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.

it doesn't have to be about us

One word: Afghanistan.

So much turmoil and trouble and grief and guilt and pain and suffering.

And a hefty dose of misinformation and drama running around as well. For which I wrote this post and actually put it up on FB.

In the midst of the takeover of Afghanistan, there are undoubtedly churches and Christians at risk, and Christian groups in the west are going to be praying for them.

However, please be wary of reposting every alleged atrocity that crosses your dashboard.

eg. a post came to light on one of the groups I’m in, where the missionary Judith Carmona in the city of Chihuahua in Africa reports that 229 Christian missionaries are about to be brutally executed by Afghan Taliban in the city of Quaragosh. The post exhorted Christians to provide ‘prayer cover’ for them.

Chihuahua City is in Mexico, not Africa. The city of Qaraqosh is in Iraq, not Afghanistan. And 229 Christian missionaries – most likely from Western countries – are being executed by the Taliban and not a scrap of media attention being paid to it?

(“Oh, but Sel, the western media hates Christians. Why, they’d watch us all slaughtered in the blink of an eye and never so much as make a peep!”)

If you google "judith carmona missionaries" and limit the results to before mid-last year, the first result on the page is a data scrape website that dates back to 2018. Other reports indicate that Ms Carmona and her missionaries actually first appeared in dire need of prayer cover back in 2009.

Basically, Judith Carmona's 229 Christian missionaries have been waiting in anticipatory terror of their beheading for at least three years, possibly up to twelve years, now. If they died, either in 2009 or in 2018, possibly both, then they have clearly been resurrected through the power of the risen Lord!!!!! ...and transported once again to a place where there is unrest and trouble in the Islamic world, that you and everyone who sees this rebirthed story may fire up their outrage against Muslims, Islam, and the primitive tribal peoples of that area who don't know the proper kind of civilisation and politeness that we in the west are party to.

But, taking the sarcasm font away...

Seriously. We are Christians, we should value the truth. So fact-check before reposting stuff like Judith Carmona and the 229 missionaries.

And don't come at me with, "But there are other atrocities happening to Christians even now!" Have I denied that there are?

But also be aware: this isn't Christian-specific persecution: this is a generic 'anyone who stands against the Taliban' persecution. Christians will absolutely and undoubtedly fall under this category, but it's not as though non-Christians will be untouched.

So let's also be wary of making out that this is "Christian persecution", because it's more than that. There is persecution because people are Christians, absolutely, but there's also persecution because people worked with the allied forces, or because women behave like they should have the same rights as men, or because journalists might report things that the Taliban doesn’t want shown, or because communities aren't as obedient to the teachings of the Koran as the Taliban thinks they should be.

Frankly, it’s not ‘Christian persecution’ so much as ‘anyone who isn’t 100% “Taliban YAY” persecution’.

So let’s pray, fellow Christians, by all means, but let’s also not make it all about us, mhmm?

I have no idea how it's going to be taken among my conservative FB church friends. But I did preface it with: "Buckle up. This gets grumpy."

Not Our Problem

I don't actually believe your average Australian wants asylum seekers (colloquially known as "illegals") shot in the head above a shallow grave so they're not a problem anymore.

I do believe your average Australian wants Someone Else to do it Somewhere Else Where We Can't See so it's Not Our Problem.

I mean, our entire society - social and economic - is built on It's Not Our Problem - from the comforts of capitalism (and it's underlying necessity of economic slavery) to the avoidance of the idea that the problem is us (thank you, G.K. Chesterton for such succinct phrasing).

So, yeah, I think that if most Aussies could handwave the Murugappan family into a shallow grave somewhere with a "so sad, so sorry, they brought it on themselves, we're not responsible" they absolutely would.

PROVE ME WRONG.

of liars and leaders

The year I was sixteen, my church had an Easter church camp. The theme of the camp was that We Would Face Oppression And Resistance As Christians. It's a reliable Evangelical theme, both then and now.

That camp, we got confronted by it quite directly.

At the Saturday night event, usually only filled with teenagers from 12 to 18, their over-18 leaders (up to about age 27, maybe), and maybe four adults/parents who were there to keep an eye on everything, a stranger walked into the event and started demanding to know why we believed. What was this Jesus thing all about anyway? How could we follow this thing so blindly? He was escorted out, and the evening started to go on but ground to a halt as the leaders realised that the teenagers were mostly too traumatised to continue. The evening was disrupted, and we were sent back to the main hall while the leaders conferred about what to do next.

About half an hour later, we were called back in and a handful of the leaders confessed: the stranger was a plant. Someone that they knew from their university Christian groups who'd agreed to be the 'challenger' to a bunch of sheltered, conservative teenagers of Asian background and Australian birth about the realities of the Christian life.

Most of us accepted this, I think. I don't remember much about my thoughts and feelings, except that it seemed like a reasonable idea that had gone way out of control. Also, some of the younger girls in my cabins - 12 and 13 years old - were rather traumatised by the sudden prospect of confrontation. One was really close to the guy when he stopped in the centre aisle to castigate the leaders, and she was trembling. These are kids from Sydney's North Shore, young and protected, upper-class, private school kids brought up in a Christian environment among family and friends. They've never known hardship or struggle or oppression - and money and status and power insulate us from those things, too.

She was struggling a lot, so we had one of the female leaders sitting on the bed and talking with her, with many of the other younger girls who were still struggling to process. This leader hadn't been part of the plan. In fact, her boyfriend - a grown man of thirty - had twigged that the challenger was someone from a university Christian group back in his day, and gone after the group of leaders who'd escorted him out to reason with him, only to find out that it was all a show. A performance with the intention of 'showing us how it really was'.

He was furious at the deception.

When I ventured that the leaders had our best interests at heart - preparing us for the world - though, John shook his head. "Selina," he said, "God never uses fear and lies as His tools to further His kingdom."

God never uses fear and lies as His tools to further His kingdom.

I don't know if John remembers saying that, but it has stuck with me for nearly thirty years.

What does this thirty-year old memory have to do with the now?

Simple.

Scott Morrison is a liar.

He may be a Christian, but he is also an inveterate liar. He takes no true responsibility. He bears no true burden of leadership. What he can deflect to someone else, he will. What he can obfuscate and deny, he does. He may very well be saved by the blood of Jesus, but he is a terrible ambassador for Christ in the political arena because he is not a man of honour and decency. He is the Aaron Burr of our times: "talk less, smirk more, don't tell them straight what you're against or what you're for..."

And Australian Christians are voting for Morrison and his party out of fear.

All the ranking church people I know in my denomination are behind the Liberal Party of Australia. For gender certainty. For religious discrimination. For 'decency' and 'uprightness' and 'a godly society'. To keep our society from 'falling to godlessness', to maintain our privileged standing in educational institutions and charitable institutions, because God's way is the correct way and this gives us the right to demand that other people listen to us and put up with us and don't question us and our methods...

The lies and falsehoods and squirrel statements that the leaders of the Liberal Party make? All in the service of God. All in the flourishing of the Christian faith.

All in the undercutting of Christian witness.

God never uses fear and lies as His tools to further His kingdom.

captive audiences and the gospel

the right to force other people to listen

In my mid-twenties, I was working in the city, commuting up the north shore line.

It was usually a quiet, unprepossessing trip, full of people who carefully didn't make eye contact and who tried not to say anything more than the barest minimum to each other. Mobile phones had not yet achieved internet status at the time, and so people read their papers or a book or stared blankly into space as they girded themselves for the day ahead.

Except this one morning.

A young man - maybe my own age, maybe a bit younger - got on my carriage at Chatswood. Taking a position near the stairs, holding firmly to the provided handles, he raised his voice for our attention and began...a stand-up comedy routine. He had a nice voice. The jokes were dad-level - that wincingly funny angle of 'oh no dad, please'. His voice carried through the quiet carriage, intruding on a peaceful morning commute. And there was no escape for anyone who didn't have headphones on. (And headphones or earphones were a far less common proposition in those days.)

We were on a train headed to work. We had no choice about being there - not if we wanted to earn money. Sure, some people smothered laughs at his routine, but my own thoughts at that moment were, I didn't sign up for this and I have nowhere to go.

The thing about that train carriage was that there were another six stops to the city, and I didn't know how long he was going to make jokes, but I wasn't in a mood to take them.

I can't remember what I said. I remember that it was short and polite and very much annoyed. I sympathised with his enthusiasm and his vigour, but at that moment if I'd had a neon sign to put up over my head, it would have read something like: DO NOT WANT.

He apologised and piped down. The guy standing next to him said quietly that he enjoyed the humour. The train ride continued, and he got off a few stops later.

Maybe under other circumstances, I might have been more forgiving. After all, the guy was passionate about what he was doing, he was enthusiastic, he was pretty funny in that dad-joke kind of way. But I didn't have the capacity for it then, and if I didn't, doubtless many other people didn't either, although none of them would have been so bold as to say so. Don't rock the boat, don't interrupt him, put aside your own discomfort to make him feel at home...

No. Sorry. A stand-up routine on a street or a platform, where people can move away? Yes. Sure. All good.

A stand-up routine with a bunch of people who are pretty much the definition of a captive audience? No. That's inflicting something on people that they haven't paid for, haven't asked for.

I think of that morning sometimes when my friends complain that they can't "tell the gospel" at their workplaces anymore.

I think of people who just want to get through their day, who are tired and grumpy, who haven't signed up for this, who didn't ask for it. I think of people who have no choice but to listen to a co-worker whose enthusiasm might be enjoyable outside of work but whose insistence on preaching the gospel inside an office space leaves no choice but for the recipient to stand up and say "No. Enough. I don't want to listen to this now. I signed up to work, not to be preached at."

What we offer to people as individuals, on their own time, in spaces where they have the choice to listen or the choice to shut it down gently. And I think of being preached at by someone who might have my best interests at heart but who has all the sensitivity of a brick when it comes to my comfort levels, or who tells themselves "it's the gospel, of course it's going to make them uncomfortable".

And I think that we are doing a great news no favours at all when we force people to listen.

In the same way, I think we are doing a great news and a great freedom no favours at all when we require people to follow Christian standards for our own comfort levels, but that's another conversation entirely.

TW: domestic violence

Tell me again that she was burned alive because she didn't smile properly. Tell me again that he flung his daughter off a bridge because she was singing a song he didn't like. Tell me again that he drowned himself and his daughter because his ex-wife made him angry...

Tell me again that he's a good man, a good father, a provider, an upstanding member of the community, a god-fearing man, that it's not his fault, that nobody saw this coming...

Tell me again how it's what she did, how she didn't appease him, how she wouldn't respect him, what she was wearing, who she was smiling at, her slutty behaviour, her bad morals....

We have a song when this kind of thing happens. We sing it really well. In six billion five hundred million part harmony. It's partly self-defence. So long as we do the right things, as long as we meet the right standards, so long as we jump at the right time through the golden hoops... We'll be okay, right?

Violence and abuse happens because the perpetrator chooses to be violent and/or abusive in a situation where others choose not to be.

Nothing more.

They're not "good men". They're not "just sinners". They're not "driven to it". They choose.

Moreover they learned that they could choose this way because you and I and the papers and the authorities excuse it. Because we think "oh, he's just a little weird" and "he does so much good in the community" and "well, maybe he didn't mean it like that" and "it's just the way God made men with all that extra testosterone that's gotta go somewhere hur hur".

And after the bodies are recovered and lying in the morgue, after the mourners have screamed their throats raw in the first flush of agony and finally fallen asleep in a funk of exhausted grief, we whisper gently, "he's a good man, even though he burned his wife to death, shot his son at a cricket match, abused multiple women, threw his partner out of the moving car..."

Do you think the God that wipes every tear from the eye of the broken doesn't see the way you slide respectability over brutality?