Saving the West - Conclusion

Saving the West – Conclusion

The far right seeks a return to a golden past that never was. The far left seeks a utopian future that will never be. Religious extremists believe you can bring salvation by terror. Aggressive secularists believe that if you get rid of religion there will be peace. These are all fantasies. [Rabbi Lord Sacks]

To save the West we need to pursue hard reality not chase enticing fantasies.

Those things in Western cultures and nations which were good, humane and productive of happiness were achieved by the laborious application of Christian principals to further refine moral rules which had themselves evolved over millennia as bases for successful community life coupled with the determined suppression of wickedness, evil and vice.

Jeremiah prophesied in his day: “this people has forsaken me, a spring of living water and hewed out for themselves cisterns – cracked cisterns that can hold no water” This also is the sin of the West.

In France the Revolution ushered in an attempt to create a society without religion. In Germany, th elate 1800's saw a decline which by the 1930's saw a resurgence of Nordic paganism. England, perhaps as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century was showing signs of decline. Australia had revivals in the early 1900's (when some of my forebears were converted by a Methodist revival) and the 1950's with the Billy Graham crusades. But I would place decline visible in the late 1960's. The United States has maintained a much more visible religiosity, but deep it goes is another matter. In any case there has been opposition movements to any Christian influence visible from the late 1960's mirrored in the rise of Social Progressivism.

“We” have attacked the old rules and tried to formulate a new morality. That really was a high point of human arrogance – to think that we could in one go create a better set of rules that those which took generations to evolve, face the test of real life and be endowed with Christian virtues. Our self-hewn cisterns were also cracked: they did not take into account the sad srate of human nature depicted in the Bible, they paid no heed to the Creator's moral character and purposes, and they dismissed Divine aid – either in their project or in transforming human lives.

No wonder the West is teetering on the brink of destruction.

I come back to my original premise that the only hope is a Christian revival.

Jesus said his followers were like salt and yeast. As olden days mariners found, a bucketful of salt can preserve a whole barrel of beef. Just a little yeast can leaven a whole lump of dough. So even though past revivals have rarely converted more that 10% of the population to a sincere faith, this may well be enough to change the course of nations.

One reason is that, even in the present situation many, perhaps a majority have a sort of faith, but are cowed into submission and silence by the vocal Progressives – who will brook no dissent. Revival may firstly inform them better of the Faith they nominally hold and secondly liberate them to express it.

Another is that as discussed in previous posts there is no “golden age” to go back to: we must go on. This does requite continuous effort to apply the basic principles to new situations. As a student of engineering I learned the laws of thermodynamics. The first and second laws can be (very) simply expressed in a jingle that I remember after forty something years : “Heat is work and work is heat. And heat flows from hot to cool as a rule.” However actually applying these to real life requires much more complex formulations. So with our national malaises. Godfearing men and women are needed in every walk of life to formulate the complex solutions from  Biblical teachings.

The third is God's intervention. The Biblical narrative should leave us in no doubt that walking away from God deprives us of his help. It also should leave us in no doubt that “God desires not the death of a sinner but rather that they should turn from their wickedness and live” So a revival where even say 10% truly turn to God may result in their prayers being answered and the whole nation being rescued.

This end the series “Saving the West”

No more posts for 2 weeks, then I begin a new series examining revivals in the Bible and history to see what can be learned from them

Saving the Planet

“Saving the Planet”

The catch-cry “Save the Planet” is a favourite of environmental activists and is so often repeated that ordinary people are starting to echo it without critical thought.

What nonsense. Apart from sci-fi movies where the bad guys manage to blow a planet to smithereens saving a planet has no meaning. Ah! To be sure there is climate change or global warming as it used to be called. But how exactly would that “save” the Earth? If you are a dedicated environmentalist please bear with me writing what must seem the worst of blasphemies for a moment – after all if you read the last post remember that rejecting new ideas because they conflict with the ones you have previously accepted is not a good thing.

Now planet Earth, on our present scientific understanding has been a ball of condensing incandescent gas, had its surface totally covered with ice, and most things in between. In what way is preventing or slowing a few degrees of heating “saving it”?

Ah, not the “planet” itself but “life on the planet”? Well once again any aspiring polymath should be rolling around the floor laughing! The scene we enjoy is the result of what I have been told was the biggest environmental disaster in Earth's history: the release of oxygen into the atmosphere which killed off near all of life on earth at that time. Then there was whatever cause the extinction of the big dinosaurs (I am told birds are the descendants of some little dinosaurs). In the Permian period the “great extinction event” killed off 95% of all life. But life on Earth went on – indeed it flourished. Then as well there were the five – yes five - ice ages scientists have recorded, with inter-glacial warm periods. Geologists reckon that in the late Paleocene period the temperature was about 8deg. C. greater than at present. Really all this makes a few degrees here or there seem child's play – and who knows despite any anthropogenic influence earth may be about to enter another cold patch or even ice age!

OK enough “heresy”! My point is that if people have, or are unthinkingly repeating ideas relating to climate change based on a mystical view of “planet Earth” or even the “life on earth” as a god or gods then these aught to be firmly rejected!

What then really does matter? Humans. From a Biblical perspective only humans were “the image of God” only humans in Genesis are described as having God breath his life into them, thus setting them quite apart from animals. The Son of God took human nature in lived among us and died in order to reconcile us humans to God.

Granted other things have some though lesser importance. Some theologians point out that in ancient near east pagan religions an “image” was thought of as the visible and present representation of the absent deity. On this basis mankind as the image of God would mean something like humans being appointed as God's representatives to manage the earth and its creatures. The “rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen 1.28) is in the same vein. Naturally with authority comes responsibility and additionally “ruling” would be in accordance with God's moral character – not mankind's fallen and sinful nature!

So a proper response to climate change is not necessarily trying to prevent it – that may even be like King Canute trying to stop the tide – but to work at achieving the best outcome for all humans.

Before one responds “Oh but we are!” let me give a counter-example. Australia has large coal reserves. India wants to build a large new mine here to get coal for its expanding electricity needs. Environmental activists are thwarting this plan on the grounds that to prevent climate change the coal must stay in the ground. But millions of people in India will be trapped in terrible poverty if new coal fired (because they are big and cheaper than alternatives) power stations are not built. So to look after humans in general and not just allow well fed and affluent Western activists feel self righteous the coal should be mined.

Even in the West itself we are in danger of crippling our economies in the name of “sustainability”. This suits the Luddite mentality of activists but it is not looking after humans – in the West and worldwide. Whatever ill effects come from climate change, human ingenuity, technology and money can be used to alleviate. Crippling our economies may be the global equivalent of olden days doctors bleeding their patients!

Finding the best way forward for humanity is being obscured by a number of factors

Global Warming has become an industry – too many funded research positions, manufacturing products like expensive wind turbines and school syllabus are dependent on current thinking to allow for contrary facts to be allowed to emerge

The “save the planet” dogma has become for many a religion – and woe betide anyone who challenges ardent religious beliefs; People innately feel guilty. Having rejected the real cure for guilt – repentance and forgiveness through Christ – many in today's “post Christian” society find relief for their guilt, and even a warm glow of self righteousness in environmental activism and so are quite addicted to it.

Human psychology: We accept the first premise we hear, often without critically examining it, but we then put our blinkers on and employ every critical faculty to defend it from contrary evidence. Thus anyone questioning the “party line” is immediately howled down as a “climate denier”, any research news is censored, anything we do hear that conflicts with what we have been told is rejected.

My bottom line is that the West, to itself rise and also to take poor countries with it, needs to reform its response to climate change.

This, considering what I have said here, and the fact that many churches and people who profess Christianity are so caught up in the bad aspects of the present response, and indeed so addicted that they preach Jesus as a means to this end rather than the one true End in himself and only Saviour, that only a radical and grass roots revival of Christianity will suffice. The political change is, as I said at the very beginning of this series only a spin-off, a very beneficial spin-off but not the real “end” of a revival of Christianity.

Reviving Intellectual Honesty

Intellectual Honesty

There has probably never been a golden age for honesty. Nevertheless in those instances when it has prevailed the West made scientific advances which have brought immeasurable benefit to the world and made the West great.

One tragic example where, although the truth ultimately triumphed, many lives would have been saved and a brilliant man honoured in his lifetime had there been widespread intellectual honesty in the medical profession of the day is the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, also described as the “saviour of mothers”.

As a senior doctor in the maternity hospital in Vienna in the mid 1800's he noticed that many more women died of blood poisoning in the clinic staffed by medical students that the one staffed by trainee midwives. He refused to sweep this observation under the carpet but worked out that midwives washed their hands whereas medical students did not – even when going straight from an autopsy to the delivery room. He instituted hand washing in a disinfectant and the mortality rates immediately dropped.

Semmelweis tried to promote the practice of surgeons disinfecting their hands, but was met with opposition, scorn and ridicule by the medical profession. He was dismissed (for political reasons), and when he continued a virulent campaign for hand washing he was committed to a mental asylum where he died two weeks later after being beaten by the guards.

After he was replaced at the hospital the practice of hand washing was abandoned and mortality rates among mothers returned to previous levels in the clinic training doctors. This statistic was suppressed and ignored by the authorities. However many of Semmelweis's former students spread his discovery around Europe. However he was only vindicated later when Pasteur's work showed how disinfecting hands prevented the transmission of the bacteria that caused blood poisoning. Belatedly he was recognised in his home town as a hero.

Lack of intellectual honesty and rejection of that love of the truth that allows debate so that all the facts can come out has caused harm many times in recent years. A couple of times just in the past few months my wife. Reading the latest medical journal has pointed out that another medical issue long held as incontrovertible has been disproved.

Generally the history of the issue has gone something like this: A paper has been published saying that XYZ is good (or bad) for people's health. The story has been taken up by both medical and allied health professionals, been popularised in the press, and manufacturers have got onto the bandwagon advertising that their product is extra high or low as the need may be in XYZ.

Now that this is the accepted wisdom, research papers claiming the contrary are either ridiculed, or simply refused publication. After 20 years or so some researcher finally breaks through the silence barrier, proves that the original research was faulty and sets things straight. Of course it takes a long time for the trickle down effect to change professionals' and the public's minds and all this time they have been carefully following bad advice!

These examples probably cause little harm, but illustrate the problem when intellectual honesty is made second to other things and free debate is gagged on scientific matters.

Take the DDT case. Malaria kills millions of people a year. There was a campaign to eradicate its animal vector the Anopheles mosquito using the powerful insecticide DDT . The Anopheles was on the verge of being made extinct – which would have made malaria “extinct” too when environmental activists, aided by the film “A Silent Spring” campaigned successfully to have DDT banned. Ten years later the UN reversed the ban having decided on the evidence that DDT was in fact safe to use. But that was ten years too late. The Anopheles mosquito had got the reprieve it needed, and millions of people continue to die each year from malaria.

Take the “Anti-Vacc” movement. True most people do see them as cranks, but to ignore the benefits to humankind of vaccination requires a complete denial of intellectual honesty. Just take Smallpox as one example.

I still have the tell-tale scar of the inoculation I got when I first planned to travel overseas – it was too dangerous to travel to countries where smallpox existed without inoculation. During the 20^th century it is estimated that smallpox caused 300 million to 500 million deaths. But an eradication program largely featuring inoculation was successful and in 1980 the WHO declared the disease to have been eradicated.

In a totally different field of endeavour I read a columnist in the financial section of the paper today emphasising the need for intellectual honesty in order to be successful as an investor. He pointed out that the investment guru Warren Buffet when he formulated an investing strategy spent considerable time trying to dis-prove it! Only when the strategy has survived this process does he put his money on it. The columnist went on to quote a book on rational behaviour: “rational beliefs must correspond to the way the world is, not to the way you think the world ought to be. … If you can't be honest with yourself about the difference between the truth and what and what you think ought to be true, you may be intelligent but you aren't rational.”

Intellectual honesty and love of the truth are essential for successful living in the real world. For the West to pull out of decline one of the many things necessary is to recover the intellectual honesty that gave us the great leaps forward in science and technology and the knowledge that a real world has real truth.

Christmas in the West

Christmas in the West

Secularists are trying to sweep it off the stage: Iislamists are trying to create carnage: but still persists.

I am writing this on Christmas Eve. This week has seen people massacred at a Christmas market in Berlin, a terror plot in Indonesia foiled, and a plot to massacre worshipers at the Anglican cathedral here in Melbourne foiled by police. There has been a notable lack of Christmas carols in public places. Yet it seem to me that people are starting to react against the grinches. People seem to be more open in wishing "happy Christmas" than last year. Maybe it is just my wishful thinking; but just maybe the tide of public feeling is starting to turn.

In today's paper there is a brilliant article setting our the Christian joy of Christmas. Greg Sheridan says it much better than I could so I will just paste in article for readers to look at.

It’s no miracle Christmas survives in the post-Christian west

• Greg Sheridan
• The Australian
• 12:00AM December 24, 2016

• Greg Sheridan

  

  Foreign Editor

  Melbourne

  https://plus.google.com/101372426793016687263

  

And so this doleful year ends and Christmas is upon us, with an atrocity at a seasonal market in Berlin, with police foiling an ­alleged plan to attack St Paul’s ­Cathedral in Melbourne on Christmas Day, with the Canberra headquarters of the Australian Christian Lobby, Eternity House, being car-bombed, even though police say there was no religious motive, and against the background of a continuing religious and ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East.

Christianity’s long ability to ­inspire both the love and the hatred of human beings ­continues.

In many parts of the world Christianity is thriving. It is on fire in Africa, expanding through the global south and there are many more Christians in China than there are members of the Communist Party.

But much of the West, with the partial exception of the US, is heading towards a predominantly post-Christian iden­tity. The main way Christianity is treated in public culture ranges from contempt and ridicule, to ­calumny and vilification, through to just being ignored and whitewashed from the public square, unless, very occasionally, it can be recruited to serve a fashionable cause.

Yet Christmas survives, even in the post-Christian West, as the most popular Christian festival, a symbol truly of universal appeal.

We all have our childhood memories of Christmas. For me it was midnight mass, black-and-white TV, presents at the foot of the bed, Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, the roster of movies we seemed to watch every year — It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Going My Way — all long gone now.

It would take a fantastic curmudgeon to deny the happy sentimentality of Christmas, for much that is good is wrapped up in that sentimentality.

But as our society leaves Christianity behind, it is a pitiful fact the content of Christianity, and especially the content of Christmas, has all but passed out of collective consciousness.

Given that for most of the past 2000 years, until about five minutes ago, Christianity shaped Western civilisation, this sheer and wilful ignorance, entirely separate from the question of belief, is an extreme version of a perverse kind of intellectual self-harm. And to deny students especially any real knowledge of their own ­inheritance seems to mount perversity on perversity.

For Christmas, as traditionally understood in Western culture, is the most radical event in human history. The claims of the Christian religion, which centre on Christmas, are the most stupendous that have ever been made.

Consider just four of the most astonishing claims of Jesus, and of Christianity, arising out of Christmas: that Jesus is God and that God for a time was a child, that God alone is the principle of all goodness, that the devil is a real character always about and that Jesus can work miracles.

One common post-Christian way of understanding Jesus is to think of him as a good and kindly man who provided great moral teaching, a kind of early Mahatma Gandhi, and that others, ­especially the historical church, have attributed divinity to him that he never claimed.

The problem is this doesn’t ­accord with the facts at all. Jesus himself, and the Gospels generally, constantly claim that Jesus is God, not a messenger of God, not a teacher inspired by God, not an angel, still less the leader of a social movement, but actually God.

No other historical figure who founded a significant religion has ever made this claim. Therefore, as Christians used to point out, there are only three possibilities for Jesus. Either he was a deluded fantasist, a profoundly brilliant charlatan or indeed he was and is God.

One of the best ways to try to understand the cultural and historical import of Christianity is ­actually to read the Gospels. There are mysteries in them but overall they are abundantly clear on all the big points.

Did Jesus claim divinity? In St John’s Gospel, Jesus says: “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am.”

John’s Gospel, by the way, is one of the greatest works of literature in human history. Read it just for the literary experience, preferably in an older translation. Modern translators have tried to render the Bible in all the soaring prose of a telephone directory but even they cannot disguise the majesty and drama and sweep of John’s language.

In many passages, John refers to Jesus as “the word” and begins his Gospel thus: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.”

In Mark’s Gospel, when asked if he is the Christ, the son of God, Jesus replies: “I am.” Not much equivocation there.

Elsewhere in John’s Gospel, Jesus declares: “I am the resur­rection and the life. Whoever ­believes in me will live, even though he dies.”

Later, Jesus returns to the same theme: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.”

The point of these quotations, and there are many others to the same effect, is not to convince anyone that Christianity is true but just to make clear the uncompromising nature of the claims Jesus made.

Jesus proclaimed that he is God and that, incidentally, God created all the universe.

These are the most radical and paradigm-shattering claims ever made in human history. They may be wrong but it is surely worth knowing something about them.

The other claim entailed there is that salvation, eternal life, is available only through Jesus. This leads traditional critics of Christianity to describe a jealous God, as though God were just one person among many but demanding all the attention.

Catholic Cardinal George Pell addressed this in his justly famous debate with the atheist Richard Dawkins. Asked if non-Christians could expect salvation and eternal life, Pell answered yes, anyone who sought the good and moves ­towards God might find salvation. Pell outraged some Christians and surprised some atheists, but this is the official position in the Catholic catechism. It shows that while the basic messages of the Gospel are clear enough, there is still a need for ­interpretation. The ­inclusive view of salvation rests on the sovereignty and authority of Jesus. He alone decides who ­approaches the father so it’s not up to anyone else to judge.

But there is a much deeper point. As Jesus frequently ­declares in his teaching, everything that is good comes from God. It takes only the smallest extrapolation to realise that when being asked to worship God, it is not just to choose one person, God, among others, but to choose the very principle of goodness. Since God is the principle of goodness, the jealous god is jealous that people should choose good over evil.

That is not everything that a Christian believes but it illustrates that the message of Jesus, at least as claimed by Jesus, is universal, it is for Christians and non-Christians alike.

Which leads to another ­piquant question: why do Christians believe in and practise Christianity if they also believe that non-Christians can find salvation? The answer is simple: ­because they believe Christianity is actually true, which is the only reasonable basis for any serious commitment to Christianity at all.

Two smaller but hardly less revolutionary, to modern sensibilities, features of the Gospels are the presence of the devil and the near ubiquity in the Gospels of miracles.

A little over 40 years ago, the devil made a big comeback in Hollywood through The Exorcist. Hollywood has never quite wanted to dispense with him as he’s such an arresting character. But now he’s right out of fashion. The recent Marvel Comics’ Doctor Strange movie felt obliged by the zeitgeist to give an entirely materialist explanation of the hero’s powers, which in the original had much to do with the ­occult.

But you cannot really believe anything of Jesus without believing in the real existence of the devil, for Jesus frequently talked about him and the devil is central to key Gospel episodes.

Pope Francis is immensely popular, in part because of his ­social justice messages. He is an Argentinian Pope who seems to ­interpret all economic matters through the very distinctive Argen­tinian experience. But of course, as the Pope himself often acknowledges, the Pope has no special authority on economics.

The media tends, however, to more or less ignore what the Pope says about religion, and he ­frequently talks about the devil.

Miracles are equally unfashionable. But in the Gospels, Jesus performs nearly 40 separate miracles. He spends a great deal of his time performing miracles. Intellectually, it is perfectly sensible to try to interpret the Gospels and not just read them without any ­interpretation at all. But as with all great works of literature, inter­pretation is entirely secondary to actually reading the work in the first place.

It’s pretty clear that unless the Gospels are absolutely full of lies, in which case the only reason for reading them is historical curiosity, miracles are a central part of the deal of the teachings of Jesus.

Of course, logically it’s hard to believe in God at all and not ­believe in miracles. Otherwise the proposition is God cannot do anything that we can’t do ourselves, in which case there is ­almost no meaning in the word God.

This is the quiet position of ­almost all believing Christians. Peter Costello, in his memoirs, ­attributes the recovery of his wife from a grave illness in part to the miraculous. Kevin Rudd, who I think quite nobly disclosed his Christian faith, was once asked point-blank whether he believed in miracles and answered point-blank that he did.

Yet in most circles, to assert a belief in miracles today would be to court instant ridicule.

The neglect of the wellsprings of Western civilisation in our education, and in our culture more generally, is one of the drolly miraculous elements of our own time. To desire not just to reject Christianity but to determine not to know anything much at all about it is weird and would be incomprehensible in any other field.

Though it is available to all cultures, Christianity built Western civilisation which, presumably, we still have some use for. Imagine wanting to continue to use a bridge but being determined to suppress the knowledge of how the bridge was built.

The wonders of Christmas are endless.

I wish you all a very blessed and joyous Christmas 

 

Marriage and Normality under seige

The LBGTI Lobby

This acronym sounds like a bacon and lettuce sandwich with the lot, but is the current flag under which lobbyists of every sexual orientation other than normal heterosexuality is fighting. And fighting they are.

Not that long ago homosexual acts were crimes. Then the cry went up “what place does the law have in private bedrooms” and homosexual acts between consenting adults was de-criminalised. Fair enough in a secular state if it had stopped there. But it didn't. Granted many – perhaps most of the small percentage of the population who defined themselves as “gay” were content to live quietly with their partner.
But there was a vocal group who were incredibly, almost impossibly promiscuous and who were far and away the major group affected by aids. They mounted a brilliant and unrelenting scare and propaganda campaign. (I even had 80 year old widows and single ladies in my congregation afraid they would catch aids!)
One of the claims of this propaganda was that the general heterosexual population was at risk. This was backed up by stories from Africa. But in a medical journal I read that this did happen in Africa because there was such a high rate of promiscuousness coupled with a low availability of medical treatment that untreated venereal disease was endemic and gave rise to running sores so that there was an easy entry path for the aids virus. This was not the case in developed Western countries.
When I wrote this my parish newsletter I the 80's I was reprimanded by the bishop. The Anglican church had already been infected by the homosexual extremist's campaign.
Since then anti-discrimination legislation has made LBGTI's one of the “protected species” of identity politics while Christians have been “fair game” for attacks and vilification.
The movement has not stopped there. Films at first showed the good side of homosexuality – who could not sympathise with the pair in “the Birdcage” and as I said there were many like that who were just living quietly as best they knew how. But for the extremists it did not stop there. More gay, lesbian and bisexual characters appeared in films – I suspect far exceeding their representation in the general population. One we were acclimatised to that, overt homosexual sex scenes appeared.
On the political front there was the push for “marriage equality” that is to say they wanted homosexual marriage instituted by law – curiously at the same time that a very large proportion of heterosexual unions were de-facto rather than legally instituted. So much so that laws were passed to give property rights to de-facto couples breaking up the relationship.
Laws were then passed giving that same property rights as marriage entailed to breakup of homosexual relationships. But that was not enough. It had to be “marriage”. In many jurisdictions homosexual marriage has been made law, in others lobbyists are still trying.
While all sections the community was extending a “live and let live” attitude to homosexuals, the LBGTI extremists and the social progressives who had taken up their cause had no intention of reciprocating in kind. Anyone who wanted the word and institution “marriage” to mean “between a man and a woman” was immediately howled down, called a bigot and a homophobe and excoriated in social media – which sometimes cost the victim of this attack their job. There was no tolerance now of the traditional view or of those who held it. Religious tolerance – a cornerstone of modern Western democracy was to be suspended towards a Christianity that did not espouse gay marriage. (Islam was naturally exempt because it was – at a distance – the darling of the progressive left).
But again that was not enough!
Now curricula are being forcibly introduced into Australian schools by government mandate teaching children from kindergarten up that gender is “fluid”. There are no longer “boys” and “girls”. All “hetero-normative” expressions were to be avoided. Children were to be trained to at various times to chose to be one, and then perhaps at another time chose to be another gender.
Even government departments were instructed to avoid all hetero-normative words!
Added to this the idea of constancy “till death do us part” (even to a same sex partner) is completely rejected. Sexual immorality is assumed.
Mercifully there has been some public outcry, and the few non-progressive media have severely criticised these and there are some signs that governments may back pedal. The frightful aims of these social terrorists have been exposed. They want to destroy the institution of marriage (legal and de-facto) causing catastrophic damage to our society and cause incredible psychological damage and long trauma to our children. They may indeed be far more dangerous than Islamist terrorists!



For the survival of Western societies these dangerous dogmas need to be defeated.
Certainly kindness and tolerance to those few who choose a same sex partner. But no quarter for the ruthless fanatics with their complete bigotry and intolerance of all that is good.
We must restore moral virtue and the social necessity for marriage to be “between a man and a woman for their mutual support and joy and the raising of children to the good order of society” to paraphrase the Anglican Prayer Book.

Marriage and Divorce

Marriage and Divorce

Marriage is one of the vital institutions of society. It is also an institution which has been under subtle but relentless attack in the West. If we don't want western nations to disintegrate, marriage and family must be reclaimed.

Divorce is traumatic. One other or both of the couple suffer very obvious hurt. For children, particularly in the mid years, the effects are most often devastating and often leave them emotionally scarred for life. Where children then come under step parents, the incidence of abuse increases dramatically. The hurts involved ripple out to the extended family – from grandparents having limited access to friends having to “take sides” and drop one member of the former couple. Economically there are costs as joint assets have to be split and often the family home sold also if the couple do not re-marry two households are more expensive to run than one.

Changes to the law making divorce much simpler may have caused more divorces, but were also introduced as a result of divorce increasing.

Many churches have loosened up on re-marrying divorced persons. This may sound cheeky, but I think churches were in error Biblically banning divorce altogether, an equally un-biblical now in accepting it to align with the spirit of the age.

Yes I know Jesus' words and I take them seriously. But note that when the Pharisees questioned him about divorce their question was more in the nature of “how much of an excuse do I need in order to divorce my wife?”. Jesus' answer was then in the form of “no amount of excuse will stop what you are planning to do (put away the old wife and marry the new) from being adultery”. This is strengthened when their reply “then why did Moses command ...” (of course they are miss-quoting Moses here – the command was to give the wife written proof if she was divorced) is met by Jesus saying “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard, but it was not this way from the beginning.”

So divorce was never God's intention for humans, but our fallen nature sometimes made it the lesser of two evils.

Among Jesus' followers divorce should be unnecessary. But even professing Christians can be unteachable sinful or cruel. There is an old saying – usually about a man: “street angel: house devil” In practice even in the church, let alone in general society, there are times where one partner is so abusive to the other (and or children) that to allow the innocent party a divorce is definitely the lesser of two evils.

On the other hand, Jesus made his opposition to gratuitous divorce abundantly clear. His position, as always, is at one with the Old Testament, with statements like “I hate divorce says the Lord”

So in every area of public life there needs to be asked “what can we do to reduce the divorce rate”

If as a society we were really concerned to reduce the divorce rate people in various walks of life should be asking the question “why do people divorce” and “Is there something that can be done to save some of these breaking marriages”

Here are a few thoughts I have had over the years:

As a minister I had people coming to me to re-marry after a divorce. I always went through the details of the breakup of the previous marriage with them. A thing that really hit me was that most of these breakups did not involve wickedness or cruelty or serious issues: they had simply allowed themselves to grow apart – until of course the inevitable happened to one or other. I so often felt that if someone had got hold of them early in the drifting apart and banged their heads together they would have gone on to have a happy marriage: So that is one thing that can be done: friends, family etc to reinforce “You are a single social unit now: do your socialising together, develop interests you can enjoy together …”

As a doctor my wife sees even more divorcees. Some had partners that were so abusive that the wonder is that they stayed so long – of course some of these had husbands who were so dangerously violent that they didn't dare leave. But the more common causes she says are unreal expectations, and the stress of modern life.

Women particularly – and they more often than men now initiate divorce – expect their husbands to be everything and meet every need. Men can't. They can be good husbands and fulfil those needs but they can't be everything and fix every problem. So the women leave – only to hit the same problem over and over because what they have been led to expect marriage to provide is just not realistic. So how, as communities can we have young people grow up with a realistic ideal of what to expect to contribute and receive from a good marriage.

Stress in modern life. I don't mean the “old days were better” that, the Bible says is a foolish thing to say. But there are some higher or different stresses.

In my mother's day, middle class husbands earned enough that wives could stay home. Children came home from school to find mum waiting to hear all about their day, husbands came home to find dinner prepared. The importance of the wife and mother role was reinforced by the 50's movies and TV.

Now both parents have to work to maintain the same social position. Also the social and media pressure is on women to follow a career path. Obviously as my wife is a doctor I don't have any problem with women and careers, in many ways the opening up of these things for women has been very good: I'm just looking at the stress that has come with it. The importance of motherhood is played down, so children now spend long hours in child-care and after-school care and come home to a mother who is exhausted from the day's work. Husbands come home - and there is now hot dinner ready (for either of them!). So someone has to bath kids, cook dinner, and by then the evening has gone. All I am saying is that feeling too tired, burdened and not enjoying life makes escaping the marriage look attractive. Of course like all those things that used to be called “temptation” in the end it only multiplies the problems.

As a society can we change the expectation that working wives will do all the tasks their non-working mothers did? Can we re-discover the importance of parenthood, so that father or mother sacrificing several steps on the career ladder to stay home and rear young children is not resented?

Can more part time or shared positions be provided? I even think providing better highways to reduce time and frustration travelling to and from work would help.

Then there's the oldest cause of all: adultery. Some marriages survive it, some don't and many leave their husband or wife to live with the new man or woman. Currently as I see it social mores accept this and the world view constructed by our TV shows and films actually encourages it. This is a false world view, and the end result is a great deal of human misery, and as I said earlier, emotional harm to kids and even child abuse. But sex is a powerful temptation: to resist it ordinary people need all the support available, including social taboos, and the reinforcing of the true word view: adultery looks enticing but the end result is hurt. So there are things that could change in our societies that would reduce the divorce rate from this cause too.

What causes have you come across? How could they be made less potent?

What makes a Fair Trial

A Fair Trial.

The idea that people should have a fair trial before being punished is so ingrained that even quite despicable regimes often at least stage a “show trial” to make it look as thought this requirement has been satisfied. Even Pontius Pilate who as Roman procurator had no compunction in massacring protesters wanted to know what the charges against Jesus were, gave him an opportunity to answer them and had the charge on which Jesus was condemned to die: being “King of the Jews”; affixed to the cross.

Some readers may now say: “Aha, so you admit even pre-Christian (and non-Christian) peoples had some accurate ideas on justice and due process.” Well I do! And this is my reason: Justice is part of God's unchanging moral character, he is also depicted in the Bible as “Judge of all the world” and similar titles, so “fair trial” is a reflection in human terms of his character as Judge. Us humans were created in his “image and likeness” and since God is spirit, this must mean something other than looks. We are also fallen creatures, having as a race chosen to rule the world on our own resources rather than as God's viceroys. So the upshot is that all humans may show more or less of God's character and all humans may show lack of or warped versions of God's character.

In English based jurisdictions the Greek and Roman ideals have been much refined over time. On to this base has been laid a carefully constructed edifice by godly men and women whose life's work has been the practice and development of law.

Much of their work has been the practical outworking and application to their field of expertise of a Christian and perhaps Protestant world view. The danger today is that by a combination of ignorance, the reduction of Christian influence and immigration of non-Christians bringing very different world views, Western societies are in danger of losing this treasure.

What are the basic essentials of a due process in the English system?

a) To know who is accusing you and to be able to question them; to know the details of the charge(s), and to be able to answer them.

b) for the prosecutor to set aside their own “need to win”, to release all information to the defence, especially information which would help the defence.

c) for only evidence that is actually relevant to the charge be admitted, and hearsay and gossip to be excluded

d) for the judge to be independent and impartial

e) for some avenue for an appeal

“the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” as the saying goes. So too with due process. There is always temptation for it to be abused. Governments may pressure judges for political reasons. Judges themselves may decide in accordance with their own political ideas, or for all sorts of bribes rather than on the evidence. Prosecutors may be so emotionally (or say in the US career wise) involved that they cross the line, hide inconvenient evidence or the like. Lawyers will try to bring in inadmissible evidence. In every jurisdiction there are historic cases trials which have been a perversion of justice. Unless people see these for what they are and protest then standards will inevitably slide.

Cardinal Wolsey on his deathbed in 1530 is reported to have said “If I had served God as diligently as I have done the king ...” Affairs of state, from real or imagined security of the realm down to prejudices or even vindictiveness of rulers have frequently in the past and down to the present resulted in courts perverting justice.

The Bible denounces such acts as crimes of the highest magnitude. First judges are warned that they are reaching a verdict under God, not a king, president, governor or to appease a public outcry. Then there case histories – I think Ahab and Jezebel is the classic – where God's hatred of perversion of the trial process is played out in real life.

The Bible gives approval to Jehoshophat's admonition to the judges he appointed “Consider carefully what you do because you are not judging for man but for the LORD, who is with you whenever you give a verdict. Now let the fear of the LORD be upon you. Judge carefully, for with the LORD our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery.”

King Ahab is frustrated that one of his subjects will not sell his family vineyard to him to use as a vegetable garden for the palace. Queen Jezebel, a former princess from Tyre is horrified: this is not how kings in her world act. She secretly writes to the elders of the town where this man Naboth lives instructing them to have Naboth falsely accused of blasphemy and executed. (interestingly also a modern occurrence in Moslem countries! The Christian governor of Jakarta has just been arrested on blasphemy charges ahead of an election, and in Pakistan a Christian woman has been sentenced to death for blasphemy for drinking from the same cup as Moslems). The town elders comply, and Jezebel on receiving their report tells Ahab to go and take possession of the vineyard because Naboth is dead.

God took this injustice so seriously that he sent Elijah the prophet to meet Ahab at the vineyard and deliver God's sentence on him and Jezebel. “where the dogs licked up Naboth's blood they will lick up your blood – yes yours. … (I will) cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel” and “dogs will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel” These all happened, although there was a stay of execution because Ahab repented before God after Elijah confronted him. Someone famous said that although God reserves most judgement till the Day of Judgement, he gives some instances in advance as indications of what is to come. This instance – written in scripture for our instruction leaves no doubt that God really, really hates perversion of justice!

The Oxford Dictionary added a new word “Post truth” this year. It is not just in the realm of politics that truth suffers, and its not new – just more brazen. I know someone who as a barrister some decades ago changed their field of law because they were so sickened by the way so many litigants and witnesses in court lied without the slightest compunction.

False witnesses and false accusations have been around a long time – Potiphar's wife accusing Joseph of molesting her because he had rejected her advances – the false witnesses testifying against Jesus and so on. The Bible is once again absolutely clear on God's abhorrence of such things. The Biblical injunction was that false witnesses should suffer the exact punishment which would had befallen the accused person.

There is a brilliant story in the Apocrypha (Daniel, Bel & Suzanna) about this. Susanna, a virtuous married woman rejects the advances of two men who have been stalking her. In revenge they accuse her of adultery and testify that they saw her in the very act under a tree. She is condemned and about to be dragged out and stoned to death when one Daniel steps forward and demands to be allowed to cross examine the witnesses. He has one sent out and asks the other “what type of tree was it” and then sends him out, brings in the other and repeats the question. Of course without opportunity to get their stories straight they give conflicting answers. The lie is exposed, Susanna vindicated, and the two lying witnesses deservedly stoned to death.

I am not for a moment suggesting the rule of OT times should be in modern laws. However when perjury is rarely punished at all, and less and less of the population fear God's judgement on them if they lie in court, our justice system is in trouble.

Just one more item: Rules of Evidence

They have been developed over millennia (even a Roman emperor persecuting Christians ordered that anonymous denunciations were not to be accepted) to help achieve fair trials.

Humans are fallible, so even the best run trials may give the wrong verdict. One Judge Blackwood is famed for saying “I would rather release ten guilty murderers than hang one innocent man” People are right to be angry when a guilty person gets acquitted. But they often blame the rules of evidence saying things like “But if the jury had bee allowed to hear such and such piece of evidence they would have convicted ...” Possibly they would, but in another instance had they heard such and such a piece of evidence they would have convicted an innocent person! Nothing human is perfect but remember, it is God who said “Justice is mine: I will repay” the acquitted guilty person will not escape punishment! But to punish an innocent person is a great evil.

PS I have not been citing chapter and verse for scripture reference lately because with the Internet, particularly search engines like “Bible Gateway” it is simple to bring up the text on screen and then look at it in any other translations you wish. I am using the TNIV version