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The orner Post
March 25, A.D. 2018 Weekly Bulletin for Cornerstone Presbyterian Church cornerstonehobart.com
Cornerstone is part of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, and supports the vision100.org movement.
Looking for Rest? Today is the last of our nine week series on
Genesis 1:1-2:3. When God rested, not only
do we see a great hope of perfect rest for
exhausted and restless people, we also see
the way by which we may obtain that rest.
Easter Services
Good Friday 9 am, combined
with Soul Presbyterian.
Easter Sunday 10am.
Genesis 1:1-2:3 In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the
earth was formless and empty, darkness was
over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit
of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and
there was light. 4 God saw that the light was
good, and he separated the light from the
darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and
the darkness he called “night.” And there
was evening, and there was morning—the
first day.
6 And God said, “Let there be a vault
between the waters to separate water from
water.” 7 So God made the vault and
separated the water under the vault from the
water above it. And it was so. 8 God
called the vault “sky.” And there was
evening, and there was morning—the
second day.
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky
be gathered to one place, and let dry
ground appear.” And it was so. 10
God
called the dry ground “land,” and the
gathered waters he called “seas.” And God
saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, “Let the land produce
vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on
the land that bear fruit with seed in it,
according to their various kinds.” And it was
so. 12
The land produced vegetation: plants
bearing seed according to their kinds and
trees bearing fruit with seed in it according
to their kinds. And God saw that it was
good.13
And there was evening, and there
was morning—the third day.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the
vault of the sky to separate the day from the
night, and let them serve as signs to mark
sacred times, and days and years,15
and let
them be lights in the vault of the sky to give
light on the earth.” And it was so. 16
God
made two great lights—the greater light to
govern the day and the lesser light to
govern the night. He also made the
stars.17
God set them in the vault of the sky
to give light on the earth, 18
to govern the
day and the night, and to separate light from
darkness. And God saw that it was
good.19
And there was evening, and there
was morning—the fourth day.
20 And God said, “Let the water teem with
living creatures, and let birds fly above the
earth across the vault of the sky.” 21
So God
created the great creatures of the sea and
every living thing with which the water
teems and that moves about in it, according
to their kinds, and every winged bird
according to its kind. And God saw that it
was good. 22
God blessed them and said, “Be
fruitful and increase in number and fill the
water in the seas, and let the birds increase
on the earth.” 23
And there was evening, and
there was morning—the fifth day.
24 And God said, “Let the land produce
living creatures according to their kinds: the
livestock, the creatures that move along the
ground, and the wild animals, each
according to its kind.” And it was so. 25
God
made the wild animals according to their
kinds, the livestock according to their kinds,
and all the creatures that move along the
ground according to their kinds.And God
saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in
our image, in our likeness, so that they may
ruleover the fish in the sea and the birds in
the sky, over the livestock and all the wild
animals,[a]
and over all the creatures that
move along the ground.” 27
So God
created mankind in his own image, in the
image of God he created them; male and
female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be
fruitful and increase in number; fill the
earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the
sea and the birds in the sky and over every
living creature that moves on the ground.”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-
bearing plant on the face of the whole earth
and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.
They will be yours for food. 30
And to all the
beasts of the earth and all the birds in the
sky and all the creatures that move along the
ground—everything that has the breath of
life in it—I give every green plant for food.”
And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was
very good. And there was evening, and there
was morning—the sixth day.
2 Thus the heavens and the earth were
completed in all their vast array.
2 By the seventh day God had finished
the work he had been doing; so on the
seventh day he rested from all his
work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh
day and made it holy, because on it he
rested from all the work of
creating that he had done.
You Need Rest My good friend has a heart
problem. Sometimes it races
uncontrollably, and dangerously. He’s a
very busy man, with lots of plates in the
air. The doctor says he has to slow
down: “There needs to be time each day
when you end up saying to yourself, ‘What
shall I do now?’” Times of boredom are
highly recommended. Does he ever find
such times? I doubt it.
Our pace of life is frantic, perhaps especially
if you have some kids running around. And
then there’s our minds. There’s a three-
ringed circus going on up there: action,
anguish, anger, drama, dismay, debate, and
more action. “When I lay me down to
sleep” is exactly when the circus of the mind
is unmasked, “with inward furies
blasted.” It can take a while to find sleep,
and when you wake in the night...
When ever do we find rest for our
bodies and minds? Rest from our
worries? Rest from our financial
obligations and strains? Rest from
relationship clouds and
puzzles? Above all, rest
from sin? From relentless nagging
temptation? From failure? From
guilt and shame? When will we be
able to look at one another with a
placid conscience? When will we be
able to look full into the awful and
holy face of God without flinching
with the shame and guilt of a sin-
stained soul?
Rest is right here. Right here in the first
three verses of Genesis chapter two.
Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth
were completed in all their vast array.
Array translates צבא, tsābā, meaning
“army,” or “host.” It is the same word used
for God’s famous title, so common in the
kingly books, “Jehovah Sabaoth,” the LORD
of Hosts.
Moses pictures completed creation: light,
firmament, verdant land, sun, moon, stars,
birds, fishes, and the mighty creatures of the
ocean deep, the land animals domestic, wild,
and swarming, as a mighty and splendid
army, a great host arrayed before her
general. And we, male and female in the
image of God, are at the head of that array,
made by God to enjoy, subdue, and govern
it all for the mutual benefit of humanity and
creation.
God was thus successful in his work. This
is emphatic—both verses one and two begin
in the original language with the phrase
“God finished.” The Septuagint translates
this συντελεω, synteleō, “to bring to
completion, fulfilment, or accomplishment”;
the word telos referring to a “conclusion,”
“the last in a series,” or “the goal to which a
movement is being directed.”
How many times do we start something that
we never finish: War and Peace, a home-
project, learning German, or writing a piece
of music? And we fail so often to complete
far more important things: we pull out of a
friendship, we give up on parenting, or even
a marriage. Why do we fail? Sometimes
because we lack the strength and ability: we
thought we could write an EP, or build a
greenhouse, but we just can’t. More often
we get bored, or we simply lack the will to
stick with what we promised to stick
with. God set out to create the universe,
with humanity as his leading image-bearers
and, lacking neither the power, ability, or
will, he completed his work.
Genesis 2:2-3 By the seventh day God had
finished the work he had been doing; so on
the seventh day he rested from all his
work. Then God blessed the seventh day
and made it holy, because on it he
rested from all the work of creating that he
had done.
God worked. Work is good. We were
created to work. Work is not the result of
the curse anymore than childbirth is the
result of the curse. It is the difficulty and
frustration of work that came as part of the
curse, just as it is the pain of childbirth—of
bringing a child into a world of war and
disease and evil—that was curse-caused.
The great goal of many in the West
is retirement from work: endless
summers of Eggs Benedict, country
drives, and barge tours down the
Rhone. Work is painful and
frustrating. Who does not want to
be freed from that? But our Maker
works (“My Father is always at his
work to this very day,” John
5:17), and he made us to
work. Work is good, and it is sin to
want to have no work and
responsibility. To get old and frail
in body and mind, where we can no
longer do as much work, is a
sadness. We should look forward to those
new bodies that are promised to Christ’s
people, so that we can get back to
work! What we need is not the absence of
work, but the redemption of work.
Yet on the Seventh Day of creation week,
God stopped working, and rested. (Note the
emphatic repetition within verse 2.) Work is
good, yet work is not an end itself. It is
done to make something good, to achieve
something worthy, and then after
completion there is rest and the enjoyment
of what is made. It is very bold of Moses to
say that “God rested,” and to even to say
that he was “refreshed” on that day (Exo
31:17). The idolatrous mind, always
hankering to belittle God, instinctively
seizes at his phrase: “Who is this god who
is so wearied by his exertions that he needs
to rest? Is he really almighty and self-
sufficient?” Genesis 2 doesn’t say
that a tired god needed to stop. This is
God’s way: he works, then he ceases
from work and rests.
This is likewise to be the way of
God’s image-bearers. For God
“blessed the seventh day, and made it
holy.” When God blesses, he turns his
face towards someone or something,
communicates his goodness to that
thing, and bestows function. (Thus
God had blessed the birds and fishes,
land-animals, and humanity.) The
Seventh Day alone is blessed, to reflect the
face of God and all his goodness. The
Seventh Day will carry a special function,
God makes it holy—distinct, life-imparting,
and good.
Thus a principle and pattern is
established. We note here the
correspondence between the Hebrew ordinal
“seventh” (ׁשביעי, shabīī), and the verb “to
rest, cease, stop, take a holiday”
whose equivalent noun ,(shābat ,ׁשבת)
is ׁשבת, shabāt, “Sabbath,” “a set-apart day
of rest,” or a “week.” We can see then in
the OT how intertwined are the ideas of
Sabbath, seventh, rest, and week.
In the world’s first week sacred principles
are thus blessed: of work not being in itself
an end, of working for something, of
enjoying its completion in subsequent rest,
and of all God’s work tending toward
supreme life and goodness.
For the first readers of Genesis, the Hebrew
slaves of Pharaoh, this represented 1)
salvation liberation, and 2) its means.
1) The Hebrew slaves’ work was bitter,
unreasonable, and driven by the overseer’s
blood-caked lash. The days were very
long. There was no day of rest.
God showed them his original plan and
design: six days of work, then one day of
rest. And God pledged to replicate this
work with his people. From the black chaos
of slavery he would bring light and life. He
would redeem his people from the lash into
the Promised Land, a place of salvation
plenty, freedom, and rest.
2) By establishing among the freed
Hebrews a weekly routine of human work
and rest, patterned on creation week, God
also showed how salvation liberty would be
won. We see this with the establishment of
the Sabbath in Exodus 16 and the gracious
provision of manna. Every day God would
rain down food from heaven, except on the
sixth day, when he would rain down double,
so that they would not have to go out and
collect food on the seventh. This inculcated
faithful reliance on God’s gracious
provision. “On the Sabbath we don’t have
to work for this life-giving food: he has
given it to us already! And we will trust
week-after-week that he will do this.”
God reinforced this blessed pattern with a
rule: “This is what the LORD commanded:
‘Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy
Sabbath to the LORD.... Everyone is to stay
where he is on the seventh day; no one is to
go out” (Exo 16:23-29).
This command is then generalised and
enshrined as the Fourth of the Ten
Commandments:
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it
holy. Six days you shall labour and do all
your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath
to the LORD your God. On it you shall not
do any work, neither you, nor your son or
daughter, nor your manservant or
maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien
within your gates.”
The reason given for the Fourth
Commandment, in Exodus, is God’s own
creation-week work:
“For in six days the LORD made the
heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is
in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath
day and made it holy” (Exo 20:11).
The reason for the Fourth Commandment,
given in Deuteronomy, is God’s redemption:
“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt
and that the LORD your God brought you
out of there with a mighty hand and an
outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your
God has commanded you to observe the
Sabbath day” (5:15).
The Seventh Day of creation was thus a
pattern for God’s image-bearers, and a
picture of redemption. The Seventh Day
teaches that God will save his people from
slavery. Obeying the creation week pattern,
and resting on the Seventh Day, teaches that
we are saved not by our works, but by
trusting in God’s work for us. Thus for
Isaiah the Sabbath is a delight:
“If you keep your feet from breaking the
Sabbath and from doing as you please on
my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a
delight and the LORD's holy day
honourable, and if you honour it by not
going your own way and not doing as you
please or speaking idle words, then you will
find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause
you to ride on the heights of the land and to
feast on the inheritance of your father
Jacob” (58:13-14).
In the Gospels we see Jesus taking complete
charge of the Sabbath. He taught on the
Sabbath (Mark 1:21, 6:2). He picked heads
of grain on the Sabbath, and demolished the
Pharisees protests, teaching that “the
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the
Sabbath” (2:23-23). He defiantly healed
people on the Sabbath. “Which is lawful on
the Sabbath: to do good, or to do evil, to
save life or to kill?” (3:1-5) Above all, he
declared about himself: “The Son of Man is
Lord even of the Sabbath” (2:28).
The Pharisees loaded the Sabbath with
untold dumb laws, and turned it into a day
of fear and misery. Jesus now recovers
it. For he is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is
the God of the seven days of creation. He
was the one who created the world, and who
rested on the Seventh Day. He determines
what is good for the Sabbath because it
is his day.
Hebrews 4:9 says that “There remains, then,
a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for
anyone who enters God’s rest also rests
from his own work, just as God did from
his.” With Jesus we are delivered from lives
cut short by death, and are brought to the
fulfilment of our God-given destiny. With
Jesus we are delivered from cursed
frustrating work, and brought into
rest. Jesus wins for us Sabbath rest. We
stop trying to work and win for salvation for
ourselves, and we trust in him and his work
for us, for:
“We know that a person is not justified by
observing the law, but by faith in Jesus
Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in
Christ Jesus that we may be justified by
faith in Christ and not by observing the law,
because by observing the law no one will be
justified” (Gal 2:16).
Thus in the New Testament God’s blessed
day shifts from the last day of the week, to
the first—the day when our salvation was
completed, the day of Jesus’ resurrection
(John 20:1; Mark 16:2), and the day of his
repeated resurrection appearances (John
20:19, 26). Christians met on this day (Acts
20:7, 1Co 16:2), and thus it came to be
known as “the Lord’s Day” (Rev 1:10).
The ancient church manual known as the
Didache commends this: “But every Lord’s
day do ye gather yourselves together, and
break bread, and give thanksgiving after
having confessed your transgressions, that
your sacrifice may be pure” (14:1). And
Justin Martyr (110-65) said:
“On the day called Sunday, all who live in
cities or in the country gather together to
one place, and the memoirs of the apostles
or the writings of the prophets are read, as
long as time permits; then, when the reader
has ceased, the overseer verbally instructs,
and exhorts to the imitation of these good
things.
“Then we all rise together and pray, and
when our prayer is ended, bread and wine
and water are brought, and the overseer in
like manner offers prayers and
thanksgivings, according to his ability, and
the people assent, saying Amen; and there is
a distribution to each, and a participation of
that over which thanks have been given, and
to those who are absent a portion is sent by
the deacons....
“But Sunday is the day on which we all hold
our common assembly, because it is the first
day on which God, having wrought a change
in the darkness and matter, made the world;
and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same
day rose from the dead.”
You will find the peace that your mind and
soul craves, and rest from your sin, in the
Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus Christ.
Campbell.
Membership Classes
Continue Today
Giving at Cornerstone
At Cornerstone you can give by putting your offering in
the Blue Box at the back of church, or electronically.
BSB: 037001, Account: 586161
Budget 2018, $15,500 per month. January $21,423, February $15,278
Quarry Youth has begun for
2018. All youth Gr 6-12 welcome.
See Elya for more info
or
email quarryyouth@cornerstoneh
obart.com
Contacts Elders Campbell Markham (Minister) 0404
456 962 Simon Boonstra 0458 600 286
Derrick Clack 0419 004 167 Rafael
Muggeridge 0477 529 137 Des Richardson
0417 554 385 Nathaniel Richardson 0419
962 473 Evangelist David Gee 0421 022
202 Women’s Ministry Cristiane Baker
0404 392 812 Cornerpebble Anna Gee
6247 8976 Deacons Jane Maarseveen 0498
367 536 Trish Smith 0416 562 715 David
van Emmerik 6278 1668 Treasurer Libby
Dilger 0448 554 845. Admin. Trish Smith
0416 562 715, Gail Forder 0422 022 733
Ministry Apprentice Dan Probert 0437 985
271 If you need help or prayer please
contact an elder or deacon.
Systematic Theology Course, 2018-19
7-9PM Tuesday Nights This Week: the History of the
English Bible More info: Contact course
administrator Cristiane Baker on 0404 392 812 or c9baker@gmail.com.
GROWTH GROUPS
Study the Bible in a small midweek group! Wednesday Night in Kingston
7.30pm at the Vonk’s, 48 Corlacus Drive,
Kingston. 6267 1113
Ladies’ Group Wednesdays
10:00am for coffee & chat, study starts
@10.30am, at Libby Dilger’s, 40 Phoenix
St, Howrah. Phone 0448 554 845.
Thursday Night 7.30 PM in Kingston, 6
Tanina Mews , Contact Ian and Kym
Headley on 0419 525 292.
Thursday night in Lindisfarne 7.30pm at
James and Cristiane Bakers’. 164 Derwent
Avenue. Contact leader Matt Delphin 0478
769 009.
Thursday Night 7:30pm-8:30pm in West
Hobart with the Bartlett Family. Starting
8/2/2018, following school terms.
Studying Luke. For teenagers and older.
Contact Paul Bartlett 0406 605 419
Women’s Bible Study, Thursday 1:30 -
3pm at Annie Bartlett, West Hobart. Led by
Melanie Muggeridge. Contact Annie
Bartlett: 62319493, 0466 980 887.
Bible study for Mums with young children.
Thursday 9.30 am at Elodie McCausland’s,
101 Norma Street, Howrah. Led by Anna
Gee, 6247 8976.
Annual Congregational
Meeting Immediately after church today.
(Approximately 20 mins.)
Agenda items:
1) Budget update from Treasurer.
2) Voting: James Baker, eldership
3) Voting: Amy Glynn, B.O.M.
4) Pastor’s study and teaching plans
2017-22.
A Message from the elders:
“As elders, we recognise, and we
want all of us to recognise, that
Cornerstone is entering a new
phase of cultural and legal change
in a rapidly changing Australia.
We recognise that life as
Christians in Australia is going to
be very different – very
challenging. We also recognise
that the church may contract and
or grow with those accelerating
challenges.
We want to us all to be prepared,
and so share the following vision
of planting churches in the future,
but by growing new leaders over
the next ten years.
Short term strategy focus on:
Individuals devoted to private
prayer and Bible reading.
Healthy family devotionals.
Church meetings that are Christ-
glorifying.
Families that are strong.
Long term strategy: invest in
Christian education, and
particularly a fledgling satellite
theological college. This will
include Campbell Markham
commencing part-time doctoral
research in 2018; using long-
service leave at end of 2018 for
study and travel. (The Australian
College of Theology requires
lecturers to have a PhD.)
There will be an acting preacher
at Cornerstone during those three
months.
Short term needs of
congregation: be encouraged to
be privately in the word and
prayer daily as individuals and as
families, and do whatever we do
whole-heartedly. This means
investing adequate time preparing
carefully and prayerfully for
church services, but also giving of
our time and finances.”
Roster 1 April 25 March
MC Ian Derrick
Music Team 3 Team 4
Data Isaac Luke
Welcome/Info
Nikki, Gerald Shirley, Trish
Kitchen Webbs Raylee
M/ Tea Please bring hot cross buns!
Raylee, Bethany, Robyn
Creche Catherine, Caitlin
Brigitta, Elodie
Setup Bakers Headleys
Part Four of a summary by Stefanie
Mapley of Patrick Sookhdeo’s 2017
THE DEATH OF WESTERN
CHRISTIANITY
CHILDREN, FAMILY AND
EDUCATION
‘The culture war is all but over and far-
right evangelicals have precious little to
show for their efforts.’ Steve Bennen
from the Washington Monthly (2009).
The darkness deepens and gloom turns
to doom, with the emergence of a
number of alarming trends that threaten
the traditional value-systems of
children, families and education.
State interference in parenting
In 2016 a Christian family in England
engaged in a dispute with local
authorities who were encouraging a 14
year old girl to change her name to a
boy’s name because she believes she is
transgender. Parents told the media,
‘The rights of parents in the UK are
being eroded, especially those who have
traditional Christian values.’
The Canadian government is able to
intervene if there is ‘a risk that the child
is likely to suffer emotional harm ….
and that the child’s parent or person in
charge does not provide services or
treatment. Moreover, new legislation
requires parents to ‘direct the child or
young person’s education and
upbringing in accordance with the
child’s or young person’s creed,
community identity and cultural
identity’.
Christianity is dangerous to children
Western governments are systematically
stripping parents of their fundamental
rights to impart moral and religious
teaching to their children. No more is
this more pernicious than within the
school system.
Oxford biologist and militant atheist
Richard Dawkins claims that teaching
children religion as facts constitutes
child abuse.
Schools and education
Scottish Parliament became the first
government in Europe to indicate
majority support for the mandatory
teaching of LGBT issues in schools.
Authorities in Europe have also
attempted to clamp down on home
schooling. Armed German police
stormed a house in Darmstadt in August
2013 because the family’s four children
were being home schooled. The
children, between seven and fourteen
years old, were forcibly removed from
their parents and taken into state
custody at an unknown location. The
court transferred formal custody of the
children to the state, despite there being
no allegations of abuse or neglect
against the parents, because they wanted
to raise them according to Christian
values.
Principals of schools in Victoria,
Australia have decided to axe Religious
Instruction (RI) from their schools.
Cathy Byrne, a sociology tutor, claims
that her ’research has highlighted the
divisive implications of RI curriculums
that are racist, sexist, anti-science, age
inappropriate or somehow objectionable
- even to church-going Christians’.
Despite the rise of fundamentalist
Islamic schools and the reluctance of
Australian authorities to take a firm
approach to the teaching of Islam in
Australia, Byrne portrays teaching of
Christianity in schools as a public
hazard. ‘Whether we recognise it or not,
whether we develop policies to address
it or not, Christian religious extremism
can be a security risk, a risk to the
nature of our pluralist democracy and
our hard-won liberal freedoms.’
Narrative suggesting same-sex
couples make better parents
Destruction of conventional family
structures is the ultimate agenda of
homosexual activism. It has won the
battle for hearts and minds in the West
through the media, Hollywood and
popular culture.
A disproportionally favourable narrative
now dominates the portrayal of gay
parents. Thus, they are viewed as not
just acceptable, but demonstrably better
than heterosexual couples in parenting
skills and an ideal of love, stability and
progressive parenting. They supposedly
promote the healthy development of free
thinking children who are free of the
influence of backward, bigoted,
religious, extremist parents.
To abolish the family is to destroy
society
In the last century, the eminent Oxford
ethnologist and social anthropologist
Joseph Unwin, embarked on extensive
research to prove that monogamous
marriage and the family was an
irrelevant and harmful institution. He
discovered precisely the opposite of
what he had hoped. The massive data
revealed a positive correlation between
the cultural achievement of a people and
the sexual restraint they observe. He
concluded that only marriage with
fidelity would lead to the cultural
prosperity of a society. On the other
hand, the loosening of sexual restraints
and the breakdown of the family would
have calamitous consequences for
society that would become evident in
the third generation.
When he was chief rabbi of the United
Hebrews Congregation of the
Commonwealth, Sir Jonathan Sacks
described the maniacal destruction of
the family. ‘Today we have divorced
sex from love; love from commitment;
commitment from marriage; marriage
from having children; and having
children from bearing responsibility for
nurturing them and bringing them up. It
is as if somebody had planted a bomb in
the very midst of our most sacred
institution and all we have left is
fragments.’
THE MARGINALISATION OF
CHRISTIANITY
Christianophobia
The West is not merely passively post-
Christian; it is now actively anti-
Christian and profoundly intolerant of
the Christian faith.
George Yancey and David Williamson
believe that the West is moving into
Christianophobia, a state of fear and
hatred against Christianity and
Christians. In their book So Many
Christians, So Few Lions (2015) they
conduct what they believe to be the only
academic enquiry of American scholars
and their views on Christians and
Christianity. Below are some of their
findings.
‘I want them all to die in a fire’,
said one man with a doctorate. I would
be in favour of establishing a state for
them …. If not then sterilise them so
they can’t breed more,’ said a middle-
aged man with a master’s degree. ‘The
only good Christian is a dead
Christian,’ said another man with a
doctorate. ‘I abhor them and I wish we
could do away with them’ said a
middle-aged woman with a master’s
degree. ‘A torturous death would be too
good for them’, said a college-
educated man. ‘They should be
eradicated without hesitation or
remorse’ said an elderly woman with a
master’s degree. ‘Restrict their
ability to become judges, senators,
representatives, members of Cabinet,
military Chief of Staff and other
powerful members of government,’ said
a man over 75 with a bachelor’s degree.
‘Should not be able to make
decisions regarding the law, they should
somehow have to be supervised if they
are working with other people
(drastic I know)’ said a woman under 45
with a master’s degree. ‘We should put
in place mandatory
extreme prison sentences for anyone or
any group that attempt to take away
civil liberties guaranteed by our
constitution’ said a middle-aged man
with a master’s degree. Conservative
Christians should ‘not be allowed to
hold political office, be police
etc. serve in the armed forces’ said
another middle-aged man with a
doctorate.
Sections of society infected with
Christianophobia tend to be powerful
elites with influence in certain important
areas, such as higher education.
Christianophobes are also prominent in
government and the judiciary and so the
targeting of Christians is probably
intentional and systemic.
Christianity in the West is facing its
most vicious attack from the
postmodern ‘cultured despisers of
religion’. Over decades, the Church has
been progressively marginalised, but
now basic Christian beliefs are even
criminalised.
Legal structures
After the Second World War, the shock
and horror of the atrocities committed
by Nazis against the Jews compelled
many Western nations to introduce laws
aimed at eliminating hatred and violence
based on ethnicity and religion. These
laws were intended to guard against the
virus of anti-Semitism. Over the years
and with the rise of women’s rights and
civil rights movements, western nations
passed laws to include other groups
facing discrimination based on gender,
colour and race. More recently
governments legislation banning
discrimination against people on the
grounds of race, gender, pregnancy,
marital status, ethnic or social origin,
colour, age, disability, religion,
conscience, belief, culture, language,
birth, trade and sexual orientation. At
first glance such laws appear noble and
commendable. However, the avalanche
of legislation under the heading of
‘human rights’ is now increasingly open
to abuse, subjective interpretation and in
many cases is in clear conflict with
other freedoms, such as freedom of
expression and religion.
Laws specific to protecting minority
groups in most countries generally fall
into three main categories:
Discrimination
Hate speech
Hate crime
The silencing of Christian belief
A tidal wave of restrictive legislation is
battering the church and orthodox
Christians who find themselves slapped
with penalties ranging from diversity
and sensitivity training and fines to
community service and prison.
The Bible teaches that the only way to
salvation is through Jesus Christ. This
belief cannot avoid clashing with other
religions and worldview. However, such
a view is condemned as exclusive,
intolerant and hateful. It must be pointed
out that all religions make exclusive
claims in conflict with the claims of
other religions. Communism believes in
the abolition of private property, while
capitalism believes that private property
is absolute.
Christianity holds that life is sacred and
God-given and must be protected. This
is in direct conflict with pro-choice
beliefs which promote abortion as a
fundamental human right, and its
corollary in the form of assisted suicide
or euthanasia.
Christians believe that God created
humans male and female. There are very
rare instances where genetic dysfunction
results in cases of intersex. However,
society is widely embracing the idea of
gender fluidity and affirms that people
can now choose their own gender. In
June 2017, the province of Ontario,
Canada, passed a law that allows
government to remove the child from its
parents if the parents use the child’s
biological gender pronoun, rather than
the child’s preferred one.
Western society not only accepts same-
sex sexual relations but celebrates and
validates them with laws allowing same-
sex marriage and same-sex parents to
adopt children. LGBT groups, who
believe any criticism of homosexual
behaviour is tantamount to a hate crime,
have gone out of their way to trap and
target conservative Christians.
Since its inception the Church has
upheld the biblical idea of a lifelong
monogamous marriage between a man
and woman.
A person who is living habitually and
unrepentantly in a sexual relationship
outside marriage is living in sin. This is
one of the most counter-cultural
teachings of the church since living
together before marriage without any
desire to get married has become the
norm.
It is important to distinguish between
individuals and ideas. People must
always be protected from harm and
allowed to express their beliefs freely
but the beliefs themselves should not be
protected from analysis, critique and
criticism. No matter how much we may
disagree with a person’s beliefs,
ideology or practice, Christians must
never attack the person; indeed they
must be willing to protect that person
when attacked by others, To support that
person when vilified and to stand
alongside them , despite their difference
of belief. This is part of the Christian
command to live a life of love.. The
criminalisation of homosexual practice
is completely unacceptable, as is the
criminalisation of opinions disagreeing
with homosexual practice; any
judgement must be left to God.
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