Should Christians speak out in the political process?

My answer to the question posed above is “yes”… what’s yours?

Following on from my so called “open letter” about school chaplaincy funding from last week,* I’d like to address one of the comments that made its way back to me via a third party. I won’t name names, lest I betray any confidences…

“[I] wondered if he was too hasty in ruling out involvement of Christians in public discourse in an arena like education”

This isn’t what I’m trying to do at all. I’m actually trying to open a more helpful variety of engaging with the political realm, and those in opposition to Christianity, by hearing their criticisms and concerns, and weighing them up against these five starting assumptions. I’m not advocating that Christians acquiesce to any change in the law that will bring us one step closer to the lion’s den. I don’t have a martyr complex, figuratively or literally.

I don’t know if people have followed along on any of the now quite numerous debates I’ve had online regarding a Christian stance on gay marriage. There have been a few. Here, and elsewhere, and again…

Much smarter people than I have disagreed with my position on the relationship between church and state in each of those threads. But because I tend to see my own position in overwhelming clarity, while at least imagining that I have a good grasp of my interlocutor’s arguments, I still haven’t budged.

I think I’d describe my approach to politics as revolving around five poles, or starting assumptions. Perhaps you don’t share them. But at least you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

1. Jesus is the true ruler of the world (Philippians 2). Governments are appointed by God (Romans 13). As Christians our job is to proclaim the gospel to people (Matthew 28), and live such lives among the pagans that our proclamation has some appeal (1 Peter 2).

2. While the earth is the Lord’s, and while he has established guidelines for living lives pleasing to him, and while what the Bible says is sin is sinful… We can not seek to impose Christian morality onto people who don’t have the Holy Spirit, nor should we necessarily try to do that, it is ultimately a bandaid solution if point 1 is not taken into account.

3. Separation of church and state is a good thing, that should be upheld by both church and state – for the sake of clarity on both sides.

4. The nature of a democracy is such that all members of society have equal say about how society is governed, and ultimately it means that the will of the majority will become the law of the land. All parties in a democracy have the right to speak out in favour of their positions, but from a government’s perspective, elected representatives are elected to represent their constituency not to be the puppet of special interest groups (including Christian special interest groups). Special interest groups, or organised lobby groups, aren’t necessarily a bad thing, unless their clout outweighs their supporter base through graft, corruption, or manipulation.

5. Liberal democracies are also focused on providing individual liberties – which are valuable for Christians, especially as they pertain to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of public assembly.

Given those points, if you want to speak out like Danny Naliah, Family First, Australian Christian Lobby, or even somebody more moderate – that’s great. You can’t necessarily claim to be speaking for God, or for Christians, though – you’re simply participating in the democratic process. And arguments starting with “The Bible says” or “God says” in a secular society aren’t going to get a long way when we’re increasingly not just secular, but non-religious. But you should feel free to do it. I’m not, in the words of No Doubt, saying “don’t speak” – it’s not my place to suggest that. I’d just love to see Christians thinking before they speak – about why we feel entitled to be able to impose our views on the majority.

I’d love more Christians to be entering into political discourse – even if they disagree with me, perhaps especially then. I don’t think that means starting our own party, or putting together an Australian Christian Lobby that acts just like any other self-interest group with a powerful supporters base. I’d love more Christians to join real parties (and even better, The Greens). That would be a great witness to our love for the world, and would help out with point 1 from above.

I’d especially love more Christians to be speaking out in favour of 3, recognising 2, and being wary of falling foul of point 4. Which is the approach I’m trying to advocate when it comes to both gay marriage and school chaplaincy, and indeed, politics in general.

I’m not saying “don’t say anything” – I don’t know where the notion that I was suggesting this in the chaplaincy post comes from. I’m not about acquiescence – I’d actually rather hear Christians speaking out against government handouts (which was the position I was trying to articulate) rather than just speaking out in favour of them. The truth, so far as I can figure it out, in the chaplaincy debate – is that we don’t really want the government’s money if it means compromising our position in the schools (where we enjoy the ability to teach children about Christianity). We also don’t want chaplains and religious education lumped together so they can be thrown out together. But even if both are, all is not lost. I haven’t really heard many people saying that in this debate – certainly not on Facebook.

Is it possible that our most positive witness is if we argue that God has given us all an amount of liberty (see point 5), but that we hope people use that liberty to live lives pleasing to him, through submitting to the lordship of Jesus? But if they don’t, we don’t want to force them. We don’t want to spoil the time they have on this earth. And we want the right to disagree with them, respectfully, in honouring our own beliefs and traditions.

Is there a danger of losing more than we’re bargaining for because of the way we’re so dogmatically trying to shoehorn everybody into Christian behaviour by organising lobby groups and political parties and not engaging with the world? Family First is never going to be a legitimate political force in Australia. They’re simply a mouthpiece for people who may not admit it but would like to legislate Christian values, or the Danny Naliah types.

The more we appear to be on the fringes, the more we appear to be relying on some sort of special pleading for our own personal point of view in an increasingly diverse nation, and the more we appear to be condemning other people’s exercising of liberties based on our “imaginary friend” and our “2000 year old book”, the less appealing Jesus is… why not let God, through the Holy Spirit, and the Bible, convict people of their sin, and then judge them accordingly – rather than trying to play judge, jury, and executioner ourselves (or at least legislature, judiciary, and executive…).

I’m going to spend the next few days reading through Andrew Cameron’s material (alongside K-Rudd and John Anderson’s material) from the 2005 New College Lectures on Church & State.

*Where, if you care to, you can read how I engage with a couple of atheist Facebook commenters from the platform I’ve outlined above…

April 12, 2011

The real McCoy…

My friend, and soccer buddy, Brad McCoy is back on the blogging horse. He’s posted literally a dozen times in the last few days. Maybe work is boring him or something – but it’s good to have life in the bones of that blog. He writes about fun political things and ethical things and other things. His post on a Christian response to gay marriage is right up my alley – I’m glad to find other people out there who have a similar position on the issue to me. It’s reassuring. I like to comment there, though I worry that I’m turning into one of those pedantic argument pickers that nobody likes…

So you should go and throw your two cents in the ring too. Or in his cap. Blogging is a little like busking. Sometimes.

This is not a photo of Brad, it is a photo of a busker in Christchurch.

Sometimes blogging is just about keeping one’s balls in the air… profound.

April 12, 2011

Banana art… do, do, do, do, do

This is pretty appeeling (sic – pun intended), though I’d like to see it incorporate the inevitable browning that goes on once the skin comes off a banana.

There’s a bunch of these (pun intended) hanging out at this site written entirely in Japanese – so if you can read Japanese get on over there – otherwise, you can find the pick of the crop at Geekologie.

Bizarre update – as I tagged this post I noticed two odd things, this is not the first post I’ve used the tag “banana art” for, nor is it the first time I’ve used this exact heading (the last was in September 2009) albeit with a differently punctuated metre.

April 12, 2011

Art criticism imitating life: The Dunning-Kruger Effect, Modern Art, and the importance of a frame

If there’s one truth I’ve learned in my time on the Internet it’s that people will be at least 25% meaner behind a keyboard. Unless they put their real name to what they’re writing, but even then they’re probably 10% meaner because so much of communication occurs outside the words we use.

But this is just hilarious.

David Foster Wallace is considered by many to be one of the written voices of his generation. His essays regularly (and posthumously) appear in lists of the best essays ever written. He wrote some books. Including a book called Infinite Jest.

Somebody posted the first page of the book to Yahoo questions asking for “feedback”… hilarity ensued.

“This needs some serious work… your writing is not formal… it is written in informal language that imitates the qualities commonly believed to be characteristic of formal language.

I recommend checking out “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk and E.B White… that should help to clear a few things up.”

And another:

“You know your story needs more work, so you don’t need anyone to tell you what you already know.”

And another…

“No discernible voice/tone in this writing. Rambling descriptions. I, frankly, do not care where each and every person is seated. I don’t care what shoe you’re wearing.
If you take out all the unnecessary details, you’d be left with about seven words.”

Something similar happened on Flickr, when a photo by the pioneer of photo-journalism, Henri Cartier-Bresson, was put up in a “Deleteme” thread – where “good photographers” comment on the work of budding photographers by voting to save or delete the photo.

In this case this photo was roundly condemned, and advice was distributed to the photographer (for some reason this photo has been flagged as inappropriate and you have to log in to Flickr to see the thread)…

Here’s the photo.

Some of the comments:

“hard to tell at this size but is everything meant to be moving in this shot, all seems blurred”

“so small
so blurry
to better show a sense of movement SOMETHING has to be in sharp focus”

“This looks contrived, which is not a bad thing. If this is a planned shot, it just didn’t come out right. If you can round up Mario, I would do it again. This time put the camera on a tripod and use the smallest aperture possible to get the best DoF. What I would hope for is that the railings are sharp and that mario on the bike shows a blur. Must have the foreground sharp, though. Without that, the image will never fly.”

There are a couple of things going on in these situations for me – one is the idea that an artist’s name or reputation is enough to turn something substandard into something that people will describe as a “masterpiece,” while the other is that there’s a big difference between being educated and believing you’re educated – all these “experts” on both forums are assessing these works based solely on their own personal preferences developed by their own environment and experience.

Those two examples of this phenomenon at play – Dunning-Kruger meets the internet forum meets modern art – came from Kottke.org, and remind me of this little story, where Joshua Bell, one of the world’s most famous violinists played one of the world’s most expensive violins (with a $3 million plus price tag), at a train station, and nobody noticed. This was an experiment conducted by the Washington Post and covered in this story.

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run — for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

It was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch. Try speeding it up, and it becomes one of those herky-jerky World War I-era silent newsreels. The people scurry by in comical little hops and starts, cups of coffee in their hands, cellphones at their ears, ID tags slapping at their bellies, a grim danse macabre to indifference, inertia and the dingy, gray rush of modernity.

The Washington Post piece points out the truth underlying the responses to the written works of David Foster Wallace, and the picture by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Context is king. Art requires a frame. Something to point out why people should sit up and take notice, this is the only truth that keeps the doors of the Gallery of Modern Art open – a frame provides a point of reference.

“When you play for ticket-holders,” Bell explains, “you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I’m already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don’t like me? What if they resent my presence . . .”

He was, in short, art without a frame. Which, it turns out, may have a lot to do with what happened — or, more precisely, what didn’t happen — on January 12.”

Fascinating stuff.

April 12, 2011

Tyndale v More: Men, seasons and the KJV

Sir Thomas More was an interesting chap – lauded for his philosophical writing (like Utopia) and his ability to speak truth to power (see A Man For All Seasons).

But, on the whole, he wasn’t a nice chap. Especially so far as bible translator William Tyndale was concerned.

This piece by atheist polemicist Christopher Hitchens on the literary merit of the King James Version is fascinating (on a number of levels). Here’s a snippet:

“Until the early middle years of the 16th century, when King Henry VIII began to quarrel with Rome about the dialectics of divorce and decapitation, a short and swift route to torture and death was the attempt to print the Bible in English. It’s a long and stirring story, and its crux is the head-to-head battle between Sir Thomas More and William Tyndale (whose name in early life, I am proud to say, was William Hychyns).

Their combat fully merits the term “fundamental.” Infuriating More, Tyndale whenever possible was loyal to the Protestant spirit by correctly translating the word ecclesia to mean “the congregation” as an autonomous body, rather than “the church” as a sacrosanct institution above human law. In English churches, state-selected priests would merely incant the liturgy. Upon hearing the words “Hoc” and “corpus” (in the “For this is my body” passage), newly literate and impatient artisans in the pews would mockingly whisper, “Hocus-pocus,” finding a tough slang term for the religious obfuscation at which they were beginning to chafe.

The cold and righteous More, backed by his “Big Brother” the Pope and leading an inner party of spies and inquisitors, watched the Channel ports for smugglers risking everything to import sheets produced by Tyndale, who was forced to do his translating and printing from exile. The rack and the rope were not stinted with dissenters, and eventually Tyndale himself was tracked down, strangled, and publicly burned.”

Tyndale’s work was a precursor to the KJV. Hitchens waxes lyrical about the literary benefits of the KJV in this article, which you should read, and be ready to quote, the next time somebody tells you that religion poisons everything.

“Though I am sometimes reluctant to admit it, there really is something “timeless” in the Tyndale/King James synthesis. For generations, it provided a common stock of references and allusions, rivaled only by Shakespeare in this respect. It resounded in the minds and memories of literate people, as well as of those who acquired it only by listening. From the stricken beach of Dunkirk in 1940, faced with a devil’s choice between annihilation and surrender, a British officer sent a cable back home. It contained the three words “but if not … ” All of those who received it were at once aware of what it signified. In the Book of Daniel, the Babylonian tyrant Nebuchadnezzar tells the three Jewish heretics Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that if they refuse to bow to his sacred idol they will be flung into a “burning fiery furnace.” They made him an answer: “If it be so, our god whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, o King. / But if not, be it known unto thee, o king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”

A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one. To seek restlessly to update it or make it “relevant” is to miss the point, like yearning for a hip-hop Shakespeare. “Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward,” says the Book of Job. Want to try to improve that for Twitter? And so bleak and spare and fatalistic—almost non-religious—are the closing verses of Ecclesiastes that they were read at the Church of England funeral service the unbeliever George Orwell had requested in his will: “Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home. … Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. / Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was.”

April 12, 2011

Bang Bang: Best dog leash ever

Take your dog for a walk past PETA’s head office with this bad boy.

Still in the concept stage, I think, but worth keeping tabs on if you’ve got a canine and a sense of humour.

From Art Lebedev Studio.

April 11, 2011

Puppets sing “I can see clearly now the sin has gone”

Church concerts should be kept behind closed doors and not posted on YouTube.

Robbed of context most things performed at such events look even stupider.

Via Christian Nightmares.

April 11, 2011

Predator: The Musical – If it bleeds we can kill it

A slight language warning in this video. Well. Not slight. It contains an f-bomb. But it also contains somebody singing like Arnie and footage from Predator.

April 11, 2011

Bacon Cologne: Smells like swine spirit

If you want to play the pied piper role for a city full of bacon lovers you need every possible bacony tool at your disposal. Including the subtle scent of bacon found in this cologne from fargginay.

A common question, does this fragrance really smell like bacon? The answer is yes & no. Our Gold formula offers a memorable sizzling citrus aroma with an ever so slight hint of bacon and the fun… is in finding it. This artisanal Gold formula is lovingly crafted with a pure essential oil blend of mandarin, bergamot, grapefruit, lemon, nutmeg, pimento berry, black pepper & a touch of sweet, a smidgen of savory, and one pinch of Bacon salty goodness. What are you waiting for?

Like every magical product it has a magical backstory.

The year was 1920 and quite by accident John Fargginay, a Parisian butcher discovered the ability to dramatically elevate his customers’ mood with a secret recipe blending 11 popular pure essential oils with the essence of…bacon. As the story goes, film stars & heads of state would frequent his shop to procure the magical elixir. With a wink of the eye and the secret code, “fargginay,” customers would be slipped a discreet pouch containing the formula said to trigger pleasant memories. After a massive fire on July 4, 1924, the business was lost and so was the formula…Until now. Ladies & gentlemen, behold, bacōn fragrances, by fargginay. The time has come to uncover a new level of awesome.

Via Uncrate.

April 11, 2011

A very sandy easter – incredible Easter videos drawn in sand

My very talented friend Tim, and his very talented brother, have put together these sand art Bible stories. You should get a hold of them if you’re looking for a bit of multimedia for your easter service.

April 11, 2011

Fun times in harbour town

Our weekend in Sydney is drawing to a close. We’ve had a great time, though only ticked off six of the seven things on my list of things to do, and only visiting three of the six cafes. Apparently Sydney still closes on a Sunday.

The wedding was fun, it was great to spend time with cousins who we’ve barely met. There’s something to be said for a family heritage that produces so many ministry minded people. I really love being part of the family I’m part of. What was even more fun was seeing people from Maclean (where I grew up), and Dalby (where Robyn grew up), at the wedding and having to explain why we were at this wedding of their friends. Fun times.

We skipped the Manly game, in favour of dinner with good friends. Which was great. I haven’t laughed as much as I have this weekend since I watched Four Lions two weeks ago.

Church By The Bridge on Sunday was a most enjoyable experience. So much singing. Never have I sung so much in an evangelical church service and enjoyed it. It was a refreshing change. And very friendly. Though it helped that I knew a bunch of people, including the guy on welcoming, from various AFES events and other bizarre quirks of Christianity’s two degrees of separation. It was fun meeting Ali in real life too. Meeting blog people is sometimes a little awkward because you know more about somebody than you should on first real life meeting. But this wasn’t.

I love the smells of Newtown, and we had two great dinners from the Sultan’s Table and Faheem’s Fast Food (a terrific sub-continental curry place).

You can read about our adventures in coffee on thebeanstalker.com.

April 11, 2011

Tumblrweed: Chicks with Steve Buscemeyes

Freaky. Steve Buscemi has notably freaky eyes. He looks like an ice addict. So sticking his eyes on lady faces is scary. But that’s what this single serving tumblog is all about.

First up we’ve got Pink, and then Angelina Jolie.

Damien recommend this one on Facebook – thanks Damien. I will never sleep again.

April 11, 2011

Today: Coffee, Zoo, Greek Food, Gould Books

Ahh Sydney.

So, today, we walked down King St, visited Moore College (where we stood in a corner and people watched and my wife was shocked by how young and cool Con Campbell looked, she had pictured him as a 60 year old englishman), walked to Redfern, caught a train going in the wrong direction, so we caught a different train. Then, finally, we arrived at our destination – Mecca Espresso on King St in the CBD (not to be confused with the aforementioned King St).

I’ll be reviewing Mecca on thebeanstalker.com, but I tried my first ever Clover brew. The Clover, when released, was a $15,000 piece of technology. It’s the black box in the middle on this bench:

It was nice. Smelt like fruity tea. Tasted like coffee.

We spent the morning with my friend Paul. Which was tops. Then walked to Circular Quay, caught the ferry to Taronga, and walked around the zoo for the afternoon. Which Robyn loved and I enjoyed.

There were turtles.

And rabbit-eating dragons…

And primates.

And giraffes.

And other animals.

Though, some were missing…

Then it was a reversal of the morning, though we added dinner at a cheap Greek place, and about 45 minutes poring through the shelves at Gould Books.

A good day.

April 8, 2011

1 pixel clock: counting down the hours in slow-mo

Nice idea. Get it as an iPhone app, or a webapp, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re into incremental displays of the changing time then it doesn’t get much smaller than this… The 1 Pixel Clock.

April 7, 2011

Life imitating computer game: Pizza Tycoon

I used to play a really fun game on the ‘puter called Pizza Tycoon (if you believe in abandonware you can download it here (I have no idea if that link is safe). The purpose of the game was to design and build pizzas and pizza restaurants that you then managed. You had to buy shop fronts. Hire staff. Set prices. You could also be a criminal. Where you could join the mafia and rise in the ranks, or just stick to sabotaging your competitor’s shops with bombs and rodents.

There’s a whole website dedicated to tips and tricks (and pizza recipes) here.
Well. Somebody obviously played that game and thought that it was representative of the real world.

An Upper Darby pizza shop owner has been charged with putting mice in the shops of several competitors.

In what Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood called a case of “food terrorism by mice,” the owner of Nina’s Bella Pizza is charged with trying to sabotage his competitors by setting mice loose in their shops.

Nikolas Galiatsatos, 47, now faces charges of disorderly conduct, harassment and animal cruelty.

Chitwood said two of his officers happened to be eating lunch in Verona Pizza on West Chester when Galiatsatos, 47, entered the business carrying a bag and then asked to use the bathroom.

When the owner of the shop inspected the bathroom, he found footprints on the toilet. The owner checked it out and discovered a bag stashed in the ceiling of the bathroom.

Officers suspected a possible drug deal and checked it out. But instead of drugs in the bag they found a bag containing several mice.

April 7, 2011