Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Caution: Christian/political-y kinda rant ahead

The more you hear, read or see about Family First, the more unlikeable they truly seem. And the less credible their claims The Greens are "extreme" become...

Oh, plus the way they go down the "Christian"-nutjob route instead of looking at the ways in which Christians are meant to behave, according to various things in the Bible like "Love thy neighbour as thyself," or "Forgive us our sins as we forgive each other," or "[You should forgive] Not seven times, but, I tell you, 70 times seven," or "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law," or "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone..." or "Judge not lest ye be judged."

I likes me some King James language sometimes...

Anyway, along with "Thou shalt not kill," there perhaps should have been somethin in the Bible about "Thou shalt not be a hypocritical jerk. Remember thou hast all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Just to keep things in a little more perspective (okay, the "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God is in the Bible. But not the first bit with "Thou shalt not...").

And yes, I realise that things like abortion can be a strongly emotional sort of topic and thing to deal with - particularly when it comes to dealing with anything like that on an individual level. I doubt many women who have abortions performed do so with a sense of glee. And yet there are these people out there who seem to enjoy pointing the finger and breaking out some serious judgin'.

Hypocrisy? Everyone does it. I'm pretty sure I do it. It's part of being human. But when we're Christians - or at least claiming that name for ourselves - we should be trying to reflect a Christ-like nature and treat others accordingly. Is that going to happen in this lifetime, realistically? Probably not at all... Nym would tell me to stop being so optimistic about people's behaviour for a start (or something along those lines).

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
- John 8:9-11

4 comments:

Perseus said...

One of my greatest bon mots was when Family First got a Senate seat with about 1% of the primary vote because of Latham's fucked up preference deals. I turned to my mate and said, "God help us."

Oh, I laughed and laughed at my brilliance.

But seriously, the best ad for atheism is quite often religion.

Della said...

God help us indeed...

I just don't understand why Family First gets themself so much airtime, considering how they really are a minor party. Perhaps a deal with the devil of some variety ;)

And agreed about the best ad for atheism being religion. So many Christians have that special way of making it seem about as appealing as being beaten with an echidna on a stick.

Perseus said...

First preference votes in lower house as at 12:00PM Sunday.

Australian Labor Party 4,368,650
Liberal 3,562,708
The Greens 757,580
The Nationals 534,943
Family First 196,446
CDP Christian Party 84,516
Democrats 67,788
CLP - The Territory Party 30,802
One Nation 25,157
Citizens Electoral Council 21,051
Liberty and Democracy Party 12,449
Socialist Alliance 8,131
Climate Change Coalition 7,359
DLP - Democratic Labor Party 4,355
Socialist Equality Party 3,308
What Women Want (Australia) 2,855
Conservatives for Climate and Environment Incorporated 2,403
The Fishing Party 1,586
Non-Custodial Parents Party 636

I don't think we needed to worry about FF. Even with halfwit Feilding in the Senate for 3 years, they have made no impact on national consciousness.

They got just under 2% of the national preference vote. It's still a little high for me, but it's less than I thought it would be. What is horrible is the 0.2% for the CEC. Any figure above '0' is a bad number when it comes to the CEC.

I hope The Fishing Party do better at the next election. They are more relevant than Family First and CEC combined.

Della said...

I wonder with the CEC whether they got votes because people didn't know who they were and thought, "Oh, that sounds nice enough."

Most people would probably be pretty disturbed if they knew/read what the CEC was all about. But then there are a lot of people who don't bother to find out the basics of who they could vote for and what their parties stand for.

There's a girl in our office who based her vote entirely on what the names of the candidates were. The more interesting the name, the higher the vote.