The human mind to the rescue of God: John Haldane and scholasticism

I understand why you are spiritually dead; you have been preoccupied with the study of God and you have forgotten God!

--- Glenn Martin, A Biblical Christian Worldview 

An intellectual content without an experiential practice leaves us with an immobilising scholasticism. On the other hand, an experiential practice not anchored in an intellectual content leaves us with an impotent mysticism.

 --- Glenn Martin, Prevailing Worldviews of Western SocietySince 1500  

The scholastics […] attempted to shore up a waning Christianity by bringing the Classical tradition to the rescue of the Christian; […] by bringing the human intellect and reason to the rescue of Biblical revelation; by bringing a focus on man to the rescue of the significance of God; by bringing this age and temporality to the rescue of the age which is to come and so-called eternality; […] by bringing Aristotle to the rescue of Augustine.

 --- Glenn Martin, A Biblical Christian Worldview

Today I listened to an interesting – and intermittently maddening – podcast on ‘Science and Religion’ in the ‘In Our Times’ series by Mervin Bragg on BBC 4. Of the three interviewees, John Haldane impressed me with his eloquence and his brave stand (in the midst of a predominantly antitheist discussion) for morality, and the mutual congruence of theism with rationality.

I went ahead and researched a bit about Haldane. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University of Saint Andrews. He was educated by Jesuits and is a Catholic apologist and prolific author.

Importantly, he is a prominent follower of Thomas Aquinas, having coined the term ‘Thomism’, a school of thought also known as scholasticism, which Glenn Martin refers to and dissects in his lecture series on the Biblical Christian Worldview (available from here).

Scholasticism predominated from the 1200s to the 1400s. Its philosophical objective was to rejuvenate and perpetuate a dwindling Christianity, and so rationalism was used to ‘come to the rescue’ of Christian thought through a ‘scholastic synthesis’.

Scholasticism [is] the attempt to provide an intellectual basis for something on the ground of the human intellect without reference to the Word of God [either from direct personal revelational form or in the written word of scripture], usually in terms of logical analysis.

Synthesis [is the] combination, putting together, building up of separate elements, especially of conceptions or facts into a connected whole.

Thomas Aquinas was the originator of scholasticism, as expounded in his ‘Summa Theologica’ (1265-74), where he argued the case of an incomplete fall (whereby the human heart became fallen but the mind remains all-capable), and attempted to reconcile Classical (i.e. Greek, rationalistic Aristotelian) thought forms with the Christian worldview.

Through Aquinas’ legacy of the scholastic synthesis, we inherited philosophical dualism/dichotomy, scholastic Christianity, and Thomistic Catholicism (to which John Haldane subscribes). The consequence of these being natural theism, and, historically, the demise of Christianity, which was evidence by the subsequent period of the Renaissance, with its focus on classical tradition, humanism and natural philosophy.

Glenn Martin comments on the value of scholasticism:

Of course true leadership demands, not only that we know what we believe and why, but that we be fully committed to living existentially, that is, moment by moment, our world and life view. It is one thing to know; it is another thing to act on the basis of what we know. We must combine the intellectual content with an experiential commitment. An intellectual content without an experiential practice leaves us with an immobilising scholasticism. On the other hand, an experiential practice not anchored in an intellectual content leaves us with an impotent mysticism.

John Haldane gives lip-service to an equal tripartite union of personal revelation (‘experience’), Biblical revelation (‘scripture’) and rationality as the foundations of faith in an interview titled ‘Why I am a Theist’:

Religious experience is a part of what shapes religion, scripture is a part, reflection is a part, and so on. But one can’t give sole primacy to any one of these. You can’t say that what, in essence, it is about is scripture, or in essence what it’s about is experience, or in essence what it’s about is argument and reasoning and so on. Part of the reason you can’t is that any attempt to do so will find itself foundering, will find itself looking for support from the other parts.

For example, […] any attempt to rest on scripture will have to answer the question, which scripture? What is canonical? Is this to be regarded as apocryphal or is this to be regarded as part of the authentic scripture? How is that resolved? It’s no good having a piece of scripture that says, ‘this is the real one’. Several can say that. So we have to use experience and understanding to determine which scripture is to be attended to. Along with that, we have to interpret that scripture. And that interpretation again, brings to bear experience and understanding.

Equally, if we try to rest it all on experience rather than scripture, famously people’s experiences can lead them in all sorts of directions. People can just become straight crazy. So experiences have to be validated and tested, tested against the belief of a community, tested against scripture, tested against reasoning and so on.

So each of these – scripture, reasoning, teaching authority, tradition, people’s ordinary experience and their reflective prayer and so on – all of these come together in a tradition, and the high points in each then themselves come together to form the core of that religion.  

But look more closely, and he only provides exposés of the limitations of experience and scripture, but not of reason. Thus he slips in the underlying notion that rationality is the superior of the three epistemologies, and illustrates scholastiscism’s foundational notion of rationality coming to the rescue of any other way of knowing that we know what we know. What is clearer furthermore is his perfect dichotomy of rationality over and against revelation – or in the example above, trichotomy of rationality over and against personal revelation and scriptural revelation. He tries to weave together a synthesis of supposedly ‘equal’ epistemologies, even though he ultimately upholds one as truer or more reliable than the others. It looks balanced but it is not.

When rationality is upheld as the superior epistemology, what ensues is rationalism. And rationalistic theism is ultimately as dry and spiritless and rationalistic atheism.

In the extract below, Haldane put rationalism to the rescue of Christianity while he sparred with Christopher Hitchens at Oxford. This is a perfect example of the ‘dry-as-dust’ type of intellectualised Christianity that is characterised by Thomism or scholasticism:

[I would like to address] the possibility of articulating and sustaining a tolerant humanism [!!!], and I think that that’s actually something it turns out that we [theists and atheists] share: a desire to see diversity recognised and celebrated, asking the question ‘What are the conditions of the possibility of that recognition or that respect?’. I want to be suggesting that the conditions of that possibility take us in the direction of philosophy, but also in the direction of a certain kind of religious worldview.

The question that is before us, is how to secure a common public life, structured by sharable ideals. […] It’s pretty obvious […] that we see ourselves confronted by a remarkable range of ethical disagreements about substantive ethical questions, whether it be questions about abortion, gay marriage, family life, warfare and so on. When one looks at those questions, there is an interesting agreement in form in the ways in which they’re discussed. That is to say, there’s a recurrent tendency to structure those questions in terms of things like welfare, on the one hand, and notions of respect on the other. So people will argue that certain economic policies are justified by the promotion of welfare, but that certain constraints are required in the count of respect.

There’s a commonality of form, but what there is beyond that is a disagreement about substance. That is to say that these notions of welfare, of rights or of respect are themselves disputed, with regards to what their content is, what their range is and what their implications are.

Glenn Martin gives an excellent discussion of the scholastic worldview:

By the time we reach the 13^th century, Biblical Christianity is very clearly on the wane. Whenever one is attempting to preserve and perpetuate anything, in this case Biblical Christianity, there are essentially two methods by which to attempt that. The first is what I call the ‘3 R method’, and the second the ‘1 R method’. The 3 R method is simply to reaffirm, restate and reapply, in this case, Biblical Christianity. The 1 R method is an effort to preserve and perpetuate by bringing that which is becoming pervasive to the rescue of that which one is proposing to preserve and perpetuate.

During the 13^th century, as lead by Thomas Aquinas, the great schoolman opted for the 1 R method as they sought to bring the Classical to the rescue of the Christian. Now Thomas Aquinas was a very brilliant individual who lived from 1224 to 1274, and his magnum opus was Summa Theologica, which simply means ‘the sum of all theology’. The schoolmen, or the scholastics, as these church intellectuals led by Aquinas came to be known, attempted to shore up a waning Christianity by bringing the Classical tradition to the rescue of the Christian; by bringing the so-called “natural” to the rescue of the Biblical supernatural; by bringing the human intellect and reason to the rescue of Biblical revelation; by bringing a focus on man to the rescue of the significance of God; by bringing this age and temporality to the rescue of the age which is to come and so-called eternality; by bringing the Classical writings to the rescue of the Christian writings; by bringing Aristotle to the rescue of Augustine.

What was produced was a synthetic construct which by its very nature was destined to disintegrate. For we developed a dualism and dichotomy at every level, ontological through teleological. And instead of shoring up a waning Christianity, scholasticism actually only served to hasten the demise thereof, and bring on Renaissance humanism in the form it would take. The reason being this: if one effects an effort to structure a dualism of the supernatural and the natural, Biblical revelation and reason as examples, there will be an attempt for a period of time to maintain that dualism and keep it in “balance”. Aquinas himself argued that, if reason and revelation appear to disagree, one always goes with revelation. When there is a dualism and dichotomy, the temptation becomes all but overpowering to emphasise one at the expense of the other.

The intellectual community increasingly, under the influence of the renewed preoccupation with the Classical, would emphasise the natural at the expense of the supernatural, reason at the expense of Biblical revelation, a focus on man at the expense of the centrality of God, and thus, there would be the advent of Renaissance humanism in the form it would take, and the acceleration accordingly of the demise of what remained of Biblical Christianity.

Aquinas, as we have said, argued that if reason and revelation appear to disagree, one always goes with revelation, because the disagreement is only apparent; it is not real. For when we have finally thought through, reason will always agree with Biblical revelation. And the logical question becomes, why? What is the epistemological basis for such confidence?

Well, the basis of Aquinas was very simple. Aquinas believed in an incomplete fall, holding that the will is fallen, but not the intellect. And this being the case, there are two pathways to knowledge and truth. There is most certainly Biblical revelation, but there is also the human intellect in contemplation of “nature” so-called. And thus, reason and revelation, when reason has run its complete course, will always be in agreement. But increasingly, as we have said, those intellectuals in the train of Thomas Aquinas opted for the human intellect and its conclusions at the expense of Biblical revelation.

Let me say parenthetically that whenever we confront the teaching of an incomplete fall, we have a very serious problem Biblically speaking, because the Bible is very clear that man is fallen, period. There have been those down the centuries that have taught that man is fallen in every respect except in his will. Aquinas taught that man is fallen in every respect except in his intellect. […] But the Biblical view is that man is fallen, period. It is not possible for man to will his way to God, think his way to God, work his way to God. He is dependent upon the work and will of God for his deliverance.

I would make two or three observations concerning scholasticism. First of all, scholasticism was exactly that, it was a dry-as-dust, intellectualised, scholasticised Christianity. The scholastics never returned to the power of the resurrection fo the dead, God’s finished work in Christ, nor to the dynamics of the in-dwelling and leadership of God the Spirit. Theirs was, and remained, a so-called intellectualised Christianity, an immobilising scholasticism.

Secondly, we would recognise that the teachings of Thomas Aquinas would become the theological basis of Roman Catholicism. Now there are a number of theological streams in Roman Catholicism: there are Augustinian Catholics, Thomistic Catholics, liberal Catholics and, as we know in recent years, charismatic Catholics. But following scholasticism, most Catholics theologically became Thomistic and scholasticism became the theological basis of Roman Catholicism.

Additionally, we need to recognise that with scholasticism, we will shift from Biblical theology to natural theology. And this is a very subtle and yet very substantial shift, because the basic study, it was held, was the study of God. And as we know, theology was the study of God, -ology being the study of theo or theos, God. But the question emerged, how do we know God? And it was on the basis, prior to scholasticism, of a Biblical theology: we know God on the basis of his disclosure of himself to man in verbal propositional form, the Bible.

We want to hasten to add that though theology is the basic study, theology is not the ultimate. God is. I will never forget while lecturing in South Africa, an individual approached me and he said ‘I don’t understand why I have become spiritually dead’. And of course, I didn’t understand either because I had never met the gentleman, and even if I had I would have made no pretence of understanding, excepting almost in the same breath he began telling me about himself and what he had been doing, stating that he was in the process of completing a PhD in theology. I stopped him instantly. I said ‘I understand why you are spiritually dead; you have been preoccupied with the study of God and you have forgotten God!’. There is nothing wrong with the study of God: it is the ultimate study. But it is not the ultimate. God is!

And we must ever keep in mind that we can have a personal relationship with God on the basis of God’s finished work in Christ. But what happens in scholasticism, and this is very significant, we will shift from Biblical theology, the study of God’s disclosure of himself to man in verbal propositional form, the Bible, to natural theology, the view that we know God on the basis of the human intellect in contemplation of “nature” so-called. […] Now the significance of that is this: I indicated that scholasticism was a well-meaning attempt to shore up a waning Christianity, but only served ultimately to hasten the demise thereof and bring on Renaissance humanism in the form it would take. Thus we need to examine the Renaissance. […]

Proponents of scholasticism are usually earnest truth-seekers who desire to have science (i.e. 'knowledge') apply to all of life under God. In my mind, this is not only a noble pursuit, but an imperative one if we are to be Christian thinkers applying God and His will to all of life. The following example illustrates this earnest desire for a synthesis of all knowledge under God. Fr. Thomas Joseph White, who teaches at the Thomistic Institute at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, writes:

In the first volume of his Church Dogmatics (1932), Karl Barth provocatively wrote: “Fear of Scholasticism is the mark of a false prophet.” As a well-known critic of modern Catholic theology, Barth was not commending specific Scholastic arguments or conclusions. Instead, he was making a broader point about the intellectual project of Scholasticism, which he thought indispensable. Authentic biblical speculation requires a search for the internal coherence of Christian thought, which, in turn, calls for us to take up the characteristic methods of Scholasticism: rigorous examination of terms and definitions, confrontation, engagement, correction, and assimilation of legitimate secular and philosophical ideas—all in the service of Christian ¬revelation.

However, what is being said by Martin is not that we should 'leave our minds at the door', on the contrary. Martin is one of the firmest proponents of Romans 12:2, and it is safe to say his entire academic career after his conversion was an attempt to reinterpret history from a Christian perspective and to apply the way and will of God to all of life. Nevertheless, the basic point is that our minds cannot be absolutised as the ultimate repositories of knowledge, understanding or wisdom. God must. Where I sometimes disagree with Glenn Martin is where he often pushes the importance of the Bible a little too far. In my view, we must also be careful not absolutise the Bible itself above other forms of revelation from God, nor indeed above God Himself.

I appreciated hearing at least one person (Haldane) in that BBC interview coming to the rescue of belief in God. I don’t discount John Haldane’s extensive philosophical scholarship and I get the strong impression he is a deep thinker and earnest in his beliefs. But we must beware of depending on our intellect to solve all existential probelms. Can we be so arrogant as to think our minds are so limitless that we could from our own powers deduce or induce any answers to the questions of ontology, epistemology, axiology or teleology?

We must not fall into the same trap as the majority of atheists and antitheists: although our minds are a great gift from God and must be engaged and renewed (Romans 12:2), our minds cannot not absolutely replace revelation. We must worship God as the ultimate provider of all wisdom – not our ourselves.

In the beginning Grace

Tullian Tchividjian gives some of the best sermons I have ever heard. He is always Christ-centred, bringing us from peripheral concerns back to the core of the gospel.

This is his first sermon in a series on Grace, as revealed through Genesis. Definitely worth listening to.

The core of his message is summarised in these potent statements:

Our identity is so often anchored in something smaller than what Jesus has secured for us, and it becomes a burden on our shoulders that we have to 'create' ourselves, that we have to 'make something' of ourselves.

We are not achievers, we are receivers [of grace, the earth and life].

As a symbol of our faith, we have a cross, not a ladder.

New life happens as a result of God's movement toward us, not our movement toward God. [...] That's what separates the Christian life from every other world religion.

There is never more than the Gospel, there is only more of the Gospel. Once God saves us he doesn't then move us beyond the Gospel, he moves us more deeply into the Gospel.

Prophet and loss

Written by Merv Bendle for the Quadrant Online
Original link here, 14 Sep 2012


Western liberal democratic societies are increasingly confronting the frightening implications of the violence-prone Muslim populations to which they are playing hosts. And it is not clear that they possess the internal fortitude necessary to protect the fundamental principles of freedom of speech upon which they are founded.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Britain, where the television broadcaster Channel 4 has been so intimidated by a public hate campaign orchestrated by Muslims on Twitter and other media that it cancelled a second airing of the documentary, “Islam: The Untold Story”, which was researched and presented by the eminent historian, Tom Holland, and which concerns the increasingly controversial revisionist scholarship surrounding the origins of Islam.

Holland was written a series of well-received histories of the ancient world, including Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (2003), Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (2005), and Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom (2008). This year he published a massive volume, In The Shadow Of The Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World, upon which the new documentary is based.

In The Shadow Of The Sword is a brilliant work of popular history that draws upon the same body of revisionist scholarship about the historicity of Muhammad and the accuracy of the received accounts of the early years of Islam that I surveyed in my July-August Quadrant article, “The Revisionist Case That Muhammad Did Not Exist”. That article focused on another new book on the topic, Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins (2012) by Robert Spencer. As these publications show, and as Holland’s work has now made very public, there is a very powerful case that the traditional accounts concerning Muhammad and the origins of Islam will have to be completely re-assessed.

“Islam: The Untold Story” includes a contribution from Professor Patricia Crone, a prominent member of this revisionist group of experts who have been carefully exploring the historical origins of Islam for about four decades. It is to her credit that she has been prepared to appear in this fashion because, as I describe in my article, a number of the other revisionist scholars have been so intimidated by the threat of Muslim violence that they have for years carefully kept low public profiles and at least two of them publish and appear under false names. Others have suffered physical harm. All of them are aware of the fates that befell Theo van Gogh, Salman Rushdie, Naguib Mahfouz, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and others who have been victimized by Muslim authorities and fanatics, often with the connivance of supine Western governments and institutions.

It was allegedly fear of such violence that led to the cancellation of the documentary. Holland received threats after the program was first shown, being warned that “You might be a target in the streets. You may recruit some bodyguards, for your own safety,” according to reports in The Independent. Consequently, as a Channel 4 spokesperson said: “Having taken security advice, we have reluctantly canceled a planned screening of the program ‘Islam: The Untold Story’.”

Three things can already said with certainty about this affair, even at this early stage. Firstly, the revisionist scholarship will not go away and the historical understanding of the origins of Islam will be re-shaped. Secondly, Muslims around the world will be increasingly outraged as this process of re-assessment proceeds and they will turn to violence, to the great discredit of themselves and their religion. Thirdly, Western institutions will be challenged, yet again, to stand firm for the principles upon which our liberal democratic societies are founded.

Less certain will be the response of these institutions. Will they once again fail the test, as it appears at the moment to be the case, or will they finally realize that we are involved in an increasingly rancorous ‘clash of civilizations’, that this cannot be wished away, and that it demands a resolute response if our civilization is to survive.


Dr Merv Bendle is Senior Lecturer, History and Communication. He wrote on “How Civilisations Die” in the April issue of Quadrant

Alive to love

One of my favourite blogs is Jamie Delaine's. She's a young woman who lives in Vancouver, and she writes beautiful posts reflecting on her faith and growth (as well as posting amazing photographs).

In this post, she focuses on love in friendships, and dealing with our own inadequacies. I hope you enjoy it.

Alive to love
Written by Jamie Delaine
Original post here, 3 Jul 2012


We are alive to love. It’s our purpose. It’s the greatest commandment. And the hardest one. Maybe you don’t struggle with this. But I find loving people hard. It’s hard work. I’m not afraid of hard work. But this is hard, hard work. all of my strengths are centred around working autonomously, uninterrupted, and finding the most efficient way to do something. i’m task-oriented. People bring problems. My first reaction has always been isolation: I don’t want to deal with your problems. How easily I forget that Jesus patiently and graciously deals with ALL of mine… and calls me to His standard of love.

I’ve always been a bit of a loner. This is going to sound terrible but given a choice between no friends and frustrating friends, as a teenager I choose no friends. Sure, I had “friends” but only in recent years have I built deep friendships. And through these deep friendships, I’ve discovered some shocking facts. 1) ALL MY FRIENDS ARE SO DIFFERENT THAN ME. She processes things really strange! He responds so emotionally! Why is she overwhelmed with this situation?! Why was he offended when I said that? EVERYONE NEEDS TO CALM DOWN! 2) I am prideful.

Life is easy in the shallow end of the pool. Everyone has their feet planted on the bottom. We can stand on our own. But life in the deep end doesn’t happen alone: I’m floundering and I can’t stay afloat myself. I need you to push me to Jesus. He’s floundering and can’t stay afloat by himself. He needs us to push him to Jesus. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says Christ is changing us into His image, taking us from glory to glory.

I am not a finished project.
You are not a finished project.

God has created people with unique strengths, fears and communication styles all for one goal: build His church. My weaknesses are not “stronger” weaknesses than your “weak” weaknesses. You’re hard to love and I’m hard to love. But sin is the great equalizer. Christ died on the cross, full of extravagant love for weak people like ME!

I’ve read the following passages from Romans [in The Message translation] every day for the past month. Paul’s words have been revealing my sin afresh and reminding me of my desperate need for Grace. Check it out.

Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it.
Be good friends who love deeply;
practice playing second fiddle.
Get along with each other;
don’t be stuck-up.
Make friends with nobodies;
don’t be the great somebody.
Don’t hit back;
discover beauty in everyone. [!!!]
If you’ve got it in you,
get along with everybody.
Don’t insist on getting even;
that’s not for you to do.
- Romans 12

“Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them [!!!] every time they do or say something you don’t agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.” Romans 14 – [HOW GOOD IS THIS?]

“Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, ‘How can I help?’ That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, [!!!!!] but waded right in and helped out. ‘I took on the troubles of the troubled,” is the way Scripture puts it. Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us.” Romans 15

- Jamie Delaine

Zacharias on Islam: What of forgiveness?

“Apologetics, if it’s not undergirded by love, it’s really nothing more than a sword intended to decapitate the person in front. That’s not what apologetics is about. It has to be undergirded by love.”

I listen to several different theology podcasts, and I recently discovered Ravi Sacharias, a scholarly, compassionate and up-to-date apologist. He is Indian-born and Cambridge-educated, and he gives the most compelling and relevant critiques of contemporary thinking and current world events I have come across. He runs RZ International Ministries, and speaks around the world.

This is a transcript from his ‘Just Thinking’ podcast, part of a four-part series titled ‘If The Foundations Be Destroyed’.

“Many years ago, it was [Orval] Hobart Mauer, who at the age of 65 committed suicide. He was a PhD from John Hopkins, one-time instructor at Yale, one-time professor at Harvard; in 1974 he was the president of the American Psychological Association; at the age of 75, ultimately took his own life. He said, well before he died, that the one article he wrote in the psychology magazine at that time [‘Sin, The Lesser of Two Evils’, American Psychologist, 15 (1960): 301-4], brought more hostile response than any other thing he’d ever written. Even though he was a sceptic himself on matters of God, he wrote this:

‘For several decades, we psychologists have looked on the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and have claimed our liberation from it is epoch-making. But at length we have discovered to be free in the sense that is, to have the excuse to be ‘sick’ rather than to be ‘sinful’, is to court the danger of also becoming lost. This danger is, I believe, betoken by the widespread interest in existentialism, which we are presently witnessing. In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free, we have cut the roots of our very being, have become lost in our sense of selfhood and identity, and with neurotics now find ourselves asking, ‘Who am I? What is my deepest destiny? What does living really mean?’. When we lost this vertical dimension, we lost the idea of who we are and what living really means.’

There are a few conversations that stand out in my life that I hope I will never forget. When I look especially at what’s happening in Syria today, and my colleague from there, Daniel, is writing and telling us how the sounds of explosions are getting closer and closer to the home, and he wrote yesterday, ‘But the church is full. And tears are running down people’s faces, and people are getting right with God, people are coming to Christ’.

But I remember it was in Damascus, and being hosted by Daniel, and being asked to talk to one of the leading Shiites, cleric Hosein. And we had a three-hour conversation, as he was one my right, between us was the interpreter, and the audience in front of us. No hostile attitude. Just a cordial discussion on our differences, and it went thus: he would ask me one question about the Christian faith, I would have to answer it; I would him one question about the Islamic faith, he would have to answer it. And there was not one ill word spoken. He was a very gracious man, always respectfully addressing me as ‘Professor’, ‘Professor’, ‘Professor’.

And after that three hours of discussion with Sheikh Hosein, the leading Shiite cleric in Damascus, he looked at me across the interpreter and she interpreted, and he said, ‘Professor Zacharias, maybe it’s time for  us in the Muslim world to stop asking ‘If Jesus died on the cross…’ and to start asking ‘Why?’’. I said, ‘Sheik Hussein, can I quote you on that?’, he said, ‘Yes, sir’.

It’s time for us to start asking ‘Why'.

As men like him are probably looking out the window and seeing lives slaughtered, and men women and children just mangled on the streets for political theory all over again, I wonder whether he is thinking now himself of the cross as the only answer for the evil that is in the heart of men, for forgiveness, for grace, for transformation.

To those of you who are studying here, I want to challenge you with this. No matter where you defend the faith, no matter where you present a defence of the Christian faith, never end without telling them about the cross. Never end without that.

Because at the heart of the gospel, is precisely that message: that your heart and my heart are desperately wicked. And the Son of Man came to this word to seek and to save that which was lost, to offer you and me that forgiveness, and that grace, and that cleansing, and the imperative of transformation. This is at the heart of the gospel message.

That’s why Bilquis Sheikh, the convert from Islam in Pakistan, writes the book, ‘I Dared To Call Him Father’. Because suddenly they understand that forgiveness is a gift, unearned.

I’ll give you this story and then move to my final thought here.

A few months ago, I was in Jerusalem, and I was hosted by four Palestinian young men in a quiet setting for lunch. Very fine young men. One of them was a product of our Oxford program. The guy sitting next to me, he said to me,

‘Ravi, can I tell you a conversation I observed, watching Brother Andrew talk to a Muslim cleric? I was an observer, I didn’t say a word, I saw Brother Andrew talking to this man, who had ordered to death of eight Israelis, because the Israelis had killed four Palestinians, and this Sheikh had ordered the killing of eight, two for one. And as Brother Andrew was talking, I was listening. Brother Andrew looked at this man and said, ‘Who made you the executioner of the world?’ And the man said ‘I’m not an executioner, I’m an instrument of God’s justice’.

Brother Andrew leaned forward and said to him, ‘What then of forgiveness? What place does forgiveness have?’ And he looked at Brother Andrew, didn’t blink an eye, didn’t bat an eyelid, and he said, ‘That's for only those who deserve it.’’

And this man said, ‘Brother Ravi, in ninety seconds or less, I saw the difference my belief and his belief, and I said to him, ‘Did anybody bother to ask him, ‘If you deserve it, it’s really not forgiveness’.’’

You and I are accountable. We are accountable before God. And there’s a cross offered for you and me for redemption, and for the daily reminder that but for his grace, we would be condemnable also.

Eternity, existence.

Morality, essence.

Accountability, conscience.

And lastly, the dimension of charity, beneficence.

And I just close with this. It is very easy in our time, very easy in our time, to get angry with opposition. You look at those who seek to eradicate what we believe, and that anger wells up within you. We were having a nice conversation over breakfast with a few students, and we were chatting. You know, apologetics, if it’s not undergirded by love, it’s really nothing more than a sword intended to decapitate the person in front. That’s not what apologetics is all about. It has to be undergirded by love.

  

I like the way our Lord handled the woman at the well. So gently. So graciously. So that she runs back and says, ‘Come and see the One who knew everything I had done. The Messiah has come.’ There is the gift of love in the gospel. And one of the main reasons the church suffers today, often, is that we have not even displayed that love to each other, leave alone to the world. Not even displayed that love to each other, leave alone to the world.

If we are going to win this, we are going to win this with the conquering disarming power of the love of Jesus Christ.

Two, three years ago I was in Dehli, where I grew up until I was twenty. I was born in the South, and raised in Dehli. I used to go downtown with my buddies, and we’d go and see the movies or have a coffee or something like that. And I was walking past the Regal Theatre in Dehli, and I saw a man lying on a little box, a little square piece with four wheels. One leg was gone, the other leg was bandaged up. Pretty messy looking stuff. And he was wheeling himself. Somebody obviously brings him every morning, picks him up every night; he’s obviously not alone. And as I was walking along I was about to stop and put some money into his hand. […] And he made a turn into a street where there were not too many people. And I stopped, got on my haunches, took his hand – it was a bit of stump – and I took his hand, and I held a hundred rupee note, which is a lot of money for him, it’s two US dollars for me. So I opened it, put that hundred rupee note in his hand, and just clasped it. And he just looked at me and in Hindi he said to me, ‘Sahibji’ (Respected sir: Sahib, Ji for reverence), ‘Sahibji, may the self-existent one God richly bless you’. And in Hindi I told him, ‘I come to you in the name, and with the love of Jesus Christ. This is his gift to you.’ I tell you what, you can’t capture the expression.

The love of God. The eternal. The moral. The accountable. And the charitable.

Those are the foundations. Life is not gratuitous and purposeless. It’s built on the foundations of an eternal God, who revealed to us the moral law, and reminded us of how we had fallen, and with love reached out to us again, to bring us back to Himself.”

- Ravi Zacharias

How can Christians live out love in the face of violence from our Muslim cousins? Here is an interesting answer to that question, emphasising perseverance, and the concept of 'witness always, speak if you must'.

Ravi's lecture reminds me of the beautiful painting by Normal Rockwell, which is entitled according to Golden Rule, the unique mandate given to us by Christ, to positively engage in active love toward others - a mandate not equalled by Buddhism (consider others as yourself - passive and thought-based) nor by Taosim (do not do unto others as you would not have done unto yourself - refraining from negative acts). We are to love each child of God, whether Jew or Gentile.

Let's pray that our witness of God's love and forgiveness may be prompt for them to come to Him.

Early life, suffering and killing in Australia

The NSW premier made an historic apology to those traumatised by forced adoptions in the latter half of last century in Australia (news article). It was an emotional event, with people crying, and a lot of people, both mothers and adopted children, finding an opportunity to forgive and move on.

The "widespread" policy of forced adoption, parliament heard, was sanctioned by governments, churches, hospitals, charities and bureaucrats. But to the mostly young and single mothers involved, they were more like abductions or kidnappings. [...]

As MPs stood to carry the motion with a minute's silence, several dabbed at their eyes with tissues. One MP crossed himself. Many of the estimated 300 people in the public galleries at the joint sitting had wept throughout half an hour of emotional speeches.

They heard stories of young mothers who were tied to beds while their babies were induced, who never saw their babies before they were taken away, who were drugged, sedated and given lactation suppressants to dry up their milk, who were told lies that their babies had died, only to discover years later they were alive.

It seems Australians value children enough to acknowledge how awful it is to rip them away from their mothers at birth.

The question must be asked, what then of children who are killed before birth?

When will any Australian parliament say 'sorry' for condoning the thousands of abortions that take place in Australia every year? The parallels between forced adoption and abortion that occurs in young single girls who feel under pressure to 'get rid of the baby', sometimes even without the knowledge of their parents or any support person, is absolutely tragic.

The psychological and spiritual trauma that occurs as a result of abortion is undeniable for a number of women (link), whether related to a moral dilemma itself, to grief over loss of the baby, grief about the repercussions on relationship, or a 'head vs heart' dilemma (read more here, here, here and here). Many of us personally know young women in our lives who have been pressured or have felt pressured to abort their babies, and some have regretted the event so much they intentionally got pregnant later down the track to quench a thirst for life. 

There are an estimated 90 to 100,000 surgical abortions annually in Australia. The number of medical abortions is estimated to be >5,000 per year, unconfirmed but increasing due to the increasing availability of the mifepristone (RU486) pill. Per woman, abortions are common, with 20 per 1,000 women of reproductive age having an abortion per year (similar to US and UK, but much higher than 6 per 1,000 in Belgium and Holland). One woman in three will have an abortion in the course of her life in Australia.

The vast majority occur before 12 weeks of pregnancy (88-90%), and 1-2% occur after 16 weeks (age depicted in photograph below).

Abortion technically remains a crime everywhere in Australia except Victoria and the ACT, although various court cases and reforms to the States’ legislation have allowed a ‘liberal’ interpretation of abortion law in most States. In Queensland, the State with the most punitive view on abortion, the Criminal Code Act of 1899 contains the following sections:

S224 attributes criminality on the doctor

S225 attributes criminality on the woman

S226 attributes criminality for unlawfully supplying anything (whether substance or instrument) with the intention of procuring an abortion

S282 allows ‘surgical operations’ on the child or mother ‘for the preservation of the mother’s life if the performance of the operation is reasonable, having regard to the patient’s state at the time and all the circumstances of the case’

Since 2009, S282 has been interpreted in the common law to also allow medical procedures. The 'preservation of the mother's life' also includes consideration of a mother's mental state as suicidal, and this is the loop-hole currently used in Queensland to procure abortions. Queensland Health condones and performs abortion when it is recommended by two medical specialists, is medically safe, and when the woman concerned consents and is deemed capable of consenting. Elective abortions basically mean there is no physically reason for the abortion, and in this case Queensland Health requires all women wanting an abortion to be assessed by a psychiatrist to certify that the women would a risk to her own life if she were to proceed with the pregnancy. In practice, this is a 'tick and flick' procedure.

Although doctors are instructed to discuss all available options including adoption to pregnant mothers wanting an abortion, adoption is inconsistently – and in some institutions, rarely – mentioned in the course of the consultation. The UK Royal College of Obstetrician and Gynaecologist guidelines  state that 'Women should have access to objective information and, if required, counselling and decision-making support about their pregnancy options'. Not once is adoption mentioned in the guideline document. It is tragic that medical students in general cannot cite a single adoption agency or support group name to give to their future patients. It highlights the bias inherent in the medical education system toward ushering women onto one path rather than another.

Especially in an age where there is such an untenable supply of childless parents wanting to adopt, why not give the baby the gift of life in a happy home, rather than killing it? It's a terrible irony that on the one hand the Australian birth rate is declining, with women increasingly leaving it too late to have their babies and many couples unable but deeply desiring to have children, while the rest of the population is killing 1 in 4 unborn children. Why not give them a chance? Yes, it does mean carrying the pregnancy to term, with all its discomforts and inconveniences, but how much inconvenience is one willing to go through for the sake of a human life? Which is the more righteous path?

The so-called ‘psychological safety’ of abortion demonstrated in two meta-analytical review articles (here and here) looks at the incidence of new psychiatric disorders after abortion. They emphasise that the strongest predictor of new psychiatric disorders is pre-existing mental illness, which is itself strongly associated with exposure to sexual abuse and intimate violence. Women and girls who have suffered some form of sexual abuse are unfortunately highly prevalent in the community, and the review articles therefore should not dismiss psychological sequelae as happening only to a 'small minority' of girls. Furthermore, the studies do not measure sub-clinical regret or trauma that does not constitute a major psychiatric disorder defined by the DSM-IV criteria, let alone a spiritual level of trauma that cannot be measured in the medical diagnostic framework (read more). How can you define and delineate the beginning and end of 'an emotional response'? Women's experiences of pregnancy are complex and nuanced, with many women experiencing a 'head vs heart' dilemma, with a deeper part of themselves not wishing to end the pregnancy. 

Recently, the medical abortion pill has been approved by the Therapeutics Goods Administration as a relatively 'safe' drug for importation into Australia, and the Marie Stopes organisation, which provides abortions in several locations in Australia, has opened a training course for GPs so that the pill will be more widely available in the community. Marie Stopes is even considering applying for Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme coverage of the abortion pill. This means Australia is joining the UK, the US, France and New Zealand, which have given access to the pill for about twenty years.

The greatest hypocrisy is how much we value our prematurely born babies. We choose to 'keep' and to help our babies survive even before they are completely mature enough to live without medical assistance. We might put extraordinary efforts into saving a 22-week old, and yet where surgical abortion is legal it is performed up to 18 weeks' gestation. Why do those four weeks of age make the difference between what we call human and what we don't? Between 'the baby' and 'the pregnancy'? Are we killing babies or just 'terminating pregnancies'? How long can we kid ourselves?

Many people would support abortion "if the mother had been raped". How many young women who are having abortions were raped? A very small minority. Most women in Australia who are chosing to kill their babies had consensual sex. 

Falling pregnant should never come as a shock. We should never ask, 'Where did that come from?' If a woman has sex, there is always a chance of falling pregnant. Women generally have an unrealistic level of confidence in the effectiveness of contraception. Whereas the oral contraceptive pill is 99% effective when used perfectly according to manufacturer instructions, its effectiveness in general use in the community is between 80 and 94%, depending on pills missed/forgotten and occasionally gut malabsorption. How many stories do we all know of 'surprise' pregnancies amongst our families and friends? Half of all pregnancies in Queensland are unplanned, and a quarter of all pregnancies in Queensland will be aborted (link). Half of all women wanting abortion had been using contraception (link). 

In ideal family upbringing, young women should be taught emphatically that there is always a chance of pregnancy with sex, and that they should only consent to that sexual encounter if they are prepared to accept the chance of pregnancy and everything that ensues. As we know, countless young girls are unprepared  for the day they might start having intercourse in unfavourable circumstances, circumstances which many regret later on for not matching their desires or expectations of a loving union with the right person, expectations which are often instinctively consistent with God's plan for sex and love.

Australia faces a higher incidence of teenage pregnancy than Europe (but lower than the US, UK or Canada), which is an age group in which the majority of pregnancies are aborted (links here and here). This is coupled with a societal trend of breakdown in family cohesion, increasing dependence on welfare across the population, stable rate of single parents (around 10% of the population), and rising teenage alcohol-related hospitalisations, all of which are accentuated in the Indigenous population.

Accountability in the realm of sexual behaviour has almost completely deserted our society. Every effort in the current prevailing worldview is to remove any trace of accountability. No negative consequences for any action. No consequences for sexually transmitted infections - we have condoms to prevent that. No consequences for not wearing condoms and acquiring an STI - we have antibitiocs. No consequences for falling pregnant - we can just 'terminate' our pregnancies.

Abortion in the context of a child with a detected disability is another area that demands consideration. Ultimately, the question must be asked, how far down the eugenics path are we willing to go? Parents with children with Down's syndrome, for instance, one of the disabilities commonly screened antenatally, often have a very rough road ahead of them with a lot of sacrifice in store. But does the prospect of hard work and sacrifice over the life of the child preclude our commitment to love? Are we to be the executioners of our disabled children?

I've heard it said, God cares less about our suffering in difficult times, and more about our response to those difficult times. And although it can be a very long and hard hard road caring for a disabled child, many parents have also found joy in the midst of the struggle. Where would we be if we annihilated any need in the course of life for loving sacrificial action, and always followed the easy path even if it means killing?

A challenging video putting abortion into the perspective of other moral dilemmas and challenging people's often complacent worldviews has been criticised by some, although it does point out the weaknesses in the way people think about the value of human life.

Rather than any effort to denigrate, shame or mistreat young pregnant women or any woman who has previously had an abortion, what should be our response?

First, to love. The anxiety around an unplanned pregnancy can be enormous, especially when overwhelmed by the expectations of parents, boyfriends or society not to keep the child. We need to embrace these women with compassion and unconditional love through this stressful time of dilemma and anxieties about the future.

Second, to support. Women often don't realise the full breadth of options available to them. Many women are afraid of the apparently terrible impact having a baby could have on their education or their career. They need to be told that they can have their cake and eat it too. We have been blessed with countless role models of strong smart women who have attained the highest levels of educational and professional achievement while also having babies along the way, including unplanned babies. Existing mothers who already have mouths to feed, and who perhaps have been deserted by the father in the midst of financial and job uncertainty - these women need to know they will be cared for. Help needs to be given, financial, in kind and otherwise by Christians so that these women feel they can keep their child and survive it, knowing the loving charity given to them by another person, and the grace of God.

 

Noel Pearson and Hope in Aboriginal Australia

Welfare has a destructive influence on any society in the long-term.

In Australia, we have witnessed the disempowering effect of decades of hand-outs, government housing, communities devoid of employment, propped up by welfare, and tragically most concentrated among the Indigenous population of the country.

Most of the push to provide and fund this hopeless way of life has probably been motivated by a perverse mixture of 'white guilt' on the part of the general Australian population, ignorance and intellectual laziness regarding how best to respond to the obvious cycle of poverty and despair in our own backyard, combined with a vocal subgroup of Indigenous activists who have jumped onto the hand-out bandwagon because of a victimhood mentality.

Who is Noel Pearson?

The argument that the current mode of delivery of welfare services to Aboriginal people is deeply antithetical to their interests and wellbeing, has been strongly reasoned by Noel Pearson, an Aboriginal activist lawyer and social commentator.

Growing up, he slept five to a bed with his brothers in the Cape town of Hope Vale.

“He was raised in a home with just one book – the good one – at a time when there still dignity in poverty, and at that historical crossroads between the end of the mission protection for Aboriginal people and the start of what would become known as ‘self-determination’. He remembers the year, 1971, ‘when the first social housing came to Hope Vale and Aboriginal people discovered that it was no longer necessary to work’.” (Caroline Overington, writer for The Australian)

Noel Pearson went to boarding school at St Peter’s Lutheran College from the age of 12, studied history at the University of Sydney, got involved in advocacy for land rights from the 1980s, studied law, became a lawyer, and started the Cape York Land Council from a flat in Sydney’s Balmain.

Pearson’s principles

A push towards accountability, a reward for motivation, and facilitating independence; these are the things I like about Noel Pearson's way of thinking.

His first core proposition is that the welfare policies of the last three decades have produced an artifical welfare economy within Aboriginal societies, which contrasts with the ‘real’ economies of both traditional Aboriginal subsistence and the market economy, thus producing a passivity and dependence now deeply embedded within Aboriginal society and culture, (Martin, 2002) which are the root of alcoholism, substance abuse, violence and hopelessness. Pearson sees that “the past generation has been one of utter devastation, that social capacity has almost gone, that the welfare and helper networks bored unto communities have eroded their central core”. (Rothwell) “Money acquired without principle is expended without principle […] the irrational basis of our economy has inclined us to wasteful, aimless behaviours […] we waste our money, our times, our lives.” (Pearson, in Saunders 2004) “The main problem is thus not government under-funding of Aboriginal services so much as the total absence of the sort of incentives that shape citizenship and individual behavioural responses in mainstream society.” (Davidhoff and Duhs, 2008)

His second core proposition is that meaningful change to address the terrible consequence of passive welfare will require structural change through informal and formal institutions of Aboriginal governance and through reform of existing institutions of government. (Martin, 2002)

“By 2007, Pearson had gathered his thoughts into a policy document called ‘From Hand Out to Hand Up’, and in 2008, he secured funding from both the federal and Queensland state government for a daring new program called the Cape York Welfare Reform Trial, which encourages four communities to meet certain standards of behaviour.” (Overington, 2012)

His reforms

In the weekend edition of 'The Australian' last week, several articles (here, here and here) revived the attention on placed on Noel Pearson, and reforms he has instituted through the Cape York Institute which illustrate his principles.

One of these reforms is a new voluntary community program called Pride of Place, which gives residents of four communities in the Cape the opportunity to improve their houses, backyards and community infrastructure, while also requiring them to save up for a portion of the costs from their own salary or paycheck, and to contribute 'sweat equity' by physically helping in the construction. Some people have joined the program to build a brand new fence around their property, others have created vegetable gardens, built pagodas... The idea is to reinstate a sense of ownership and pride in the community’s appearance, and also to mentor willing individuals in budgeting and monetary discipline. One couple saved up and built their dream, a simple white-picket fence on their property:

"We wouldn't have been able to afford that before. It would have been just a dream in our mind. ... [Before welfare] every house had its vegetable garden, just like the one we have here now. We lived off the land: jackfruit, soursop, watermelon, pumpkin, sweet potato. Then things shifted, we got spoilt, we'd go to the nearest corner shop, to the IGA, and that took away people's pride. But this program has started changing the lifestyle of people." (Esmee Bowen, partkaker in the Pride of Place program in Hopevale)

Another program is MPower, a money management reform, which carries the simple slogan ‘A better life begins with a budget’. Individuals who agree to take whole-hearted part in the reform program are coached in managing their income, planning, budgeting, and setting funds aside for schools needs and home improvements. The manager of MPower sees her job as being about “behavioural change altogether, helping people to come to their own goals, in finance, in family priorities. People are more independent, more knowledgeable. Participation is at the heart of everything.” (Nicolas Rothwell, writer for TheAustralian)

Christianity shines through

Many of Noel Pearson’s principles are essentially Christian principles.

"Pearson is himself a figure imbued with mission values, and those values, subtly secularised, shine through in the atmospherics and precepts of the programs now being implemented. One might call them moral programs, more than purely social policy exercises.” (Rothwell, 2012)

You can see Christian values shining through. The parenting program staff wear uniform shirts with a motto on their backs: “Strong families have faith, hope and love – and the greatest of these is love.” As Rothwell points out:

“How not to hear the crashing echo of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians? How not to be startled, in the arid context of indigenous social services language, by words so rich and full of heart?”

A ‘moral entrepreneur’ is what Noel Pearson has been labelled, grouped with other Indigenous leaders (namely Warren Mundine and Sue Gordon). (Paul t’Hart, 2007)

Paternalist or not

Critiques of Noel Pearson’s policies centre around their cost, around his programs taking credit for other groups’ work, but mostly around paternalism.

As part of the Family Responsibilities Commission, one of the programs at the core of the Cape York Welfare Reform, families “have to stay out of trouble with the law and they must send their children to school or else they’ll get rousted by elders and, if that doesn’t work, they’ll have their welfare cheques managed for them.” (Overington, 2012)

Another part of the Welfare Reform is a new way of teaching, Direct Instruction, which is “energetic rote learning until the age of 12, when children are encouraged to leave their communities and go to boarding school”. (Overington, 2012) Direct Instruction has been credited by its main funding body, the federal Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA), with significantly improving school attendance in communities partaking in the reform, particularly in Aurukun.

Paternalism has had a bad rap, revived with renewed focus in Australia since the federal Northern Territory Intervention.

Noel Pearson’s programs have been called ‘reverse social engineering’. (Rothwell 2012) They are costly and most of them depend on government funding, rather than private charitable giving.

Critics are also concerned about how much credit Pearson’s team should be able to take for gains made on the ground. As per another Aboriginal leader, Chris Sarra, chief executive of the Smarter Stronger Institute:

“In my view, some of the heavy lifting, particularly in regards to school attendance in Aurukun, was done by (former principal, now Queensland education bureaucrat) Ian Mackie and his wife (Liz, who is likewise a former principal of the school).” (Overington, 2012)

One of Pearson’s vocal critics, Murrandoo Yanner, traditional owner in the Cape, feels insulted by Pearson taking an interventionalist approach to the Cape’s problems, and doesn’t see welfare as playing as great a part as ‘institutional racism’:

“He’s a paternalist. The reason our people take drugs, bash each other, is dispossession and the racism inherent in white society. We don’t need the Great White Man to come in and manage things for us.”

Pearson’s defence shows how convicted he is, even it sometimes requires being confrontational:

“I’m not going to excuse myself. My view is, if there’s no conflict, no strife, if nobody’s disruptive, where there’s no movement at the station, we will never achieve any result.”

There are local people who have seen his programs in action and who understand what he is trying to achieve.

"Noel's attitude is for us to come out from that shady tree, move on in life and prove to government that we can do it. This whole reform's an opportunity: if we don't grab it we'll be lost. The picture he's drawing, I can see it. ... He's trying to tell the people out there that our community indigenous people can do it, but we have to get up off our backsides. The test's for us." (Bernard Hart, partaker in the Pride of Place program in Hopevale)

Who is going to make it happen?

Reform doesn’t have to be top-down. Noel Pearson’s programs carry the ideal of voluntary participation with a strong focus on taking ownership, which is probably the only way that a sense of responsibility and self-reliance can be fostered. It’s like grassroots work, with a bit of structure and help.

“It’s not enough just to rip out the welfare system: it must be slowly replaced; new networks, economic and educational, must be put in its stead. The usual intellectual contradictions threaten: to set free, you must set down conditions; to strengthen, you must patronise.” (Rothwell, 2012)

Some are sceptical that a solution will ever be delivered by the right people. David Martin from the Australian National University questioned how Noel Pearson’s philosophy can and should be implemented. He highlighted concerns that there may be no ‘social capital’ left within Aboriginal Australia for a ‘grassroots’ or Aboriginal-lead solution to be born.

“The ethnography from Cape York and elsewhere suggests that certain widespread Aboriginal values and practices may be inimical to the kinds of social and attitudinal changes which Pearson is advocating. […] [C]ontemporary groupings [such as ‘families’, other local groups and ‘communities’] do not have the requisite moral and political authority over individuals”. (Martin, 2002)

Martin further argues that Indigenous groups do not have the capacity to institute the changes within Indigenous polity required for new forms of Indigenous governance and leadership, and that facilitation from external sources including government carries risks because “government is inherently incapable of moving beyond its own dominating rationale”. In other words, Indigenous people aren’t capable and nor is the government capable of providing a solution. A grim view.

Where David Martin sees no hope in Aboriginal people taking charge of their own problems without government steering, Noel Pearson maintains hope that traditional social patterns of accountability and family priorities inherited from both the tribal and missionary eras still survive in small pockets of each community and can be revitalised.

“I’ve wrestled with [the allegation of paternalism], and I’m unapologetic. Every successful society depends on a degree of paternalism. What I’m trying to grapple with here is, how do we solve poverty? How do you activate that fire in the belly that’s necessary to life people from their circumstances?”

Noel Pearson sees government playing a limited role of facilitation by approving and/or funding community-driven local programs with a strong participatory focus.

“The biggest item is convincing [the Liberal National Party in Queensland] we don’t need a government-led solution. You’d expect the [politically conservative] Liberals would be more accepting of the limitations of what government can do, but no. They’re as bad as Labor in terms of their belief in government. The fact is, it’s jealous regard for your own children… that’s what produces uplift. It’s madness to think government can lift people up. [T]he business of climbing, it’s an individual thing.”

Government, Aboriginal institutions, communities, families, individuals. Are those the only possible agents of change? Who else can redeem any hopeless situation? Of course, the spiritual undercurrent of life is usually unacknowledged in the mainstream political discourse. God’s applicability to all of life, to all of the institutional pillars of life including the ‘civil-social’, and his ultimate and exclusive role as the only redemptive agent in this universe is hardly ever publicly voiced let alone privately accepted in the procedure of politics in Australia today.

'Remember the poor' and social engineering

At the centre of the poverty and despair in Indigenous Australia lies the question, how should Christians respond? The mandate to ‘remember the poor’ is clear (1 John 3:16-18, Prov 29:7, Deut 15:7,10, Lev 19:19, Luke 12:33, Luke 14:12-14, Mt 5:42). But are political structures, including social welfare, the most effective or the right agents of good works for the poor?

“Welfare turns caring for the poor and needy from a spiritual compassion to a social agenda. […] Welfare as a social program negates the spiritual dynamics of supporting the needy.” (Kuban, 2010)

I would close with the following four points:

1. Although government is a God-ordained institution for the orderly conduct of man in this world, (Rom 13:1-7, Matt 22:16-21, 1 Pet 2:13-17) government is by no means the redemptive agency of this world. Only our Lord God is, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

2. Christians should not allow government-led initiatives to lull them into believing that their tax contributions have already satisfied the mandate to remember the poor. We need to be interested and our minds must be awake when it comes to responding in a Godly way to the poor in our midst. Compulsory redistributory taxation does not negate the command to “give generously to [your poor brother]” (Deut 15:10) nor the command to “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

3. Every individual is called to be productive and not to be idle. “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.” (2 Thess 3:10-12)

4. The call for each person to be productive should not stop us from remembering the poor, and serving them with love, regardless of their ethnicity, their righteousness, their productivity or their so-called value to society. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, lest they also invite you in return, and repayment come to you. But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)

Pearson concludes in a recent article with the following sentiment:

“It was my father who told me, you’ve got to serve God and serve your fellow man. While we still have women being airlifted to [the regional base] hospital with broken jaws, who are we to say, I am not my brother’s keeper?”

Be salt and light in every sphere of life. Wake up, think, and serve the lost within our own country.

References

• Davidhoff, Laura and Duhs, Alan 2008, ‘AboriginalAustralia: an economic history of failed welfare policy’, University of Queensland, June 2008, available at <http://espace.uq.edu.au/eserv/UQ:151369/econdp_371_0608.pdf>
• Kuban, R 2010, ‘How should a Chrisitan view the welfare system?’, Dollars and Doctrine, available at <http://dollarsanddoctrine.com>
• Martin, David 2002, ‘Reforming the welfare systemin remote Aboriginal communities: an assessment of Noel Pearson’s proposals’, Competing Visions, Refereed proceedings of the 2011 National Social Policy Conference, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney 317-25, available at <http://www.sprc.unsw.edu.au/media/File/NSPC01_Martin.pdf>
• Overington, Caroline 2012, ‘A zealot’s fight tolife people up’, The Australian, 25-26 August 2012, Inquirer, p 16, available at <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/a-zealots-fight-to-lift-people-up/story-fn9hm1pm-1226457693868>
• Rothwell, Nicholas 2012a, ‘Desire to end thewelfare drip-feed takes pride of place’, The Australian, 25 August 2012, Inquirer, p 17, available at <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/desire-to-end-the-welfare-drip-feed-takes-pride-of-place/story-fn9hm1pm-1226457620469>
• Rothwell, Nicholas 2012b, ‘Not just dreaming,thriving’, The Australian, 25 August 2012, available at <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/not-just-dreaming-thriving/story-e6frg6nf-1226457776944>
• t’Hart, Paul 2007, ‘Crisis exploitation: reflectionsof the ‘National Emergency’ in Australia’s Northern Territory’, Dialogue, vol 26, no 3, Nov 2007, pp 51-8, available at <http://www.assa.edu.au/publications/dial.asp>
• Saunders, Peter 2004, ‘Australia’s welfare habit’, CIS, Aug 2004.