Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you.  Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.  Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.  You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.  You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.  Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains.  You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.

The bloke who wrote this nearly 2000 years ago was probably one of Jesus’ younger brothers. He saw what it is to be true and faithful and patient. Truth is patient.

He has a lot of other interesting things to say. I expect he saw a lot of interesting things.

From an ABC news article:
(http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-10/society-role-in-london-riots/2833168)

But Ms Batmanghelidjh says many British youths have lived with that feeling of fear for their entire lives.

“This happened to the public for a few days. But many of these children are chronically frightened – they get attacked in their own homes, they get attacked on the estates,” she said.

“[To them] it feels like at that point civil society doesn’t step in to, for example, create a robust child protection structure to protect these children, or to protect them from attacks at street level.

What a good idea! It’s called family.

“So from a young people’s perspective, their conditions of fright have been chronically ignored.”

She says the way to counter the problem is to create communities which engage and support disadvantaged youth.

Yup. It’s called family.

“Sort out the civil structures around these young people, provide for them adults who are caring; who can provide a healthy counter culture to the perverse street culture that they are exposed to,” she said.

Yup! It was invented a long time ago. It’s called family.

“Then you have the beginnings of the making of a genuine community that includes these young people. And then you can legitimately hold them accountable.”

Absolutely! It’s called family.

The things that corrode family corrode society. Maggie thatcher was wrong – there IS such a thing as society. But the lefties and libertarians and free-love loonies are also wrong – society starts at home.

Remember all that rhetoric about the fabric of society? We’re all either letting it rip or making a stitch in time – or maybe nine. There isn’t any neutral ground.

It may well be that we get a rise in the stock market before a much bigger drop – (a friend of mine who has a wave theory of market psychology has been predicting that – but he didn’t expect this drop to be as big as it has been) -  but up and down or just down we can still expect much bigger drops to come. The general economy (jobs, houses etc) will start to really feel the heat probably about 6 months after that. I don’t know anything about the ‘physics’ of crowd psychology but we all know about the physics of gravity, and Wiley coyote ran off the cliff quite some time ago.

The bigger question in my mind is what do we do about the social problems that will follow. The ‘arab spring’ has been largely a result of economic problems impacting the middle class. How do we make the best of what happens? I’m asking myself that question as a member of a Christian community / mission order as well as dad / family member / individual. We can’t all shout “We’ll all be rooned!” and head for the hills.

This is not a double-dip recession – it is a continuation of what started in 2007 and has been held off temporarily by making things very much worse by sending governments (tax payers) broke by bailing out banks that deserved to fail. Ordinary savings in those banks could have been safe-guarded for a very much lower cost.

At another level this is a continuation of what first showed itself in 1987 and would / should have been able to run its course back then with less damage than will now occur if the general public hadn’t been encouraged to take on so much debt to keep the bubble growing in the years since then. The things that we have been encouraged to put our hope in – housing and super – will now show themselves to be debt-fueled rather than savings based.

You could say you don’t get something for nothing – but that plays to the lower side of human nature and perversely avoids the core moral issues.

I think a more sensible way to say it is that if you are not actively doing something good then bad things will happen: and if you do good things and bad things still happen – at least you still got to do good. Another way I like to think about is this: Never under-estimate the power and value of being a servant – God is the servant of his entire creation.

(This is a slightly edited version of something I wrote over a couple of posts to a private e-mail list a few days ago.  It is edited just enough for it to make sense outside of the list context – nothing material is changed.)

love is loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong suffering.
love is not nice pictures of sunsets and flowers.
pretending that everything is OK is not love.
pretending to love is not love.
saying that you love is not love.
not loving is not love.
and everything else is bullshit.
and you know that is true!

I’d been thinking about these things this week – dealing with the consequences of not love (make of that what you will) – feeling the pain of love deal once more with the pain of not love – wondering how far this goes on. Three things remain, and one of them is love.

This then, is a sample from one of our lectures this week.
Lecture snippet “Spirituality of Christian Ministry” Cornerstone Community

One would hope of course that the trend is long term. Many of the Prime Minister’s fellow Australians regularly experience a temporary dip in IQ points over the weekend and a corresponding rise as the work week resumes. Given that this week has been a little anomalous however – with some observations suggesting that the general weekend decline was extending into Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning – Mr Howard’s readiness to act at a time when much of the populace was vulnerable reveals more about his leadership than his statements regarding intelligence.

Trust me. I’m a Prime Minister.

ABC online goes on to report however that " the information concerns him." This might be a little puzzling except that – as we all now know – the Prime Minister was not making a personal observation but announcing a terrorist threat. Unfortunately he’s not allowed to tell us a lot about it, and nor are the state premiers and others who have been taken more fully into his confidence. Its important to remember that loose lipped premiers can cost lives. And if you can’t trust a politician then who can you trust?

In any case there are a few things we can deduce from the available information.

The first thing we know about the terrorist threat is that it probably wasn’t a terrorist threat until today – or whenever it is that the amended legislation passes through the senate. We know this because the legislation had to be passed urgently to widen the definition of a terrorist act specifically to make this terrorist threat a terrorist threat. If you know what I mean.

The second thing we know about the terrorist threat is that it involves the planning of some sort of attack. Again the legislation is designed to make it easier to prosecute someone planning an attack. That’s a bit of a no-brainer really. Any terrorist threat is going to involve some sort of attack. Maybe with weapons of mass-destruction.

In the know or in the no!

The third thing we know about the terrorist threat is that it has nothing whatever to do with workplace relations legislation. Attorney General Philip Ruddock has assured us that any connection between the terrorist threat and workplace relations is entirely co-incidental. Workplace relations in the parliament have been a little strained, but Mr Ruddock is such an amiable fellow that he probably hasn’t noticed. From his statement yesterday it seems that his own formula for keeping the peace is to act whenever he receives advice, or accept the blame. Some of Mr Ruddock’s more argumentative colleges seem to be more reticent to adopt that approach. Come to think of it I don’t think I’ve ever seen Phillip get upset or emotional about anything. He really is a remarkably amiable fellow!

The fourth thing we know about the terrorist threat is that the advice was independent – that it came from some outside agency. It doesn’t really matter where it came from – it might have been the Brits or it might have been the Americans. or someone else. Most likely the Americans though – they’re pretty good at giving advice. And we’re pretty good at taking it. And acting on it. Or accepting the blame.

The fifth thing we know about the terrorist threat is that it is home grown. I can’t remember any thing specifically said by the Prime Minister or the Attorney General to that effect yesterday, but that was probably because they can’t tell us too much. In any case the media has been talking a lot about a home grown terrorist threat for the last week or so. So it must be home grown.

The sixth thing we know about the terrorist threat – and this is of particular concern – is that the information concerns the Prime Minister. Mr. Howard knows a lot about terrorism. After all he was in the US to visit George Bush on 911. And he gets a lot of advice. So if he is concerned we should all be concerned. But what if – and understandably he couldn’t tell us this – what if the terrorist threat concerns the Prime Minister himself – personally?

OK! Enough talking! Time is running out! There is a terrorist threat and we have to do something about it! We may not have the benefit of the advice that the Prime Minister and the Attorney General have been receiving, but we do have some intelligence and its probably more than we had on the weekend. So if we put the pieces together we should be able to work this one out!

We have a terrorist threat that might not have been thought of as a terrorist threat before. It involves an attack, possibly with weapons of mass-destruction, maybe blowing things up. The Americans heard somebody who is very Australian talking about it. Phillip Ruddock doesn’t think it has anything to do with workplace relations legislation, but he could be wrong because other people get a lot more upset about that sort of thing than he does. And it could be a threat to the Prime Minister personally.

Hmmm…

Hang on. I think I’ve got it!!! Has anyone checked on Ted Bullpit lately? I think he’s gone and gotten himself all upset about workplace relations and all those ads on TV! And the yanks have overheard him shouting “Someone should blow up bloody John Howard!” Well I’m glad we can reveal the facts at last and all rest easy. That’s a relief! For a moment there I thought Australian democracy might be under threat.

Hang on again – there’s a knock at the door. I’d better post this quickly in case I’m unavoidably detained and can’t tell you about it later.

What’s up on trial here is Christianity itself. … The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world – and stop being its apologist.

 As I read I was thinking about the current G8 proposals to forgive the debt of some third world countires. Many Christians have worked long and hard for this to happen. As we stand on the verge of a great step in the right direction, there is a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that we may just be watching evil achieve a tripple whammy under our very noses. The devil is – as they say – in the details. Much of the funding which lead to debt did little to help the poor and much to help the rich in both donor and recipient countries. Much of the debt relief will have strict conditions attached to it which will massively benefit the rich over the poor. Much of the cost of debt forgivness will come not from the pockets of the rich who have benefited but from the ordinary working poor. How do we get to a situation like this – where it seems that even our best efforts are fatally flawed. Where is the voice that speaks counter to the strange mixture of confusion, self-congratulation and apathy that dulls our collective conscience?

Jesus expected his followers to be salt and light in the world – a ‘moral preservative’ and a clear sign of good that was impossible not to notice. But he also said that salt which lost its saltiness was worthless and would be thrown out and trampled underfoot! How does salt become unsalty? Well I guess it can become so absorbed into or diluted by the thing that it is meant to preserve and flavour that it no longer has any effect. It becomes no longer detectable as salt. Is that where we are at now? Is there enough noticable difference between us and the culture around us?

One thing is for sure: Jesus would stand out. Just look at the accounts of his life to see how. It is not his miracles that stand out most – not the ‘superman’ factor. If anything Jesus constantly played that down. It is the very core of Jesus’ life that was different. The centre of gravity of Jesus’ life was not that of other men; and the way he lived, every breath he took, how he related to others and the way he expected others to live showed it constantly.

I don’t think Jesus ever intended that following him should be part of normal life. Everyday life yes, but not normal life. If you want a normal life, don’t follow Jesus. If you like the world the way it is and just want more of the same, don’t follow Jesus. If you like the way you are in yourself and don’t want to change, don’t follow Jesus. Following Jesus does not actually work in normal life! It isn’t mean to. Jesus called men and women out of normal life into something completely different.

But if you choose normal life, don’t expect it to last. In the words of Bruce Cockburn – ‘the trouble with normal is it always gets worse’. Without the purifying salt, decay sets in. And then the very things which should nourish us become a rotting revolting poisonous mess.

Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps he must give up all right to himself, take up his cross and follow me. For the man who wants to save his life will lose it; but the man who loses his life for my sake will find it. For what good is it for a man to gain the whole world at the price of his own soul? What could a man offer to buy back his soul once he had lost it?" (Matthew 16:24)

So we made our appearance, had our 5 minutes of fun, grabbed our tooth brushes and were on our way again. All the way driving there and back I was hoping desperately that we didn’t get stopped for random breath testing – it might have been hard to explain.

Later that night we went to an excellent gig with a friend, heard some great music from a few local bands., and stayed overnight at the friend’s house. About 4:30AM I woke up with one of the worst headaches I have had in years, and no pain killers in the house. I spent the next few hours hurrying from the bed to the toilet to be violently ill. From both ends of my body. Before long there was no toilet paper left. I was wishing we had used toilet paper for our mummy wrappings instead of cloth strips because then at least we would have had left-overs.

Actually no I wasn’t – I was too sick to think anything much at all except “It’s only pain. It will pass.” And it did eventually of course, and later it left me feeling a bit like I was back from the dead. It made me think how much we take pain relief for granted, when for many its not easily available when they need it. It also made me think that its good to be reminded of our mortality from time to time. We too easily forget what is real and get wrapped up in ourselves.

Yesterday my wife and I spent the afternoon with a friend whose marriage recently ended. She is a good woman and has done well under the circumstances. I know that nobody is perfect and that marriage can be really hard. But her ex has been a real jerk and is so blind right now. I’ve been there and done that, and somehow that makes it feel all the more horrifying to me to have this up close view of him really fucking things up. He is fucking up his kid’s lives, fucking up his own life – though I know for sure he can’t see it right now. Its pretty scary to hear some mutual friends talk and know that they can’t see it yet either.