And so we begin

This is the first attempt to put some recent thoughts down on page. This is an ongoing thought process but I am at the stage where I need some feedback. Actually there are 2 ideas here that have begun to merge so bear with me if this is a little all over the place.

The 2 thoughts began as a response to the war in Iraq as I looked into my motives for opposing it. What drove me to oppose the conflict?
- Was it my Christian faith?
- Was it my Australian sense of fair play - the USA is a super power and Iraq a little country what's fair about this fight?
- Was it a fear of the USA taking over the world - or at least acting as if it could if it wanted to?
- Was it a sense of outrage and helplessness that the USA was arrogantly defying the rest of the world and we couldn't do anything about it?
- Or was it simply that I was reacting in the manner that the worlds secular press wanted me to react as they portrayed the conflict according to their editors wishes?

I started to wonder - not why should I oppose the war but why shouldn't I support a Christian leader, IF his policies are not in conflict with the scripture. Now I should make one thing very clear here - I was not thinking and am not advocating the mindless, uncritical following of any person. That would be cultish. My first question was more along the lines of, and bear with me here:

If a Christian political leader has a policy that I disagree with, but is not defying or denying scripture should I oppose this? What if the alternative view has it's basis firmly in humanistic philosophy rather than in scripture? Which do I support?

If we consider the war in Iraq the evidence from intelligence that the leaders of the USA, Britain, Australia and a few others saw was obviously fairly compelling. Compelling enough that it would probably have passed a 2nd resolution in the UN authorising limited engagement al beit in a diluted form from that which the USA wanted. That the intelligence has since shown to be flawed is another story because I am looking at the decisions made based on the evidence available at the time. The evidence was obviously compelling enough that members on both sides of parliament in these countries authorised involvement despite overwhelming public opinion being against war. At least 2 of the leaders in this group are active practising Christians, Bush and Howard. These are men who, if you read their biographies, take their faith very seriously. They would not have made decisions without having taken it to God first.

Now consider that arguments against going to war. Without having access to the "sensitive intelligence" what did the worlds media and their "experts" base their opposition upon? Obviously there were snippets of information from experts who had been in Iraq previously. There was work of the weapons inspectors who found nothing but admitted they were often being led on wild goose chases and playing a game of cat and mouse with the Iraqi authorities. But there was also a very definite humanistic agenda being pursued by the worlds media.

History shows us that world order is established through the domination of one or more countries by another. War was used to establish territorial boundaries and bring peoples into submission. Often it is external but sometimes internal elements are used by external forces to achieve the same end (proxy wars). It is an ongoing method in many parts of the world. recently (or ongoing) in Africa - Rawanda, Dem.Rep. of Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan, etc ... In Europe - throughout the Balkans (Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, etc.) In the west Asia - Israel, Syria, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, etc. In south Asia - India & Pakistan involved over Kashmir, insurgency in other parts of India, the Maoist movement in Nepal, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. In east Asia - the islands in the South China Sea, Tibet, Vietnam, Cambodia. The list can go on (Fiji, Colombia, Haiti, etc...) The USA in particular is partial to the proxy war senario as has been seen in Haiti and at various times throughout the cold war (Afghanistan, various place in Africa, ...) But we should learn from history and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

These days we have names for these situations. We call it ethnic cleansing and talk about communal tensions. We talk about human rights and democracy (whatever form that takes - USA, Singaporean, Westminster???) But where have our current understanding of these terms arisen from? Who decides what is a human right? Many of the stories we find in the Bible are gross violations of human rights. They demonstrate ethnic cleansing, often brutal, and usually commanded by God. Democracy is not even mentioned. People talk about Jesus being a pacifist and yet he caused huge upheaval and was obviously considered a big enough threat to the status quo have him killed. The following centuries as Christendom expanded was marked by both horrific persecution of the Christians and also uprising against the Roman authorities. Historians talk of only 2 sects of Judaism surviving the putting down of the Jews after the final uprising - one of these was the Christians.

And here is where my other line of thought merges in. I started wondering whether the emphasis on a "personal faith" that came about since the reformation has led to us no longer understanding the role of the body of Christ in the world. As the west has embraced humanistic philosophy it has also spawned the concepts of human rights and the rights of the individual. Subtly we have embraced this within the church as well. Again I am not saying that human rights are wrong and the rights of the individual are wrong. Not at all. But God is clear throughout the Bible that what he does, what he lets happen has nothing to do with human rights. It has nothing to do with whether we think it is fair or not. It has everything to do with God's rights and his justice. God often talks about dealing "for my name's sake." It is his name that is being defended. It is his justice that is being fulfilled. Yes God cares for the nations and different ethnicities - he created them (think Tower of Babel) after all. But he deals with them on a global scale according to his rights.

So what role does the church have in the world today? One of the mistakes of the Israelites is that they failed to destroy the high places as they entered lands. This then led to idolatry. These days the church in the west again puts this in an individualistic context - idolatry means money, fame, position, etc. But put it in a global context and we see that the groups that are fulfilling this command to destroy the high places are more often than not Islamic no Christian!! The Taliban destroyed the huge statues of Buddha in Afghanistan to the outrage of the world's humanistic masses. What about the great colonisers the British? How might India be different today if the Christian British destroyed the idols and temples they found in India? Idle speculation, yes, but I am prompting thoughts in my mind regarding the church of today. We focus on the individual at the expense of global issues. We object to Christian political leaders doing the same thing God commanded his people in the old testament to do. Which brings me back to my original question. If a Christian political leader has a policy that I disagree with, but is not defying or denying scripture should I oppose this?

Well I am sorry this is a long series of thoughts. But like I said the time had come to try and articulate some of the thoughts and get some feedback on whether I am way off the planet or at least half way there.

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