergheim of Deutsche Bank Research economic centric approach to the good society the ultimate measure for any Christian? Luke’s Gospel and Acts seems to disagree Wilkinson assertion that “welfare handouts, lower levels of inequality, and bigger government have little or no positive effect” on happiness. How does that equate with the common purse of Acts 4 and 5 or the parable of the dishonest servant of Luke 16?

The layout of the last paragraph is questionable but, I think, one understands the general is idea.

Restarting My Blog

I have decided to restart my blog. Why? I have been cleaning out my life and chucking everything. So I have been doing so on the computer to. I stand by most of the things I have said before, including a defence of political violence. This is unpopular in the post 911 world.

However, I decided to restart because it can be a clean slate. This blog has two functions. The first get me to publish my non-fiction works which include opinion pieces and sermons. The aim is to make sure I can write. Like all skills writing requires practice. I need to practice!.

The other is to counter the continual crap from the Christian bigots. They see themselves as the Christian right. However , I doubt they would have sat on the right side of the French King. They hate gays and think that evangelism requires denigration and they continually name call. Being my brothers in Christ, I need to start countering them.

It is an ineffectual method but I pray that God will bless it.