Theology of Government and COVID – Part 3

September 30, 2021 Ethan Aloiai

Welcome to part three of this series looking at a Biblical theology of government and certain applications to our current cultural moment. For links to the other installments, see the list below.

In today’s episode, we are looking at the third principle and thinking about the fact that all nations are, in fact, theocracies. The question is, which God is in charge?

Theology of Government and COVID – Part 2

September 23, 2021 Ethan Aloiai

Welcome to part two of this series looking at a Biblical theology of government and certain applications to our current cultural moment. For links to the other installments, see the list below.

In today’s episode, we are looking at the second principle regarding the limited authority of civil governments.

Theology of Government and COVID – Part 1

September 16, 2021 Ethan Aloiai

Here in New Zealand, we have once again been subjected to a nationwide lockdown. Churches are closed, the nation is on house arrest, and you can only go to work if the government deems your work essential.

I am convinced that one of the premier problems facing the Christian church is a disgraceful complicity with the idolatry of the state and a woefully lacking theology of government.

By the end of this series, I want to make the suggestion that churches and church leaders are morally obliged to disregard our government’s lockdown orders and reopen the church as soon as possible. But before we get there, we must lay some Biblical foundations. Foundations that have been eroded for decades and are about to cause a collapse of the entire house.

What I want to do here is lay a ground-up foundation for Biblical principles regarding our theology of government and then make application to our current cultural moment. My hope is that we might all be able to take a step back and reconsider some of our assumptions about the role of government and our obligations before God in relation to government edicts.

Across this series, we will look at three core principles and then some applications regarding our current cultural moment. here is where we are heading:

This first installment explores principle one. Enjoy.

Conversion Practices Prohibition Submission

August 26, 2021 Ethan Aloiai

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

A ‘Choice’ Education.

January 15, 2020 Grumpy Boomer

Kiwi slang uses the word ‘choice’ as a way of saying something is really good, of top quality. You might say, for example, “that was a choice party” or “that’s a choice car” etc. When it comes to education and schooling in NZ, what is desperately needed is a ‘choice’ education of another kind, as in the literal meaning of the word. Parents should be able to choose from a number of alternatives in the type of schooling and education best suited to their children’s needs. For too long, state schools and successive governments have monopolized the education scene in NZ.

Most people, when it comes to education, would probably put fairness and accountability high on their list of desirable features with regard to teaching and learning. I would like to add a third ingredient. One that is at times, contentious and not popular with bureaucrats, ‘educrats’ and the ‘political left’. It is, of course, ‘choice’, where parents are given real options and choices about the type of schooling they want for their children. After all, parents are the key stakeholders in this whole business of schooling, teaching and learning.

Choice has the power to change the educational landscape and improve educational outcomes for all children regardless of ethnicity or socio-economic background. Choice is an answer to the continuing slide in our international OECD rankings in reading, maths and science. The latest round of results from OECD’s Programme for International Study Assessment (Pisa) report, confirms New Zealand’s entrenched trend of a continuous downward decline in our international ranking.

This, of course, flies in the face of the mantra, “NZ has the world’s best education system”, which has been incessantly chanted for years, by incompetent politicians, bureaucrats and short-sighted teacher unions. All kinds of explanations, reasons and excuses have been put forward by ‘experts’ to account for this persistent slide into mediocrity. Choice, making real, tangible choices available to parents has the potential to turn things around.

However, there are a number of barriers obstructing the benefits of choice and its introduction into the current education scene. Two ‘roadblocks’ are politicians, particularly those on the ‘left’ and the narrow-minded education bureaucrats fighting fiercely to hold on to the status quo and their own considerable power base. Many commentators have accurately pointed out that we continue to have an education system largely shaped by political whim. Politicians and successive governments somehow always presume that they know best. Long term strategic thinking and planning in education will never happen while politicians preside over it.

One example of this political arrogance occurred early on in our current Labour coalition government’s tenure. The newly appointed minister of education, Mr Hipkins, was quoted as saying that the benefits of the competitive model ‘have run their course’. How would he know? He doesn’t! He just decided that the concepts of ‘competition’ and its close ally, ‘choice’ don’t fit with his party’s ideological and philosophical views on education. Perhaps Mr Hipkins should spend some time looking at successful state, integrated and private schools all around the country and then ask some hard questions. For example, “Why are parents sending their children to these preferred schools? What are these schools providing that many others aren’t?” The answers are not rocket science. Preferred schools are providing what parents value and believe is important and not some political utopian vision of mandated conformity.

State schooling is all about compulsion and ‘one size fits all’ model. The Labour coalition government’s closing down of the charter school model, when it came to power, is a case in point. Isn’t it funny how we believe and value freedom of choice in most other aspects of life, but not when it comes to education?

New Zealand’s educational woes will not be solved by just focusing on the key specific components of our education system. Rather there is an urgent need for government and education policy makers to examine why there is a lack of choice, fairness and accountability in our current education system.

Choice and fairness for parents do not exist, especially for families from lower socio-economic groups. Government state schools hold a virtual monopoly and real choice is only available to those families who are able to afford private school fees. These taxpayers, who have already paid taxes for our state education system, have to pay again to make a choice and on top of this, suffer the indignity of paying a third time with the added GST component.

Much has been written about the concept of ‘money follows the child’ or as it is more commonly known ‘the educational voucher system’. Nearly everywhere this has been deployed around the world, it has resulted in vastly improved educational outcomes, particularly in poor ‘low decile’ areas. It is a simple but powerful idea. Every parent is given a voucher which they can redeem at any registered school of their choice. Parents are able to lever some real accountability. They can choose to invest their educational dollars in schools which get results and meet their child’s needs. Suddenly overnight, schools become far more parent and family-focused; the ‘educrat’s’ power and influence is reduced commensurately. School performance and educational outcomes rise.

Achieving any real change and improvement to our current education system will require political will of courage and strong convictions. Teacher unions and the bureaucrats have systematically opposed just about every reform of note in the government-run education system for the past twenty-five years. The principles driving this reactionary bias are fairly obvious: firstly, teacher jobs and conditions must be preserved at all costs; secondly, if any proposed government policy would threaten teachers or the control of the unions over the sector, it will be vociferously opposed.

It will take visionary leadership of conviction and purpose, not pragmatism, to make inroads into a system badly in need of a complete makeover. Unless this happens, we will be destined to continue our downward decline in education rankings and a further round of ‘hand wringing’ accompanied by a plethora of reasons and excuses for further failures, delivered by ‘the experts’ several years on from now.