Thursday, October 19, 2017

Everything to play for

We are going to have a very new government in NZ.

Jacinda Ardern will be our new PM, leading a coalition government consisting of Labour and New Zealand  First with the Green Party offering confidence and supply and having some ministers out of cabinet.

Bill English has led National to its best ever defeat. I guess that will be of no consolation to him. I would urge him not to resign. I can't see his successor in sight.

There will be changes to our economic policies. As a mortgage holder I am a little nervous. They say interest rates always rise when Winston Peters is in government!

As a Christian I am concerned that our economy may be imperilled by having a two and a half headed government, which will make it much harder for the government to help our poor and vulnerable. That is what matters most to me about politics: that we have an economy which sustains a fair programme for the advancement of society.

Jacinda Ardern is a brilliant politician and will have the opportunity to be one of our most revered Prime Ministers. I hope Winston Peters doesn't stuff it up for her.

Everyone has everything to play for!


30 comments:

Sam Anderson said...

"That is what matters most to me about politics: that we have an economy which sustains a fair programme for the advancement of society." Peter Carrell

I find your statement, as a Christian, hard to comprehend. Is your primary concern, as a Christian, that the government be able to help the poor, rather than that the Government implement policies that are for the moral good of our society?

The left, and especially the Green Party, pushes social policy that consistently undermines Christian values/belief/whatever you like to call it. I would think this would be more concerning to a Christian, than our economic position.

The West is increasingly wealthy, comfortable, godless, and unhinged. Better to have a poorer, and more moral country, than a richer, godless one.

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Sam
I am thinking primarily of the material advancement of society (housing, health, education and training, employment, accessibility to food).
Depending on overall situation of society that advancement may be in a context where few get to be especially wealthy (NZ in 1930s?) or it may be in our situation today where many have gotten and will continue to be very wealthy, and the vast majority enjoy material goods to a point that God gets forgotten.

Am not sure that I look to governments to advance moral good in society save to the relationship between setting of just laws. But, as a lawyer observed yesterday at a conference I am attending, most laws are about property rights!

I don't think a govt running an economy down so that we are all poor is necessarily connected to moral or religious revival. That's not happening, for instance, in Venezuela is it? Or North Korea?

Andrei said...

"That is what matters most to me about politics: that we have an economy which sustains a fair programme for the advancement of society."

What does the "advancement of society" mean Peter?

The urban yuppies of Parnell seem to think it means men marrying one another and the ability to put Grandma down when she's past her "use by" date.

On the other hand developing a Nation of self reliant people who have the whit to see others and understand instinctively how to support them in times of trial without recourse to central Government might be a worthy goal

As for listening to lawyers

Three professionals were arguing as to which profession came first - a Doctor, an Engineer and a Lawyer.

The Doctor said "After creating the universe God made woman from Adam's rib, clearly an act of surgery, so medicine is the earliest profession"

Then the engineer said "But God created the Universe out of the chaos before that act of surgery and that was a profound feat of engineering so engineering came before medicine"

The lawyer just smiled and said "And who do you think created the chaos"

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Andrei
Most Kiwis are wonderfully able to get on with life, work hard, play hard, and pay their mortgage off just before their KiwiSaver fruits kick in to supplement their well earned pension.
Some Kiwis are not so able, including those whose lives are dogged by disability and disease, and those who have had a raw deal (e.g. Being made redundant from their work).
Advancement of society means, here, continuing to work on the poor among us receiving some share of the cake the rest of us tuck into, as well as ensuring that we do the best we can on great schooling, hospitals etc.
WP - who I otherwise have little time for - has come up with a useful phrase, talking about "the human face of capitalism".
My concern with a two and a half headed government is that their laudable aims will come unstuck.
My dilemma is that National showed too little too late interest in the human face of capitalism and tried to get away with a massive lie during the campaign.
Mind you, my party vote went to none of the four parties involved in last night herding of cats into govt and opposition!

Andrei said...

It all comes down to values Peter and what we as a society value.

We now have as a Prime Minister and early middle aged woman who is unmarried and childless who has devoted her entire adult life to obtaining the position she now holds - some maybe even the majority might think that admirable but I would not want my daughters to take that path, there might be better ways of spending your time on Earth

A Biblical verse that might have resonance

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

The latest Alfa Romeo might be a great status symbol but if we valued family and children a humble people mover would then be a vehicle to command respect

Anonymous said...

"I find your statement, as a Christian, hard to comprehend. Is your primary concern, as a Christian, that the government be able to help the poor, rather than that the Government implement policies that are for the moral good of our society?"

Sam, here at ADU one encounters views that are still common but no longer current. Father Ron, for example, brings the ethos of the 1960s right onto the screens of the early C21. Few voices today argue things from the premises current in his youth, but there are still many who were formed by them, and so what he says is not yet eccentric. (I do not mean any sarcasm in saying that. My views have been eccentric for somewhat more than a millennium.) God willing, you too will speak on at some far distant time when fewer people see what you see so clearly now!

I think Peter writes from a once commonplace assumption that a conservative morality leads organically to a more prosperous society, and that setting the conditions for prosperity likewise imposes an opportunity cost on vice and incentivises the cultivation of virtue. ("Why do you sell sex?," the voyeuristic interviewer asked a prostitute on television. "Because I have two children, no money, and cannot get any other job.") Similarly, the Canadian party of the centre right until 1993, was the Progressive Conservative Party, not at the time an oxymoron. That is, moral conservatives used to think that society would be better if people believed them.

Why is this link from traditional mores to social progress and vice versa so much less obvious to evangelicals today? Five guesses. (1) The dour pre-tribulation eschatology is now much more widely believed than the optimistic post-millennial eschatology, so that any belief in progress at all sounds vaguely unbelieving. (2) In societies where the fruits of the labour of all go chiefly to the top one tenth of one percent, more prosperity is not the incentive to virtue that it once was. (3) The outbreak of pluralism has prompted a new politics that insists that-- no matter what St Paul thought about this-- Caesar must do the work of Jesus. (4) Capitalism's swing from survival values to sumptuary ones has lead moralists to worry less about crime in the streets (and the suites) of reality and more about sins of the bedroom, although God seems to be more even-handed. (5) Political scientists have noticed that support for democratic institutions and practises have been eroding in democracies for about two generations, so that the general premises of inter-party competition judged by voters are less and less likely to be agreed among Christians online. To my younger self in a time before these trends, Peter would have sounded rather conservative.

So is Peter's thinking today simply behind the times? No, I don't think so. The other day I mentioned the futility of the evangelical and liberal pursuit of Immediacy. Everything is better on the blessed isles, especially your head of state, so this may not make obvious sense. But the evangelical failure to come to terms with these five changes has led them into an association with Caligula that has disgraced them. Had they followed Peter's usual assumptions, they would have been more useful to the Lord today.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/59*.html#1

Bowman Walton

Bryden Black said...

"Italy" here we come ...?!

Anonymous said...

Correction--

So is Peter's thinking today simply behind the times? No, I don't think so. The other day I mentioned the futility of the evangelical and liberal pursuit of Immediacy. Everything is better on the blessed isles, especially your head of state, so this may not make obvious sense. But IN MY COUNTRY evangelicals have not understood the effects of these five changes, and our failure has led us into an association with Caligula that has disgraced our witness. Had we followed Peter's usual assumptions, we would be more useful to the Lord today.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/59*.html#1

BW

Father Ron Smith said...

Sam, your slip is showing here. The Gospel of OLJC, of course, always favours the poor. The morality option was that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, whom Jesus scorned. Morality is often failed by its loudest advocates, as Jesus knew.

Jean said...

What do they say it is interesting times... Like you Peter none of the parties involved got my party vote but I am not surprised they were the main contenders!

It will definitely be a case of wait and see. National has run for quite a few years on an economic slant which of course has its advantages, unfortunately the cost has largely been our environment and those on the bottom of the rung so to speak. So a change may be good for a time to even things out a bit.

Morals and social progress, why is it our human nature to always divide. I personally think biblically as Christians we are called to take both seriously. You have Micah's warning (the prophets) on just what God thinks if we sacrifice personally but neglect justice and mercy. You have Paul's many warnings to Christian's that freedom in Christ isn't license to sin. Although I would not expect a government to follow Christian principles necessarily their formation of policies that do influence how I vote. This time around wasn't easy as the parties who advocated they would uphold moral societal concerns (e.g. euthanasia) were not necessarily the ones advocating for social justice or environmental concerns.

Bowman if you succeed in being able to explain American politics let alone their intersection with Christianity to us, you will have achieved much!

Anonymous said...

Peter; I think we need to remind Fr Ron that Jesus condemned the Pharisees because they were hypocrites; actors in the true sense. Had they kept the law, they would not have received condemnation. Fr Ron seems to think that Jesus condemned the moral; he actually condemned the immoral.

Nick

Anonymous said...

Bryden, in one sense Italy (or England) is here: in a country with deep regional differences, the coasts are at least as wealthy as, say, greater Milan or London, but the rest are gradually sinking toward the Italian south or the English north. Only the Federal government has the power to attempt a reversal, but voting is only robust among the poor and middling when it pays, and voters in the interior regions are wedded by their cultural values to Republicans who minimise Federal help in the US to keep taxes low for the most wealthy. (In the last Bush Administration, a town council in Kentucky petitioned Afghanistan for annexation to get more aid from Washington.)

That makes it difficult to imagine a voter-led revival of the interior. Stephen Bannon has been trying to use whatever demagoguery it takes-- Breitbart's and even Donald Trump's-- to mobilise an interior constituency within the Republican Party that can push the billionaires aside and bend the power of the state to that purpose. The craziest tendencies on the American right are suddenly in relative prominence because they are useful to that strategy. And while demagoguery in foreign relations could possibly trigger a Third World War, it is politically-speaking cheaper than demagoguery against domestic constituencies. For Presidents Nixon to Obama, North Korea was a serious problem; to President Trump, it is a golden opportunity to expand his base.

Bowman Walton

Anonymous said...

Jean, Americans cannot talk openly about the three strong forces in our society--regions, class, and race-- and so religion functions as their proxy in our politics. All religion here is read in that dual way. This ideological use of religion in politics can be seen the world over, but electorates vary in their awareness of it. Americans seem to me to be much less aware of this than, say, Italians or Turks.

About evangelicalism. To you or me, it is a theology and a style of churchmanship; American churchgoers have at least a vague sense of that. But evangelicalism also inculcates a centuries-old habit of resistance to the power of the two coasts; this is ideology.

A Bible Belt preacher who gets you upset about the teaching of evolution to your children may actually have an apolitical religious motive in so doing, but he also has the political effect of eliciting your resistance to the scientific and other elites of the Northeast and the Pacific coast who take evolution for granted. And that resistance is, by extension, a refusal to believe them about the mere existence of human-caused climate change, and further an abhorrence of the liberal politics of the Democratic Party's strongholds of New York, Massachusetts, and California.

While evangelical preachers may be apolitical, few in fact are. The most ironic development in the history of That Topic is that when the Human Rights Campaign-- the main LGBT political force-- decided NOT to seek SSM, Republican strategists got evangelical preachers to organise petition campaigns to put referenda on state ballots that further prohibited the already illegal practise. Why? To increase the turnout of voters highly likely to vote for President George W Bush on the same ballot. This effort did help to re-elect the president, but the passage of these laws also embittered the debate about That Topic and began the judicial effort to overturn all laws against SSM, which ultimately succeeded.

I mentioned race. How can evangelicalism possibly be used as a proxy of race when black Americans are themselves overwhelmingly evangelical? Through the culture embedded in the presentation of it. White Americans hear an evangelicalism with a very very heavy stress on authority, which not unnaturally leads to a strong sympathy with the police, who must have guns to protect themselves, who cannot always be expected to make split-second decisions about them correctly... Black Americans hear an evangelicalism that is just as moralistic, but much less authoritarian and much more supportive of the need to speak up, to protect one's dignity as a man or woman, to not be intimidated... Does evangelicalism cause our police to kill innocent black men? The theology of evangelicalism does not, but the experience of it as a carrier of different cultures, white and black, clearly has set up some tragic collisions.

A similar duality is at work when white evangelicals see Federally-subsididised health care as an assault on personal freedom and self-reliance and black evangelicals see it as a wise investment in more productive lives. All have values with some sort of origin in the Bible but the social forces in play are guiding the selection and emphasis. The same social forces keep whites and blacks with the same theology from being in the same denominations.

Someday, we'll discuss Catholics...

Bowman Walton

Father Ron Smith said...

Nick, I think you will find that Jesus condemned the Scribes and Pharisees because of the way they condemned sinners - pretending that they, themselves, were righteous. That is what is called hypocrisy. Remember when Jesus was once addressed as "Good Master!"? Jesus immediately confronted his interlocutor with these words (Jesus was here acknowledging His own full humanity); "Who are you calling good? There is One alone who is good!" Jesus was recognising the FACT that only God is sinless! He was always kind to sinners who admitted their culpability. He reserved judgement for those who thought they were better than other people - A wqarning, Nick to all of us.

Glen Young said...


Bowman,
In quite simple terms,perhaps it's because the nature of man (except in Christ) has never changed from the Garden of Eden. We still follow the archetype (Adamic) image in our spirits, and want to discern what is good and evil for ourselves.We then try to work out policies and programs which will bring about the utopia we envisage; but the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
We spend millions of dollars on programs to feed the poor; but the other day we walked past a man sign saying he wanted money for food. We said,"we will go into the roast shop here and buy you a meal,what do want?
His reply was,"Just money". Likewise,how many of the people flooding Europe are actually now employed? Do they want employment, or do they want the benefits?
The act which makes "straight the way", so that the Holy Spirit can bring the "GOOD NEWS"; is the act which bears the LOVE OF CHRIST, with a personal face.All else misses the mark.All the efforts of the new Government will fail,simply because they are not designed to make straight the way for the Holy Spirit.

Glen Young said...


Ron,
When Jesus condemned the Scribes and Pharisees; Jesus was recognising exactly who HE was: "the PRE-EXISTENT LOGOS" and yes ,He was recognising that He was Fully MAN and fully GOD.If God alone (the Father) is sinless,how could Jesus have taken the our sin upon himself.He did so,because He was also sinless because He is also GOD.

Ron,I fear that your "Progressive Christianity" penchant is showing forth in this blog of following "Jesus the man" rather than "Jesus,the Son of living GOD".

Jean said...

Hi Bowman

I appreciate your explanation. Wow, does it ever point out the dangers of using the bible to forward ones own personal or political agenda's! You are correct, race, religion, and politics are all topics that kiwi's will talk about albeit with varying viewpoints, and even though we quote the polite English phrase of two things one shouldn't talk about in polite society is religion and politics : ) ...

I can see now that you point it out though that it isn't that uncommon to abuse religion by using it as ideology, the racial conflicts in Sri Lanka began when a political party decided to use race and religion as a campaigning strategy to get into government (appealing of course to the majority as one is more likely to win). Not a good look for supposed Buddhist Monks who advocate the giving up of human desires to be seen engaging in conflict. And an even worse outcome, decades of civil war...

And my gosh if that is just the evangelical scene in the US. Yes please wait awhile before you explain the Catholic landscape in the US. It's too much to take in! I have come across the 'you don't talk politics in the US' or 'you do not say anything against the government in the US' approach from kiwi ex-pats who have lived in the US and received that message loud and clear. Us kiwi's veer to the other extremes being too critical of our government representatives!!

Re the above Pharisee/good debate: My understanding that the word 'good' as used in that context is actually more equivalent to our word today 'perfect'. And yep agree with most the Pharisees were singled out not because they sought to follow God's commands but because they acted as if they lived up to them all and punished others for not doing so; also they added their own rules for their own benefit; also they failed to recognise Jesus despite their study of scriptures unlike say Anna or Simeon who learning from OT teachings were prepared for Jesus' birth. Basically, they were probably like many of us at times : ) ...

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Bryden and Jean
Thank you for a fascinatin, illuminating discussion!

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Ron, Nick, Glen
We could get a bit muddled about the scribes and the Pharisees!
1. I agree that Jesus never affirmed immorality and thus did not disagree with the Pharisees on the law and it's keeping in general terms.
2. Jesus attacked scribes and Pharisees for hypocrisy, or play acting, because he discerned instances of playing with the law, e.g. korban, in order to avoid obedience to the law.
3. There were occasions of dispute between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees when the Pharisees were right about the strict application of the law but wrong to insist on that application to the detriment of advancement of life: typically these were Sabbath disputes and probably had as much to do with a power clash with Jesus (as a new authority) as with legal arguments. It is highly likely that when Jesus was not concerned to heal on the Sabbath he kept the Sabbath law just as the scribes and the Pharisees did.
4. Always worth remembering is that Jesus undermined no part of the Law of Moses save for some ceremonial law and on most significant laws relating to human relationships he intensified the demands of the law rather than liberalised them.

Father Ron Smith said...

"There were occasions of dispute between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees when the Pharisees were right about the strict application of the law but wrong to insist on that application to the detriment of advancement of life"

Thank you, Peter, for this key codicil to Jesus' application of The Law.

Glen, I think you will find that Jesus never over-emphasised his filial relationship to His Father (witness; his refusal to go along with Satan's invitation to throw himself down from the Temple parapet). On the contrary, Jesus own title for himself was 'Son of Man'. I have no dispute with Jesus being both God and man - orthodox theology. However, we must never diminish the fact that Jesus was 'fully human'. Otherwise, how could Jesus have redeemed us 'from within'? It was made possible by his incarnation - his own assumption of our earthly humanity - from the womb of a human being, the BVM - fully human! This Mystery is beyond our human comprehension.

Anonymous said...

There is a well-known story of a church in the Scottish highlands where strict "sabbath" observance was the norm. One day the elders were discussing the matter, and one of them pointed out that Jesus had repeatedly broken the sabbath and had spoken out against its observance. “Ah yes,” replied another. “It really seems that even our blessed Lord himself was a bit of a liberal on that matter."

-- p. 145.

If we are to understand what happens to the sabbath in the New Testament, it is vital to keep this whole larger [Old Testament] picture in mind. To truncate the ancient biblical picture of the sabbath into merely a rule or law to be rigorously imposed and blindly obeyed— and then to hail Jesus or Paul as the great antilegalist!— is first to trivialize, then to misunderstand, and finally to ignore the real significance of the sabbath principle first in ancient Israel and then in the great renewal which Jesus launched and Paul implemented.

-- p. 154. N. T. Wright. Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

BW

Anonymous said...

Hi Peter; Fr Ron takes a rather Pollyanna interpretation of your comment on 21 Oct at 9.02pm. As Christians we cannot select the odd verse that suits our doctrinal preferences and ignore the majority of a passage or indeed the tradition.

Nick

Bryden Black said...

One of the better books I've read out of USA these past few years is The Unwinding by George Packer. Have you come across it?

Anonymous said...

The Bible, as I have insisted throughout this book, is a STORY, and its authority is put into operation when we learn how the story works and where we belong within it. In terms of the five-act play, the Old Testament sabbath law is a vital part of Act 3, rooted indeed in Act 1 itself. But when Act 4 brings in a new day, Act 3 is seen, not as a sidetrack or backwater, but as the necessary but time-limited step by which the ground is prepared for that fresh fulfillment. And we who live in Act 5 must go on telling the story of all five acts in order to understand the abiding significance of sabbath, albeit translated into the life-giving “now” of the gospel. Merely to treat the Old Testament sabbath command as an ancient and restrictive rule now happily abolished would be to ignore the entire principle which Jesus massively affirmed in Luke 4 and elsewhere: God intended to come in person to live within his creation, within its space, time, and matter, and when he did so his prime task would be to bring liberty to captives and, not least, release from debt.

-- p. 171-72. N. T. Wright. Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

BW

Father Ron Smith said...

Peter - breaking into the theme, not entirely off-topic here:

Do you have a doppel-ganger relative in Brendan Hartley, who has just come 13th in the Texas Grand Prix? He is your stunt-double. Check in to TV1.

Peter Carrell said...

Dear Ron
He is not my doppelgänger.
I drive under that name to avoid people coming to hear me preach just because I am a world famous racing driver.

Peter Carrell said...

Dear Nick and Ron
Typically Jesus weighted advancement of life such as healing the disabled or feeding the hungry as better representing the intended purpose of the law. Advancement such as we might welcome today (e.g. To greater happiness) do not seem to have figured much in Jesus' exchanges with the scribes and Pharisees.

Peter Carrell said...

Dear Bowman
Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Bryden-- Yes. Thoughts?

Peter-- You are welcome. For what?

BW

Peter Carrell said...

Dear Bowman
For illuminating, helpful and embracing comments!