The Random Demands Begin

One has to love an election to stir up the rabble-rousers. Catherine Deveney kicked off the random demand train this morning with this little gem:

'RT this if you would vote for a party who promises to remove tax-exempt status for religions. #ausvotes'

This followed some pointed tweets against the lunatic Danny Nalliah who was complaining that Gillard will destroy our Judeo-Christian heritage. Deveny pointed out that Australia has had 50,000 years of indigenous spirituality (conveniently forgetting, of course, she hates such science-free mumbo-jumbo) and that Nalliah was barking up the wrong tree, making her at least half right. The man is certainly barking.

Anyway, the point is, many demands are going to be made of us, particularly via Twitter, during this campaign. Many of them are going to be random demands we must make of our politicians, and if they don't fit in with our own personal obsessions we are not to vote for them.

I find this perplexing - if I take Abbott at his word (and ignore many of his actions), one would imagine that his Christian faith would be the top of my list and I'd vote for my Liberal member on that strength. One would be wrong.

If I were to look at Gillard's so-called red-headed, childless, unmarried atheism, one would expect I would put her at the bottom of the list. After all, Tony would never sleep around outside of/before marriage...oh, I see. Yes, yes he would.

(Steven Fielding is close last, just so you know)

I have a few pet issues. One is a free and open internet but with the ability for parents (and those who want to prevent themselves) to filter that. One filter for all is ludicrous, stupid and threatens our relatively free way of life. I think this country is absurdly wealthy and equally absurdly, we do little to help those in need in this country.

We pay our teachers and nurses bugger-all and expect the world from them. We are pushing our children into schooling that ignores individual strengths and interest and aims for a lowest-common denominator 'best-practice' so that a government can beat its chest and say how wonderful they are at education. Meanwhile our kids become disillusioned with education and drift without a purpose as they fill in dots on exams, the results of which they will never see but may affect their school in a profound way.

Which of these two parties will do something about these two things? Neither. Who will I vote for? The least worst. I will not boil it down to their belief systems because I believe Gillard's approach to compassion is rather more advanced than Abbott's. The Rudd and Gillard governments will no doubt do things I detest, and have done, but above all, they appear to have more compassion than the Coalition. Abbott's approach to compassion appears to me to be the much misappropriated (and untrue) 'Jesus helps those who help themselves.'

My Facebook page this morning hosted a mini-rant about the 'stop the boats' hypocrisy thus:

'Yes, to those fellow Christians who think it's sensible to vote for Tony Abbott 'because he's a Christian' I think you might just be missing the point. The old cliche, 'What would Jesus do?' about the 'boat people' (itself a racist, emotive term) makes me wonder how a Christian can honestly say Abbott is doing the right thing. Jesus was an asylum seeker once.'

There was a wonderful thing Jesus said (among many) and that was recorded in John 13:34-35:

'A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another'

Jesus loved us like no other. Whether you see the New Testament as a story or the truth, as a character, Jesus laid down his life and suffered the punishment of all of humanity, something he did not deserve. He didn't have to be dragged to the cross, he carried it himself. Many of those 'boat people' are in genuine fear for their lives and will contribute productively to Australian society.

'Terrorists' tend to arrive by air, bankrolled by fellow nutters. The September 11 terrorists arrived by air, studied, were reasonably privileged, did rotten things. Note that last bit, it's important and renders much of the stop the boats rhetoric null and void.

Abbott, and to a certain extent Gillard, are lying to us about the size of the problem. That's not love, tough or otherwise.

'Stopping the boats' is not loving one another, it's being a jerk and not stopping to think or worse, not stopping to care, about the realities. Lying to the Australian people about the size of the problem is not loving one another. Insisting the boats are stopped by the Navy endangers thousands of people because people smugglers, like fundamentalist leaders who send minions to their death, do it all remotely and rarely have skin in the game. And I'm sure most Navy bods would rather help than hinder.

Abbott does not distinguish himself as a disciple of Jesus as his love for his fellow man appears to be restricted to white people born here in Australia who are obsessed with their mortgages and the cylinder count of their four-wheel drive and how much it costs to run this unnecessary beast. He appears untroubled by the realities of climate change - I don't give a damn why it's happening, if it might be in our power to stop it, we should try. And we should lead the way. Because if we can reduce or halt climate change, less people will feel the need to get on a boat and hope we'll take them or jump on a plane and fly into a building because our greed is destroying their part of the world.

Rambling now. You get the point. As a Christian, I will be 'voting for everyone,' not just for me and my own requirements, petty prejudices or bank balance. If our leaders are Christian, I think that's good for everyone (of course), but it's not the only reason to vote for someone. As a Christian, I believe we must be intellectually engaged and not just stop at 'Oh, he's a Christian, he's ticked the big box.' The first question for me is who comes closest to fulfilling the ideals of Christ, not who goes to church on Sunday. Either way, it's a compromise but I'd rather 7000 people in 18 months arriving by boat than 7000 possibly drowning alone in the sea after having a hugely rich 'Judeo Christian' country fire live shots across their bow to scare them away.

So I won't be insisting you RT anything random and won't be telling you how you should vote (does anyone even know what Deveny is on about? Does it mean the same thing here as in the US? I don't think it does...the church I make donations to does not provide me with a receipt with which to claim a tax deduction...). I am trying to smash the idea that 'Christians' will vote for Abbott for that reason and those who are thinking about it will hopefully consider the words of Jesus and what he stands for before they vote.

Rant over. Back to work.