There is right time and right season for the work of God. In your life and in this world. It is quite legitimate to pray that it is now, but God moves when the time is correct. That time is not that of this world.

This world wants miracles. It wants the specatacle. It wants the festivals, but it does not us to challenge its narrative. Though that narrative is evil.

And yes, Andrew, asking a Doctor to facilitate your suicide is evil. Calling it other things misses the point. I have seen many people die: there are means of managing pain. There are ways of making the time remaining work for good. But setting laws fo euthanasia means that the handicapped, the mad, and the despairing will be offered poison: this has been the pattern in Belgium, Holland and Oregon. There is a slippery slope. And that is who most doctors won’t do it. I work to preserve health and save lives and to comfort those who have to manage their illnesses. I don’t want to be drafted into a death squad.

Media personality Andrew Denton has called on those opposed to euthanasia on religious grounds to “step aside” from the debate and blamed a “hidden theocracy” at the heart of government for blocking the introduction of assisted dying laws.

Denton took aim at Labor’s Tony Burke and the Liberal Party’s Kevin Andrews for working in tandem 20 years ago to overturn the Northern Territory’s introduction of ­assisted dying laws, labelling them part of a political “God squad”.

In an address to the National Press Club in Canberra, Denton warned that nothing had changed since the defeat of the euthanasia laws in 1997 and accused the Catholic Church of running a campaign against change based on “fear, ­uncertainty and doubt”.

“On the questions that are most fundamental to how we live, love and die, religious belief trumps everything,” he said. “This is the theocracy hidden inside our democracy.”

His speech was attacked by the Australian Christian Lobby as a misguided attempt to blame a “religious conspiracy” and for sending a negative message to vulnerable people.

Responding to Mr Denton’s speech last night, Mr Burke said: “Pretending my faith determines my political views hits a pretty clear wall when you consider my support for marriage equality. The claim past debates were driven solely by religion doesn’t explain why many atheists and people such as Lindsay Tanner and Barry Jones held the same view as me.”

Denton, who watched his ­father Kit suffer agonising pain in the lead up to his death, used the address to launch a new organisation — Go Gentle Australia — to advocate for assisted dying laws, but urged those with religious convictions to stay out of the debate.

After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, he remained in Galilee.

But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private. The Jews were looking for him at the feast, and saying, “Where is he?” And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, “He is a good man,” others said, “No, he is leading the people astray.” Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.

(John 7:1-13 ESV)

Translating this into modern terms: the Jews were waiting for Jesus to arrive in Judea for they had a squad ready to defenestrate and stone him. A spontaneous demonstration. Not our doing, the passions of the fervent. He breaks the narrative, he must go.

His brothers, who did not believe he was of God, saw it as a political move, and one must market oneself: thus go to the feast, where you can speak in the temple.

But the narrative was strong. The narrative was that Jesus was leading the people from the path of righteousness and the laws of Moses. The intellectuals (Sadducees) and conservatives (Pharisees) agreed on this. The truth had come, and contradicted the narrative, so the narrative must go.

And when the narrative is a lie, people know this, and fear.

Ignore this elite. Know yourself. This life is not long, but long enough. You have things to do. Work on them. Ignore the narrative. Follow instead the truth.