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As demonstrated by the vandalism that brought down Captain Cook’s statue in Melbourne, the campaign to cancel Australia Day, along with the broader push to condemn and reject Western civilisation as racist and oppressive, there’s no doubt society is under attack. Christianity is especially threatened. Instead of seeing anything beneficial or worthwhile about Christianity, ALP and Greens MPs across the nation, from local councils to Canberra, want to banish the Lord’s Prayer as it’s no longer considered relevant to our multi-ethnic, multicultural society.
Worse, while seeking to banish the Lord’s Prayer, activists want to make Welcomes to Country mandatory. While one ritual is condemned as divisive and obsolete the other is to be endorsed and made compulsory.
No amount of fake history pushing indigenous culture can escape the fact Christianity is Australia’s largest religion and our institutions, culture and way of life are underpinned and imbued with Christian beliefs and virtues. The various bids to banish the Lord’s Prayer demonstrates an appalling ignorance of the political and legal systems inherited from the United Kingdom. Ensuring parliament is superior to the monarch or the prime minister is driven by the belief all us, even purple-haired agitators, are made in God’s image and deserve justice, freedom and equality.
Magna Carta … the Glorious Revolution … concepts such as popular sovereignty and one person/one vote only came to be because those responsible believed “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”. As argued by the Perth-based academic and Quadrant contributor Augusto Zimmermann, Christianity is also central to our common law system. Zimmermann argues, “Indeed, there is little doubt that Christian philosophy influenced the origins and development of the English law”. As he notes, “England’s most celebrated jurists – including the likes of Blackstone, Coke and Fortescue – often drew heavily from their Christian faith when expounding and developing what are now well established doctrines of the common law.”
When Victoria’s premier, Jacinta Allan, argues the Lord’s Prayer is obsolete because society has embraced and is characterised by “cultural diversity”, that also fails the intelligence test. History tells us societies only hold together when there is a common bond represented by an agreed set of morals, values and beliefs endorsed by all. In the United Kingdom and Europe, where governments extol multiculturalism as the manifestation of all cultures being equal, urban ghettos, ethnic violence and society have become tribalized. Trashing patriotism, refusing to praise Australia as a successful Western liberal democracy and deeming the overwhelming majority of Australians strangers to their own land leads to the balkanisation of society. Division reigns when and where there is no commitment to the common good. Closer to home, ALP and Green MPs, plus ‘blaktivists’ such as Senator Lidia Thorpe, advance the bleak and nihilistic ideology of neo-Marxist-inspired critical race theory which insists Western society must always be condemned as structurally racist.
Religion, as argued by TS Eliot, represents an essential bond between citizens giving moral direction, community cohesion and the belief there is a higher spiritual good all are called on to respect and defend. Such is religion’s power the Marxist Antonio Gramsci argued Christianity must be replaced by socialism to ensure the revolution’s success. Eliot also argues, while all cultures have their own religion, what makes Western culture unique is its on-going debt to Christianity. He writes “The Western world has its unity in this heritage, in Christianity and in the ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome and Israel, from which, owing to two thousand years of Christianity we trace our descent”.
No amount of welcomes to country, no amount of virtue signalling by companies such as Woolworths and Qantas, and no matter how many students are indoctrinated with fabricated black history, we are a Western, liberal democracy imbued with Christianity. Whether the French Revolution, the rise of communist Russia and China or Pol Pot’s Year Zero, history tells us once societies jettison religion they inevitably succumb to terror, imprisonment and, inevitably, the deaths of millions. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said it all in a few words: “The failings of the human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century”. For those pushing cultural-Marxism and denouncing Western, liberal democracies Solzhenitsyn also argues “the world had never before known as godlessness, as organized, militarised, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism” where “hatred of God is the principle driving force”.
Not all is lost. Proven by the 60/40 vote against the indigenous Voice to parliament and the fact more and more parents and teachers around Australia are establishing schools committed to a classical, liberal/arts education dedicated to teaching virtues. There is still hope.
Kevin Donnelly is a senior research fellow at the ACU’s PM Glynn Institute
Thank you Kevin Donnelly.
@Editor – Meta will not allow this image – I have to come up with something else.
Arthur Allan Leff, a Professor of Law of Yale University died young in 1981. No believer in God, he dared to go where few atheists and humanists dare to go. Leff said in his book, ‘Unspeakable Ethics’: “All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves, and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, (but) the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us “good,” and worse than that, there is no reason why any thing should. … As things stand now, everything is up for grabs. (We have to say) Napalming babies is bad. Starving the poor is wicked. Buying and selling each other is depraved. (but) [All together now:] Sez who?’ ‘There is today no way of ‘proving’ that napalming babies is bad except by asserting it (in a louder and louder voice)’
Yes Andrew, Christianity provides a moral compass.
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Without that or some other moral compass it becomes only a matter of what you can get away with. Or “sez who”.
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If for instance a number of young scum at a shopping centre in Queensland decide they want a Hyundai Getz, they think they can do whatever it takes. If that means stabbing and killing a defenceless grandmother in front of a child, then so be it for them.
Or if the scum think your home contains something they want. Or a car in your driveway looks good, the scum know you are defenceless in your home.
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That you may be killed is of no concern to them, only to you. But be assured, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. A full investigation will ensure and your bereaved family will have our thoughts and prayers.
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It happens in the best of Australia’s suburbs, even Doncaster in Melbourne.
“ensue” not “ensure”
Yes melb this incident, I think, highlights one of the downsides of multiculturalism. We, (Australia), should choose which cultures we welcome and which ones we deny entry because not every culture will intergrate harmoniously with our culture or their previous homes allowed behaviours that are unacceptable here. We see it time and time again both here and in Europe where the people from certain countries or cultures cause mayhem. We should be learning from the mistakes of others and not falling into the same traps because we don’t want to offend anyone. These offending peoples use our laws against us as in the Anti-Discrimination Laws. They say we can’t refuse them anything including entry here because it contravenes the Ant-Discrimination Laws.
It is up to our Governments to police the immigration of peoples that will enhance our communities not harm and destroy our cultures, traditions and way of life. It is after all the responsibility of Government to protect it’s people.
Garry,
“Too late, she cried, as she waved her wooden leg.”
We have possibly a large majority of Australians upset by some consequences of recent immigration management, unable or unwilling to rectify, facing a political system that has moved from the wishes of the people to dictatorial control, backing unseen bureaucrats who plug on with more and more multicultural imports.
Change is needed, but who is volunteering to do better? How?
Geoff S
Why do people discriminate against ants ? 🙂
Damn, my purported witticism was meant to follow Garry Donnelly’s comment, not Geoff’s.
Enjoyable nonetheless, Tony.
Okay it meant I had to back up but good, and worth it.
There are billions of people in the world who adhere to religions that forbid what we ordinarily regard as evil conduct. And we can add to that the countries where the Confucian heritage is still strong, including China: Confucianism, in terms of its mundane ethics, is pretty close to the Abrahamic religions.
As to the consciously atheistic: Dawkins and his ilk accept, as Christianity also teaches, that principles of basic decency are etched into the human heart, and I think they were even etched in Nietzsche’s heart and those of his less brilliant and later acolytes.
The up-side of the pendulum of wokeness showing everyone it’s destination is that the true nature of the human being is revealed. When Dawkins was parading himself as a brave rebel against an authoritarian Christian culture, yes, he could say that the human heart was essentially decent – thereby implying that Christianity had appropriated a human characteristic and claimed it for itself.
Now, humans do not feel constrained by the Christian demands to see Christ in every person, including one’s enemies, or that man is made in the image of God. And we see man making himself into his own image and we see the dehumanisation of mankind in many hitherto unimaginable circumstances.
So, it becomes more apparent that the so-called inherent ‘decency’ of the human heart was a culturally inculcated decency, and was not a given human characteristic at all. The up-side of the trans/woke/totalitarian bullying is that the evil is exposed, not as a caricature, but as the mediocre bureaucrat/politician/premier/lawyer/CEO who leverages themselves as the modern Gauleiter or Capo.
That is, original sin is shining out in all its ugliness and we can see Christianity as the divine institution that lifts humans up to achieve beauty in life, rather than tear things down into a man-made utopian hell.
Jacinta Allen is wrong. The Christian world view says that The Lord’s Prayer will never be obsolete because like all scripture is is God breathed. The fact that many people like Jacinta Allen think that The Lord’s Prayer is obsolete and irrelevant is a barometer of how far we’ve gone down the broad highway of perdition where we’ve discarded our basic moral anchors for ever increasing bureaucracy and silly rules to accommodate and appease our parasitic reprobate class.
Unfortunately the ‘Golden Rule’ is also virtually unknown today – and certainly not observed. I know, because I raised it at a staff meeting of mainly millennial females as a simple solution to what was becoming a ‘toxic’ workplace. Blank looks greeted the term; and, what’s worse, I detected discomfort at the thought of applying it!
The Lord’s prayer is about decency: the basis of our legal system.
It is about decency, but it’s about much more also.
Ha ha. Not anymore, I don’t think.
Another prescient commentary on contemporary society by Kevin. One of our great educators Emeritus Prof. Edwin Judge once said that western thinking was built upon the cultures of Greece and Jerusalem. It is easy to understand that the analytical and logical thinking of Classical Greece overlaid with Hebrew and Christian values produced civilisations that flourished.
As values collapse and understanding of our strengths decline, we should not be surprised that violence and mental illness is increasing in our communities.
Then there is the push to teach the three R’s to our school children where, “the three R’s represent Respect, Relationships and Reconciliation with a resource to help teachers gain confidence teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues, culture and history in the classroom”.
https://atributetoaustralianchristians.wordpress.com/2023/06/27/three-rs-online-training-module-launched/
I thought they were teaching about Race, Rumours and R##ting
Thanks for such writing. I especially like the final paragraph -there is still hope. With writers like this we will survive the idiocy and preposterous woke stuff. I hope!
Our father who aren’t in Heaven why haven’t you used your omniscience and omnipotence to assure that our sky isn’t falling? Question answered.
It’s not falling.
If it falls on us, we deserve it.
Just a couple of comments about this article.
It’s over 40 years since I read much of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and Davidson’s biography of him. My recollection is that Gramsci was nothing like a fervent atheist. And I’d be grateful to know where in his work he argued that Christianity should be removed and replaced by the alternative (socialist or marxist) ideology.
The thrust of this little essay is right. And perhaps I’m a bit more optimistic than you are: as well as the points you mention in your last paragraph, I think that the crazy left causes are nearing exhaustion in that ordinary people, including me, do not accept extreme ideas like transgenderism, that the UK heritage is inherently racist and bad, that old, white men are basically bad etc. And I think the 60/40 vote against the Voice is an example of the limits of progressive extremism.
I also hasten to add that today’s progressive movement has large slabs of liberalism in it, as well as its left-wing aspects. The self-centeredness and selfishness of the purple-hair crowd is anything but socialist in the old sense. Traditional Ozzie socialism was about responsibility, family and hard work, all of which are part of Catholicism.
Thanks for the article.
It was GK Chesterton (I think), who said that Communism/Marxism is a heresy. He described a heresy as a belief system that takes one aspect of Catholicism and hammers it to death, all the while violently denying and repressing the other, more balancing characteristics. In the case of communism, the concept of ‘all men are equal’ is taken up, while the other factors, such as ‘made in the image of God’ and ‘love your enemies’ are, of course, rejected and suppressed. This may explain why, in instances where Catholics are badly catechised, they are attracted to socialism and why, in the past, the Catholic political drive had what might have been described as a socialist character (but was actually simply Catholic-the Catholics had social justice one thousand eight hundred years before the socialists).
The current woke culture is imbued with this heresy, of course, in the infiltration of Marxism into the discourse, but there is also present the Gnosticism of the transgender/LGBTQR+ – the detachment of the spirit from the physical.
The fundamental basis of Catholic belief, the Incarnation, means that our Creator, the Creator of the world, became a man through the body of a woman -He took her body to become man. The physical nature of our bodies is sanctified. To disassociate the body from the spirit is the heresy that has returned to oppose the Catholic Faith since the 4th century. Transgenderism is its current manifestation and that is the outcome of a rejection of the basic, most fundamental tenets of Christian/Catholic belief.
It is also amusing, especially when the comments betray the smugness of the atheists, to contemplate that the rejection of Christianity has not, as GK Chesterton observed, resulted in mankind believing in nothing, but that instead, mankind has revealed themselves as capable of the Emperor’s New Clothes. The claimed ‘rationality’ of the atheists is starting to look like a product of Christian logic and rational thought (based on Thomas Aquinas and various medieval philosophers) – and, instead, we are witnessing a wholesale conformity into thought which defies human experience- together with the thought crime punishments. We also see the promotion of Satanism – the ultimate defiance of any rational belief whatsoever.
The Gramsci quote about Marxism replacing Christianity is cited by Augusto Del Noce in his book ‘The Crisis of Modernity’ (p 273). He gives it as Antonio Gramsci ‘Audacia e fede’ in Avanti, 22nd may 1916.
Thank you Kevin Donnelly for this article.
In the final analysis it is no use looking to the elected leaders for any kind of salvation or relief.
It is up to each one of us!
WE elect the leaders so must accept responsibility for OUR choices from the poor quality candidates on offer.
There is another option … if the candidates are unsuitable then reject them rather than voting for the lesser of the evils on offer. Australia is still the lucky country but I fear time is running out! I believe a campaign of ‘put the sitting Member last’ would quickly bring a reaction. For obvious reasons, we would not lose many good representatives! Hark … the skeletons are rattling in the cupboard!
As a Christian, I believe the Lord’s Prayer should only be used by Christians. This is a model prayer that Jesus gave to His disciples. It is not for everyone. I disagree with the view presented in this article, and am disappointed that the Australian Christian Lobby, which aims to defend Christian institutions and values, is also campaigning for the retention of Lord’s Prayer in parliament.
Broadly speaking, this issue has been a ‘bone of contention’ for a long time. The use of Christian prayer to open meetings of public bodies was certainly facing opposition in Victoria well over a hundred years ago. For example, the evangelical physician John Singleton, co-founder in 1870 of the Children’s Hospital (now RCH), resigned from its committee of management in 1872 because the other members of the committee would not to allow him to open the meetings with prayer.
It is simply a long-established fact of life in Victoria that, regardless of the broadly Christian cultural foundations of many of our public institutions, not everyone is sympathetic to Christianity – even if that concept is rather loosely defined. I believe that Dr. Singleton was in error when he tried to force the committee of a public hospital to open its meetings with Christian prayer. Likewise, I think ACL is in error on this issue today. Placed in the mouths of parliamentarians who despise Christianity and revile its Lord, this model prayer becomes a ghastly parody of what was intended.
It would be an entirely different matter if we were talking about prayer in a specifically Christian institution that welcomes members of the public, such as a church or a Christian school. That is where Christians should be on high alert today, because a much more sinister agenda than removal of a prayer in parliament is clearly being signalled by Victoria’s Woke parliamentarians. They are gradually building a legislative arsenal intended to be deployed against Christian institutions as such. They do not really care about the Lord’s Prayer. Their main objective is to force Christian institutions to come into line with the Woke value system known as Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Obviously Christianity – as defined by its Bible, Prayer Books and Creeds – is totally incompatible with the DEI belief system. The major task facing Christianity in the political arena today is to oppose the intolerance of DEI, by insisting on its right to preach and teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to preserve the integrity of its institutions.
Agreed; however, whenever a vacuum is created (in this case by removing the Lord’s Prayer) the void is always filled with something far less palatable if consideration is not preempted. So, if this is to be the course of action, it needs to be pre-arranged that nothing shall be put in its stead: no fake, disingenuous, cringe-worthy Welcome to Country or acknowledgement of “elders”, no Islamic Calls to Prayer (as is incredulously been allowed to happen in some UK council meetings – see, that’s what happens if this isn’t considered carefully) indeed no deference to any particular cultural group. Unless those who choose to serve us can truthfully utter the sacred Lord’s Prayer with all sincerity, then it ought not be uttered in condescension, but nor should any far less worthy utterances be a prelude to our legislative processes.
The ACL is forever missing the mark. Bernard Gaynor has no time for them and in the same sex marriage disposal their then boss went on TV and opened his case with the weakest of all arguments against the proposal i.e. the “what about the chikdren” argument. Not surprised they have got this one wrong too
Thank you for confronting this difficult question. Christianity is not primarily concerned with providing an ethical framework for societies, but this has been a benign by-product of the faith. As a citizen (quite apart from any personal beliefs I may have) I can fairly ask that if Western atheists believe that they have some better structure for social ethics than that set out in the Bible, then they should produce a volume that sets this out and has been shown in practice at least somewhere to produce a more humane society than the one we have. Until then, for all its difficulties, a canon that, unamended, has proven itself for about one-and-half millennia might just have to do. Indeed, regardless of our personal faith position, we might even be glad of it and revere it as a great treasure. Some foundation for public ethics must be better than none and a proven one better than a mere logical one. The closest we ever came to such a secular canon was Das Kapital. It was tried and failed spectacularly. The alternative to accepting the Bible as our ethical foundation is therefore to accept that ten thousand years of civilisation has given us nothing at all that is both durable and useful in the field of ethics. Is it not more likely that, rather than the canon having failed us, affluence has produced the decadence it predicts in Deuteronomy 31:19-29?
I don’t argue with Kevin Donnely that the moral, ethical and legal bases of our society have derived from Christianity in Europe. Another compelling account is Tom Holland’s “Dominion” which I’d highly recommend. My personal and ethical difficulty is that, while I subscribe and adhere to a set of values that’s very congruent with those of Judaeo-Greco-Christian derivation, I find the Christian story, indeed any story that depends on supernatural beings and/or their alleged offspring, unbelievable. I’m sure that I’m not alone in this.
It does seem to me that the success that Western Christian societies have had in making possible cooperation between widely separated and unrelated individual and groups, and the increased material prosperity that cooperation has enabled, is itself an argument for the beneficial effect of those moral/legal codes on the societies which apply them.
We are the constituents of societies which have provided their members greater freeedom from the coercive control by governments and their functionaries than any other societies either present or past.
This way of life works for the benefit of most members of society and, as an ongoing ambition and program, for the increasing benefit of all members.
We don’t need a divine authority: we can point to our history of widening social inclusion and increasing material prosperity to say “This works! If you disagree, show me a better real world example to support your position.”
It is a popular assumption that supposedly supernatural events cannot be believed by intelligent people who acknowledge the contribution of modern science. Ian Hutchinson is Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in his book, “Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles” sets outs why he does and why the rejection of this is “Scientism” and not true science.
Craig S Keener in “Miracles Today” sets out particulars of hundreds of well-documented modern-day miracles. One of these was made into a major movie, “Breakthrough”.
The rejection of the supernatural may be a reason you have for personally rejecting Christianity, but it is not an adequate reason to reject the Christianity and Bible as a foundation for public ethics.
Whilst Christianity and the Bible are not without their problems, is it really responsible to reject them as the foundation for public ethics when you have nothing that has been proved to be durable to put in their place?
You would leave your society ethically naked because you object to the style of the clothes it wears.
The Terror of the French Revolution and the bitter harvest of Soviet communism are what you can fairly expect when you leave a society ethically naked. You would have us take that risk because you have a personal problem with miracles! As Prof. Hutchinson says, the presumption that the laws of nature are inviolable is not a Doctrine of Science.
Quantum mechanics is not far off the mark of what drives the Universe. There is no gulf between scientists and intelligent appreciation of how Love underlies all things. For example one’s home is a manifestation of what someone wanted, a pile of bricks and timber didn’t just get dumped out of the blue on one’s vacant lot.
Albert Einstein, who knew something about science, writes “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science”. While not religious in a formal sense Einstein argues he who cannot marvel, is a s good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed”.
Yes, and I would add to that Kevin, that Einstein considered the use of the brain for memorising was not a sign of genius, and that true genius is to be found in the imagination – in being creative and this ability is not of our invention, therefore the truths of the imagination are graced as they do not reside in the storehouse of the memory bank initially – imagination if you will, is a bright light, the truth is something that is sort, therefore it is a given (grace) – the galaxy of the imagination (heart) being the search engine – (as the Church fully understands, at heart man needs and wants the truth, for life) – therefore his life is subordinate to the truth – graced truths, and as such the very kneel of humility – thy will be done there as My truthful covenant intends- as I Am (here).
Einstein did remark that “God did not design the universe by chance” (chaotically), and that the universe has a creative design that resides in law – in the laws of nature which includes the natural sciences also.
In other words Einstein did not take the credit unto himself – Science did not invent or create the truth as these reside at the throne of truth itself, right; which incidentally stands outside of both the concepts of space and time – their there in another dimension that transcends the physical realm and if we are really honest with ourselves, the truth in its entirety, including the sciences actually exists and is accessed in its abstract form, it being the actual pointer to the spirit in man, in the case of science, the spirit of cogitative thinking and things.
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As Michelangelo’s David and the Creation of Adam manifestly make apparent – the truth is lifelike and has a life of its very own and it is something we reach (aspire) for and innately want to behold , why? Because like the nourishment in food it’s needed in our nature and we spend a lifetime grappling (X) both with and over IT…the search for truth is a subliminal sense and actually the key to love or put another way truth is the key to the answers, which have always been and always will be and lay at the seat of justice (seek and you shall find truth…..what you love)………………God.
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Interestingly even the atheist scientists can’t escape that truth, even through blind consciousness.
Just a quick addendum to say to those that want or need a divine authority, please feel free. But do remember that there are competing accounts of divine authority which would prefer, apparently, to destroy our society. You need then to prove that YOUR divine authority is the real divine authority.
To me that seems a much more fragile position than “This works.”
Jordan Peterson is facing professional deregistration because he is not prepared to confirm to woke narratives.
He outlines the implications of defying reality, using gender-transitions as an example.
https://youtu.be/SgxOEFD7-rc
Prayers uttered without faith are meaningless, but they have always been part of Parliamentary practice because our Constitution begins with the Preamble; “We, the people of NSW, Victoria etc. relying on the blessings of Almighty God……..”.
Democracy evolved out of reformed Christianity, but widespread unbelief has eroded our democracy to the point where it is rapidly being overcome by fascism; that is, what Mussolini called “corporatism”, an amalgamation of big business and big government and the suppression of individual liberty.
As Christ disappears from Christianity, we can expect a reversion to what existed before the Divine spark ignited democracy. In those days, a handful of tyrannical aristocrats ruled the many, with the compliance of a corrupt church that kept the citizens in a state of superstitious bondage.
We cannot look to organisations such as churches or political parties to restore the culture that produced that Constitutional Preamble, which, I remind you, was approved by the people in referendum.
It is each individual who is accountable before God. The Western world must go down, because it was faith in God that lifted it up out of the slavery to tyrants and superstition.
Speaking of superstition, the ancients had nothing on today’s generation. Global cooling, global warming, men choosing to be women and vice versa, multiculturalism, modern “education” and the vast array of woke shibboleths that infest society today leave our forbears as true amateurs in the superstition stakes.
I am a 72 year old man and I have seen a lot of life, that life at its glorious best and at its abysmal worst. Reared in the Catholic tradition, I quickly realised as an abused boy that all the adults in my world, including those of any type of ‘faith’ set, were never to be trusted. This has served me well and continues to do so. An example from the recent past which I can use to indicate this is:
I purchased two mattress covers from Spotlight and went on my way back home. When I arrived and began to unpack them, I routinely looked at the receipt and realised that I had been charged for one item, not two. I went back to the store and as the lady at the checkout went about correcting their mistake, she made the comment that most people would not do what I had done. Being well read and well versed in the disaster that has crept upon our country I could only agree with her and she asked why I had done what I had. I replied, “The moral act will always result in a reward, only most cannot recognise that reward”.
On returning home, I subsequently enquired of a group of about 12 people who I know, “What would they have done?” The response. Not a single one of them said that they would do the same, in fact, they all derided me, laughed at me and jokingly insulted me for being such a fool for not taking advantage of the error at the store.
That experience, and others reaching back in history, merely affirms for me what I know as a truth statement…….We have lost the war which was never declared.
Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war, but perhaps more properly, “Poor fella, my country”.
A most interesting discussion. I would add one or two points for consideration by this worthy congregation.
Evangelicals might disagree, but Christ’s ‘Golden Rule’ was his major guide to behaviour and contribution to human morality: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
However, he was not the first to think of it. Confucius (Kong Qiu (c. 551 BCE – 479 BCE) was the first sage recorded as advocating it. But he put it into the arguably superior negative form of ‘do NOT do to others what you would NOT have others do to you.’
This precept rests upon the human ability to empathise, or to put oneself in another’s place; to imagine how everything would appear to him or her, and to act accordingly. Were this not the case, the world (including the nominally Christian part of it) would be a very dangerous place, and not just for any stranger, outsider or ‘other.’ It would literally be Hell on Earth, populated by human ‘animals’ guided solely by the principle of ‘be totally selfish, and just do whatever you can get away with.’
But it is not. I have personally visited many ‘non-Christian’ countries and have felt and have been perfectly safe walking alone or with a small group of friends/relatives in the streets. These countries include much of Asia.
NB: Nonetheless, cultures have to be taken into account, if not respected. If you are tired of life, you can go to say, Pakistan, stand in any street in any town or city, and yell out: “Down with Islam.!” Your life will be terminated quickly in a rush of male devotees of The Prophet (pbuh) keen to wind up in Paradise, where each can claim his reward of 72 beautiful virgins.
Paul, am so saddened to hear of your experience of abused trust and impressed that you have clung to virtue when those charged to teach you of it betrayed you.