One of the ways that the ruling classes have always worked is the cultivation of useful idiots. Tame clerics, members of the press, teachers at second-rate schools, bored students. You want someone who is intelligent and but who is not wise. You want someone who has no shame about doxxing: destroying the lives of others, while demanding that their very smallest sensitivity is respected.

I am going to have to deal with a few of these this week, for at a conference am I. Pray for me, that the snark rises not.

There is an ongoing discussion of dirty politics in NZ. As if it was new, and the idea that the PM talks to bloggers on the right wing — the pamphleteers of this age — is evil wrong. And at the same time the meme that those on the left, the SJW, are always right.

Stop your onanism and become an opposition. Slater is not evil, you manichee. @RusselNorman @juhasaarinen

— Chris Gale (@pukeko60) December 2, 2014

But there is nothing new here. Not at all. The Council in Jerusalem were playing the same tricks two millenia before this.

The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people. So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. So they asked him, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” They said, “Caesar’s.” He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him in what he said, but marveling at his answer they became silent.

(Luke 20:19-26 ESV)

Now, we need to render to God our worship, and to him alone. Our rulers deserve our respect (something I am clearly struggling with, with my subversive tweets aimed at a sitting MP and head of the Green Party). There is an entire part of systematic theology based on the idea of the civil authority, and how it should work with the church, listening and being informed by the word of God, and those Christians called to rule require our prayers and support.

As do those pagans who currently rule over us [1].

But what we need to be more aware of — even in these days of statist regulation, is the sneaky question, the subversion of reputation, the manufacture of outrage. There is no place for this in the church. We need to be direct.

This ruling elite will fail. Do not be their useful fool.

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1. There are some rulers who take their faith seriously. But, like Abbott (Catholic) and Bush (Baptist) they are generally despised by the elite.