>Sabbath Meditation

>The Means of Grace

A Christian doctrine that has largely “passed from the sight of mortal men” is the doctrine of the means of grace. It was at the heart of much Reformational theology and teaching. Today it is scarcely heard, even amongst those who identify with the teachings and traditions of the Reformation.

Regardless of modern forgetfulness or distortions, Jerusalem must recapture and restore this great Christian doctrine. It is a vital foundation stone to building and extending God’s City. To the extent that it has been lost, Jerusalem is the weaker and poorer for it.

Actually, the phrase “means of grace” appears an oxymoron, at first glance. For grace is God’s unmerited favour to man. Man is not owed God’s goodness or favour; he has no right to it. Nevertheless, when God does bestow His favour, despite the fact we deserve it not, we call it grace. Because God’s favour is not on account of any merit we might have, we call it free—as in, God’s free grace. The idea that there could be means by which God’s grace comes to us at first glance might appear to undermine the idea that God’s mercy is free and without debt.

The divine mercy that fell upon Abraham and his descendants provides the eternal pattern. The Lord explicitly says that there was nothing particularly significant about Abraham. He was an idol worshiper along with everyone else, despite the fact that much later, subsequent rabbinic tradition almost deified Abraham. They forgot that every male Israelite was required to confess formally that Abraham his father was a “wandering Aramaean”—that is, a pagan Syrian. The Hebrew word translated wandering means “perishing, lost, in great danger”. (Deuteronomy 26: 5)

Abraham was taken from a family of idolaters, as the Lord declares through Joshua: “from ancient times, your fathers lived beyond the River, Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nabor and they served other gods. Then I took your father from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan.” (Joshua 24: 2,3). From that point on, every descendant, every Israelite through birth and those brought in through profession of faith knew that they were recipients of God’s grace through no merit of their own. They simply happened to be descended from Abraham, and therefore God’s love had fallen upon them.

Moses explicitly tells the people, “The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers.” (Deuteronomy 7:8). Thus, every Israelite who could say, “I am loved by God”, when asked, “Why does God love you,” was bound to say, “Because the Lord loved my fathers and made an oath to them.” It was freely done by God. I had no part in it.

Later, as idolatry insinuated itself back into Israel’s heart, the free nature of God’s grace was obscured, if not entirely obliterated. Being a child of Abraham was distorted into a badge of merit. “Because I am descended from Abraham, therefore God owes me His favour and salvation.” In contrast were the Gentiles whom God was understood not to love. This reached its apotheosis in the time of our Lord, when Israel was rapidly filling up the cup of its transgression.

When John the Baptist was preaching the message of repentance to prepare the way for Messiah, he warned them against what was their habitual mode of thought: “do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham!’” John was calling them to repent. In heart the multitudes were saying, “No, it’s OK—we are descended from Abraham and this is sufficient to merit God’s love to us.” John rudely confronts such an idolatrous notion, declaring that being descended from Abraham is of no merit whatsoever, for God is able to raise up children of Abraham from stones.

“The very fact that you are a descendant of Abraham should have confirmed to you that the salvation of God was brought to you through no merit of your own. You did not engineer your forebears. Since you have turned it into a basis of merit, let me leave you in no doubt that it is nothing, for God can throw you out, and replace you with stones.”

And so it came to pass. Israel of old would not hear, but clung to their idolatry—clung to their belief that they merited God’s favour, that He owed them His mercy, and that He needed them. So they were cast off. But God replaced them, making former stones into sons of Israel—and in this instance, the stones were the Gentiles who were adopted into God’s family and made descendants of Abraham, heirs of his promises.

So we read Paul’s letter to the Gentiles who were now in the Ephesian congregation: “Therefore remember that formerly, you, the Gentiles in the flesh . . . . that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the Commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But . . . you who were afar off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:11—13)

Thus, God’s grace is indeed free. He chooses to bestow it on whom He chooses. Nevertheless, God has appointed means (methods, ways, circumstances, and institutions) by which His grace comes to people. If we are to receive God’s grace, we are directed to look to the rock from which we were hewn. We are directed to look to the means which God has established. Grace is found where God has appointed it to be.

God’s grace is sovereign and free. God also sovereignly has appointed the means by which His grace flows to men. Faith responds by submitting to His appointment, taking up the means of grace that God has appointed, looking to God, and expecting His grace to flow in and through the means, even as He has promised.

This means that the means of grace which He has appointed are holy and sacred—because through these means God comes to us, and we are drawn into His very presence.

>Crooked Thinking

>Why the Internet is Fixated with Hitler

In a world where formal education has a weight put upon it that it cannot possibly bear, it is to be expected that the “system” will crack. Virtually all of Athenian society looks to formal education as a redeemer, a saviour from all social ills. The result: more and more people successfully graduating from the system who cannot read or write. This is not likely to change until Athens comes to the realisation that education cannot save anyone nor can it redeem society from all its ills–which will hopefully lead society to focus upon what is the proper competence of education and a reshaping of the system.

But in the meantime, we are going to have to put up with a lot of ill tempered, ignorant, and frustrated people in the community. People who cannot think their way out of a wet paper bag—they cannot think because they have not been taught how to think. They have not been taught the difference between straight and crooked thinking. The formal education system has been too busy running around attempting to fix all the ills of society.

As a result, public discourse in our day is largely a spectacle where individuals hurl epithets at one another, and play the man, not the argument. This of course is a fallacious ploy and will never actually win an argument. But it does enable one to strut one’s stuff, swell out the chest, and feel good. Criticising the man who is making the argument, not the argument he is making, is of course a fallacy of relevance known as ad hominem. In most cases, ad hominem is the preserve of a lazy, untaught, ignorant, or incompetent mind.

It is stock-in-trade for politicians—which is probably, at least in part, why they are generally so poorly regarded. Somehow the electorate senses they are charlatans but is not sure why. It is also stock-in-trade for the blogosphere. If you look at debates on posts, usually by around the fifth comment, ad hominem has taken over and the protagonists are hurling insults at each other. It is heady, powerful impressive stuff—but only to those who cannot distinguish crooked from straight thinking.

This phenomenon actually led to the identification of a new informal fallacy. Noticing the common trend, someone proposed an “internet” law of argument that runs: the longer an on-line debate continues, the probability that a protagonist (or his position) will be compared to Hitler or the Nazis rises exponentially. He called this the Reductio ad Hitleram. The reductio ad Hitleram is a specific form of ad hominem.

Another oh-so-common fallacy is begging the question. This leads one to assert as true what one really has to prove, in order to carry the argument. Normally, arguments represent conclusions which are derived from, or implied from, premises. If an argument is taking place over a particular conclusion, usually the focus will turn back on the original premises of the argument to test whether they are true. When protagonists prove unwilling or unable to subject the premises to scrutiny and examination, but just continue to rely upon them and assert them, they end up begging the question—which means that they have reasoned in a fallacious circle.

To illustrate, we were recently observing a “debate” on a blog over global warming. True to form, within four posts it had turned into an ad hominem, vituperative slanging match. But thrown in to the mix was a wonderful example of question begging. The issue started off with the observation that recent data (past five nine years) shows that the earth is not warming, but level pegging (temperature wise) but that particularly in the past year, it cooled rapidly, as the globe had one of the coldest years in a long time.

The advocate for the global warming thesis posted a rejoinder to the effect that though the data showed the earth was cooling, “underneath” it was really warming all the time. So, the data is not relevant; it is disguising what is really happening. If you broke out his argument into a more formal frame, it appeared to run as follows:

Man-made emissions of carbon dioxide cause global warming.
Man-made emissions of carbon dioxide have increased substantially over the past nine years.
Therefore, over the past nine years the globe has warmed up (substantially?), regardless of what the data shows.

The opposing side was arguing that the data showed that the globe has not warmed—that is, the conclusion of the argument appears to be not just unproven, but wrong. Normally, if question begging had not been introduced, and people were thinking in a straight and critical fashion, one would then move back to the premises and begin debating them. If we were to do that, there remain three possible alternatives: either man-made emissions of carbon dioxide do not cause global warming, or man-made emissions of carbon dioxide have not increased substantially over the past nine years, or both premises are wrong at the same time. And so the discussion would continue—in a helpful and constructive fashion.

Needless to say, this did not occur, for the global warming protagonist simply re-asserted the two premises. He was begging the question. He was asserting what he needed to prove, in order to carry his argument. He was reasoning in a circle—which is to say, he had no argument to bring. In the light of this, it is understandable that very quickly the debate degenerated into hurling insults at one another. What else was left to be done?

Circular arguments cannot be tested or falsified. They are unchallengeable dogmas. To the extent that they inevitably lead to an elevation of some aspect of the creation as an ultimate truth, beyond rational examination or testing, they represent an irrationality.

So pervasive is crooked thinking in our public discourse that Contra Celsum is considering running a series of posts on formal and informal fallacies and identify examples we come across in our daily lives. It can be quite fun—spotting the fallacy—like those children’s books where you had to find the key character hidden somewhere in an illustration.

But let’s all remember that a study of formal and informal logic, while invaluable in identifying crooked thinking, is far less helpful in enabling us to reach the truth. In order to do that, we have to commence with premises that are true to begin with—and that’s entirely another matter.

>Youth Crime–‘Tis a Small Matter

>Youth Crime and Gin Lane

Athens has just published the latest statistics on youth crime. Overall, the youth crime rate is steady—which would appear to be good news. However, violent youth crime has risen steadily for the past three years. So—same proportional numbers, but increasingly violent. This implies growing depths of desperation, de-sensitisation and depravity.

Other statistics include:
83 percent of youth offenders are male, but the number of violent female offenders is rising.
50 percent plus are Maori
80 percent of youth offenders have drug or alcohol problems
70 percent are not enrolled in school
Most youth offenders come from dysfunctional and disadvantaged families and lack positive male role models. (NZ Herald, 9th May, 2008)

The top Youth Court judge, Andrew Becroft offered some “very simple suggestions” to combat youth crime: firstly, kids must be provided with good role models; secondly, they must be kept in some form of education for as long as possible.

The first represents a pipe dream. The second incorporates a fallacy. So much for “very simple suggestions.”

Athens has no meaningful answers or solutions. It will dance its dervishes forever around the fire—and it will temporarily feel better for the sweat and effort—but no solution or change will be at hand.

Let us deconstruct these “very simple suggestion”. The first calls for providing kids with good role models. As the Judge acknowledged, most of the youth offenders come from broken homes and have never had a good role model to which they could look. They come from blended families, where adults are constantly moving in an out of sexual relationships with one another. By the time the children are two or three, irremediable damage is done.

The parents, the two people commanded and ordained by the Living God to provide abiding values and verities (truth, honour, respect, loyalty, love, tenderness, care, order, structure, and discipline upon which one can rely) have likely changed several times. The child has probably heard endless wrangles, fights, tantrums, screaming fits, cursing, and blasphemy. It will have witnessed alcohol and drug abuse. The child will have been serially passed from adult to adult and he will have intuitively learned that he is just an objectified thing. He will have picked up that it is an appendage at best, a nuisance at worst.

In most cases, the child will have been born for the economic advantage of his mother—under the DPB, income will rise as a result of having another child.

The child’s world view will have been set by age two or three, such that everything thereafter will be interpreted according to that world-view. So, now, let’s meet the new role model which “someone” is going to provide. Immediately and instinctively the child will respond to this role model as one more transient influence in his life. Therefore, while the community or state might anoint him/her as a role model, the child already has its own view of role models, and the two views are diametrically opposed. Unless the child changes his world-view, the expectations of the community for the positive influence of the role model will be hopelessly dashed.

We would hazard a guess that whatever role models the community might provide, they will be transitory and temporary—just one more damn thing after another in the child’s life. By now the child will have learned irrevocably that this transient, temporary, changing flux of existence is the real world. Everything will be interpreted accordingly. The child grows up thinking that the world just is, it happens, whatever will be will be. There are no verities that will bind the world for the next one thousand years, around which you can build your life, structure your existence, plan for the future, or establish your line.

By the time the child becomes an adult—co-inciding with the assumption of an adult’s physical strength, exponentially increased by the opportunity to band together with peers into both formal and informal gangs—the ethos of “whatever will be will be” elides normally and naturally into sociopathic behaviour, crime, living for the moment, doing what lies at hand, and let the Devil take the consequences.

Then, let’s think about the role models Athens is going to throw up. Athens will only put forward the role models which reflect its own religious position. In order for the role model to have any chance of influencing the child he will have to have a strong, clearly defined set of principles that touch everything and which will be so clearly and strongly advanced to the child that they will have at least the prospect of counteracting the acute relativistic world view in which the child already operates.

But Athens itself is an acutely relativistic world. There are no ultimate rights or wrongs in Athens—only social conventions. So the kind of role models which Athens will approve are those who, at best, will be allowed to say to the child—do this, or don’t do that, because society likes this, but does not like that. But the child will have already worked out that the world consists of the temporary serial imposition of someone else’s prejudices or preferences. The upshot will be that the only kind of role models Athens will tolerate in the child’s life are those who will systematically reinforce the child’s world view. There is no right and wrong—there are only power complexes.

The second “simple solution” is to keep the children in education as long as possible. This is just one more tedious example of the fallacy of reductio ad educatum. This is a fallacy of relevance. Education has little or no relevance to a child who has already been so conditioned that they are un-educable. This solution represents Athens wringing its hands and in effect demonstrating that it has no solutions. The appeal to education makes middle class liberals and elites feel good because no doubt they call upon their experience of how education assisted them and developed them. But it is actually worthless. Moreover, it will make the situation far worse.

It is not hard to imagine what happens when a child with a radically relativised world-view is sent to school. Yes, you have guessed it. The child regards school as one more succession of influences that are meaningless and will pass. It is one more imposition that has no meaning or significance. It will soon be replaced by another influence or experience. School is just one more damn thing after another. From the time the child first steps foot in the school he will be disengaged.

To be educated in any sense that will result in meaningful lifetime change requires that knowledge be both structured and ordered (which in itself is a violation of the child’s world view to begin with) and which requires that the child enter into the discipline of learning to master the tools of learning that it can take on out into life. But in most cases the heart of the child is already damaged beyond repair.

To keep such a person in school will only generate a sense of frustration and anger—for increasingly the growing child will regard successive years of schooling as a waste of time and of little or no meaning. To be kept at it will only breed resentment and anger. Which is why, of course, 70 percent of children involved in youth crime are no longer attending school. Despite compulsory education laws they dropped out long ago. In truth, they were never enrolled. They may have physically spent some time in the class room, but in heart and mind they were never there.

Since Athens is so bankrupt and impotent, what does Jerusalem offer? Jerusalem represents a solution which is offensive to Athens—and which we expect Athens will resist to its dying breath.

Jerusalem says you will not redeem and restore the children unless you are first successful in redeeming and restoring the parents. But, we hear you say, the parents are too far gone. Is it not significant that the solutions being trumpeted by Athenians have clearly capitulated on this point? They assume that something must be done to counteract the already destructive influence of utterly negligent parents in the lives of children—and all their solutions sideline and ignore the parents, and represent an attempt to replace the parents in one way or another (role models, schools, etc).

But Jerusalem knows that any plans or programmes that ignore the vortex of the Covenant God has made with humanity is doomed to failure. That Covenant is not between God and individual human beings, but between God and “familiated” human beings. God deals ordinarily with people in and within families. Whakapapa is an essential construct within the the Covenant of Grace. God says to Abraham: “I will be a God to you and to your children after you.” Consequently the family is the most powerful socialising agent, for good or evil, in the life of a child. Nothing will ever change that. To change the evil socialisation effects that lead to youth crime and a host of other problems, you have to change families, which means you have to change parents.

Moreover, the change must be from the inside out; it must be root and branch. Only the liberating, transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ can bring that change. But once the change has occurred, once a parent has been born again by the Spirit of God, intense and constant work on behavioural patterns needs to take place. If parents were to change in this way, within a generation the problem would have largely dissipated.

So Jerusalem suggests that Athens invite Jerusalem to provide an army of preachers of the Gospel of Christ to this terribly unfortunate underclass. Jerusalem suggests that Athens gives a Macedonian call to Jerusalem: “Come over here and help us.” Jerusalem suggests that Athens work to take away every obstacle and hindrance, and meanwhile let Jerusalem do its work without interference, rules, regulations and bureaucratic meddling. And Jerusalem also demands that Athens provide no money, no financing for this great rescue mission. We know that “he who pays the piper calls the tune” and Jerusalem serves the Risen Lord, not ungodly Athenian mammon.

Now, as noted above, we do not expect that Athens will issue that invitation. It would be too close to putting the stake into Athens own heart. But maybe Maori would consider it. We learn that at least 50 percent of youth offending is from Maori. Maybe Maori would have the humility coupled with the depth of concern to issue the call.

In the eighteenth century, the Great Awakening occurred in England and the eastern seaboard of North America. Spearheaded by the Wesleys and George Whitfield, the Great Awakening represented (in large part) the English underclass turning to Christ in response to the clear, clarion, preaching of the Gospel. Many of the converts were from Gin Lane (immortalised in Hogarth’s etching) and similar places and were people whose lives had become truly wretched—as wretched as many New Zealand underclass families have now become.

The Wesleys established weekly new convert growth groups that began training the members in methodical, disciplined Christian living. These groups helped people establish Christian disciplines such as Bible reading, prayer, fellowship, giving, thrift. This inculcation of the methods of Christian living through small groups led to them being called Methodists. But the point is that within a generation this afflicted underclass had largely attenuated, if not disappeared. The new Christians began to put their lives back together as they began to live for God, Who alone brought them hope in their degradation.

The “simple solutions” of Athens to increasingly violent youth crime are not solutions at all. They will end up being no more than cruel mockeries and will make the problems worse. The only social utility they have is that they will make Athenian social liberals feel better—but that utility is worthless on any meaningful moral or ethical scale.

Jerusalem’s answer will be mocked and spurned by Athens. But that will not deter us in the least. So it has always been. So it is likely to be for the next two or three generations. But, in the end, God’s Word will be the anvil that breaks up Athens, and a strong refuge for those desperate enough to turn to God when all else has failed.

>ChnMind 1.25 Noah and the Restraint of Evil

>The Permanent Legacy of Noah

Forever after God’s people have referred back to this awe-inspiring event of the Great Flood. As we contemplate this terrible event, we understand that the continuation of the creation, of history, of mankind upon the earth is only by God’s grace and patience. The sun shines today, only by God’s mercy. Rain falls to replenish the earth by His lovingkindness. Ever since Noah we have learnt that God is to be feared and loved and respected, and that our lives are surrounded by God’s love, mercy, and faithfulness from the time we first draw breath. “Let all living creatures praise the Lord!”

The Flood came as wickedness reached its apotheosis. In the period from the Fall to the Flood―which represents roughly 1500 years―God allowed wickedness to mature and flourish, such that at the end of the period, “God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5). This was deliberately done.

The point is to let all mankind foreverafter know what happens when sinful human being are left to their own devices, to work out the principles of evil that lurks in every heart. So great was the poisonous flowering of evil that the world could not continue. It had to be cleansed. This in turn led the Lord to bring a universal world-wide judgement upon mankind. We read: “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:7)

Why and how did wickedness flourish? The strong implication of the text is that the period from the Fall to the Flood was a libertarian’s “paradise”: there was no authority, no government, no restraints of any kind. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. There were no institutions, for example, to punish Cain for murdering his brother. Without divinely instituted restraints the true nature of man showed forth: evil matured, and became “grown up”, as it were. Lawlessness, murder, pillage―centering around the possession of women―dominated. (Genesis 4:18―24; Genesis 6: 1―4) It became the kind of world that represented our worst nightmares―society at its most lawless, murderous and degraded.

Every so often history provides a glimpse into what it must have been like. Martin Amis, writing of the horrors of the Stalinist era in his book Koba the Dread, describes how Stalin arranged for the torment of his victims. Herding his victims into prison camps, having extracted confessions out of them by torture, he set criminal gangs into the gulags and allowed the gangs to torture, maim, torment and destroy the other prisoners. We suspect that such extreme evil gives a glimpse into the world of man before the Great Flood.

This period of history, its fruit, and its culminating universal judgment, stands as a backdrop to the subsequent establishment of civil government as an institution of punishment for extreme wickedness and a restraint upon evil. Civil government, regardless of its constant shortcomings and failings, works to prevent the need for univeral judgment, prior to the Final Advent of our Lord. Civil government helps ensure the continuation of the world.

After the Flood, history began again. So, what now would be different? Genesis 8:20―22 tell us that God declares He will never deploy a universal judgment so extreme that it involves cursing the entirety of the created world. However, this is not due to man’s heart being changed. He still remains intent on evil from his youth. So, if there will never again be a universal judgment, it implies that sin is going to be restrained.

What, then, will stop the recrudescence and triumph of universal evil such that a universal world-wide judgment is required? God mandated and commanded the lawful shedding of blood as punishment for murder: “And surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.” (Genesis 9:5―7) God institutes His ministry of capital punishment upon murderers―for murderers have sought to strike down the very image of God by taking the life of another human being.

The State punishing murders with execution (and by implication and extension, punishing all lesser crimes with appropriate punishment) has been given by God, not only to execute justice, but to prevent the kind of monstrous flowering of gratuitous evil which led to the Flood. Thus the magistrate is declared to be the Minister of God for the punishment of evil doing. (Romans 13: 1―7) After Noah, judgment was to be particular, not universal. This institution is one of the key, if not the key, ways God prevents evil from triumphing in the earth.

As well as the restraining effect of the civil magistrate and the death penalty upon murder, God uses additional means to prevent the world devolving into universal unrestrained wickedness. He brings localised judgments (Sodom and Gomorrah) as well as wars, diseases, famine, pestilence―all mediated through the cause and effect of human actions―to punish and restrain sin, preventing it from gaining ascendancy and dominance.

For example, one modern economist has argued that the drop in the violent crime rate in the United States has as its primary cause the legalisation of abortion in Roe vs Wade. This particular evil has resulted in many children, which would otherwise have been born into evil and degraded households, and which would have headed straight into the criminal underworld, drugs, and the gangs, being aborted. If true, this is serves as an example of how the Lord uses social causes and effects to restrain and wither evil. Sin now tends to destroy itself and kill itself off.

A second and major theme of the revelation concerning Noah is God’s grace before and in judgment. We notice in Genesis 6 that despite the fact that God had announced His judgment upon all mankind, He gave them more time. He determined that He would strive with man for another 120 years―which is the time it took for Noah to build the Ark. This is a startling example of God’s longsuffering and patience towards sinners.

The manner in which He strove with men was to send a preacher of righteousness, Noah, amongst them. According to I Peter 3: 18-20, Christ by His Spirit, in the person of Noah, went and preached to that evil generation of mankind. This preaching continued throughout the 120 years of the Ark’s preparation. The building of the Ark was itself a visible sermon to the world of the coming judgement of God. Noah’s building of the Ark according to God’s direction and instruction was a graphic way of confronting his generation with the judgement to come: the rejection of God’s prophet during this 120 years sealed the condemnation of the world (Heb. 11:7).

A third theme of divine government of human history established ever since the time of Noah is the continuity of the world. The natural order will be maintained; natural law will continue to exist; the seasons will cycle. (Genesis 8:22) The rainbow was placed in the sky as a perpetual sign of God’s promise to this day. This is why Jerusalem refuses to get caught up in the apocalyptic catastrophism which racks the modern world (atomic annihilation, mutual assured destruction, the poisoning of the planet, global warming catastrophies, global pandemics). This firm and confident faith of Jerusalem is expressed in one of her most ancient hymns, the Gloria Patrie:

Glory be to the Father
And to the Son
And to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning
Is now and ever shall be
World without end
Amen, Amen.

Jerusalem believes and knows that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and has commenced the work of the recreation of the world, which involves changing men’s hearts from the inside out. As a result all the nations are going to be discipled and the creation itself is to be regenerated―but this is happening from within human history.

Now it is true that not a few in Jerusalem have faltered at this point, and have sucuumbed to a kind of “Christian” global catastrophism. They see evil getting stronger, the kingdom of God fading and a great apocalyptic battle―which they call the Battle of Armageddon―to end all things. They have failed to reckon with the covenant God made with Noah, and with the ascension and investiture of our Lord. But these folk, sadly, have listened more to Athens than to Jerusalem and they have drunk deeply at the wells of cynical unbelieving pessimism. They have come to read their Bibles through the glasses of modern Athenian newspapers. But, in time, these little ones will grow up. They will turn back again to the Scriptures and will lay aside their newspapers.

A fourth legacy of Noah is that he represents a new beginning, a new Genesis. God re-institutes the Cultural Mandate. God commanded once again, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” (Genesis 9:1) One can imagine that Noah and his family would have been quite dispirited and overwhelmed at having to begin again. Nevertheless the commands of God do not change. Regardless of what localised judgments we have to go through―poverty, famine, degradation, wars―God’s people must always begin again.

Jerusalem is the City whose Spirit cannot be broken. Jerusalem never stops. Tyrants have arisen which have sought to wipe Jerusalem off the pages of history (Haaman, Antiochus Epiphanes, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, Honecker,) but it is they who have been wiped out―Ozymandius’s all―and Jerusalem flowers again. It starts again. It comes back. Why? It cannot do anything else. It is constrained to begin again and come back. The Spirit of God won’t let any other outcome eventuate. This is why Jerusalem will eventually fill the earth and Athens will die out. All enemies are being progressively placed under the feet of the King of all kings.

A fifth element of the revelation of Noah is its prophetic significance. In God’s determination to punish mankind for their great sinfulness, God provides for us a picture of His wrath and judgement to come. All judgements in history (Sodom, Jerusalem etc) are aftershocks of this great judgement. But the judgment of Noah serves as a small precursor to the great Final Judgment when all men of all time, and all demonic heavenly powers will be thrown into the Lake of Fire in one great universal, final judgment.

Notice how Jesus deliberately refers back to Noah when He was warning our fathers of the soon-to-come destruction of Jerusalem. “But as the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be . . .” (Matthew 24: 36-42)

The destruction of the world the day that Noah entered the Ark becomes the picture of how it was just prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. People were eating, drinking, marrying―they were insensible to their spiritual dangers. They were dead to God. They ignored His about-to-fall wrath. They had not listened to one-greater-than Noah who had preached amongst them and warned them to flee from the wrath to come. They were totally absorbed in their life and its natural processes. But suddenly they were swept away to judgment. Two were ploughing in the field; one was taken.

Peter, likewise, writing to the Hebrew Christians, warning them of the coming judgment upon the Israel of his generation, refers his readers back to the days of Noah and God’s destruction of mankind (I Peter 2:5). He warned that it was going to be exactly as it was in the days of Noah. People would be mocking the warning of coming judgment. “Nothing ever changes. Our fathers were not judged, so why should we worry?” (II Peter 3:4)

Just as people in Noah’s time forgot that the whole world was established and sustained by the Word of God, and that by that same Word it was swept away in the time of Noah, so our fathers in Peter’s day had chosen not to remember and heed.

Note that Peter changes the image of destruction from flood to fire. Jerusalem, and particularly the Temple, was razed to the ground with a terrible fire in AD 70, as God’s judgment fell upon apostate Israel.

The destruction of Jerusalem ended the age of the Old Covenant. It was an aftershock of the judgment that fell upon Noah’s generation. But both judgments are also prophetic of the great judgement yet to come upon all mankind. (Matthew 25:30-46) But because of God’s covenant with Noah, that judgment will not result in the destruction of the creation, but in its cleansing—even as the Great Flood cleansed the world.

The curse of sin upon the saints and the creation in general will be removed. (Romans 8: 19-23). This will occur at the Final Advent of our Lord (I Thess. 4:15-18). It will be the final outworking of the covenant made with our father, Noah. When Noah sacrificed to the Lord, He said to himself: “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth. And I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done.” (Genesis 8:21,22)

There is a wonderful promise implicit in these words. If God promises never again to destroy every living thing, it implies that He would work throughout history, from the time of Noah to this day, to restrain the sin of mankind.

It also implies that God would extend His hand of grace and mercy to mankind to save mankind. In other words, the unfolding of human history would be the unfolding of His grace so that in time to come, His grace would extend to every corner of the earth and every nation will be discipled unto Jesus, our Lord. And so it is coming to pass.

As the scripture gradually opens out God’s purposes they reveal that God’s grace is extending over the whole earth and that all peoples and nations will come and worship the Lord.

The floodgates of God’s mercy were opened after the resurrection when our Lord commanded that the Gospel be preached to all nations and that all nations would be discipled unto Him. (Matt. 28:18―20.) Thus we come to see that mercy triumphs over judgment and that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

>The S-Files

>A Lone Voice of Moral Sanity

Contra Celsum has nominated Olivier de Schutter—a United Nations special adviser on food—for an S-Award because he has had the courage, the moral perspective and rectitude to call for an immediate freeze on investment in biofuels.

Citation:

Contra Celsum is delighted nominate Olivier de Schutter for the award.

The ABC (www.abc.net.au/news qv “UN adviser calls for halt on biofuels investment”) provides the following summary:

1. Mr de Schutter says the pursuit of biofuels is contributing to a global food crisis threatening 100 million of the world’s poorest people.

2. He has described it as a massive violation of basic rights and called for a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to tackle rising food prices and global shortages.

3. “I believe that any new investment in first-generation agri-fuels should be [frozen] immediately and that we should discuss in an open and transparent manner whether the current levels of production of bio-diesel, bio-ethanol—which are no so bio—should continue,” he said.

Contra Celsum applauds this clarion call to halt further biofuel investment, and to look at rolling back present production. At least someone in the UN is listening to the cries of 100 million suffering people and for their sake is prepared to slaughter a sacred cow that they might be able to afford food again. At least someone in that subterranean Gothamesque labyrinth has some moral perspective.

Now, we await some clear moral leadership from our own politicians. Our political leaders in New Zealand have all endorsed biofuels. Some have militated for their urgent production and introduction to the fuel market in New Zealand to help save the planet.

Now, where does the moral compass of our leaders lie? Who will be the first political leader to demonstrate they have the slightest smidgin of human decency? Who will be the first to stand up and say that a policy which will contribute to the threat of starvation for 100 million of the world’s poorest people is morally bankrupt—and that, regardless of what threats climate change is supposed to present—biofuels represent a morally unacceptable answer.

Who will be the first to say, “The price is too high, and that under current conditions, biofuels represent the grandiose policies of the megalomaniac?” We are waiting.

Olivier de Schutter: S-Award, Class I for actions in the course of duty that are Smart, Sound, and Salutary.

>Genuine Science and Alchemy

>The Mythology of Snot-Nosed Science

When is a science not a science, but ideology in drag? This is probably one of the most important questions facing the modern world. Sadly, the question has already been answered—convincingly and comprehensively—but the answer is so embarrassing to modern sensibilities that it has been put in the back room, with the door as firmly shut as an Austrian cellar.

The modern world craves infallible and certain truths upon which it can rely. It is impossible to live, move and have being without relying on some infallibility or other. That is why David Hume, the most consistent philosophical sceptic in the history of western philosophy, is regarded as an enfant terrible. He kept arguing that one could never know anything for certain. To a world requiring infallible certainties, his views have never been congenial—although never successfully refuted by the Unbelieving Mind.

In the grand empiricist tradition which flowed out of the Enlightenment, the quest for certainty has taken refuge in science. Usually, what is meant by the term “science” is a relentless pursuit of the facts, by means of proposing hypotheses, then testing them rigorously, seeing if they can be falsified. In this method, the presumption is always that hypotheses are likely not to be true, and the task of the scientist is to prove that they are not true, by falsifying them. And if they cannot be falsified, we should accept the theory as a working hypothesis in the meantime. The scientific method, historically, was imbued with a fundamentally deep vein of scepticism. David Hume would have approved.

This exacting method has led to an explosion of knowledge about the world and how it works—precisely because the method is so rigorous and demanding. Ironically, the more rigorously sceptical science became, the greater the profusion of discoveries. It has led to wonderful discoveries—not just of knowledge, but of technology and, therefore, economic progress.

So wonderful has been the outcome that a patina of infallible certainty has developed around science. Now, when science proclaims it must be infallibly true. Science is now promoted as the opponent of myth, ideology, and religion. Science deals with the facts—just the facts, ma’am. Everything else is speculation, pure and simple, and consequently the preserve of the simple minded.

This is a pure propaganda play by institutionalised organs of modern science. It is, however, willingly believed by a world craving certainty and infallibility. Consequently, we now have two types of science between which we must distinguish. The first what we will call hard-nosed science; the second is snot-nosed science.

Hard-nosed science insists upon the inherent scepticism, rigour, and limitations of the scientific method. Hard nosed science—restricted to repeated observations seeking to confirm hypotheses—knows that it can never prove anything. At best it can disprove. This is the fundamental problem inherent in all induction—investigation from the bottom upwards. Hard-nosed science knows that empirical investigation is inescapably inductive. It starts from the “facts”, the basic raw, observable, measurable data, and reasons outwards by means of constructing hypotheses, then testing them to see whether they can be falsified.

The limitation of induction is that it can only ever establish something as probably true. For this verity we are indebted to Karl Popper, one of the greatest philosophers of science in modern times, if not in all time. If something is only probably true, it is possibly false. Induction and the scientific method, for example, can test ad infinitum whether the sun will rise tomorrow. But it can only test the hypothesis in such a way that all the repeated observations have not yet falsified the rising of tomorrow’s sun. But that is not to say it will not be falsified in the future. The best that the scientific method can deliver is to say that it is probably true that the sun will rise tomorrow. On the other hand, it only takes one genuine falsification of an hypothesis to lead to its rejection or severe modification.

As Popper demonstrated, under the principles of induction, testing, and falsification, which lie at the heart of the scientific method, there are no such things as natural laws—only natural conventions. Natural laws, by definition, could not be falsified; natural conventions, by definition, could be.

Hard-nosed science knows that the scientific method cannot give infallibility nor certainty. It can only give higher probabilities of something being true, the more rigorously a proposition sustains testing. But probabilities are not certainties. In this sense, hard-nosed science knows that the scientific method cannot establish certainty about anything—except those hypotheses which it has successfully falsified. It can give greater certainty about what it not true, but far less certainty about what is true. Ironically, this is sceptical, hard-nosed science at its best and most reliable. This is what induction is all about. This is what repeated testing and scrutiny is all about. This is the essence of the scientific method.

Snot-nosed science, on the other hand,—which has come to dominate modern society—claims that science will provide certainties, verities, and infallible truths. Naturally, snot-nosed science is far more popular with the madding crowd because it gives the people what they need. Infallibility is an inescapable necessity. It has to be found somewhere. In our modern world, materialist science has the nod.

But there is a great irony in this. Hard-nosed science knows that this is a false claim. Hard-nosed science knows that it can never provide positive certainty. But snot-nosed science has deliberately chosen to cover this over with false propaganda and claims about the veracity and integrity of science.

Ah, but you can always tell whether you are dealing with hard-nosed, genuine science, or snot-nosed science. It is a simple test. Hard-nosed science will always be able to tell you the terms, the data, and conditions which will falsify any hypothesis—because that is the scientific method. Snot-nosed science will be unable to declare terms of falsification. It will not be able to tell you what would falsify the claims. In other words, snot-nosed “scientists” are not involved in sceptical scrutiny, examination and testing. They are involved more in works of advocacy, of propaganda, of sensationalism, of ideology. It pays more.

Two pervasive examples are ready to hand. The first is Evolution. Evolution is a non-scientific ideology, falsely claiming the garb of hard-science. How do we know that? It has failed spectacularly to define the terms under which its hypotheses would be falsified. Evolutionists do not rigorously and relentlessly seek to falsify the theory. Thus, Evolution is not science, but mythology. It is snot-nosed science.

A second is more recent—Global Warming. We can tell instantly that in the case of Global Warming, we are not dealing with scientific knowledge, but ideological advocacy, with propaganda. How do we know this? Its protagonists cannot define the terms under which it would be falsified. That is, Global Warming has not been developed under the rigour of the hard-nosed scientific method. It is snot-science.

As actual data comes in, the evidence is mounting that the earth is cooling. The Global Warming hypothesis would lead us to expect the opposite, particularly with the huge increase in anthropogenic CO2 output over the past thirty years. If the science were genuine and hard-nosed, the actual testing of the hypothesis would lead to its falsification. The Global Warming hypothesis implies rising temperatures. Temperatures are not rising; global cooling is occurring. Ergo, Global Warming hypothesis is false. At best, it needs to be radically rethought, and re-crafted—then re-tested.

But what is actually happening? In a German study, published by Nature magazine (peer reviewed, of course), in light of the growing evidence of cooling, the prestigious, mainstream magazine asserted that the world is definitely warming! There is snot-nosed science at its worst. Ideology masquerading as science. The “scientists” concede that it is now likely the world will cool until 2015, but—there is always a “but” in snot-nosed science—it will heat up rapidly after that.

Sounds remarkably like Evolutionists trying to marshall believable explanations for brute chance producing perpetual order and structure. Yes, how do you explain that? “More time folks.” Billions of years more time. Anything can happen over billions of years—projected back into the past.

So the earth is cooling, rapidly. How do you explain that in the light of your hypothesis? “More time folks”. It’s the Pantene effect. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. The evidence will emerge—eventually. There is one certainty in all of this which is beyond doubt: the earth is definitely warming! In other words, regardless of the evidence, the theory cannot be falsified. It has no terms under which it could be falsified. Snot-nosed science. Ideology. Mythology.

Not that scientists are entirely to blame—although those worthy of the name should know better. (Thankfully, a growing number of hard-nosed genuine scientists are starting to rip into Global Warming mythology.) The world demands certainties, verities, infallibilities in order to be or do anything. As the modern world has devolved into a crass materialistic world-view, it has demanded that those that study matter, the scientists, provide infallible certainties upon which it can base its policies, programmes, and planning. Stupidly, far too many scientists have heeded the Siren’s call. The outcome is likely to be a shipwreck of the credibility of science.

For the snot-nosed scientists, this will be a tragedy. For the hard-nosed scientists, it will be huge leap forward.

For the modern world, its politicians, planners, pseudo-intellectuals, and chattering classes it will be just one more idol, lying broken in the temple of Baal.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>The Malignancy of Unbelievers Toward Christ Will Out

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Matthew 10: 34

These words of our Lord have been seized upon in recent days by those intent on blaspheming against the Lord, and on ridiculing and mocking His followers. They have alleged that Jesus Christ and Christianity is a religion of blood and violence—and cite this text to “prove” their case.

They then go on to draw equivalence with Islam to the effect that the bloodshed and oppression of Islam is equally intrinsic to our Lord’s mission to bring bloodshed and violence—which in turn “proves” that all religions are alike in their bloodlust, primitiveness, and violent oppression. They, however, for their part, eschew violence. They are modern men. They are reasonable, sober, even-tempered individuals who weigh matters in cool rational discourse, with a fearless desire for the truth. They are in every way the modern enlightened scientific man.

Does this text establish the proposition that Jesus Christ is propagator of violence and oppression? Or have our cool, rational, modern, enlightened men merely used the text as a pretext for their hatred and rejection of our Lord? Have they used the text in an intellectually honest manner, or have they deceitfully misused the passage?

It is very clear that Jesus confirms that violence will always attend the Lord and His mission on the earth. But the question is begged, who is the aggressor? Who is the violent? Who lifts up the sword? The answer is not far away, nor difficult to find. Even a child taking the time and trouble to read the text and its context would be able to answer the question.

Matthew chapter 10 records Jesus sending out his disciples as missionaries to Israel. He gives them various instructions about the mission, then provides a frank and sober assessment of what they will face. He says that He is sending them out as sheep among the wolves (verse 16)—an interesting image, since when we compare sheep to wolves, we instinctively know that violence attends the wolf, not the sheep. It is the wolf which tears the sheep to pieces, not the other way around.

He says, “Beware of men; for they will deliver you up to the courts, and scourge you in their synagogues . . . and brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all on account of My name. . . . But when they persecute you in this city, flee to the next; . . . .” (verses 16—23)

We ask again—whence the violence? Who is wielding the sword?

But, the Christian is not to fear this violent outpouring of hatred upon him. “Do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (verse 28) So, who is killing whom? In our Lord’s warning and description it is clearly the Unbeliever who is persecuting, torturing, and killing the faithful Christian. That is what Jesus is speaking about—and it is given as a description of the norm. This is what will always occur when Unbelievers are confronted with the Lord Jesus and His disciples. They will turn like wolves upon the sheep.

Immediately after this, Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” (verses 34—37)

The reference to enmity and divisions in households refers back to His warning that brother will deliver up brother to death—but clearly Christ is referring to the unbelieving household member so hating the truth of the Gospel that he violently rejects the ties of blood and brings pseudo-judicial murder upon his own brother. He is referring to children rising up against parents, causing them to be put to death. (verse 21). That is what the disciples are to expect at the hands of their own children.

So when Christ declares He comes not to bring peace but a sword, in the context He is candidly telling His disciples that the effect of His coming will be bloodshed—but that the shedders of blood, the murderers and the violent will be the Unbelievers, and the one’s whose blood will be shed will be the Christians.

Notice that He does not instruct His servants to carry weapons, and engage in violence in retaliation—but that they are to be as sheep. If they are delivered up to death, their vindication at the hands of God is yet to come.

Finally, we note that Jesus, when speaking of a man’s enemies being the enemies of his own household, is quoting directly from Micah 7:6. In that passage, Micah is lamenting the murder, rape and pillage of the righteous in the land at the hands of the unbelieving wicked.

So, even the young Sunday School child could tell you at the drop of a hat that to suggest from Matthew 10:34 that our Lord was calling for violence and the shedding of blood is superstitious nonsense, intellectual deceit, and a grave slander.

How, then, should we assess the misuse of this text by those alleging that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a bloody, violent religion? Firstly, we note that it is a practice of deceit. While cloaking themselves in robes of cool, rational discourse and a relentless pursuit of the truth, in this matter they have trafficked in deceit, lies, slander, and deliberate distortions. While espousing honest intellectual inquiry, in this matter they have propagated egregious errors.

But why? Why such cant? Why such a bitter outburst? Why such hypocrisy? Why such intellectual legerdemain? Why have they acted in such a way that puts the lie to their carefully crafted self-delusions of rationality and love of the truth? The answer is simple. They are yet unwilling servants of God. They serve His purposes. They are being used by God to testify to His truth, and to the veracity of His Son.

Their hatred of Christ proves the very point that Christ was making. Their malignancy leads not only to deliberate slander and distortions of the truth—but also to a thorough going hypocritical denial of all that they pride themselves to be—cool, intellectual, objective, rational moderns. They cannot help themselves. Their natural hatred of Christ has to come out, even if they must traffic in lies and slander to do it.

Yes, the coming of Christ in our world brings a sword, not peace. But it is the Unbelievers who are the wolves. It is the Unbelievers who wield that sword. And their innocent victims are the peace-loving followers of Jesus Christ. Our erstwhile modern objective rationalists prove it so. And thus it has ever been.

>Sabbath Meditation

>A City upon a Hill

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. . . . Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 5: 14,16

It is clear that the Kingdom of God is not to be a secret society, known only to initiates who have been taught the secret codes. It is clear from these words of our Lord that the the Church and the broader Kingdom are to be seen and its existence to an extent known by all men.

In the first place, the Church—God’s people—is, and are, the light of the world. It is intriguing that this is not an imperative or command—as in, “You ought to be, or must be, the light of the world.” Rather it is a proposition. The Church is the light of the world. Whether we like it or not that is who we are; that is what the Lord has constituted us to be.

Moreover, the Church is not one light amongst many. It is the light of the world. The world has no other light. It is a dark place. That is not to say, of course, that the world does not have many claimants to be light—but they are all false. God has given one, and one only light to the people of the world. It is the Church of the Living God. Now here is the thing: the more dark the world becomes: the more depraved, destructive, dissected and dessicated, the brighter the light shines. The contrast between the people of God and the people of the world becomes more clear. The light becomes more attractive as the alternatives becomes unspeakable.

The Church, then, is to be public and evident—just like a city set on a great hill cannot be hidden. God intends then that His Church will be increasingly visible and evident and known in the world.

But with this comes a temptation for those who are spiritually immature and still children. Many falsely reason that since the Church is to be public, it is our duty to get noticed. Therefore, many spend much of their lives and wealth “marketing” to the world, trying to get the world to change its mind about the Church and God, trying to cast the Church in a more positive light, trying to do an image-makeover.

But our Lord neither commands nor commends such efforts. The shining of the light before the world is to be in terms of our good works (verse 16)—by which the Scripture means righteous living. This simply means that we are to live as the new creation of God, the people of the realm of Resurrection, conforming our lives to the life of God in Christ whilst still in the world. Simply put, this means seeking to live our lives as if sin had never entered the world.

So, it means living according to the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, etc) in our relations within our families, neighbours, fellow believers, and all men as we have opportunity. It means living richly generous lives. It means working hard, being prudent stewards. It means denial of self for the sake of the future of others. It means being godly, Spirit filled, grace giving parents—and children. It means being part of a public worshiping community where there is no rich or poor, slave or free—in the sense that these things do not matter and do not cause divisions or separation—joyfully together in the presence of the Lord.

It does not mean trying to curry favour with the world, doing things which the world will approve or with which it is likely to be impressed. The whole point of living as the new creation amidst a dying world is that who we are, what we do, and how we do it will be inevitably radically different from what is done in a gangrenous, necrotic world. The whole point of being a new creation is that we could not care less what the old creation thinks. It is, after all, the old creation, afflicted with sin and death. The whole orientation of our lives is to cry out, in effect, to the world, “Come out from among them and be ye separate . . .” That is the call of redemption to those still in the world. They have to change camps. The call of the Church is not to show the world that we are just like them. Our cry to the world is not “Make room for us, we are coming over.” yet that is how many foolish children think, even to this day.

But, then, the question is begged—since the world hates God and His people, how will they ever come out and over, if we do not make ourselves more acceptable to them? After all, sugar attracts more flies than vinegar, they say. They will come out and over when their lives in the world become troubling and hateful to them. This is when the light of the City of God shines most brightly.

It is those who are yet in the world and who have begun to be troubled by it, who have been made to be afflicted with a deep sense of unease and dissatisfaction with themselves and their lives—it is these who are motivated to lift up their eyes to see the city on a great hill and think, “It’s got to be better up there.”

When people taste the fruits of unrighteousness and find them bitter, the Church, which is the light of the world, appears most bright and beautiful to them.

>The S-Files

>Dr Cindy Kiro: The Ex-Nihilo Creator of Human Rights

Contra Celsum has nominated Dr Cindy Kiro, Children’s Commissioner for an S-Award.

Citation:

Dr Cindy Kiro has argued before the parliamentary law and order committee considering the anti-tagging and graffiti bill that the bill will adversely affect young people under eighteen. The good doctor is nothing if not profoundly insightful. If you are under eighteen and you are a tagger, we guess it is pretty much right on the nail to argue that the bill will adversely affect you. We are sure the interests of the taggers are being properly defended by their Commissioner.

What is far more difficult to accept is that we, the people, have to pay Dr Kiro’s salary. Yes, we actually have to pay for this kind of scintillating social commentary. It is really far too valuable not to have to pay, after all.

But Dr Kiro went on to argue that for some people, graffiti and tagging was a legitimate art form. It provided a sense of community and reflected an expression-based culture. (NZ Herald, 10th April, 2008)

So, let’s get this straight. If a group of people think something is a legitimate art form, the rest of the community should make room for it. In a Clockwork Orange world, some people think violent sado-masochistic torture is a legitimate art form. Should we tolerate that too? Violent serial sociopaths have a consistent tendency to see themselves as artists. Would Kiro have us respect their art as well?

One wonders what Dr Kiro means when she uses the adjective “legitimate” art form. Is she claiming that some people think that graffiti is a genuine art form? Or is she claiming that the act of painting graffiti and despoiling people’s property should be lawful (that is, not a criminal act because it is a genuine art form? )

If the former (graffiti is a genuine art form), one is left scratching one’s head at the relevance of her submission. For surely, if some people regard graffiti as a genuine art form they are absolutely free to hold the opinion and view. Moreover, they can create and express their art to their heart’s content—as long as they do it on their own property. Who can object to that? We imagine that everyone on the parliamentary committee would want to defend a person’s rights of free expression in that regard. How could this be construed as adversely affecting young people under age eighteen?

If the latter, Dr Kiro must have lost any moral compass she once might have had. It would seem that Dr Kiro really is arguing that despoiling people’s property should be accepted as a lawful act by the community because it is a genuine art form.

But it gets worse. In her submission, Dr Kiro urged that the bill should be amended to balance appropriately the rights of property owners against the rights of young people. As we have argued above, there is absolutely no way the current bill traduces the rights of anyone to graffiti their own property if they wish to do so. What Dr Kiro is arguing is that a certain group of young people, who are genuine artists (in their own eyes), apparently have a right to graffiti and despoil other people’s property—a right warranted because they are “artists”—and that the community should respect their rights.

Dr Kiro is apparently an expert on rights (in her own eyes). She sees them here. She sees them there. She sees them everywhere. She can even create them out of thin air.

Well how’s this, Dr Kiro. We, the people, have rights too. We have a right not to be afflicted with such monumental stupidity from our public servants. Please respect our rights, sit down, cease, and desist from egregious, asinine behaviour.

Dr Cindy Kiro—S-Award Class II for behaviour that is Stupid, Short Sighted and Stupefied.

>Fiddling While Rome Rots

>Politicians and the Growing Underclass

About a year ago, John Key, Leader of the National Party, claimed that there was a growing underclass in New Zealand. The chattering classes tut tutted between sips of pinot gris, and the Labour government said, “Diddums.” Yet there was a surprising groundswell of agreement.

It is highly unlikely that John Key will be able to do anything about the underclass. It is probable that he has only the barest modicum of understanding about what constitutes the underclass, how people get into it, how people get out of it, and what causes it to contract or grow. But it was good political theatre—particularly coming from a “poor boy who made good”. Nevertheless there is a broad social consensus in New Zealand that everyone deserves a fair crack—hence the groundswell of agreement—and so there is a general desire to do something for the underclass.

But before we hive off into yet another costly utopian dream, which, like all utopian dreams, merely makes some people feel good, whilst creating far worse problems than it was ever designed to overcome, we would be wise to establish a definition of the underclass that comes close to approximating reality.

Firstly, let us establish what the underclass is not.

The underclass is not to be defined in terms of race. Whilst it is true that at any given time certain races may be predominantly reflected in underclass statistics, race itself does not determine who populates the underclass. People may loosely speak of Maori being over represented in the underclass, or of Polynesians, or of any other racial type or group. But the characterisation is loose and misleading because race is not a determinant of class, nor is it a necessary cause.

Moreover, the underclass is not to be defined solely in terms of socio-economic status or income. This is counter-intuitive, because when people speak of upper or lower classes they almost always are referring to levels of relative income or wealth. It is also confusing because the underclass—as a group—are predominantly poor and less well off than other groups. But if we think of the underclass only in terms of socio-economic status we fail to take cognizance of people that are in transition through low levels of income.

For example, younger people who are just entering the work force, may soon increase their level of income and rise relatively rapidly up the socio-economic scale. We would also fail to account properly for people who have fallen on hard times, whether through sickness, death of a breadwinner, loss of employment or some other hardship. Yet these people often regather themselves, start over, and make progress. Incidentally, this is why John Key was never in the underclass, although he and his widowed mother were poor. Any extenuations from Key’s experience to generalisations about the underclass would be terribly misleading.

Socio-economic status and income levels may be a sign-post to the underclass, but they fail as a definition. If they are used as a definition—which is universally the preference of the bureaucratic mind, which requires things that can be measured, in order to devise policies and plans—the measurement is foolishly simplistic and the policy outcomes which are built upon it end up doing far more harm than good. It is axiomatic that policy outcomes based on such stupid and naïve criteria will cause the underclass to swell rapidly. In fact, because of such folly, it is not an exaggeration to say that the modern underclass is largely (but not solely) a creation of government.

The underclass is not a function of race, nor of socio-economic position. The underclass is essentially a function of family (hence, its often mistaken association with a particular race.)

Here is a description of the underclass:

They have no respect for the law, or themselves
They enjoy their shacks and huts along the river or across the tracks and love their dirty, smoky, low-class dives and taverns.
Whole families—children, in-laws, mistresses, and all—live in one shack.
This is the crime class that produces the delinquency and sexual promiscuity that fills the paper.
Their interests lie in sex and its perversion. The girls are always pregnant; the families are huge; incestual relations occur frequently.
They are not inspired by education, and only a few are able to make any attainments along this line.
There are loud in their speech, vulgar in their actions, sloppy in their dress, and indifferent toward their plight. Their vocabulary develops as profanity is learned.
If they work, they work at very menial jobs.
Their life experiences are purely physical, and even these are on a low plane.
They have no interest in health and medical care.
The men are too lazy to work or do odd jobs around town.
The group lives for a Saturday of drinking or fighting.

A further characterisation is as follows:

They will leave a job casually, often without notice . . . 8 percent of the mothers and 46 percent of the fathers had been convicted once or more in the local courts. Serial monogamy is the rule . . . one-fifth to one-fourth of all births are illegitimate . . . The mean (number of children) is 5.6 per mother. . . . Disagreements leading to quarrels and vicious fights, followed by desertion by either the man or the woman . . . is not unusual.. . . The burden of child care, as well as support, falls on the mother more often than the father when the family is broken. Before the sixteenth birthday is reached . . . 75 percent of [their children] have left school.

Sound familiar? Which town or city in New Zealand is being described? Murupara? Kaikohe? Manurewa East? Which race is being described? Maori? Pacific Island Polynesian? Chinese? European?

Actually, the description is of twenty-five percent of the population of a small Midwestern town in the United States in 1940. The entire population was white, apart from one black family, and was mostly native-born Protestants, mainly descended from “old America stock.” (The sociological analysis is presented by A B Hollingshead, Elmstowns’s Youth [New York: Wiley, 1949]. The summary and citations are found in Edward Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited [Boston: Little Brown, 1974], p.88,89)

What Hollingshead presents is a picture of the life style of the underclass. It is eerily consistent with the behaviour of the underclass in New Zealand. How many of you reading the descriptions were not recalling people and places you know in our own country? How many had a vision of Macsyna King and Chris Kahui spring to mind?

The underclass is not a function of race, nor of income. It is a function of habituated family lifestyle, which in turn is an outworking or expression of one’s inherited heart, soul, and world-view. Thus, everything that occurs and happens is interpreted by the pre-conditioned mentality of the underclass. If you gave a $100 note to a member of the underclass, and a second $100 note to a non-underclass member with instructions that they were to use the money to achieve the outcome that they desire and value the most, it is likely that the choices made would be very different. The underclass member would be focused on immediate benefit and gratification.

It is around about now in the discussion that everyone sees light at the end of the tunnel. Right then—what we need to do is educate the underclass so that they can be reprogrammed. We need to indoctrinate them into taking responsibility for themselves and for their families, work hard, save, order their priorities around food, clothing and shelter, not drugs, drink, or indulgence—and so forth. If we do this, the underclass will shrink. We will have provided a hand up, not a hand out.

Now there is a notion which is risible. There is absolutely no way modern Athenian society or government can provide such an education or indoctrination—and even if it could, it is doubtful that it would have any impact whatsoever. Modern Athenian social and political culture is built pervasively around the notion of rights and entitlements. It is a blasted and benighted legacy of the rationalistic, humanistic Enlightenment.

Modern Athenian social ideology tells everyone—including every member of the current underclass—that they have a right to automatic, unconditional entitlements. Everyone is told ad nauseam that society owes everyone a living. It is a right of being a human being. No matter what terms are used to disguise the ideology—such as “safety net”, “emergency benefits”, “helping hand”, “closing the gaps”—the reality is that modern culture believes deeply and universally in unconditional entitlements as an necessary expression of justice, human rights, and equity.

The idea that the underclass should be taught that they must become responsible for themselves and accountable for their own lives would be an anathema to modern society—because it would be seen as unfairly discriminatory. Since any ideology of self-responsibility and “un-entitlements” would be so contrary to all that modern Athens stands for and represents, one would have to conclude that the underclass was being unfairly singled out—and therefore discriminated against.

Education of the underclass to change their world view would be an utter waste of time and money, since the modern Athenian education system is founded on an ideology shared and held in common with the underclass. In a way, the underclass are the true vanguard of the world view of modern man—they are fearless enough, and honest enough to live consistently with what the world believes about life, humanity and happiness.

However, notwithstanding the inevitable abject failure of any attempt by modern man to educated the underclass, try they will. And everyone will feel better about it.

In New Zealand now, we are seeing the fourth welfare generation emerge. For four successive generations the underclass has not worked but has been kept alive by unconditional entitlements. And more families are falling into the underclass lifestyle month by month—and staying there in perpetuity. The underclass mentality is now so pervasive, so influential, so synonymous with New Zealand that large numbers of people have concluded that getting ahead and progressing necessitates leaving the country entirely and going to Australia and elsewhere. The country itself is becoming seen as the underclass ghetto.

But don’t worry our politicians, our governments, are busy off tilting at incredibly costly and expensive windmills, such as saving the planet from green house gases. If ever there was to be an instance of utterly incompetent blindness we have seen it now. But Athens will not change. Athens cannot change. It can no more change than deny itself.

The ideology of rights based entitlements results in a permanent and growing underclass. A welfare system that only supports needs over time produces more and more needy people. To get what one wants and needs, one must be more needy. That is the inevitable outcome of humanist, rights based ideology.

The disgust of modern Athens is that it makes the lifestyle and mentality of the underclass rational and reasonable. But its prevailing ideology and religion mean it cannot do otherwise.