Overnight, I have been converting most of the laptops to a rolling release of OpenSuse. This has taken considerable time. I’ve also got a considerable amount of work on. The boys are in mid-semester break, with projects to do and the first examination of the year looming. The gym was difficult, as I’m fighting off a virus.

So why bother? Why swim against the tide? Why worry about virtue, pursue righteousness, in the full knowledge that I am imperfect and fail daily if not hourly?

Because you cannot reduce this life to the material. What you do in this life matters.

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

(1 Corinthians 15:51-58 ESV)

This falls out of the fact that Christ rose from the dead, and he has told us that those who believe will be with him.

So it is our role to be the rock. As a church, to be something that society can anchor itself on. For politics alone will not work. It requires right living, right thinking and right actions.

From refusing to accept cohabitation and divorce, keeping the marital bed pure, to avoiding corruption (State sanctioned bribery and the institutionalized blackmail), to speaking the truth and letting it trigger others.
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And here the reforms need to begin with us all. This elite wants us to be silent, and to censor ourselves: to see progress where there are cuts to services, and praise the destruction of the fabric of society and the death of faith.
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I am serious when I say it is good not to be part of them.

For when the lies get too great, they will find that the people do go… elsewhere. To their horror: to the UKIP, to Trump, to Winston Peters (who makes Trump look meek and mild: a Maori politician), and to the church that preaches the gospel. (The elite should pray that they return to the church: many are going to the mosque and being taught that killing the Christians and Jews is very righteous, killing gays less so, and killing the elite is not needed because they will submit).

But not for us. We must not be of this world. Our church and our society requires that we continue the daily struggle. Regardless of what we are called. Until we are jailed and hung and crucified, or until he comes, we must live for Christ, preach for Christ, and use our words for Christ.
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For we are all appointed, after death, to face the rewards for our actions. At that point, may Christ say that the due penalty has been met.