So my Senior Pastor has joined the trend and now has a blog.
The post I have linked to talks about the Rudd controversy. As befitting a major Christian minister, he has chosen not to politicise his post. But the comments are pretty much all politicised, including mine. Probably the most prominent commenter is none other than Jim Reiher (follow the link to read some extraordinary mental gymnastics as he justifies why he’s running for the Greens over and over again. 8.5/10 from the Australian judge.)
Note: this post may seem a little angry to some. I know it’s not my normal style, but when people claiming to be Christians drag the whole religion into the mud, I get pissed off.
Reiher is, as I have just mentioned, a serial Greens candidate. He’s also a lecturer at Tabor Bible College, one of Victoria’s best. My dad is the Academic Dean over at Tabor in Sydney, NSW.
When I heard that Reiher was becoming a Greens candidate, my father was at the time lecturing at the same Tabor and my mum was a student there.
So as soon as possible I dragged Dad aside and said “is Reiher NUTS? Does he seriously think this is consistent with his Christianity?” Dad was able to catch up with him and I don’t know if he’d be happy me quoting him fully as I have just associated him with his place of employment. This is not to say he thought Reiher was a raving lunatic. But he was definitely unconvinced.
Declaration: At the time I was a 100% born-again believing Liberal party paid and signed member. I’m still a member (for my own reasons) but at the last election I didn’t give Liberals my number one vote.
Anyway, let’s look at Reiher’s comment over at Mark Conner’s blog. You’ll soon see why it’s impossible to support Greens and remain true to the Christian message. It’s simply breath-taking:
Thanks for the honest comments Mark. I was very disappointed in the tragic media circus that surrounded the incident.
This is the point that Jim wants us to think he was disappointed with the moral incorrectness of what Rudd did. But I dare him to deny that his first reaction was something different. I dare him to deny that his reaction was fear over what this would do to Rudd’s votes come election day.
After all, on one side of the Parliament we have a Christian leader who went to a strip club drunk 4 years ago. On the other side we have a Christian leader (Costello) ridiculing him for it, and playing it up in the hope of gaining some political points from it. I was raised on the sermon on the mount: judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgement you give, that will be the judgement you get.
Amusing. Judge not lest you be judged, hey?
“and playing it up in the hope of gaining some political points from it”
That strikes me as judging, Jim. And Peter Costello did nothing of the sort. That also means you’re breaking two more commandments - bearing false witness and love your neighbour as your self. I doubt your comments about Costello would strike anyone as loving. I know I’m being slightly hypocritical here but I stand before you as a hypocrite, not as a holy moralist as Reiher is.
I am sad that the Liberal future PM (Costello)- a sincere Christian supposedly -
Judging again….?
thinks it is appropriate to ridicule and mock a brother in the faith.
Judging, again.
I thought we were meant to NOT rejoice in the failings of your brother. hmmm.. Christians and politics. So much compromise.
The saying ‘take your own advice’ comes into play here. Within 5 words he’s rejoicing in the failings of Costello. *as he sees them.
One last thought. I liked what one of our senators said: Rudd 4 years ago, drunk, went into a strip club. But Howard, 4 years ago, sober, took Australia into Iraq. Who committed the greater moral failure? The sin with the greatest consequences?
Judging. Again. And “one of our senators” turns out to be the leader of… you guessed it, the Greens. Why didn’t he have the cojones to just name Bob Brown? Because he knows that Brown is a figure with no credibility amongst the general Christian community.
Nearly 1 million civilians are now dead in Iraq since the invasion….. [And Rudd did confess the next day, and admit he was an idiot and did the wrong thing. Howard still justifies the war….]
76,000 dead according to Iraqbodycount.org. Bearing false witness again, Jim. Saddam Hussein on the other hand, is estimated to have killed upwards of 1,250,000. Even measured as lives lost/day that’s more than three times as much killed since the Iraq invasion. Not only this, but if you look at the Iraq body count database a huge majority of these deaths are either insurgents or the people killed by insurgents (the insurgents, of course, being Saddam supporters.) I’d be very interested to see the number killed by the USA… probably less than 10,000 of this total.
Reiher needs to go read work by independent journalists Michael Yon or Michael Totten and see what’s really happening in Iraq. He also needs to look at every opinion poll ever taken since the invasion of Iraq, of Iraqis which show supporters of the US invasion outnumber those against in 100% of cases.
It might be good advice to keep this in perspective and not let it blur us from the real issues of the day.
Such as defeating the evil gnome, Howard. We got it, we got it, we got it…..
Note: if Reiher comes across this post I will publish his reply, in full, and without annotations.
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