Yesterday I got one of those commentators who was shocked, shocked, shocked by what I was saying. I’m mean, you see, and I did not put much evidence up.
Where is it written that homosexuality is the preferred form of love? And where are these waves of careers being smashed and destroyed in New Zealand?
Every age has its pieties and orthodoxies. The difference with this one is that students can graduate from universities and form their own ideas and even blog their heresies without reprisal. They might even become famous and write books or get on talk radio. This was not the case in the time of Calvin, as you well know, when heretics were burned alive.
Well, I’ve seen careful and honest researchers be pilloried by the social justice warriors because they published the rates of childhood adversity among men who have sex with men — and they are much higher. I’ve seen the politically correct tear churches apart. And I have seen them make shit up. Calvin argued against the execution of Servetius, and that was the only heretic burned in Geneva. If you want to see a bloody time, may I introduce you to Tudor England.
Or read the accounts of the Orthodox neomartyrs, who died like flies under the Ottoman yoke.
But the commentator is correct in one aspect. We have freedom of our conscience. And there is always a risk we will be teaching those who will not hear. The pig ignorant. And when we consider this, we often have quoted at us “do not judge”. Well, let’s look at the passage.
1“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. 2For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. 3Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? 4Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
6“Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.
7“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 9Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? 10Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? 11If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
12“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
Now the first part of this is that we all judge. We all do. We cannot stop ourselves: nor should we. But we need to know that Saul Alinsky was correct: the standards we apply to others will be applied to ourselves. And by that measure, we will all fail.
This is why Paul said that we have the law written in our hearts, and even if we have not heard of the Law of God (which is good. Today’s passage is about setting up festivals, and reminds us to leave grain on the ground when we harvest so the poor can get their share)
Today a bit of research that we did in the department got published, and yesterday the department had a bunch of reporters in it. And they were judging. They were saying that what we are reporting should not happen. And they are correct.
Nearly 40 per cent of hospital staff report have been assaulted at work by patients or relatives of patients in the preceding year, a survey has found.
Twelve per cent were subjected to stalking, 10 per cent to sexual assault, and 79 per cent to a verbal threat, according to a report on the survey in today’s New Zealand Medical Journal.
District health boards say violence is becoming more common at hospitals. Waitemata DHB has set up a rapid-response unit, including security workers, to help when staff believe there’s a threat to the safety of patients, visitors or staff.
The survey, done by Nicola Swain and Otago University colleagues, was completed by 227 hospital staff at an unnamed district health board. Most were nurses, and the rest doctors, allied health practitioners or clinical support workers.
“The rates are considerably higher than those reported in a UK general hospital where 27 per cent were physically assaulted over the preceding year, compared to 38 per cent in the past year in the present study,” the researchers say.
The rate of violence was also much higher than the reported lifetime incidence of interpersonal violence and warranted “urgent attention”.
In the journal’s editorial, Christchurch surgeon Dr Steven Kelly said patients could lash out because of drug, psychiatric or personality disorders, or “may come from a social environment where violence is normal and where violent behaviour is a way for them to get what they want”.
“Aggressive patients and their families must realise the right to access free healthcare in New Zealand does not include a right to abuse hospital staff and that it won’t be tolerated.”
Data obtained by the Herald on assaults by patients and visitors showed there were 2500 reported attacks on staff at upper North Island DHBs in three years. Staff were bitten and head-butted, one patient tried to strangle an employee and another threw boiling tea over a worker.
Christ follows this teaching about judgment by telling us not to teach what is holy to Dogs, or cast pearls before swine. We do need to have some discrimination. It is right that the leadership of the church is only given to those who are tested and faithful, and that we accept that many, indeed most, will not qualify. It is important to deal with things carefully.
Which is why I was arguing last night that any intervention within the health service (The crown, that is the taxpayers, funds health in NZ, which is then delivered by regional government. A district health board controls all taxpayer health spend in a defined geographical region) require testing. Just doing things without a trial to show that they work is stupid: bringing in interventions on a pilot study alone without an RCT is also stupid.
But finally, we have one promise within this. Christ promises that those who seek righteousness and forgiveness and salvation will find that in him. And, given that we have all erred and fallen short of our own standards, which are lower than those of God Almighty, is the one way we have to achieve reconciliation.
So are we to judge? Well, inevitably we will. Are we do damn? At times, society will, but we ourselves should instead pray for the shock troops of the social justice warriors. That the words of correction are being cast in front of humans, not swine.
‘Shocked, shocked, shocked’? No, just mildly surprised at how much you exaggerate. You stated that homosexuality is being taught as the ‘preferred form of love’. Your evidence is a civil disagreement within a church. I’ve dipped into your blog – it reads sometimes like you believe you’re living in downtown Mogadishu, with Christians being persecuted on every corner.
I say again, there is nothing new under the sun. The current orthodoxy you chafe against so much is a much milder and less vicious one than the orthodoxies of the past. You don’t like homosexuality being normalised? You think it’s bad that there is pushback against people who think homosexuality is bad? Probably there is and, as always, it goes too far. But those poor persecuted people can start a blog, or write a book. In the not so distant past, homosexuals were beaten, killed and imprisoned. In Uganda, they still are, with the full blessing of the Church. I bet they’d much rather suffer the mild version of persecution that you are railing against.
Your choice of Tudor England is apt. That was real persecution – burnings, hangings, maimings, torture, exile. If you think God would be just to destroy the wickedness of the Western world as it is now, I take it you believe that speaking out for homosexuals and for feminist women who (shock! horror!) get fat, is a far graver sin in His eyes than the horrors of religious persecution in the past, or as it plays out in non-Western countries today.
I don’t live in Downtown Mog. Thank God. Nor Egypt, where the Copts are being murdered each Sunday. Or Nigeria, where the Christians are being killed village by village by Boka Harum.
I live in NZ: and I note the problems that occur here. On the issue of homosexuality &c I took the example from the previous day. You want more?
Easy.
Wait, this handful of examples prove homosexuality is the preferred form of love, and that God would be justified in sweeping away Western civilization with Biblical devastation? That’s called overkill.
Well, God is justified in sweeping away a society that kills a third of its babes and decimates its neighbours.
A good description of the former Soviet Union and the current United States of America.
Homosexualists are shock troops used by the elite to shut up Christians right now. It used to be “you are all Tories” or “You are all racists”. (except in the Former NSDAP, when it was “you do not work to meet the needs of the people”). Now it is homphobia.
Meh.
We have to deal with the issues we have now. And if that means that we offend people who beat up those they disagree with, such as the radicals who threatened to kill the leaders of the Avondale Mosque, well we stand with those who are trying to do good, and against overt evil.
Regardless of what we are called.
Re Tudor England: don’t want it. Nor the Edinburgh of the Covenators (which is much closer to my theological position than I’d like). I want the Victorian compromise: freedom of speech, limited government, and an understanding that marriage is about raising kids.
I also want regulations on hours, robust apprenticeships and unions, and charities that provide for the poor, injured and indigent. I would like a safety net with conditions. We had all of those things in NZ by the late 1880s.
I come from the English Presbyterian Tradition, and we were called nonconformists: one reason why we emigrated to the USA and the Antipodes.