Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas from Chuck Norris (and some airline)
Anything JCVD can do, Chuck can do better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W82sMSMJJg
Here’s the JCVD original (in case you missed it).
And as a bonus. Chuck Norris fights Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaPxgxTMT-4
Tired of #firstworldproblems (like looking for Christmas presents)? Give #thirdworldpresents this year
This video is apparently old (Robyn tells me she saw it months ago)… but in the tradition of celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves (scroll down), here are some third world people reading first world problems to raise money for clean water where it is needed.
For $25 you can buy someone the gift of giving clean water to a family or community from TEAR’s Really Useful Gift catalogue this Christmas.
Here are some celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves on Late Nights with Jimmy Fallon…
Some Christmas videos for churches
You can find links to good videos for Christmas services all over the place at this time of year. Well. At Communicate Jesus anyway. Most of these feature the talents of some talented people from across the seas. If you want Australian made videos. Here are a couple.
Sand Bible (Luke 1-2, Matthew 2 – in sand) – Grab a five pack. With or without narration.
Sand Bible is a little project from some talented Brisbane brothers.
Or there’s this one – Love Came Down, from Creek Road Media last Christmas.
Three days in the belly of a boat
Call him Jonah.
This is the look of a man confronting his rescuer after three days believing he was going to die. Trapped in the belly of a boat.
Back in June, a tugboat cook named Harrison Odjegba Okene spent almost three days in the upturned hull of the boat he’d been sailing in. 30 metres below the surface. A rescue diver sent to retrieve bodies found him. And was sufficiently freaked out when the hand he suspected belonged to a floating corpse grabbed him.
The story is here. But the really stunning bit is the footage of the rescue. Hooray for ubiquitous cameras.
He’d been on the toilet when the boat sank.
“He groped his way out of the toilet and tried to find a vent, propping doors open as he moved on. He discovered some tools and a life vest with two flashlights, which he stuffed into his shorts.
When he found a cabin of the sunken vessel that felt safe, he began the long wait, getting colder and colder as he played back a mental tape of his life — remembering his mother, friends, mostly the woman he’d married five years before with whom he hadn’t yet fathered a child.”
To make the sermon illustration complete, Okene is a Christian.
“I started calling on the name of God. … I started reminiscing on the verses I read before I slept. I read the Bible from Psalm 54 to 92. My wife had sent me the verses to read that night when she called me before I went to bed.”
Psalm 57 seems particularly apt.
1 Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me,
for in you I take refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings
until the disaster has passed.
2 I cry out to God Most High,
to God, who vindicates me.
3 He sends from heaven and saves me,
rebuking those who hotly pursue me—
God sends forth his love and his faithfulness.
4 I am in the midst of lions;
I am forced to dwell among ravenous beasts—
men whose teeth are spears and arrows,
whose tongues are sharp swords.
5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.
6 They spread a net for my feet—
I was bowed down in distress.
They dug a pit in my path—
but they have fallen into it themselves.
7 My heart, O God, is steadfast,
my heart is steadfast;
I will sing and make music.
8 Awake, my soul!
Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.
9 I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.
10 For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
11 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.
As does Psalm 61…
1 Hear my cry, O God;
listen to my prayer.
2 From the ends of the earth I call to you,
I call as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
3 For you have been my refuge,
a strong tower against the foe.
4 I long to dwell in your tent forever
and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.
5 For you, God, have heard my vows;
you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name.
6 Increase the days of the king’s life,
his years for many generations.
7 May he be enthroned in God’s presence forever;
appoint your love and faithfulness to protect him.
8 Then I will ever sing in praise of your name
and fulfill my vows day after day.
The moral to the story must surely be read Psalms when you’re on a boat.
The power of stories
This should have a profound impact on how we share Jesus with people. Less propositions. More stories.
I’m aware of the irony in that sentence. It would have a profound impact on how I blogged if I was able to figure out how to tell a story about telling stories – and just how powerful they are.
Book Review: Alex Ferguson, My Autobiography
I love Manchester United. I have always admired Alex Ferguson. Even when he appeared to be a dolt.
So I bought his autobiography on release day – it promised to be tell-all, revealing, and controversial. The greatest controversy isn’t what Fergie had to say about people like Mark Bosnich. It is just how inane the prose in this book is. It was clearly rushed to print. It is repetitive. Self-indulgent. And in need of a good edit. Some random examples of just how stilted and language-defying the writing is are included below for your education.
Do not buy this book if you don’t like knowing how sausages are made.
On giving criticism
“Faced with the need to confront a player who had performed below our expectation, I might have said: ‘That was rubbish, that.’ But then I would follow it up with, ‘For a player of your ability.’ That was for picking them back up from the initial blow. Criticise but balance it out with encouragement. ‘Why are you doing that? You’re better than that.’”
An “amusing” anecdote
I was coming out of the Grand National meeting with Cathy in April 2013 and two Liverpool fans came up alongside to say, ‘Hey Fergie, we’ll hammer you next season.’ They were good lads. ‘Well, you’ll need to buy nine players,’ I said. They looked crestfallen. ‘Nine?’ One said: ‘Wait till I tell the boys in the pub that.’ I think he must have been an Everton fan. ‘I don’t think we need nine,’ said the other as he traipsed away. I nearly shouted, ‘Well, seven, then.’ Everyone was laughing.
7 Scrolls of Suffering: Some good Aussie Hip Hop
Check this out. It’s good stuff from my friend Nat aka Sounds Like Dsipl. He’s produced this 14 track Hip Hop album including 7 collaborative songs with other people involved in the Change the Tape label (on Bandcamp | on Facebook). 7 Scrolls of Suffering. I don’t just like it because he’s my friend though. I promise. It’s good. Plus, you can pay whatever you think it’s worth.
Each scrolls tells a story about how people who follow Jesus overcame suffering.
Nat has had his own share of suffering and I love how much he loves Jesus, and other people, how he’s persevered and grown, and how keen he is to tell other people about Jesus using the mediums that he loves and has at his disposal.
Get it. Sling him a few bucks. Stick around for the bonus “scroll” in track 14…
A modern take on the persuasive triangle (ethos, pathos, logos)
I’m doing some bits and pieces of assessment for a subject I’m taking this semester on Christian Leadership. I can’t help myself when it comes to seeing leadership as getting the mix of ethos, logos, and pathos right. Because, well, I’m obsessed. And because I think leadership and persuasive communication are incredibly linked. And that leadership involves persuading people to live a particular way.
Anyway. Here’s what I’m thinking might be a nice way to sum up what these are and how they relate to being a leader. They even play nice with the Greek roots of the words…
Live the ethic. Explain the logic. Show the path.
I think there’s a fourth part to it – that’s also part of sublime communication. Making the links between the three clear by integrating the three, so that they’re almost interchangeable.
Live the ethic. Live the logic. Live the path.
Explain the ethic. Explain the logic. Explain the path.
Show the ethic. Show the logic. Show the path.
I am trying to find a more evocative word than “show”…
But I reckon you can apply this model of leadership to Jesus, and to Paul, and that’s part of what sets them apart as world changing leaders.
12 propositions about image-bearing being at the heart of the Biblical Narrative
Everywhere I turn these days, in the pages of the Bible at least, but also in some thinking about media and communications stuff I’m blown away by how significant the “image of God” is in the storyline of the Bible. It is vastly unrelated as part of the narrative.
You can basically chart how well humanity is going at being human by how near or far they are from carrying out their function as image bearers. What their hearts are beating for. The heart functions as something of a yardstick for measuring imageness.
Like the whole story of the Bible, it culminates in Jesus.
Here are some of the things I keep noticing.
1. Bearing an “image” is about representation, not just replication. Images have always had an incredible power to communicate and change others. And have been used as communication tools by nations and religious organisations since Genesis was written. Idols in ancient near eastern temples were made alive by a ceremony where their mouths were opened. Once they were “alive” – they were believed to manifest, and speak for, the god they represented. Eden is a temple. Adam is God’s image in the heart of his temple. The word image in Genesis 1-2, and its near eastern cognates (words that sound like it in other similar languages), is almost universally used for these idols of gods and god-kings (kings who presented themselves as divine representatives).
2. We all bear the image of something – at the heart of Adam and Eve’s rejection of God was a decision to promote their own image. You can’t not bear an image of the god you worship – even if the god is yourself and your picture of success. I think it’s telling that while Adam was created in God’s image, Seth was created in Adam’s…
5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” – Genesis 3
When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.
3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. – Genesis 5.
3. The image we bear is closely related to the things we turn into idols. The things we get excited about. The desires of our hearts. Our hearts no longer desire God. They are broken.
“The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?” – Jeremiah 17:9
Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all? – Ezekiel 14:3
The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. – Genesis 6
4. Part of the brokenness we feel, and the longing we naturally have is to do with trying to recapture the image we were created to bear. This supplies the narrative tension in the Old Testament.
But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. – Deuteronomy 4:29
Then in the nations where they have been carried captive, those who escape will remember me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their detestable practices. – Ezekiel 6:9
“But as for those whose hearts are devoted to their vile images and detestable idols, I will bring down on their own heads what they have done, declares the Sovereign Lord.” – Ezekiel 11:21
5. We can only recapture that image if God re-creates us.
Therefore speak to them and tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: When any of the Israelites set up idols in their hearts and put a wicked stumbling block before their faces and then go to a prophet, I the Lord will answer them myself in keeping with their great idolatry. I will do this to recapture the hearts of the people of Israel, who have all deserted me for their idols.’
6. The residual image of God in our humanity gives humans dignity and value, even if the image of God is no longer fully realised. It also enables us to know what “good” is, even if we can’t do it. I think this is the tension Paul is reflecting on in Romans 7 (which leads to Romans 8, which culminates in Romans 8:29).
7. We become, and bear the image of, the idols we behold. Part of the damage sin does to what it means to be human is that we can’t behold God the way we were made to. Our idols work because they shape our lives around our desires.
Those who make them will be like them,
and so will all who trust in them. – Psalm 115
For their hearts were devoted to their idols. – Ezekiel 20:6
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. – Ezekiel 36:26
8. The tools we use shape us as much as we shape things with them. Nothing is neutral. The things we choose to use and make part of our lives rub off on us. We should try really hard not to become beholden to the things we hold or methods we use.
9. We can’t re-image God without a change of heart – the whole narrative of the Old Testament, culminating in becoming New Creations in Jesus, by God’s Spirit – can be understood as telling the story of humanity’s repetition of Adam and Eve’s attempt to make a name for themselves, not God (ie build their own image), and our inability to properly bear God’s image, even in our best moments. The promise of the new covenant and new hearts is a promise to restore the image of God and its communicative function in humans.
The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live. Deuteronomy 30:6
I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart. Jeremiah 24:7
7 The path of the righteous is level;
you, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth.
8 Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws,
we wait for you;
your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts. – Isaiah 26
10. Jesus being “the image of the invisible God” is hugely anthropologically significant. Especially when we are being conformed into his image. This transformation isn’t just restoration, it’s renovation.
11. The image of Jesus is at the heart of Paul’s imitation of Jesus – especially, this is the image of Jesus on the cross as described in Philippians 2. It’s also at the heart of the ethos bit of our communication as Christians – people who bear the image of Jesus and become more like him through the transformation of our hearts.
12.The mission of God, and thus the mission of the church, is to see the image of God restored in people, by the Gospel of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. These people become communicative agents of God as they represent God through their changed humanity and heart.
Anthropology in a Beautiful Eulogy: a song about being human
I really really like this song. I can sort of take or leave the music (I like it well enough), but the understanding of what it means to be human, and what it means to follow Jesus, that it presents is pretty spectacular.
I’m just a man of unclean lips, I’ve only seen a glimpse but everywhere I look I see His finger prints, all things were made through Him we received His revelation so we reflect it when we breathe and the concepts we conceive are born of spiritual seed manifest in the material realm as musical composition the rhythm of heart beats transformed by the Gospel and Godly wisdom I’m an instrument of His mercy, unworthy but still He uses me the beauty of the eulogy, through His death we are truly free free indeed, the condemnation and the bondage of our sin was abolished on the cross & He alone accomplished it God made Himself known exposing His own nature and His glory through His son, the revelation of Our Savior the fullness of God born in human form, deity in the flesh we need the Spirit and the Word to open our eyes so we can see correct – the Vital Lens
It’s from this album. Which is a free download from NoiseTrade.
Q&A, the other Hitch, and some dangerous ideas…
Did you catch Q&A last night? I’ve largely given up watching Q&A, unless Malcolm Turnbull or Tanya Plibersek are on. They seem to be able to humanise the political catch phrases better than most. Tony Jones irks me. I’m turned off by the turnstile approach to pumping politicians through the panel who simply foist us with whatever party line there is to be foisted upon us, with minimal humanity, minimal engagement, and maximum robotechnics. Nobody seems to change their minds as a result of an hour of twitter interrupted grandstanding, and the show is so pitched towards the self-proclaimed intelligentsia that I actually feel a little bit dirty watching it. A case in point is the sycophantic applause bandied round on Twitter following K-Rudd’s Q&A performance, followed by the panning the general public gave him for nastily and arrogantly going for the jugular when he answered a Christian who held the position on gay marriage that K-Rudd himself had signed up for until a couple of months prior.
Q&A barely has mojo.
But I do tune in when there’s likely to be a discussion about Christianity – as was the case last night, in the Festival of Dangerous Ideas special edition, featuring gayctivist Dan Savage, feminist provocateur Hanna Rosin, feminist elder stateswoman Germaine Greer, and Peter “brother of Christopher” Hitchens.
Peter Hitchens is a Christian. Some time in his history a switch in his head flicked and he went from Trotskyist to Tory, from atheist to Christian. He’s an interesting character in part because he’s elegant and eloquent, but he’s also supercilious and appears curmudgeonly, and in part because he’s got interesting street cred as someone who significantly shifted his position on issues of politics, philosophy, and religion while in the public eye. He changed his mind. There are so few public intellectuals who do that. That alone makes him worth listening to. Even if listening to him is a pain. At times. Because he sounds like such a toff.
Last night on Q&A it was Hitch 2.0 verse the world. The champions of the world were Savage, Greer, and Rosin, with Jones offering a little support every now and then. Hitch held his own – he doesn’t back down from his opinions, he seemingly seems to see no reason to do so – he also refused to make eye contact with his fellow panelists, and was often guilty of dehumanising them or using personal pronouns in a less-than-vaguely dismissive way when referring to his fellow panelists. It was uncomfortable television.
Usually on Q&A there’s someone you can get behind and cheer on, or at least agree with. My ability to empathise with the panelists was pretty lacking last night. I came close to identifying with Germaine Greer, who was at least prepared to admit that the sexual revolution doesn’t come for free. When you read the transcript of the evening, Hitch 2.0 is much more reasonable than his manner suggested, and he was certainly shouted down whenever he spoke – by the other panellists if not the audience.
Hitch 2.0 opened with a defence of Christian morality, and something of a requiem to Christendom.
PETER HITCHENS: Well, Christianity more or less collapsed in Europe after 1914 and the First World War and when it ceased to exist, all kinds of other things rushed in to take its place. But mostly what’s rushed in to take its place is what I call ‘selfism’: the idea that we are all sovereign in our own bodies, that no-one can tell us what to do with our own bodies and that everything that we do is okay, provided we think we aren’t harming anybody else. Quite often the truth is that we are harming other people but hiding it from ourselves.
HANNA ROSIN: But who gets to decide what’s corrupt? So, you know, drinking, drugs, gay sex. I mean sort of where do you draw the line at what seems totally arbitrary?
PETER HITCHENS: Where do you draw the line? You draw the line fundamentally, as far as I’m concerned, around about the Sermon on the Mount and those instructions given to us and I have absolutely no shame in saying that I believe that the Christian religion was the greatest possession which the human race had, which it’s now, in large parts of the world, rather busily throwing away.
His big dangerous idea seemed to be that we’ve got to take responsibility for our actions, and admit that we’re inherently selfish. Which is beautifully orthodox Christian anthropology. He was, by word if not by tone, self-effacing and humble.
“DAN SAVAGE: Consent matters and harm matters. Consent matters and harm matters. If there’s consent and no one is being harmed it’s no one’s business what an individual chooses to do with his or her body.
PETER HITCHENS: Yes, but the question…
TONY JONES: No, I’m going to…
PETER HITCHENS: No. No. No. It’s so essential to answer this. The people who say that they’re not doing harm are invariably deceiving themselves. The people who divorce and say the children are happier as a result, they’re not.
DAN SAVAGE: And the government should rush in to prevent people from being self-deceptive if that’s indeed what they’re doing?
PETER HITCHENS: The teenager who takes drugs and becomes mentally ill and ruins his own life and that of his parents is doing harm to other people, but at the time they do these things they say “No, my body is sovereign. I am a completely autonomous person. I don’t harm anybody else. ” We lie to ourselves about this all the time. I lie to myself about it. You all lie to yourselves about it. You lie to yourself about. We know that we harm other people.”
Hitch’s criticisms of the Savage world view were coherent and are worth hearing. But this quote below is one of the examples of his refusal to engage person to person, as it were.
TONY JONES: Peter Hitchens, I’ll just bring you in here. You listened to that. I mean do you see anything sort of wrong with this concept of hook-up apps?
HANNA ROSIN: You’re setting him up. You’re setting him up. Say no. Just say no. Just for the surprise of it, just say no.
DAN SAVAGE: I’m going to get on grinder and see who’s on right now in this room.
PETER HITCHENS: Do you want me to say anything, or not? It seems to me that when intimacy is something which is profoundly private and often, if people are mistreated when they’re intimate with other people, they are severely damaged and the idea that sexual relations can be conducted in this casual and mechanical fashion is extremely cruel and crude and dismisses the concept of human love from a very important part of our relations and I think that’s a pity. He doesn’t think it’s a pity. He wants a crude and, as far as I’m concerned, individualistic, unrestrained and a totally selfish world.
DAN SAVAGE: And the transcendent can emerge from the crude.
PETER HITCHENS: There is a definite difference between me and him. I’d just like to emphasise it. I think a society in which his ideas rule will be one you will very much regret having created.
Here’s a nice little example of Tony Jones participating in the discussion…
PETER HITCHENS: (Indistinct) No, don’t stop me. The ceaseless (indistinct)…
TONY JONES: Excuse me, we have a question. We have a question on this subject.
MULTIPLE SPEAKERS TALK AT ONCE
HANNA ROSIN: Wait a minute. Wait. Wait. Wait. Can I…
PETER HITCHENS: …(Indistinct)…
TONY JONES: You’ll get a chance.
HANNA ROSIN: No. No. No. Just one thing…
PETER HITCHENS: You haven’t stopped anybody else.
HANNA ROSIN: One thing.
PETER HITCHENS: You haven’t stopped anybody else.
TONY JONES: I’m stopping you to allow a questioner to make a point…
PETER HITCHENS: Yeah, I know you’re stopping me. I noticed that, yes.
TONY JONES: …you can respond to.
PETER HITCHENS: Right.
Great hosting Mr Jones.
Here’s how Hitchen’s thesis for the evening plays out in his own brand of condescension come self-deprecation. It’s an odd mix for an Australian audience.
PETER HITCHENS: All revolutionaries…
DAN SAVAGE: …it will identify itself to you.
PETER HITCHENS: All revolutionaries claim to be fighting against the oppression of other people when, in fact, they’re fighting for their own personal advantage.
TONY JONES: On that one-liner we’ll move on.
DAN SAVAGE: I’m fighting for everybody.
TONY JONES: Sorry, go on.
DAN SAVAGE: Well, the gay rights movement is fighting for the advantage of being treated equally and being full members of society. We are not fighting to take anything from anyone else.
PETER HITCHENS: Says you.
DAN SAVAGE: That is not some selfish goal that we had in mind. Oh, it would be really fun to be equal under the law.
PETER HITCHENS: No selfishness involved in it at all. Not a bit. No.
DAN SAVAGE: No. I’m not trying to prevent you from living your life.
PETER HITCHENS: Well, of course I’m selfish but I don’t pretend not to be.
He does present quite a nice warning – he’s not fighting the cultural wars, he’s fighting a desperate rear guard action. This exchange was also a little heated.
DAN SAVAGE: How do you hope to bring about the world – to return the world to the state you would like to see it in without authoritarian (indistinct) …
PETER HITCHENS: Oh, I gave that…
DAN SAVAGE: You’re not going to get the pot out of my hands any other way.
PETER HITCHENS: I gave that up long ago. It would only make me miserable. I know that you people have won. All that I seek to do…
DAN SAVAGE: Which is why you have to be gay married now and do drugs now with the rest of us.
PETER HITCHENS: No, all I seek to do is to tell the truth about you and what you want while it’s still allowed to do so because you are so fantastically intolerant.
TONY JONES: Now, Peter, I’ve got to interrupt. What do you mean when you say “you people”?
PETER HITCHENS: I mean the cultural revolution. I mean the cultural and moral revolution which has swept the western world since the collapse of Christianity.
DAN SAVAGE: I’m not intolerant.
PETER HITCHENS: It changed our societies, as anybody who has lived through it knows, out of all recognition in the course of 50 years and in my view for the worst. He’s part of it. She’s part of it. For all I know you are part of it but I’m not.
DAN SAVAGE: You’re paranoid and you’re projecting by saying we are intolerant. You have…
PETER HITCHENS: See, this is the intolerance. Because I hold an opinion different from his, he has become suddenly a qualified psychoanalyst who can tell me – who can tell me that my opinions which I am entitled to hold.
DAN SAVAGE: You’re entitled to your opinions. You’re not entitled to your smears.
PETER HITCHENS: But are a pathology. And this is the absolute seed bed of totalitarianism. When you start believing that the opinions of other people are a pathology, then you are in the beginning…
DAN SAVAGE: You’re the one standing there pathologising other people’s choices.
PETER HITCHENS: …in the beginning of the stage that leads to the secret police and the Gulags.
DAN SAVAGE: You are the one sitting there saying that society is sick and damaged because other people are now free as white men used to be.
PETER HITCHENS: You’ll have the whole world to yourself soon. You can’t imagine anybody else is entitled to hold a view different from yours without having some kind of personal defect. That’s what’s wrong with you.
And this bit…
“DAN SAVAGE: You sit there pathologising other people’s choices. You sit there saying that other people being free to live their lives by their own light in some way oppresses you, when it oppresses you in no way whatsoever. You are free not to get gay married. You are free not to use drugs. You are free not to drink. You are free to stay married to one person for the rest of your life. You are free to stay home and raise your wife’s children so they always have a parent by their side. You are not free to sit there and say that other people being just as free as you are to live their lives and make their own choices in some way is damaging you personally, in some way is destroying society. People are freer now, happier now. It’s a less intolerant world than it used to be because people like me are now empowered to look at people like you and say you are full of shit.
PETER HITCHENS: This is so personal. Can I respond to it before the…
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDE AND CHEER)
PETER HITCHENS: It’s a rally.
TONY JONES: Okay.
PETER HITCHENS: It’s a rally.
TONY JONES: Hold on. We actually do need to hear (indistinct)…
PETER HITCHENS: While you do this – while you do this I can’t talk. While you do that – while you do that I can’t talk and you know it and that’s to your – and that’s to your shame because silencing opponents is a very wicked thing to want to do.
DAN SAVAGE: You’ve been a lot of things tonight, but you’ve not been silenced.
PETER HITCHENS: You said this is very personal. This is very personal. I’ll reply to it. I am a very rich and fortunate person. I can – and I’m coming towards the end of my life anyway. I can personally escape many of the consequences of this but most people can’t. They can’t afford to and leave aside some of the things you’ve mentioned but a society in which the use of illegal drugs is widespread and unrestrained is one in which everybody is affected by the consequences, whatever they themselves do. It’s like that ridiculous bumper sticker “Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one,” to which my reply has always been: “Don’t like murder? Don’t commit one”. The fact is if a society permits – if a society permits things to happen which damage the lives of many people, who, as I’ve said earlier as a result of the selfish unwillingness of those who do those things to recognise that they have consequences, it affects everybody.”
Peter Hitchens also channeled Russell Brand, or more the anti-Brand, with his thinking on the modern political scene.
“TONY JONES: Peter, you did do whatever you could to hasten the demise of the Cameron Government. In fact you…
PETER HITCHENS: Yeah, not very effective with that.
TONY JONES: Well, in fact, you actually advised people, or your readers, to vote for UKIP, which is a populist party – a populist party primarily anti-immigration in its basis?
PETER HITCHENS: Well, I advised them to do that because I kept saying that they shouldn’t vote at all but they all seemed to think that voting was some tremendous important process, which actually it isn’t. If you go to a shop and you’re offered a load of goods which you don’t want to buy, you don’t buy any of them. So why, in an election, do you vote for people you don’t like?”
Interestingly, Hitchens and Brand had this clash last year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbVNZUHeg6o
And then this one as a follow up…
But back to Q&A.
Rosin and Savage kind of became one person by the end of the show, or some sort of comedy double act where you couldn’t tell who was playing the straight man. Greer was, at times, incoherently nostalgic, once the show hit its halfway mark she stopped answering questions and started wafting into stories from the good old days. As I said above, Hitch 2.0 wasn’t particularly loving to the other panelists, and for me, that damaged the credibility of what he had to say. It’s an ethos thing. You can’t just carry ethos with the words you say. But boy did he nail the finish.
Where Tony Jones invited the panel to share what they think is the most dangerous idea going around… Here’s the video of the answers, the transcript is below.
I’ll present the answers out of order – so that Hitch gets the last word, which he was so keen on all night. These were a little character revealing.
DAN SAVAGE: Population control. There’s too many goddamn people on the planet. And I don’t know if that’s a – you know, I’m pro-choice. I believe that women should have the right to control their bodies. Sometimes in my darker moments I am anti-choice. I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years. That’s a dangerous idea. She wanted a dangerous idea. So throw a chair at me.
GERMAINE GREER: Well, I’m always in the same place. The most dangerous idea, the one that terrifies us the most, is freedom – to actually be free – is, to most human beings, disorientating, terrifying but it’s the essential bottom line. If you want to be a moral individual you must be free to make choices and that includes making mistakes.
HANNA ROSIN: I’m tempted to say something about the Jesus Christ but being the Jewish one on the panel I’ll let that one go. Given our conversation today, I think I’m going to go with we should watch our children less. We live in a culture which follows our children around, is obsessed with safety, decides everything for our children, doesn’t let them have any freedom. Doesn’t let them wander. Doesn’t let them go anywhere or do anything by themselves and we should, in fact, do less with our children, not more.
PETER HITCHENS: The most dangerous idea in human history and philosophy remains the belief that Jesus Christ was the son of God and rose from the dead and that is the most dangerous idea you will ever encounter.
DAN SAVAGE: I’d have to agree with that.
TONY JONES: Just quickly, because I think you can’t really leave it there, why dangerous?
PETER HITCHENS: I can’t really leave it there? Because it alters the whole of human behaviour and all our responsibilities. It turns the universe from a meaningless chaos into a designed place in which there is justice and there is hope and, therefore, we all have a duty to discover the nature of that justice and work towards that hope. It alters us all. If we reject It, it alters us all was well. It is incredibly dangerous. It’s why so many people turn against it.
What an ending. There wasn’t a whole lot to love about Q&A last night. But I loved that.