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CHAPTER EIGHT
EXCURSION ON
RELIGIOUS DIRECTION IN AUSTRALIA
In Ch. 5, below, there arose from the Bible, Isaiah 31-33 in particular, the question of national treachery, and ambassadors of peace, subversive international exchanges, which were free from the nurture of God, breaches in secular dramatic, failing in faithfulness to God. In particular, reliance on former slave-driver, Egypt was in point
While the cases of modern Australia, and ancient Israel in this point, are not identical, they have a formidable degree of similarity which deserves thought, often a useful prelude to action! for while thoughts may be changed, actions are sometimes irrevocable.
Australia has a civilisation founded by the British. Some people visited earlier, and aborigines, showing marked similarity in some terms and in appearance with some of Southern India, were here for a considerable time. However, our present Commonwealth with its continent-wide civilisation and integration of people, is the first known all-embracive civilisation, rather than a patchwork of loosely associated pockets of life.
It is God who made the land (cf. SMR) and the idea that one who made it has no place in it, or that some who came earlier to parts of it thereby secure certain all-inclusive rights to it, is merely a religious one. But what SORT of a religious idea is it ?
It has no basis in fact, or rational ground. Using a sports car that you find, for a while no more makes you an owner of it than it removes the possession of the one who made it, or bought it. When it is only a section of it, the case is the more absurd.
Many are they who would like to own the land, possess it or claim that from them is it to find its meaning, power or defence!
Owners ? Not some partial residents of the past, or the present, with or without arms or clamant claims, none of these are the owners, for none made it. Many have lived in it and done much; but this is not to make them owners. The Maker is the owner, and if people want to get rid of Him (as far as they may in the Constitution), then so be it. At least they then would know what they are doing. Religious ideas about the nature of value and land and its origin are contrary to our Constitution, if they are to be enforced, and made operative. If without reason however, this is done, it means that naturalism is taking over from God, and this the more obviously if the reference to Him in our Constitution be at the same time removed.
No more are the Islamic body, some of whom wanted a type of law to be instituted, which in practice is associated often with mutilation at young age, of female genitals, and vast degrees of subordination of females to what appears a civilisation of such male ascendency as to make of women not so much a help, as a unit of service.
Such degradation, whether by aboriginal lore or Islamic law, wouold be contrary to equality before law in this land, just as is the use of force by some to afflict all, and gain physical ascendency over them. That is against the same ethos, derived from Christianity, in this country. We have had, do have and doubtless will have many who come to these shores. None becomes a foundation, a rock, a masterpiece, a ground for supplication or superior acknowledgment. One major reason for this is the place of reason, which holds men equal in value as such, before God. One source of this, and here a major one, is biblical revelation in founding laws and attitudes from the British background, at that time formally wedded to Christianity. It was not dissented from in this, that there is place in the preamble to our Australian Constitution of humble reliance on Almighty God, in terms of which statedly, the States joined into a Commonwealth to continue. Such was the mode of association.
Many delight in this land; queues and naval vessels, often decrepit, surge in line and at the shores. Immigration is sought passionately. There is a degree of unity in many things which has minimised violence, compared with many another civilisation, and a sense of moral integrity in many, which restrains in many ways, the use of subterfuge, criminality and force, and even moves towards the provision of protection for young and old, the vulnerable and the disabled.
Ambassadors of peace, to use the biblical term in our current text, how did it operate in that case ? It was a matter of an Israel which had a prior commitment to God Almighty as revealed in the Old Testament, the prophets, instead of relying on the same, seeking by diplomatic feverish efforts, to get support from Egypt, much as Rudd appears to be seeking all kinds of international relations which would do this and that for our protection -or otherwise, as the case might be.
Thus for that ancient Israel, ambassadors too and fro to Egypt from which they had come as LIBERATED SLAVES by the power of God, were an abominable transfer of allegiance from where it had been. Great was the grievous contempt implied for the Lord, in such waiting on others, godless or with idol gods, about which they were warned often enough (cf. Deuteronomy 32). These changes of trust could come from many quarters, with many ultimates of their own, shown in invasions also numerous, which Israel might choose to ignore in trouble, in turning to tyrannies instead of to God.
So now, often superior and bumbling, we find those telling this people of Australia, their duty or their new morals; but from what, and on what is it based ? Is it to be from the UN (cf. News 152, Mystery of Iniquity and It Bubbles ... Ch. 11), whose continual persecution of Israel is more and more widely recognised, since that phase of its actions is so spurious, furious and uncontained, right from the abrogation of the League of Nations grant in 1920, of (then) Palestine to Israel as a homeland, effectual in 1947. Instead, in that year, after this time the SECOND World War, Israel was offered an international Jerusalem (gone one capital of historic grandeur and theological significance) and pockets of land largely disconnected in its former homeland-to-be. It was the Arabs who rejected this vast reduction on offer to Israel. For its own part, Israel was willing to accept, thus making hypocrisy of wars later, by those who then sought often to gain less than they had already rejected. Similarly, Arafat rejected an enormous concession from Israel at the Camp David scenario with Clinton.
The desire to have Israel out of its place, hounded, harassed, land of international murderers casting their thoughts to it in the form of rockets, this has apparent appeal in the UN, even if it would leave Israel in an indefensible relic position, stripped by international duress to help the many nations which have repeatedly attacked it to demolish it, to have their will. Strange indeed that a band of many nations failed to ravish Israel, seeking its destruction, and that now an international cartel, the Madrid Quartet, seeks to handle the land as if in a monopolistic position, like the Oil Cartel this time in a territorial capacity.
Strange ? apparently, but not really, for God who has chastened Israel severely (cf. Jeremiah 31:17ff., I Kings 17), has also determination that the land (which He made) be theirs for the sake of His plan of salvation, through them to all peoples. Who is this who would collapse the plan of deity ? It will prove costly; it always does. Who is this who wishes to take on the Almighty! (cf. Jeremiah 31:35ff., 33:20ff., Deuteronomy 7:6-11, Micah 7), who though He foretold their exile (Leviticus 26), forecast their eventual return. With this, He foretold just such astonishing triumphs as those of 1948, 1967, 1973, to be made before Israel in great swathes, would return to the Lord, as their true ground, repenting of the crucifixion there foretold likewise, some half millenium before it even happened.
Issues aplenty sprinkle the path of those who would war on, dismiss or disdain the Lord, even if quietly removing reference to Him from the Constitution, almost as if preoccupied with other things, and not really wishing to think about such issues now. That hypnosis doubtless many desire; but like other mind-manipulation, it is as dangerous as death, and as deceitful as sin.
What then of the League of Nations 1920 accord of Palestine (vastly beyond current Israel) to the Jewish people AS A HOMELAND! In 1947, by the UN, it was silently abrogated. It did not come to be. In its minute substitute gift to Israel, the UN made open mockery of it, and still, even now, would like Israel to have less of the particle of land it has currently rescued of itself, as for that matter, would the combined assault force of the USA, the UN, Russia and the EU. Assault force ? There is more than one way to assault, and a DIRECTIVE from Secretary of State, Clinton, to Israel to stop building in a small part of the land promised, shows to what extent this is becoming contrary to earlier US policy, as with Reagan and Nixon.
Thus diplomatic thrust towards ceding part of Jerusalem and more of the West Bank, which Israel salvaged for itself, when let down by many nations and attacked by several more, is in fact an assault. Currently it is verbal, diplomatic, but for all that, it constitutes an international force wave, a propaganda thrust, and attack it is no less.
What again of the League of Nations accord of 1920 to make Palestine a homeland ? What indeed! This in fact followed the action of Great Britain in 1917, to do the same. Little of Palestine, in a monstrous moral failure, actually reached Israel, let alone as a homeland. Much of that land went to Jordan, and many of the Palestinians - who like many of Israel, sought to change countries after the Islamic failure to exterminate Israel in 1948 - were so unwilling to cede what they had hoped to conquer, but lost in war, thus unable as hoped to return as victors after that war: that they now have other ideas. They want to return to the land so many betrayed in war, and then perhaps swamp it with non-Jews till Israel is no more homeland at all..
God however has other ideas (cf. Luke 21:24). Injustice and passion to posses is not, after all, God. Many are destined to find this, after a short time of antichrist. Psalm 2 tells you about this.
What then ? Many who are not of Israel, homeland to Jews, unlike the displaced Israelis who after that same 1948 war, had to leave their former lands, now outside Israel, want unrestricted re-entry! Moreover, the desire to return to Israel on the part of those who are SURROUNDED by Islamic nations or those favourable to it, is there, even if it should swamp Israel and so make it lose ANY place for a people of historic fame, however small it might be, so that the Jew would again be governed by Gentiles, Israel once more trodden down by others. There is a collision course with God here, and though for a little, there will be hypocritical peace and effort to secure results by attrition or imposition, yet God has done what He has said to discipline Israel and will do what He has said to conserve it.
The UN is hardly a resource of righteousness.
The UN ? On many grounds, this neo-Moses without testimony, is bankrupt in morals, as books like Shirley Hazzard's Defeat of an Ideal, and People in Glass Houses, the more intimately attest. The enormous preponderance of Islamic representatives by conviction or site, in the UN, compared with the singularity of Israel, speaks in more than one way: that is, it speaks with the voice of the UN and to the mind willing to ponder what this means. It has already admittedly spoken, after World War II, to such as Britain's Bevin, who stated that it was not in the national interest to put offside those with the oil. As noted in Possess Your Possessions Volume 5, Ch. 5: .
Oil was one stated reason for Britain's great care of the enemies of Israel, despite its earlier undertaking! This is exposed in Beauty for Ashes Ch. 1 as follows (slightly revised for this purpose). There reference is made to
that secret document from British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, which as reported in the Age Magazine, August 20, 1988 (pp. 16-21), in the post-World War II turmoil, showed the frank desire to placate Arabs, equipped as they were, with oil. Bevin had evidently passionately pursued the line that centres of oil production MUST be available. There was, it is reported, found to be grave risk in alienating Arabs "by appearing to ... endorse the Jewish aspiration for a separate State."
How does oil spread softness on the paths of war, and incline the heart to greed rather than goodness, when there is no restraint! It is a world in which restraint in 'national interests' seems increasingly if not obsolete, then all but antique.
New morals then for Australia ? from what source ? Assuredly not from a logically unbased and religiously innovative United Nations ?
Then from where ? From whatever democracy throws up ? In fact, democracy has been taken for so many rides, including the little jaunt of Hitler, once elected, that it becomes quite crucial to consider what your historic basis is, and your logical foundation, as well as giving thought to your religious roots. Certainly if these innovatory excursions have no confirmation, verification, that should encourage caution and restraint. This is not the case in the Christian foundations of Australia. In what Christian ? In the derivation from a formally (if by no means entirely factually) Christian country called Great Britain, in its founding of this land in terms of an entire country and civilisation from that source, as in the derivative nature of much of its laws and ways, restraints and insistence on liberty in religion, written into the Constitution, so that none may be established.
If then Australia should remove the reference to its having COME TOGETHER TO FORM ONE NATION not to be dissolved, concerning the humble reliance on Almighty God, then this would at once accomplish three things.
ONE: It would mean a slap on the cheek of that same God Almighty, a discountenancing in other words, of what formerly had been countenanced, and encountered as a source and stay for the land. That would be the symbolism whatever people might think.
TWO: It would remove a measure of foundational stability inherent in the direct statement from the land about itself, so making it adrift in the ocean of ideas, as distinct from having one continuing basis, however freely the individual might live. Hence the arbitrary and often desultory or even destructive forcers of other options comes alive.
The wonder of such things is visibly obvious in this present world and, while experimentation might appeal to those who enjoyed the slaughters of Communism, or the run-down of post-Christian self-indulgence in Europe, or the degradations often derived from Islam for a whole section of the human race, and the incitements to violence for the cause of Islam wherever desired, as in the Koran (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6, including the Koran there cited, with Koran 4:67-77, and index). These are but examples. History has many.
Often there are divergencies from our concern for equity and equality in status, found in other ways, not to be established, but looming with desire to be. Thus, when a man can beat his wife because he fears she may be going astray (Koran 4:34), we have a type of male ascendency too absolutist to be fair, too dominant to be righteous, and indeed quite explicit. Moreover, as for women being regarded as a field for man to enjoy, what of the field itself ? Is it merely mute and a recipient ? Or if there is more than one wife, where is the equality in that, and how many unit fields are to be the fortunate recipients of such zest from one mere man! (cf. Koran, 4:34 and 4:81-83, 2:222-227), for the men who are statedly superior to women (4:34).
Perhaps more likely to threaten a dislodged and vagrant Australia, is some combination of new dominating forces, or the secular anti-religious thrust, such as could occur if the reference to Almighty God be removed from the Preamble to the Constitution. In this, aboriginal people are used as a conduit to naturalism, as if God did not exist, and their being in some parts of the land before British civilisation, made them aboriginal owners or in some way patrons from whom permission is to be solicited. That is in essence a religious concept based on no God and no reason, but with affinity for anythingness, anything at all that went before, like a sort of anchor in the air.
This is merely one aspect. It is a useful mode for using misplaced sympathy for misplaced religion. Help to the aborigines, that is constructive and thoughtful and effective of their development in talent and training and the abundance of effective living is good; provision for wantonry, often the result of oddities of approach, is not.
Similarly, the point would be made more directly by some seculariists, that we do not NEED God and that many do not believe in Him. Is that in itself reason or mere inadequate statistics!
If it is democracy that is in question, and we are supposed to be one, then how many do believe in Him and how many do not ? If that were to make the result, in a referendum or reliable test, at least it would be democratic, and not a farce or a manipulation.
But some will doubtless be approached and be asked in the name of Jesus Christ to be tolerant ? Of what ? Of leaving our foundations ? Where is tolerance in that, to forsake the basis of union of States when it was made ? That is intolerant of the aims of those who founded the country, as explicitly set down.
Surely if this agreement which made States into a country is to be changed, there should be a reason to forsake this heritage ? What is it ? To insult God ? That is a very large step: who wishes to take it ? If some do not believe in God, in what way is this relevant ? Are they a voting majority ? We are moreover speaking of the obligations of those who DO believe in Him, not to offend Him, and not to make their form of gratitude for this land and its attractive features and blessings, to be this: that they not merely spit in His face but remove the face altogether. Let us face it: there are huge issues involved.
It is NOT a question of liberty, for religion is not permitted to be established, ONCE this basis is given; and having made the basis as a form of founding, there is complete freedom in pursuing one's own religion, subject only to physical assault and violence such as many practice, and is forbidden in these matters, to all Christians (cf. John 18:36, Matthew 36:52ff.). It IS a question of having a change to a national basis in terms of the background for the entire corporation, incorporation indeed, of Australia. Change it if you dare, and be a manipulee if you care for such conduct. Meanwhile, in fact restriction of freedom of speech is already well under way by the same sort of forces which gain religious power without acknowledging it, this time to prevent hurt feelings by muzzling facts! (cf.
THE INTERNET
AND THE NEXT GENERATION).
The point is this: IF this reference to God Almighty be forsaken (and it is very little compared with what might be said to have been implied), then there must be a reason or it is an irrational act.
If the desire is for more freedom in life in this country, that is irrelevant. Not only is this freedom guaranteed as it is, and richly used, including those who reject God and aspire to lead the land, to show how extreme is this liberty, but the removal of this founding element as both historical and a desired incorporative feature, as it expressly was, leaves this aspect open. Open to what ? to those FORCES, unlike biblical Christianity, on which undoubtedly the phrasing was based, which have appetite ideologically for our land.
Such forces as in the French and Russian revolutions, and countless ones since, are often associated with violence, of which this world is full to brimming over. Likewise, such a dereliction before God Almighty as the removal or replacement of reference to Him, with naturalism, whether stated or implied, trusting in nature and its 'nurture', in the Preamble invites a multiple blend of disaster, as when a hospital is taken over by anyone who happens to enter it.
One offering (revised) once made for any change to this aspect of the Constitutional formula and format, includes some elements noted here.
With hope in God, the Commonwealth of Australia is constituted by the equal sovereignty of all its citizens.
The Australian nation is woven together of people for many ancestries and arrivals. For long our land has been inhabited by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are freely acknowledged, in that theirs has been an ancient and continuing culture.
Indeed, in every generation immigrants have likewise brought considerable enrichment to our nation's life.
Australians are free to be proud of their country and heritage, free to realise themselves as individuals, and free to pursue their hopes an ideals. We value excellence as well as fairness, independence as dearly as mateship.
Australia's democratic and federal system of government exists under law to preserve and protect all Australians in an equal dignity which may never be infringed by prejudice or fashion, nor invoked against achievement.
The point here is not some formulation of words, to be sought for as a change in the Preamble. It is rather that in this case it can be seen that objectively, there are many ingredients, not one to be valued against another a priori, in what the nation now is; and it is as futile and inequitable to single out one as another, unless you wish to institute some kind of value preference, thus based only on desire, and so a religious matter, as forbidden in the Constitution itself. We are not about to single out any as superior in the mix, mandatory in some way, possessors or proprietors, whether because of force or fear or the United Nations, which categorically is NOT our sovereign.
Such an exhibit as just made is to show that if you MUST have change in the Constitution, which is not at all recommended, then there is no need to alter also the nature of what we are, in so doing. If you want to recognise this and that, so be it, so long as it does not have practical religious consequences leading to inequality in living, or obligatory distortion of equality for each and every person before the law. If there is establishment, indeed, directly or indirectly any religious control, such as might make people chant the praise or power of some one element in our society, thus making a religious input via a race, this is radical change. In some parts of the nation, the Constitution is already being violated in just such a manner.
Such an action, whether actual or intended in constitutional change, in itself is not only inequitable, prejudicial, but denigratory by implication, quite apart from the question of deletion of the reference to God Almighty in the Constitution.
This is by no means to suggest that it is not a great idea to help aborigines, in that some of the land they were using; and billions of dollars are currently being handed to them - in addition to government pensions for unemployment and disadvantage as applicable, for mining rights. Some try to train them for employment in ways that are sensitive and useful; and much that is good has been done for them by Christians, whose work has been denigrated by former PM Rudd who failed in his apology*1, to distinguish between those who had at aboriginal request and for help, taken some aborigines to other situations, and any lordly acts taken by others. You cannot objectively apologise for a mixed bag of good and evil, and so debase much effort in godly style wrought and even at request, or to deliver from constant outrage, those whose lives were with impunity molested when young. If you apologise for that, you call good evil and evil good, unless you feel it evil to deliver from abuse or from situations such that cries are made for help and removal.
At point, is the issue of returning to, indeed remaining where we were in matters of religious freedom, non-discrimination, and so avoiding the rejection of one of the great unity bases on which we have in fact been founded. Such result as in other cases, might justly lead to the nation being confounded, so that, if many who believe in God connive by confusion, with those who cannot wait to get rid of Him from this Preamble, that is treachery. If such despatch of the Almighty thus be attempted, by altering in this the founding document, then other options might secretly or seditiously, ambitiously or artfully, being used as replacement, be prelude to a grief which this nation has never so far suffered; though in World Wars I and II it has suffered much.
NOTE
This was considered in The Holocaust of Morality and The Coming of Christ the King, Ch. 7.
Rudd, in this land, may be of much the same mould. His debonair-seeming, freely embracive apology to the aborigines could be made without qualification, in terms of children who had been moved from parents, by implicitly condemning those who did this to deliver the children whom they served from moral rupture or even ruin, or indeed at parental request. Such a divisive apology, by its specious inclusivism, does not differentiate between those who in co-operation wrought grace and showed mercy, and those who raped or abused. It is basically false and denigratory to many Christians in particular, but not to them alone. You can indeed try to make all things one, outside the Lord, by compressing truth into figments and fictions. Dreams however are not the stuff of justice, when spouting from the mind and mouth of man.
You may achieve one attitude, then, in human terms, by misrepresenting many and many facts. It is not however in the heart, as many letters of protest against that apology showed. This is merely one example. The more you intervene with principles of humanism, effectually man-based in terms of various political agendas, the more you run into the moulding influence of political conformism and ethical morass, like treacle covering up differences.
The text of the apology of Rudd, is as follows:
I move:
That today we honour the indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.
It is precisely into such quagmires of generalisation amid transient reality, a muddy congestion together, with unclear analyses, not properly undertaken, and emotional extravaganzas, often incorporating good stuff in some ways, but without adequate protection, direction or realism, that lead to an unfounded wasteland, sinking, bogged and ready to sink adventurers. That encourages upset, equally extravagant reactions, hurt feelings, less regard for truth - if no more!
The rock of which Christ spoke as good for building, was not indicated by the Creator for null purpose, or because it was not necessary. It is not a suggestion box, but a sound truth, where nothing can change, as truth does not; and as source, it is sure.