The Road to Redemption for the Lying Left

I recently had an exchange with someone who commented on one of my QoL pieces. At issue was whether religions are mere superstitions. I responded in part: “All but two are. Christianity for which we have eye witness accounts and Judaism as the root of Christianity are the truth; ergo they are not superstitions.”

My interlocutor came back with a cogent retort which in part reads: “A big problem is the reliability of those ‘eye witnesses’, whose reports don’t quite line up (and have been heavily edited, translated and re-translated through the centuries)…”

When and by whom the New Testament Books were written is rich fodder for theologians and historians, including those intent on describing Christianity as a myth. However, by referring to eye-witness accounts, I happen to believe that I am on firm ground. It is impossible to believe that the early Christian martyrs went to their deaths in service of unsubstantiated hearsay. In any event, the eye-witness accounts are but part of the story. It is the part which is non-transcendental and therefore lends itself to the materialistic world in which we all live out our earthly lives. The other part is transcendental. Saul of Tarsus experienced the transcendental on the road to Damacus. Most of us have a more drawn-out experience. Though often like Saul in circumstances where there is no earthly reason in our upbringing or background to account for it.

Though often like Saul in circumstances where there is no earthly reason in our upbringing or background to account for it.

As to rapid enlightenment, I have experienced it. Although it was of a seemingly non-religious nature. Or was it?

It came about when I was part way through a postgraduate degree in economics at Adelaide University. Professor Geoffery Harcourt, sadly now passed away, was my supervisor at the time and the main reason I decided to go to Adelaide. He was of the left and used to spend periods at Cambridge University, where he befriended Joan Robinson. Professor Robinson had been a disciple of John Maynard Keynes and was very much of the left. Geoff introduced me to the great lady when she visited Adelaide. Ironically, it was about the same time that I had my conversion, so to speak.

University departments generate political debates, or they did in my time. My arguments, I thought, became especially cogent after a number of drinks at the university staff club. And then shock-horror, I realised almost overnight that I no longer believed what I was saying. It was the strangest piece of introspection I have ever had. I have since put it down to “divine intervention”, apropos Jules (Samuel L Jackson) in Pulp Fiction. I’m assuming most everyone has seen the movie.

Anyway, I approached Geoff with my problem. He was a fine man, old-school and open-minded. A rare breed nowadays, I dare say. Read Hayek, he suggested. I did. First a number of essays and then The Road to Serfdom and voilà I changed radically. An enormous burden was lifted from my shoulders. It is hard to describe. It is a stretch to put it in the same ballpark as Christian’s experience as he neared the top of Mount Zion in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. So, I won’t.

I gained a new supervisor who stood out as the only ranking conservative in the economics and commerce department. I truly believe that this turning point in my life was literally priceless. Instead of being bound in a lie I was freed to search for the truth. And you can’t put a price on that. This is a personal story. However, I like to think it has a moral. And the moral is that there is no shortage of people on the left of the political spectrum who need to be rescued from living a lie.

And the moral is that there is no shortage of people on the left of the political spectrum who need to be rescued from living a lie.

Effectively, in this current age, no one can keep their standing on the left without lying. They needs must lie about human biology, about men sometimes having vaginas and women penises, about Aboriginal ‘science’ and the ethnicity of Bruce Pascoe, about fanciful self-identifying, about the imaginary climate crisis, about Pacific islands sinking and the parlous state of the Great Barrier Reef, about the viability of green hydrogen, pumped hydro and the whole grab-bag of ineffective renewable energy, about made-up Islamophobia, about the illusory benefits of cultural diversity, about cops dying as a result of January 6, about Joe Biden’s acuity immediately prior to June 27 and Kamal Harris’ new-found brilliance since June 27. About everything that matters they lie, everything. Unless once in a while their agenda and truth serendipitously coincide.

Do conservatives lie? If they are politicians they sometimes do. Politicians, as politicians, are the most wretched of people. Yet those on the conservative side, to my observation, value the truth; even if, on occasions, it proves to be dispensable. Do Christian conservatives outside of the political class lie? Not at all. That is the point of my story.