utterly and totestally perssikuted

There's a persisting irony in the, shall we say, religiosity with which we cling to our "WE BE UTTERLY AND TOTESTALLY PERSSIKUTED" cross.

It is only equalled by the insistent demand that news sites treat us with respect and dignity and in a positive light all the time.

Logic, peoples! If we're being persecuted for our faith, then part of that is going to involve the reported news (which is the world's perspective) about us being negative.

Additionally, the church (broadly speaking) hasn't done any particularly standout works worth reporting on. Large-scale advocation for refugees? Nope. Large-scale advocation for social support? Nope. Large-scale advocation for mental (and spiritual) health? Nope.

The three large-scale advocations that I can think of - for the Sydney Anglican diocese, which is hierarchically led (so a single speaking voice from the top) and biblically based - have been:
1. against gay marriage ($1m put towards the 'No' campaign for marriage equality; the archbishop's statement that gay ministers who want to be married should just leave the Anglican umbrella),
2. for the 'Religious Freedom/Religious Discrimination Bill' that allows organisations to hire and fire people in line with their core beliefs
3. for Religious Education in Schools (my church was personally encouraged to send a positive postcard to our local member about it, and I think the encouragement came from the diocese leadership.

Question: do these things benefit anyone other than the church and the church community?

Like, are we advocating on behalf of the ordinary people around us? Or are we advocating solely with an element of self-interest?

And if we're not advocating on behalf of broader society, rather than in our own self-interest, then how are we being any different to any other self-interested, non-Jesus-led organisation out there in society?

"But the gospel needs--"

Whoa, there, Nelly! Hold it right there. The gospel doesn't need us. God doesn't need us. He graciously allows us to be involved. But he doesn't need us.

"If every voice was still, the rocks themselves would cry out." ~ Jesus ~

What have Christians done for others lately? As a whole, not in the charitable arms, and the small groups that do their work on the sides. Those are good things to do - no doubt about it - but they're also out of sight, out of mind. SHould they be? No. But that's not the way that 'news' works: so far as broader society think - and so far as Christians seem intent on repeating - the only thing we have is TO TELL THE GOSPEL. Which is fine, but we really need to be using actions before we use words. And in hierarchical organisations (such as the Anglican dioceses), they need to come from the top, big and showy and positive - so far as the world is concerned.

And if they're not big and showy and positive as far as the world is concerned, then they're going to be scornful and negative, because that's all they see from Christians. And whining about it doesn't make it any better; an attitude of "they should appreciate us because we're nice people!" Not when the 'nice people' who are like us have treated them badly - individually, collectivally, societally - and aren't willing to take a stand on something that matters to them.

Basically, maybe they don't report anything positive about Christians, because - from their view at least - there is no positive about Christians.

lesser humans, choices and consequences, fears and freedoms

I remember after Trayvon Martin was shot a dozen years back. And hearing about a white mama who said, "His mama can't have loved him the way I love my kids. Black women just aren't capable of that kind of depth." And that was the first time that the idea that some people truly believe "all humans are equal, but some are more equal than others" smacked me in the face. I've seen it since in the dialogue around migrants and refugees, indigneous parents whose kids were taken from them, around asylum seekers, in the dialogue around religious vs non-religious people, and quite notably in many Americans' views of non-Americans.

"They're not like us; they don't pain or hurt or grief the way we do. They're less than | not really | incapable of being human."

Sometimes I think about everything that I am and have and known and own.

Sometimes I think about the fact that I am an unmarried, childless woman, owning property, earning her own wage, respected in her communities, broad in her education, expansive in her reach and influence.

I don't think people always realise just how precarious my existence as me is. Unmarried and childless puts me on the female discard heap of all societies back six thousand years of human community save western ones of the last thirty years. Owning property in my own name wasn't possible for a middle-upper class woman like me until forty years ago in the west, and was only occasionally allowed of upper-class/noblewomen in the thousands of years before. Earning a wage several times the human median - at least twice the male median wage in my society? Extremely rare (guildmistresses, maybe), if not unheard of.

I'm of Asian descent - visibly, undisguisably so - in a western/caucasian society. A citizen of that society, with all the legal rights that a white male of equivalent age born into the same society has.

When people talk about their rights and freedoms being taken away, I always reflect on the rights and freedoms I have, and which women like me have not had for generations upon generations upon generations. I think about me existing a hundred years ago - neither a citizen of China nor one of Australia, someone's household dowd, or a slanty-eyed slut, with no property and no rights and no chance to better myself and my life through any path that anyone will let me take. In that world, I am lesser, and every person I interact with sees me as lesser and treats me as lesser and that's just the way it is/the way God ordained it.

Rights? Freedoms? My existence as a respected and respectable person surfs on a wave that is barely as old as I am, compared with the solid ground of thousands of years of western manhood and masculine dominance. It may yet take me and others like me to a sandy beach from which we can reach solid ground; it may yet dump us in the surf and leave us gasping.

So, to be honest, I find it hard to sympathise with the 'my rights, my freedoms' crowd. I understand what they're feeling - panic and fear at the loss of the certainties that they thought they'd have: time to prepare for the end of the world, time to live in sumptuous excess without thought for tomorrow, time to slowly let go of their beliefs that technology can save us or the arc of human history bends towards justice. It's just a lesser concern in my lights.

Choices and consequences.

There are countries where people have lived as the powerless minority for so long, where victimhood is the norm and self-empowerment is a pipe dream. There are countries where people can't talk about their beliefs or their interests or they'll get locked away and 'reconditioned' - as though humanity is something that others can fix. There are women still alive who were sterilised to keep them from having "the wrong kind of children", and at this moment there is a child-bride weeping in the bed of her husband who is literally old enough to be her father.

These people don't get a choice. They only get consequences.

We get the choice and in that choice we get to bear the consequences. A government can mandate vaccination, and you can still choose not to be vaccinated and take the consequences of not vaccinating. One can argue that the unvaccinated shouldn't have to bear consequences for their choice, but then who bears the consequences when the unvaccinated get sick and take up time and space in the society that could go to someone who didn't get as sick from something that was eminently preventable?

A government can say 'you can't gather and protest' and people can choose to ignore that dictate and gather anyway - and face the consequences of being arrested and getting sick and losing their job for their participation. But the price is also paid by people who weren't at the anti-masking protests: the health professionals who have to deal with those who got sick, the family members who subsequently got sick, the co-workers who had to pick up the slack when their colleagues were let go.

Does this mean we just sit down and shut up and be good little automaton droids in the capitalist system? Don't be so extremist. It's not a one or the other. But there are times and places and spaces to rebel against the system, and there are times and places and spaces to let the system do best what it can do: deal with the processing of large volumes of humans in matters that affect state and national outcomes.

Sometimes I sympathise quite fiercely with the anthropomorphic personifications of Death from Terry Pratchett's Discworld: THERE IS NO JUSTICE; THERE'S JUST US.