The running water is back. The wacky rhymes are back. The obscure metre and bad midi sounds are back. Third Eagle is back.
I love that he ends with two thumbs up.
How to hit a baseball travelling at the speed of light
It seems obvious that you can’t do this. XKCD does the math (or physics) to demonstrate that not only is it impossible, it’s also fatal for pitcher, batter, and probably the entire city…
“After about 70 nanoseconds the ball arrives at home plate. The batter hasn’t even seen the pitcher let go of the ball, since the light carrying that information arrives at about the same time the ball does. Collisions with the air have eaten the ball away almost completely, and it is now a bullet-shaped cloud of expanding plasma (mainly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen) ramming into the air and triggering more fusion as it goes. The shell of x-rays hits the batter first, and a handful of nanoseconds later the debris cloud hits.”
It’s not all bad news though. The batter gets on base.
A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered “hit by pitch”, and would be eligible to advance to first base.
I love this stuff. The XKCD “What If” blog is tackling similar questions on a weekly basis. Like trying to figure out how much power Yoda could generate via the Force.
When crowd sourced campaigns attack
Savvy user generated content is pretty much the holy grail of social marketing – or marketing of any sort – generating “buzz” also known as “word of mouth” also known as “having other people blow your trumpet for you” is the best, and most cost effective, way to spread the word about your product, cause, church, or company.
But boy can it go wrong. The Qantas Twitter fiasco is a testimony to that, as is the time Justin Bieber let people vote for where his next international tour would take him – the denizens of the Internet made sure North Korea topped the vote.
There have been a few funny campaigns like this in recent weeks, where the collective imagination, or hive mind, of the Internet has turned on a couple of campaigns – in the crosshairs, in the United States, weighing in as one of the biggest companies in the nation, is Walmart, but Australia is not immune to such frivolity, as Queensland Rail can attest.
Walmart ran a vote to sent a hip hop character known as the Pit Bull to any of its stores, well, the store that gained the biggest number of likes. Voters jumped on board to send him to the smallest, and most remote, Walmart in the country with a campaign called #ExilePitbull. At Kodiak Island. Somewhere in Alaska. Where Russia is visible from the sporting goods department. The campaign seems to have originated from a Boston website called The Phoenix.
Walmart embraced the result, so Pitbull is off to Kodiak Island.
Churchm.ag has a good little analysis of the Walmart situation as it pertains to social media marketing for churches.
A couple of months ago QR launched a train etiquette campaign, where its online followers could generate, or customise, their own “Super Simple Stuff” campaign poster. The interwebs took over, many of the posters that resulted are far too crude to share, but it’s fair to say the campaign backfired.
Here’s a relatively tame example. Via Know Your Meme.
Queensland Rail responded pretty much the way they had to when the Courier Mail turned the campaign’s memeness into a story.
“The etiquette campaign has encouraged customers to be aware of their own behaviour and think about what is socially acceptable behaviour while on the City network,” he said.
“Since its launch in September 2011, our campaign has sparked a lot of interesting discussion on train etiquette faux pas.”
The third little example is slightly different – Shell Oil is facing a parody campaign, some environmentalists have created a page that looks very similar to Shell’s own website. The parody site gives people the chance to generate an ad that looks a lot like a Shell ad – and these have spread around the net.
Here’s the ad I just made.
Image Credit: Arctic Ready Generator
Some “social media commentators” couldn’t tell the difference between satire and real life, and slammed Shell – who have been forced to be pretty gracious about the whole thing. This confusion was exactly what the campaign was designed to achieve. The campaign even involved setting up a fake Shell account to respond to the campaign…
That reaction highlights something interesting about playing in this sphere. If someone has it in for you online – like Greenpeace do with Shell – there’s not a whole lot you can do about it to come out a winner. The SMH piece has a few opposing perspectives on the issue…
“As an observer it would seem Greenpeace actually wants Shell to take legal action, which of course would draw even further attention to their campaign,” said McDonald.
“For Shell it’s the nightmare of juggling perception and reality and right now they are probably damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
“My only advice to Shell in this instance would be to suggest that they launch a fake Greenpeace site and laugh it off.”
And…
“”It’s behaving, smelling, looking as though it was Shell under siege so the only way that you would ever know that it wasn’t Shell is through the Twitter ‘verified account’ but I know that a lot of brands haven’t gone through the verified account process.”
Gloria said she saw a real Shell “Let’s Go” banner advertisement on a US site that “looks identical” to the spoof Arctic Ready site.
She said Greenpeace had realised that it was much more effective to campaign online rather than appearing as “hippy do-gooders”. Why chain yourself to polar bears in the Arctic when you can create a fake Twitter page and do more damage?
Gloria criticised Shell’s response, saying it was behaving too “corporate” and not adequately responding to the campaign in the channels where the hijacking is occurring.
“They mistakenly believe they will give Greenpeace traction by ‘dignifying’ a response. Unfortunately the opposite is occurring – by not responding, Shell look corporate and out of touch,” she said.
I tend to sit somewhere between the two – Shell needs to do something funny and brand salvaging, in a voice the collective mind of the internet will appreciate, or it needs to issue a mea culpa on its practices and promise to change, and then actually deliver (a bit like Maccas have done with responding to rumours and criticisms about their burgers in Canada)… This is partly to do with having thought out a Crisis Communication Plan for social media stuff – which the books I reviewed last week touched on, and also with figuring out your “voice” or personality online so that you can respond accordingly.
Of the three situations, only Walmart has come out a winner, QR hasn’t been particularly damaged, but at the very least their campaign shows that not all publicity is good publicity, and the Shell situation surely demonstrates the utter foolishness of that idea – their brand is being hammered and laughed at, with no potential positive outcome, unless they think that motorists are more likely to think Shell when their “fuel empty” light flashes up on the dashboard on their next drive, and less likely to think about dying polar bears.
The building blocks of the Reformation: Luther in Lego
This Flickr set of Reformation images reconstructed using Lego comes a semester too late for me… but given that I think Luther was all for communicating truth using every available medium, I reckon he’d love this.
Infographic: A minute on the Internet
This is a nice little addition to these book reviews… if we want cut through for the gospel online, in all of these channels, we need to remember we’re competing with a lot of white noise as we try to get the signal out. This is what gets produced and uploaded in the space of a minute on the world wide web…
Book Review: Smart Business, Social Business, and its implications for ministry
Smart Business, Social Business
Out of the 85 percent of people who want companies to be present in social media:
- 34 percent want companies to actively interact with them.
- 51 percent want companies to interact with them as needed or by request.
- 8 percent think companies should be only passively involved in social media.
- 7 percent think companies shouldn’t be involved at all.
The data is clear. Consumers want to have conversations with companies they care about. They don’t want to engage with corporate entities or logos, either—they want real, live human interaction and two-way dialogue with employees. And this can only be achieved with another person.
“One of the worst things any company can do is create a thriving community and then abandon it. Unfortunately, this happens all too often. Before launching new communities, Facebook fan pages, and Twitter profiles, a company must get a firm commitment from everyone involved to continuously engage in these channels. Otherwise, the company will surely be at the center of criticism and will probably be featured in a Harvard Business Review case study titled “What Not to Do in Social Media.””
“An advocate is a customer who talks about a product, service, or brand without being asked to. These customers may or may not be influential in social media, but that doesn’t stop them from talking about the brand and telling others about it.”
There’s some interesting stuff on the cash value of social media followers…
“In 2010, social media marketing firm Vitrue determined that the average value of a Facebook fan is about $3.60 in equivalent media each year. The firm calculated this using a wide range of clients and their 45 million aggregate fans before arriving at the $3.60 annual valuation. A couple of assumptions Vitrue makes up front are that each status update posted by the company generates an average of one new impression for each fan. It also assumes that the brand is posting two updates per day. Finally, Vitrue placed a value on each impression by assigning a $5 CPM, which translates to $300,000 in earned media per month, or $3.6 million annually, for a fan page with 1 million fans. The mathematical equation follows: 1M impressions × 2 posts × 30 days = 60M impressions 60M impressions / 1,000 × $5 CPM = $300,000 $300,000 × 12 months = $3.6M $3.6M / 1M fans = $3.60 The one flaw in this equation is that the $3.60 valuation heavily relies on the fact that the company needs to post an average of 730 status updates a year to reach that $3.60 value per fan. That’s just less than two posts per day, which is extremely high; sometimes overengagement can appear to be spam and can result in a loss of fans.”
And a bit on the amplification that social media platforms allow…
“For example, assume that company A has 1,000 Twitter followers. Every time it shares a piece of content, its potential reach is 1,000. Of course, this number will naturally grow as the company acquires more followers. The reach of the messages will increase exponentially as more followers retweet the message. If one of the company’s tweets gets retweeted 10 times and each of those followers has 1,000 followers, the total reach of that branded message would be the following: 1 tweet × 1,000 followers = 1,000 10 retweets × 1,000 followers = 10,000 1,000 + 10,000 = 11,000 total reach An engaged community that finds value in content that is shared on Twitter is likely to share that content with its own microcommunities.”
The plan this book advocates is fairly similar to that presented by Likeable Social Media.
- Create social media policies that address employees’ behavior when engaging online.
- Train employees on how to blog, use Twitter, and be conversational when interacting in the community.
- Develop a metrics model to measure the effectiveness of employee engagement on the social web.
- Find and engage with online influencers and the communities where they spend their time
The first two steps are pretty much described by Likeable. The strength of Smart Business is the emphasis it places on listening to what people are saying online – you can join all sorts of conversations by monitoring when people on Twitter are talking about relevant issues, and even what people in your area are talking about with a tool like Nearby Tweets.
Part of doing social media well online is understanding how people behave online, and what sort of people you want to “empower” or build systems around. The book divvies up people according to how they use the net.
- Creators—Create and publish content on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube.
- Critics—Post ratings and reviews on websites such as ePinions, Yelp, and CNET. These users also comment on various blogs and wikis and contribute to online forums.
- Collectors—Collect content in the form of tags and RSS feeds. They also vote for content on websites such as Digg.com.
- Joiners—Join social networks but might not necessarily create or interact with any content.
- Spectators—Only consume content. They read blogs, watch videos, read customer reviews, and listen to podcasts.
- Inactives—Don’t create or consume any social content whatsoever.
The book also advocates finding advocates who will do the talking about your business for you – or, in the case of ministry, will use the channels you create to share the gospel (and stuff about your church) with their friends.
“Whatever the reason, advocates are vocal, passionate, and unafraid to praise the brand (both online and offline). In some cases, advocates even defend the brand against criticism and negative feedback. And even though they might not have hundreds of Twitter followers, Facebook fans, or RSS subscribers, the conversation with advocates about the brand is always authentic. Why? Because they’re being real and aren’t trying to impress anyone.”
You’d hope that comes with the territory of being part of a church – that should involve a significant level of personal investment.
Like every social media textbook everywhere, Smart Business relies on the premise that content is king – and that producing engaging content is fundamental to any social media success. It makes a distinction between proactive and reactive content (this distinction pretty much applies to all forms of consumer/public relations).
“Proactive content considers all outbound engagement and includes the sharing and distribution of brand-related messages on corporate blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other owned media properties. Proactive content can include product- or company-related announcements, industry perspectives, contest management, and other promotions…”
Proactive content gives you the opportunity to plan. This is something we do at Creek Road, because the service, not just the sermon, is defined by the big idea of the passage, we are starting to think about how we build the big idea, questions, and application, into our use of social media. This little snippet from the book is particularly useful.
“Some companies create just weekly or biweekly editorial calendars. However, it’s good practice to also maintain a six-month thematic calendar that documents and includes upcoming events, holidays, product launches, and other topics of interest to customers.”
Reactive stuff relies on having that carefully defined voice, and being quick to engage with criticism – preferably in a winsome way. It’s also worth reacting quickly to positives too, there are some great case studies in these books where encouraging and affirming people who have taken the time to engage with your product has worked to boost the good vibes involved as the interactions spread through people’s networks…
“Reactive content happens as a result of listening to conversations on the social web and responding when relevant. It can certainly include responding to comments on corporate blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, but it can also entail leaving comments on third-party blog posts.”
Here’s a “slideshare” that goes along with the premise of the book.
Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization from Michael Brito
The author, Michael Brito, writes a blog, and you can also follow him on Twitter. He’s also produced an infographic that might help you think about the web.
This book was harder going than the other two books, but it was pretty useful, especially as a companion piece providing some of the technical background and research to support the conclusions the other books assume.
Book Review: “Likeable Social Media” and its implications for ministry
I really enjoyed this book. This was actually my second time through (I’d read through it on a previous holiday) – but I wanted to skim over it again having read Platform
“In the beginning, there was Adam and Eve. Eve said to Adam, “You’ve got to try this apple,” and the first marketing interaction in the history of the world had taken place.”
The fundamental conviction at the heart of this book is that word of mouth marketing is the most powerful form of marketing (I agree), but that harnessing word of mouth marketing and even generating it – especially in the age of social media – requires a bit of thought and deliberation, and then an ongoing commitment to being present in a persistent and authentic way.
“Who is better to defend you against negative posters, you or your thousands of happy customers? What kind of company would you rather do business with as a consumer—a company that publicly answers every single customer, or one who seemingly ignores many customers?”
The thought and deliberation happen at the level of thinking about your brand’s personality and the substance or content you aim to share to engage and benefit your audience.
Being authentic means speaking in a language that really represents who you are, but also in a language that resonates with the people you want to connect with – this means, in business, avoiding corporate weasel words or legalise, in the Christian sphere it’ll mean avoiding jargon and in crowd stuff.
You also need to have some grasp of the way each social media channel works, and use that knowledge and the thinking work you’ve put in to figure out a strategy for how you use them (or don’t). I’ve put together something like a social media strategy a while back which has some info about how Facebook works, amongst other useful things, but this book is helpful because it gives you practical homework at the end of each chapter that will leave you with a good sense of how to take your next steps into the world of social media.
There’s some stuff in the book that’s incredibly useful if you’re looking to promote a specific product where you want a purchase decision (which I don’t think you can do with the gospel – there are a few more categories that probably need to be esablished than a Facebook ad or status update can accomplish) – so this advice is relevant for events, or for people who are looking for tips for a small business, there are lots of pearls of wisdom along the way, like:
“Write five sample Facebook updates that combine an engaging question or valuable content with an irresistible offer, and link to your website to buy or learn more. Test, track, and measure the results in order to optimize for future ROI.”
To translate – even when you’re selling something you want to be hooking people with the update so that even if they don’t act, they engage, and including some sort of call to action. And you should experiment till you get it right. This is a theme Platform develops in more depth, I’ll be reviewing it in the next couple of days.
In my experience, and I, at last count, administer Facebook pages for about 20 different churches, events, and businesses, the pages that do this stuff well, and thoughtfully, are the ones that take off – so one page, for a popular drag racing team, has gone from 0 to 7,000 fans in about six months, just by having a well thought out brand, carefully driving people to their page, providing good content, and urging people to share the love and invite their friends.
Here are some examples of helpful “homework” from the book.
1. If you’re a one-person operation or a very small business, write down five things you could say that would seem inauthentic or that sound like marketing-speak to a customer. Then write five examples of how you could say the same messages in a more authentic way on Facebook.
2. If you are part of a large organization, create a plan for how to represent yourself authentically. Recognize that authenticity won’t be easy but that it’s essential. Meet with key stakeholders and management at your organization to determine how you can make communication more authentic across all channels, especially on social networks.
3. If you already have a social media policy, examine it carefully to ensure that it encourages authentic communication, and tweak it if it doesn’t. If you don’t yet have a social media policy, draft one now.
4. If multiple people are responding on Twitter on behalf of your organization, have them sign tweets with their name or initials.
1. Create a social media policy that insists on honesty and transparency as the default expectation. Review with other key stakeholders in your organization what company information, if any, is off-limits and how you can better embrace openness and transparency while still keeping this in mind.
2. If you work at a large organization, determine whether your chief executive officer can effectively use social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook herself to be the ultimate transparent representative of your brand.
3. Closely examine your social media policy to make sure it is aligned with the values of honesty and transparency at its core. If it is not, consider what you could add to help instill these values. Include references to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s code of ethics.
4. Write down three ways you could respond to questions and comments on social networks in a more transparent way in order to further build trust with your customers.
And here are some helpful quotes from the book…
“The formula for ad success is not to link ads to your website or shopping cart but to link to your fan page. Connecting users to your page encourages them to engage with you. They might enter a contest or ask you some questions about products, services, or your industry. They have the opportunity to connect with other people in your community.”
“Also, forget the notion that YouTube is about creating “viral videos” and getting millions of views. Is it possible to create videos on YouTube that will go viral? Sure. But think of the last 10 viral videos you’ve seen on YouTube. Chances are few of them, if any, were created by or for a business. Most of these videos take off organically. Videos that are “produced” don’t tend to go viral. What makes content viral is that very thing that often can’t be produced: the spontaneity of human experience. Even parody videos are based from the initial experience that was captured on video and released to the world, then deemed viral.”
“Many company blogs are unsuccessful because they are updated infrequently, and too often they’re updated with press release-like broadcast material, rather than valuable resources or content. With a blog, you have the opportunity to include longer text updates than you’re able to through Facebook or Twitter, as well as incorporate photos, videos, polls, and other multimedia. You can also tell stories at your own pace and on your own terms.”
One of the central theses of the book, if not the central thesis, is that being successful on the web means being prepared to give away good material in order to build your brand, and goodwill.
I think the great take home messages for people in ministry, or people who are thinking about how to use Facebook for Jesus, is that churches looking to use social media to help spread the gospel, as a way of connecting with people, the secret is in empowering those in the pews to be using your church’s presence as a bit of a call to action in their use of Facebook – we should be encouraging those who are keen ambassadors of Jesus, and members of our church communities to be talking about both Jesus and church in an authentic and engaging way online, we don’t carry the entire weight of producing good content that people will engage with (though our church/ministry pages should be doing that).
There are some interesting ways I’m thinking we could use Facebook advertising spinning out of this book – you could target people who say they’re Christians who have just moved to your area (changed location), you can target friends of friends to invite them along to evangelistic events, you can target people who aren’t Christians to welcome them to your area with the offer of a welcome pack if they like your page, you can target engaged or married people in your area to offer pre-marriage counselling or to advertise a marriage course. Facebook advertising is fairly powerful stuff – which is why it can be insidious when used by unscrupulous people. I read someone I respect greatly who said that the low quality of advertising on Facebook was enough to drive him away from spending advertising dollars, and someone yesterday suggested the inappropriate ads he was receiving were causing a rethink about Facebook’s values – but it’s not Facebook that does this, beyond an algorithm, it’s people using the data and likes you’ve supplied to target you – the key to improving the standard of ads on Facebook is liking more particular stuff (the ads I get are almost exclusively coffee related), and for advertisers – the key is producing relevant ads that might cut through some of the noise of weightloss ads, dating service spruiking, and whatever else you get coming up on your profile.
It’s interesting too that the emphasis on social media success seem to fall around characteristics that are emphasised by Paul as either parts of his ministry, so he has a fairly cross-shaped approach to ministry that emphasises ethos and substance over flashy and impressive stuff, or the modern equivalent. Authenticity. Loving others. Being selfless. Responding to situations that emerge with humility, integrity, generosity, and grace… the guy who wrote this book is basically the most successful social networking consultant going round – and he’s essentially advocating that people behave sacrificially in what they give out online, though he’s doing it with the expectation that it will eventually produce material returns, and we’re expecting that it will build goodwill that will get the gospel a hearing.
There are some great ideas in the book about what sort of content makes good Facebook content and boosts engagement – the ultimate goal is being likeable, and getting people to share the stuff you’re putting out there, which I guess raises a question about how we get people in our churches on board with this and thinking about themselves as ambassadors when they’re online, which probably taps into a bigger issue regarding how we get people to think about ambassadors when they’re offline. Part of authenticity is making sure that the experience people get of our church family is consistent both in the virtual world and the real world.
Holiday book reviews
These days, when I go on holidays, I ask for book recommendations on Facebook, download some novels to my iPad, and then spend my holidays discovering the 50 unread books on my Kindle that I bought on a whim, or a recommendation, and haven’t bothered reading yet. Our most recent holiday was a bit like that. I spent some of the weekend reading about the decline of Christianity in America (unChristian
I did finish possibly my favourite “How To” book of all time, How to Sharpen Pencils
Brilliant.
Then, in a possibly award winning attempt to “relax” and “chill out”… I spent most of the weekend reading books about social media and being a better citizen of the internet.
I’m going to post some reviews to these – with some helpful tips and things I’ve gleaned from them, as applied to figuring out how social media can support church and mission in some upcoming posts, but here are the books I read, they range from the practical, to the theoretical, to the technical.
- Likeable Social Media
- Platform
- Smart Business, Social Business
Third Eagle says zombie attacks sign of end times…
You have no idea how much pleasure I took from writing the title of this post.
The video is a ramble, but it’s posted here for posterity’s sake so that we can all look back when the zombie attacks aren’t the bear attack from the book of Daniel.
As it turns out the zompocalypse and apocalypse are possibly the same thing. Who knew?
Holiday snaps
So I’ve been absent from blogworld for a few days. What’d I miss?
In the real world our little family were taking our first family holiday – we had been planning to go to the Gold Coast hinterlands, right up until the car was packed, and I was printing out our wotif booking. Only to discover that some idiot had booked the accommodation for the wrong weekend. After a mad scramble around the interwebs we booked three nights in Stanthorpe at the Sommerville Valley Resort.
Soph was a bit excited en route.
Here’s the view from the balcony.
Here’s the view from the lounge room.
We saw the pyramids. Well, a slightly lamer Australian version…
Went to a fun jam shop where Soph charmed the storekeepers. Which was lucky.
Soph, in turn, was charmed by an ornamental peacock in our room. She couldn’t get enough of it.
We added a bit to the trip with a Tour De France style experience on the way home.
And now, the craziness of college begins for another semester.
Clowning around with the gospel
Here are some rules, or principles, for Christian clowning.
“When you enter the nursing home do not stand together with your group in a large cluster of clowns. Clowns can look rather intimidating if you see a lot of them in one place.”
“Choose a partner. Two clowns together are really great. If you attempt to make visits with 3 or 4 you outnumber the person so much that they may feel a bit uneasy.”
Via Scotteriology.
The guy in the video is Floyd Shaffer – the so-called “father of clown ministry”… he’s written a few books.
And this one called Clown Ministry…
If you want a good guide to “Everything New and Who’s Who In Clown Ministry” there’s this guide out there too.
Here are some tips for setting up a clown ministry in a hospital, rather than a nursing home. Because a captive audience is vital.
But here’s another rule. Don’t be creepy.
It turns out you can head along to a Clowns for Jesus conference if this excites you.
I’m so glad this is a thing.
Australians and “boat people”
Image Credit: SBS Go Back To Where You Came From Refugee Simulation.
A friend gently chided me for the image I used in that last post – suggesting it represents a bit of a caricature of what it is that causes people (average, conservative voting, Australian citizens) angst when it comes to boat arrivals, border security, and the rest.
I find it pretty hard to put myself in the headspace of someone who doesn’t think we should be looking after people displaced by hardship in their home countries – but I’ve spent the few hours since trying to do it.
It could be, as my friend suggested, something more like the fear that if we don’t get our policies right the floodgates will be opened and we’ll suddenly have all sorts of resource problems – there’s certainly an element of that when it comes to protesting about skilled migration and plans to find off shore workers to fill so called “Australian Jobs”… and doubtless some of the refugees who come here will be employed, and others will be on welfare, and thus, some will consider them a tax burden.
Most of the hyperbole surrounding this debate is pretty bizarrely short sighted. Population growth in Australia, rapid expansion at least, has almost always been as a result of migration. Right from white settlement, through the gold rushes, waves of migration in various industrial booms, and the boom when the White Australia Policy was revoked in the 70s, our culture has been enriched and our population has been boosted, by the arrival of people from other nations (arguably not so much in the convict settlement). We wouldn’t have a great coffee scene in Australia if it wasn’t for migration. Almost 1 in 3 people who currently live in Australia were born overseas, almost half of us had one or both parents born overseas (according to the 2011 Census Data).
Another friend on Facebook mentioned that white Australia’s inability to truly come to terms with Australia’s indigenous history makes dealing with new arrivals pretty hard, he said it in a slightly more profound manner (and I’m still trying to figure out if I agree)…
“Until we reconcile our own history of arriving on boats, and mistreating the original people and failing to assimilate (and creating our own segregated communities) we will never appropriately and lovingly approach refugees in the 21st century.”
Most of my disagreement with that line of thinking is because I’m not sure assimilation is the answer – I don’t think assimilation and segregation are the only options, I wonder if integration or something where unique identities are maintained and differences appreciated is more worthwhile and achievable… but I also wonder if there’s a correlation here rather than causation.
Anyway. I reckon most fears are misplaced – though I appreciate that a huge influx of migrants would put a pretty major strain on our infrastructure and economy and would need to be something we strategically planned for rather than an overnight thing.
I realise that comments made on articles online aren’t a great way to represent the population – they’re opt in, they’re usually made by people who are overly passionate, rather than objective, and often they’re made by PR people or their friends who are trying to boost some sort of cause without disclosure.
But here are some comments from two different articles – from the left and the right, dissenting and agreeing with the content of the articles in question…
First we’ve got Clive Palmer who makes what I think is actually a fairly sensible and worthwhile policy suggestion (I wonder what it would look like if we got some big cruise ships and picked up people wanting to come to Australia and processed them en route. But that’s pretty pie in the sky stuff). Here’s the story as reported by the Herald Sun, and here are some of the choice comments:
“Perhaps Clive Palmer should fly out. His suggestion would open the floodgates for anyone who can raise $1,000. Coming here at one tenth of the cost means the numbers will increase tenfold.”
“SINK THEM. Lets face it most Australians don’t want them here and they are que jumpers so, SINK THEM at sea and they will stop coming.”
“At the risk of incurring the wrath of all the do gooder human rights activists, if they try to come here via the back door, put them on the first plane home. That is the only plane we should be supplying them with I refuse to apologize for wanting a country that has a viable economy to support my children’s future.”
“Allow refugees to come here safely? Or queue-hoppers? THAT is the question. If we do that then anyone can come, whoever wants to and the hell with the normal application process that others have to go through. All we’re teaching them is how to be dishonest and move easily into a better, welfare-laden life. I don’t want hundreds of thousands of these people in my beautiful country, I would rather focus my energy on those whom I know to be genuine, those who struggle to eat, let alone buy expensive passages here that I could only dream about (as a fulltime worker i get no breaks from the govt but i constantly struggle on one income including paying private family health insurance). Does mr Palmer then propose that the money these illegals would save on their boat fares will then be used to support themselves instead of centrelink? No? I didn’t think so…”
“How bout they don’t come here at all, I want my tax dollars used for things that benefit me not these free loaders.”
“That s a Great Idea, lets fly them in First Class. Some champagne to celebrate coming to Australia. Free 5 star accommodation for 5yrs. Free Child care, Free Cigs and Food. Centrelink benefits for life. Australia best place in the world Come one come all. Were the bloody hell are ya.? Come off it…”
Interesting reading.
Now here’s the response to refugee advocate Julian Burnside and his excellent piece responding to Abbott’s “unchristian” comment on ABC Unleashed…
“It is strange that people seem to justify not accepting the boat arrivals by the fact that not every refugee is able to get on a boat. Hence “queue jumper”.
It is not legitimate to use one unfairness for which you are not responsible to justify another inhumanity for which you are.”
“Well said Mr Burnside but don’t expect Abbott to respond to your question. He knows that a majority of Australians are so anti-refugees that they don’t want to know about the logic of your argument. He is simply waiting to walk into office as PM, that’s all he cares about. And as for the aforementioned Aussies, well they don’t really care what happens to “queue jumpers” so long as it doesn’t concern them. What happens when he is PM (if ever)and the refugees continue to arrive? Will he again resort to christian rhetoric to justify his failure – like washing his hands of the whole affair?”
“What is unchristian is Abbott’s inhumane policy and his refusal to genuinely engage in some plan to prevent the loss of human life at sea”
“Point 1 – When a nation has a set number of assylum seekers or refugees that it will take in per annum, your chances of being accepted are greatly influenced by your circumstances. If you are in a refugee camp anywhere in the world, you are applying through the UN to be resettled. If you came by boat, you are taking up space in one of our numerous detention centres at great cost to the taxpayer – who do you think will be the first one processed simply because they are occupying space in a detention centre?
Point 2 – the moral question. I think that it is immoral to award limited annual intakes of refugees and assylum seekers to those who can afford it over those who can’t. Argue with that.
Point 3 – Dog whistle? This just lives in the minds of activists. We are talking about undocumented illegal arrivals who have paid for transport to Australia. Don’t care what their colour or race is. Its the method of arrival and the associated documentation you require for different types of arrival thats in question here.
Point 4 – You forgot to add that that hypothetical person also has a wad of cash to pay the smugglers. Which others do not. I thought progressives thought that financial position should not lead to advantages. Apparently not in this case however.”
This is a wide spectrum of views being presented in two different forums, featuring two fairly different demographics. It’s interesting that so many of the reasons against accepting boat people, or any refugees, are selfish and oddly nationalistic – especially given the stats about the current make up of Australia’s population. There’s a trend in comments dismissing refugees to see living in Australia and being Australian as something exclusive and worthy of protection – as though the place you’re born is somehow meritorious, deserved, or gives particular human rights. Caring for refugees should be part of being a global citizen – but sadly we live in a globe full of sinful and selfish people – which is why being a Christian citizen, living as a foreigner and caring for outsiders is something radical.
But tying these two posts together – what is there that Australian Christians, or concerned Australians, can do to be better global citizens. I have a few ideas.
- Get informed. It would be hypocritical for me to say that “raising awareness” is an activity – but combating ignorance probably counts for something. Direct people to Go Back To Where You Came From, or some facts about asylum seeking and Australia. I haven’t gone much past this point to date, most of this is a knee jerk response to this week’s idiocy.
- Get welcoming. This is cool. Welcome To Australia wants to connect Australians with refugees. One of my Facebook friends had a BBQ with some Iranians recently, and inspired me to think about how I can do stuff like that. A guy in Toowoomba drives a busload of Sudanese guys to Bible study and church every week. There’s a football team made up of migrants/refugees in the church league I play in. There are lots of ways I can think of – but if you’ve got other ideas tell me (and I’d be interested in knowing more about how the BBQ came about – that’s for you Matt). Given the stuff I said yesterday about Christians having special motivation to welcome the outsider (because we were all once outsiders) – our welcome of refugees should reflect and present our view of reality. Churches can play a huge role in welcoming refugees – we’ve got all sorts of collective resources and a pre-existing community that should be good at welcoming already.
- Get active. My friend Joel is riding for refugees with a team from his church – you can donate to their team – or get involved in other ways. The Refugee Council of Australia has a list of other ways you can volunteer.
- Write to a politician. Don’t send a form letter. They suck. Say something you mean. Tell them what you really think. I need to change my enrolment and figure out what electorate I actually live in. In the mean time I’ve sent a link to my last post to the Australian Christian Lobby, hoping they’ll one day change their tone a little.
If you’ve got other ideas I’d love to hear them…
Boat people and Christianity
Wow. Tony Abbott. Here’s a pearler of a quote from a radio interview yesterday, where admittedly, Abbott was responding to a gibe about his asylum seeker policies being “unChristian”…
“Look I don’t think it is a very Christian thing to come in by the back door rather than the front door.”
Now. Before we get into the myriad problems with this statement coming from a politician in a heated policy debate, I want to be a little sympathetic to what he’s trying to say… it’s a tragedy that genuine asylum seekers waiting in camps around the world obeying due process are missing out because some people engage in dangerous and expensive people smuggling. In an ideal world there’d be no need for people to seek refuge, but in our fallen world where bad stuff happens this sort of displacement is nothing new – it’s been happening since at least Exodus.
Whoops. I started on the theological problems already.
Every aspect of Abbott’s statement is problematic. He would have been better off copping the gibe on the chin or talking about the people trying to obey due process without even mentioning the people jumping on boats.
UPDATE: Here’s the fuller context of Abbott’s quote, lest you feel I’m misrepresenting the interview…
“And I’m all in favour of Australia having a healthy and compassionate refugee and humanitarian intake program.
“I think that’s a good thing. But I think the people we accept should be coming the right way and not the wrong way.
“If you pay a people-smuggler, if you jump the queue, if you take yourself and your family on a leaky boat, that’s doing the wrong thing, not the right thing, and we shouldn’t encourage it.”
This makes a complex ethical question into an absolute question of morality – I’m not sure you can argue that genuine asylum seekers have done the wrong thing by seeking asylum, and 97% of people who seek asylum in Australia, after arriving by boat, are found to be genuine refugees… (END UPDATE).
But ignoring the elephant in the room, that most boat people are coming from countries that aren’t exactly known for fostering significant Christian populations (though some refugees are Christians fleeing persecution) – and thus the idea that the boat people should be Christian is perhaps patently ridiculous… let’s consider for a moment that God’s people, since the very beginning, and Jesus himself, have essentially been refugees. Here are some more useful facts about boat people (PDF from the Australian Government).
Abraham left his father’s land and sought asylum in various foreign kingdoms as he headed off to the promised land.
Joseph was a refugee to Egypt.
Moses led Israel out of Egypt as asylum seeing refugees. Israel was called to care for asylum seekers/the aliens in their midst, as God does, as a result of Israel’s experience as refugees. So Deuteronomy 10:
“18 He [God] defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. 19 And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.”
Their failure to care for the foreigner is listed as part of the reason they’re booted out and forced into exile again in Ezekiel 22…
“6 “‘See how each of the princes of Israel who are in you uses his power to shed blood. 7 In you they have treated father and mother with contempt; in you they have oppressed the foreigner and mistreated the fatherless and the widow.”
Now, I know Australia isn’t the promised land, and isn’t meaningfully able to be spoken of as a Christian nation, but if the leader of the opposition brings Christianity into the debate, then it should at least be represented fairly… It’s not unChristian to seek asylum – it is the most Christian thing in the world as we’ve had to seek refuge for ourselves in Jesus. It’s arguable, though I don’t think we should really make anything of this, that Jesus’ family sought asylum when Herod was out to get them in Matthew 2.
“13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
And I think a fair case can be made that Jesus replaces the cities of refuge that OT people were to flee to (Joshua 20), and that turning to Jesus, as all Christians have, is the ultimate expression of seeking asylum. It’s certainly the ultimate expression of seeking citizenship somewhere better where we’re not truly entitled to on our own merit (especially for Gentiles). So this big quote from Ephesians 2…
12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
Now the comparison isn’t exact, and the issues here are referring to something different because Australia isn’t the kingdom of God – but there are two principles here that make it hard to justify the claim that urgently seeking asylum without regard to due process is unchristian. Firstly, Christians are asylum seekers, and secondly, the idea, for Christians, that our earthly citizenship of an earthly nation is something to be protected at the expense of being united with other people in Christ doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. Christians in the early church framed their understanding of citizenship, a particularly significant concept when it came to the Roman Empire, around being aliens in the empire – sojourners, who loved other outsiders accordingly – loving foreigners wasn’t exclusive to Israel when they occupied the physical kingdom of Israel with some power. We seem to have lost that vibe a little bit as Christianity became a dominant socio-political force – but now we’re starting to be part of a post-Christian society we need to start being informed by this as a category again, and caring for our fellow aliens.
If we’re taking a “Christian” approach to the chance to show love to the poor and oppressed people who don’t know Jesus then we’re going to want to welcome and love them. That’d be my thinking anyway…
The onus isn’t really on the asylum seekers to act as Christians when they’re approaching a country – unless they’re claiming to be Christians, in which case the decision to jump the queue is something they’ll have to wrestle with personally – the onus is on the country receiving them, if they claim in any sense to be Christian (which Abbott does), to be receiving the refugees in a Christian way. This is where Abbott went really wrong. The question was legitimate. Because caring for refugees, or any oppressed people, or any people, is a definite outworking of following Jesus.
Interestingly, Jesus echoes the Deuteronomic principle that people who are trying to be like God should be caring for the oppressed, he framed his understanding of his mission this way (quoting Isaiah):
16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
So. You might be thinking. It’s all well and good for Jesus to say this and apply it to his own ministry, if he is this refuge for the oppressed – but it doesn’t follow that it is “Christian” to love refugees.
You would be wrong.
Jesus rebukes the Pharisees in Luke 11 on the basis that they care for their religiosity but not for the poor.
“39 Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40 You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.42 “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.”
Then, when he’s talking about how people who want to follow him should approach social conventions and the hosting of status building banquets, he makes it clear that his concern is on provision for the poor (Luke 14)…
“12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Then, when he’s talking about how his followers, Christians, will be distinguished from people not following him (unchristians?), he makes it clear that this is one of the markers of a Christian, someone whose thinking has been truly transformed by the Spirit as they follow Jesus.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”
James follows suit.
“27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
It’s pretty hard to maintain anything that looks like the policies of either of Australia’s major parties on “boat people” if you’re trying to take a Christian approach – the justification for taking a Christian approach is obviously quesitonable for the same reason that introducing any policy into a secular democracy for solely theological reasons is questionable. But we have every right to speak in the democratic process, and you’d hope such contributions would be framed by our theological reality, more than by political expediency, you’d hope we’d be the most compassionate voice out there, and call for something more than what our major parties are happy to settle for… and yet, when given the opportunity to make a statement following Abbott’s theological faux pas, here’s what Lyle Shelton from the ACL says:
“It is unfortunate that the term ‘Christian’ has been co-opted in the debate… I don’t want to say what is Christian and what is not, but it is important that our policies give people languishing in camps a fair go. We have to stop the people smugglers’ business model. We have to stop people perishing at sea.”
Could this organisation stoop any lower in its bid to represent as broad a church as possible? How bout defining Christian as “somebody who follows Jesus and holds to something representing the historic confessions of the church”? It’s not that hard. And this sort of waftiness is precisely why the ACL can’t claim to speak for anybody in particular. It’s also an issue that needs the voice of Christians to offer some compassionate clarity.
It’s unfortunate Christianity has been misrepresented in the debate, but it’s more unfortunate we had to be co-opted, and haven’t been on the front line from the beginning (which notable exceptions have been – like Melbourne’s Crossway Church, which offered to care for unaccompanied minors who were at risk of being deported).
People who follow Jesus are refugees. People who follow Jesus are to love the oppressed, including refugees. This has to be the basis of a “Christian” response to the tragedy that leads people to flee their countries, and the tragedy that many of those people are turning to criminals and jumping on dangerous boats.
Opossums can’t be poisoned
Image Credit: animal.discovery.com.
A serum derived from the humble Opossum, who seems to be protected against any form of poisoning, could completely revolutionise the way snake bites are treated.
The study concludes:
“On the other hand, LTNF is effective against the venoms of all species of snakes. Therefore, LTNF can become a universal treatment for snakebites. Furthermore, LTNF is effective against scorpion and bee venoms, plant-derived ricin and bacterial toxin botulinum. Therefore, LTNF can become a universal treatment for toxins derived from animals, plants, and bacteria. In the standard treatment for snakebites, massive amounts of antivenom are administered for effectiveness, even though a large part of the population is hypersensitive to antivenom made in horses. Under such conditions, LTNF will be a most favorable replacement. It is further anticipated that the invention of LTNF has military applications due to the variety of unknown exposures that can occur under military conditions.”
So cool. BoingBoing has a bit of a story on the test that makes it clear just how awesome this gear is – some rats who had the serum introduced were also immune to poisoning.
Liveblogging Carson
Don Carson is at QTC this week. I’ll be posting some summaries of his lectures on the New Testament’s use of the Old over at Venn Theology.