Friday, September 20, 2013

Glimmer Of Hope


The Centre for Public Christianity does an array of podcasts.  They are all about having open discussion about issues that concern us but from a Christian perspective.
There was one podcast that intrigued me.  It covered the topic of ‘climate change’.  A hot button topic bound to polarise its audience.  It is 15 mins long.  A statement near the end I found disturbing.  It came from the guest on this podcast, a Christian, scientist and advocate for ‘climate change’.
Nearing the end the guest mentioned how if we act on ‘climate change’ then we still have a “glimmer of hope” of avoiding catastrophic rises in temperature.
This Christian is saying that knowing full well who created the climate and who maintains the climate (i.e. God).  He also knows that any catastrophic world-ending event would mean the second coming of Jesus is upon us.  As Christians we are supposed to pray for this event to take place.  Yet the guest claims to be an advocate for action on ‘climate change’ so that his children will have a world to live in.
We don’t have a “glimmer of hope”.  We have a beacon of hope and it comes in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  A Christian ought to worship Jesus, not His creation.  Worship creation and Jesus is ignored.  Worship Jesus and enjoy His creation in a responsible way, as stewards with dominion over God’s creation.
We ought to do the right thing by the environment.  No one in church would disagree with this.  Many Christians have gone beyond ‘stewardship’ and jumped into ‘earth worship’.  For these people God is put in a box while they focus on their glimmer of hope.   

Meanwhile the beacon of hope .................is still in the box.


Monday, September 16, 2013

Tokenism

Apparently Tony Abbott ought to have appointed more women to the front bench of his cabinet.
No surprise that the now opposition has jumped on this in order to perpetuate the myth that Abbott has a problem with women.  Disappointingly it was lead story on most media outlets.
If Abbott bowed to pressure he would be giving women a position based on gender and not on merit.  He appointed the best people available at this time.
People forget that when the coalition lost the election in 2007 they lost a lot of talented politicians.  Women replaced a lot vacant positions.  This means that many of the women in the now government are still very fresh.
Plenty of women are raved about for their ability in politics.  But promoting them to the front bench at this stage would be setting them up for failure.  This isn’t good for women in politics.  Some now call for quotas of women in ministry positions.  They ought to think about the negative ramifications of their ideals.
That this makes news is ridiculous, but not surprising. Perhaps I’m now perpetuating it as newsworthy.  Perhaps it’s the only thing the opposition can find to insult against an otherwise strong cabinet.