When cultures reject God, they cut themselves off from the ultimate ground of reality, and in the end they do indeed become weightless, insubstantial, light as air, ephemeral or, in the terms used by the prophets, “weighed in the balances, and found wanting” (Daniel 5:27 KJV). They give birth “only to wind” (Is 26:18), and like tumbleweed before the hurricanes of history, they are eventually “gone with the wind” (Is 57:13). The judgment over their end is the verdict “Ichabod” – the glory, the reality, the weightiness has gone (1 Sam 4:21).
Os Guiness in Impossible People
Sin is Social
You don’t have to travel far either in the real world or the internet realm to hear a modern man or woman assert that they are OK with an adult choosing to do with their body whatever they want to do. Thus if an adult man wants to sleep with another adult man, that’s OK. If he wants to have his genitalia removed, take hormones and have bits added to him, that’s fine too. If he wants to be involved in polygamy, that’s not a problem. The individual reigns supreme, as long as he doesn’t hurt anyone else. Unfortunately, comments like these can even be heard from Christians – which shows how thoroughly secular pluralism has infected our thinking.
A Christian response should be, “What do the Scriptures teach?” They teach that we are not just free-floating individuals. We are social beings. Yes the individual matters, but we are all interconnected. This is seen in the truth that we are literally all connected. We are all descendants of Noah and through him of Adam. We are further connected by the design of the world. God has so made the world, that we cannot live without each other. I cannot build, or do electrical work, or conduct surgery. I need others. This pattern is also seen in the moral design of the world.
So what ethical implications does this connectedness have? It means that all sin is social. Sin is never just individual. No matter how small, it has ramifications for society through the web of relationships that it impacts. The classic case of course is in our representative head Adam, whose sin caused all of his descendants to be caught up in its effects. Another case in Scripture is the story of Achan whose disobedience to God caused his own death, the death of his family, and the deaths of 36 other Israelite men. David’s sin with Bathsheba led to the slow trainwreck of his family. Solomon’s sin of marrying foreign women and going after their gods had geopolitical implications that caused suffering and misery for centuries to come.
Sin is social. This truth is denied in the statement, “He can do what he wants as long as he doesn’t hurt anyone.” Sin always hurts society. Fatherless homes have an impact. Homosexual unions have an impact. This is why Mosaic law dealt with things in a way that seems more than harsh to us. Adultery was punishable by death. Why? Because the impact on society of this sin is horrific. It doesn’t just hurt the rejected spouse and their children. The effects of sin ripple out through our social connections. So as moderns, we think we are over the barbarity of such responses to adultery. Yet our ‘mercy’ is truly cruel. In our ‘kindness’ we allow and promote behaviour that leads to more crime, more teenage promiscuity, a mental health epidemic among teens, and a high rate of suicide. We all have to live with the effects of that kind of society.
Conversion Practices Prohibition Submission
Dear Prime Minister Ardern and Minister Faafoi,
I greet you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am writing this submission to implore you by the authority of the God of Nations, to abandon this bill and turn from the unjust and wicked spirit that would compel you to write it in the first place.
Both of you bear the honourable title “Minister” and occupy an office worthy of respect and submission. The very title “Minister” as it pertains to civil rulers, comes from the Bible. Romans 13:1-4 teaches that governing authorities are God’s servants (literally ministers) who are obliged to punish evil and praise good. Therefore, Christians are commanded to be in subjection to your God-ordained authority.
Be that as it may, you have betrayed the solemn responsibility of your office. Your authority to govern comes from God. Yet you have betrayed that authority and trust by supporting and promoting this bill. Rather than obediently honouring God in your office, you have sought to usurp authority that was never given to you. You have attempted to take the rights and responsibilities that belong to God alone.
You will give an account before God for the following:
1. The deceptive nature of this bill
From the outset, this bill has been an exercise in manipulation through the control of language. When we hear the phrase “conversion practices” most ordinary people think of electric shock therapy and other abusive practices that do not currently exist in New Zealand. This is clearly intentional. You have intentionally lumped these abusive practices in with ordinary Christian teaching as a bait and switch to coax along ignorant chumps.
You clearly don’t think too much of ordinary New Zealanders, but we see through this. When a teacher, like myself, offers Christian counsel to a student confused about their sexuality, we should not be lumped together with torturers and abusers.
From the beginning, this bill has been championed by radical anti-Christian activists like Shaneel Lall. It is clear that this bill has been designed to target Christians. That much is plain. What is more subtle is the deceptive way you have gone about it. The bill purports to target “conversion practices”, when in reality, it targets those who are trying to affirm boys, girls, men and women in their gender.
2. The unjust treatment of Christian pastors, parents, and teachers
As Christians, we recognise that this world was made by, and is governed by God. He has made mankind as male and female and heterosexual marriages are the natural expression of sexual desire. All attempts to overthrow this creation reality are highhanded rebellion against the king of the universe. We recognise that since Jesus died to pay the penalty for sinners like us, we should gladly submit to his righteous standards for ethical behaviour and moral living.
We teach others to turn to Jesus, recognise him as Lord, and obey all his teachings. This is foundational to our obligations before God. This means that we will indeed teach that God has made boys to grow up into men who love and marry women. This means we will encourage our children, students, and congregations to live in accordance with all that God made them to be. We will teach people to be transformed by the powerful word of God and supress lewd and sinful sexual desires. We will teach people not to rebel against God by seeking to be a member of the opposite sex. We will explain the destructive and perverse results of lifestyles that fail to recognise God’s created order. And we will teach against the radical LGBTQ ideology that is being promoted by our government and many other institutions.
As a teacher in a Christian school, I cannot abide by the proposals of this bill. By definition, I would be castigated as a criminal because all the students I teach are 18 years or younger. Criminalising people like myself for teaching the Christian message and worldview is reprehensible. By doing so you are inviting the judgment of God and placing yourselves under his curse.
Additionally, these laws absolutely exceed the sphere of authority that has been assigned to you. You have no right to tell parents that they can’t encourage their children to live out a Biblical sexual ethic. They are not your children!
All those who set themselves against the Lord and against his people will be held in derision and will come under the wrath of God. Stop seeking to punish the good and righteous teaching of God and his people.
3. The promotion of child abusing LGBTQ ideologies
The real danger to our children and to society is the radical and destructive ethic of the LGBTQ movement. The real and dangerous conversion therapy is practiced by those who seek to chemically and surgically overturn the created order of God. Promoting rank and open rebellion is what should be outlawed, yet this government has demonstrated time and time again that they have no interest in truth and justice.
In order to know how to live and flourish in this world, we must be directed by the life changing message of the gospel. The law of God teaches us how we can best love God and love our neighbours. All other worldviews are ultimately doomed to failure. At the top of the list of destructive worldviews would be the God-denying, self-promoting worldview of radical individualism.
We do not have the right to define what it means to be human. We are creatures. Only the creator has ultimate say about what and who we are, and he has spoken, both in his word and in creation. All attempts to silence his voice can only lead to disaster.
Conclusion
Jesus Christ is Lord. By virtue of his death and resurrection, he has assumed the place of highest authority. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, your authority is a derivative authority. This means that your authority is limited. You do not have the right to legislate immorality. Jesus will judge ministers harshly who have abandoned their duties and who have engaged in open rebellion and warfare against him.
Be that as it may, Jesus is a kind and compassionate ruler who loves to show mercy. In fact, he died to take the penalty for wicked and rebellious servants. He died for homosexual rebels, transgender rebels, and tyrannical rebels. He died to save them from the penalties of their lifestyles, and he now lives to transform them to be made new in Christ.
Recommendations
By the authority of Christ, you are commanded to repent. Abandon this bill. Assign it to the trash heap. Repent for your self-aggrandising lust for power and autonomy. Recognise that Jesus is Lord. Recognise that the only way to govern justly is to do so in light of his Lordship!
If you turn to Christ, you will find him to be a perfect saviour. You will find that his stipulated standards for righteousness and justice are the measure by which you should rule.
I will be praying that you do this.
In Christ,
Ethan Apollo Aloiai
Eternal Fire Insurance Marketing
The modern evangelical tendency to reduce evangelism to a form of ‘eternal fire insurance marketing’ seriously impoverishes our ability to capture a vision of the Messianic kingdom that the evangel is meant to announce and embody.
“The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society” by Joseph Boot
A Childlike Faith
More frequently than I would wish, I come across young Christians who are strongly socialist in their leanings. They vote Labour or the Greens. They have some knowledge of the Christian doctrine of sin, but do not seem to apply it universally. For them, individuals can be sinners. For example, landlords can be greedy when they want to raise rents. Corporations and businesses can sin, as in when they ‘oppress’ their workers by not supporting the raising of the minimum wage or sick leave entitlements. Whole classes and races of people can be responsible for sin; the current example being white privilege. Yet the strange thing is, they never seem to apply this to their political heroes. Whenever you point out that their heroes are promoting legislation that is antithetical to a Christian worldview, they reflexively defend their heroes. For example, attempt to criticise the hate speech legislation as dangerous, or point out that the conversion therapy ban is over the top and liable to lead to parents being hamstrung and they will retort with some vacuous nonsense like, “As Christians, we are called to love,” or “No one is going to punish a Christian parent for speaking biblical truth to their child when they are sexually confused.” Their naivety is culpable stupidity. They are Lenin’s apocryphal useful idiots. Their 17-year discipleship of secular indoctrination has clearly worked.
Dear young socialist Christians. Your child-like faith is misdirected. Placing that child-like faith in anyone but Jesus Christ is idolatry. Repent and develop a healthy scepticism of those in rebellion against your true king.
A Short History of Slavery
The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #13
We come now to our penultimate post on the directory for private worship.
XIII. And, because it is not given to every one to speak a word in season to a wearied or distressed conscience, it is expedient, that a person (in that case,) finding no ease, after the use of all ordinary means, private and publick, have their address to their own pastor, or some experienced Christian: but if the person troubled in conscience be of that condition, or of that sex, that discretion, modesty, or fear of scandal, requireth a godly, grave, and secret friend to be present with them in their said address, it is expedient that such a friend be present.
The language here is a little bit difficult. What is being said is that there will be situations where a person might not have someone who is able to give them apt biblical exhortation. Perhaps the situation might be in a family where the head of the household is not a Christian, or new to the faith and ill-equipped for the situation one of the household members finds themselves in. In these situations, when ordinary means, both private (which I take to mean individual Scripture reading and prayer as well as family worship) and public (which I imagine includes the exhortation from the pulpit), have been exhausted and unfruitful, a person is encouraged to seek individual counsel from their own pastor or an experienced Christian. The framers wisely point out that this should be done in a way that avoids potential scandal.
It is interesting to note that this ought not to be the normal way Christians find help. The authors of this directory seem to see this kind of counsel as extraordinary. Building strong Christian homes ought to minimise the need for this kind of counsel. In my experience as a teacher, children from well-grounded homes are far less likely to have mental health issues or require help from others outside of the family.
The New Androgyny
Mary Eberstadt is a Catholic author and social commentator who has written a number of great books including Home Alone America, How the West Lost God and her latest book, Primal Screams. If you have never read any of her work before, I’d highly recommend you grab a book of hers from the library.
Primal Screams has the subtitle, “How the sexual revolution created identity politics”. It’s well worth a read. She makes a number of interesting points throughout, but her comments on a section looking at the new androgyny were particularly interesting.
“The bedrock fact is that today’s women are continually given the message that they must perform like men – that men are the standard by which women should be measured.” Obviously, this disadvantages most women, because. unsurprisingly, women are not as good at being men as men! Most women, she rightly points out, cannot compete with men on male terms – ‘sexually, athletically, professionally or otherwise’. She suggests that our view of a successful woman has become the kind of woman how behaves most like a man, and a ‘beta woman’ is one who does not. Women who act like men are rewarded, and those who persist in traditional female roles – ‘marrying, raising a family of size, devoting time and talent to what used to be called domestic arts‘ are viewed with disdain.
As Christians, we ought to celebrate the distinctive designs of men and women and a woman’s special role as nurturer. We ought to challenge the secular paradigm that only one sex is needed and that success for a woman ought to look like success for a man. This is patently untrue and is a denial of creation design. God created Eve because he wanted women in his world. As male and female mankind images God. It is good and right for a woman to attend to the domestic arts and create a haven for her family as a wife and mother. We should celebrate this, and present the superiority of God’s design for families in our joyous, fruitful and serene family life.
Disturbing Events in NZ
There have been some disturbing developments in NZ lately, and as Christians we ought to be aware of them and think carefully about their significance. Cam Slate of the BFD has highligrhted them in a post provocatively entitled “It’s Official, New Zealand Is Now a Dictatorship“. He highlights disturbing things that have happened in the last week. I quote:
- The entire country was locked down under Level Four rules.
- The Government passed regulations to enforce mandatory masking.
- The Government passed regulations to require compulsory tracing.
- The Government via the Police abrogated Health exemption cards to compulsory masking.
- People who were protesting were arrested, charged and placed under house arrest with no access to internet capable devices
- The Government sets up and encourages people to use a snitch line to dob in neighbours, friends and family
- Media are operating as Government snitches
- The Prime Minister and her un-elected Health Czar have suspended parliament unilaterally.
To that, I would add the government’s anti-parent approach as demonstrated in the conversion therapy bill and the Ministry of Health’s advice that children between 12-15 do not need parental consent for the vaccine. Go and read Cam’s whole article on the BFD.
Also check out the press releases from Judith Collins and David Seymour. Suspending Parliament at such a time is unconscionable.
Welcome!
We’ve noticed increased traffic in recent months which suggests there are a few more regular readers. Welcome.
You can expect to see a new post every weekday, and often one on the weekends also.
This Thursday we are introducing another writer for Sojournal, Ethan Aloiai, the Maga hat wearing teacher who drove the New Zealand left into a frenzy after his appearance at a 2020 BLM protest. This led to an attempted cancellation by the ever tolerant and open-minded David Farrier (among others) who couldn’t handle people supporting Ethan on his blog site so he mass-banned them. Fair enough, his website and all. However, what is outrageous was the degree of his antagonism which was seen in his attempt to get Ethan censured by the Teaching Council. Apparently we cannot tolerate a man with different views to David teaching children at an independent school which people choose and pay money for because they don’t want the kind of schools David approves of. That’s the totaleftarians for you. They don’t have an argument. They only have cancellations and force.
This has been a spectacular example of an ‘own goal’. Because of the egregious attempts at destroying him, Ethan has now been featured on Talanoa Sa’o with excellent commentary on education in New Zealand. He is also becoming well-known in Christian education for his expertise in critical theory. Ethan Aloiai is arguably New Zealand’s foremost expert on critical theory and its dangers, and we are really excited to have him on board with Sojournal! Look out for his first post, highlighting his conversion therapy bill submission which will feature on Thursday at 9:00.