Shoulda Gone Full Abbott. [Acts 19]

I like Abbott. I like his Christianity: the fact that he is an observant Catholic drives the latte sculling effete twitterati of Central Melbourne into an incoherent rage. The Liberals decided that they could not tolerate him, so dumped him for a member of the bankster elite, and as a result have almost lost an election.

Now, these things should not matter: I’m a Kiwi: I support Otago, Auckland, and whoever is playing against Australia. But the trouble is that Labour would bring in the greens. The Liberals should have stuck with a believer, because without them the Greens get too much power, and they cause destruction. Of not merely the environment, but the church.

So, to Turnbull and Shorten I say this: cast out the Soc ail Justice Twerps from among you, and defend the freedom of all true born members of our failed commonwealth to associate as they choose.

An argumentative fourth-grader could point out the hypocrisy of the nation’s most puritanical political party calling for church membership to be opened up to whoever wants it. The Greens are, legally and morally, perfectly entitled to limit their membership to those who are pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-wind farms blighting the landscape, anti-religion and anti-religious freedom.

Fair enough, but surely I should be allowed to take the opposing view on all those things. And organisations such as churches – and religious schools – should be able to have equally strident policies in whatever direction they want. As much as they shriek hysterically about diversity, the reason the Greens want to treat every Australian the same (in the words of their diversity spokesman) is because they believe all Australians are basically identical, or at least should be.

And so when it comes to religious schools generally, and Christian schools specifically, the Left wants to see an identical output to the state schools, perhaps allowing for a smarter uniform or a more elaborate school badge. They fantasize about two dads picking up their daughter from a solar powered Catholic Safe School, perhaps sharing a joke with the parish trans-priest as they walk through an ornate sandstone gate. Or about a devout Islamic family attending speech day at a strict Calvinistic academy, with mother and daughters appropriately covered, of course. #illlearnwithyou.

I can write as I see the truth, and pray as I ought, but I will not trust the princes. For their policies vary with the wind.

Nothing new here. Nothing at all.

	I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
	
	
	Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
	When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.
	
	
	Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, 	whose hope is in the LORD his God,
	who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them,
	who keeps faith forever;
	
(Psalm 146:2-6 ESV)

	And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

(Acts 19:11-20 ESV)

It was not Paul that was the cause of healing. It was the Spirit of Christ. Invoking Paul had nothing to do with this: Paul was working in obedience to the Spirit, and the sons of Sceava were but imitating him.

So it is in our society. There are many who would argue that their political policies or their appeals to common decency matter most. But that is not true. It was not true in the day of Flanders and Swan, and it not now. (Did I add that the only time that Aussies and Kiwis unite is to cheer each other against England?)

So, what to do?

Well, probably, you should vote. Note, that in Australia, it is illegal not to vote unless you are a Kiwi: who are your rulers do affect the church. Unfortunately.

Secondly, you should be wary of the entryist. You don’t want people telling you not to tell the truth because they think you are impolite. At times you need to be rude: most of us would push a person back onto the footpath to stop them walking into a car coming in their blind spot, and no one would say that is assault. We need to continually look at doctrine and teaching we have and not dilute truth with untruth.

And then we should trust. The Holy Spirit. For we may be full of errors, and we clearly have a lot of fools in leadership, put the Church does not belong to them. It belongs to Christ. And no ruler, not even the gates of hell, can prevail against it.