IT’S ELECTION WEEK in Tasmania, and former leader of the Australian Greens, Christine Milne, is clutching her pearls at the prospect of authentic Christians having a vote and a democratic voice in her home state of Tasmania.
When I tweeted last week that the Church And State conference is coming to both Hobart and Launceston in early April with teaching from God’s Word about the important public issues being debated in Tasmania, she was triggered.
Teaching from God’s Word is “extreme right-wing”? Well, that says a lot about the Greens, doesn’t it!
Yes, Ms Milne, Christians do have religious views [gasp], and do you know who else’s worldviews are embedded in their politics and seek democratic representation?
Everyone’s.
It’s what we in the pluralistic, inclusive, liberal democracies of the Christian West call civilisation. You see, a long time ago in England, it was mandated by the government that people couldn’t choose their own religion. They were fined, arrested, tortured or even executed if they refused to go to the Government-run church on Sunday.
So the Pilgrims fled to the New World to create freedom of conscience: history celebrated each year on Thanksgiving in America, and government restricted in their First Amendment.
It was that history and Amendment which Thomas Jefferson called “a wall of separation between Church and State”; a reference to the principle that never again should people have the free exercise of their conscience in private or public curtailed by an overreaching government (the kind extreme left-wing demagogues fantasise about).
Along with a free press, free speech and rights to petition and peaceable assembly, religious freedom is a check and balance on craven politicians like you who seek to bring the power of the State to bear against common people who dissent with their vision of society.
So yes, I’m coming to preach the Gospel in Tasmania to those who are humble enough to listen to what Jesus says about debated issues, “Captives will be released, the blind will see, the oppressed will be set free, and the time of the Lord’s favour has come.”
Not once was Jesus tolerant or inclusive of proud and unrepentant moral lawbreakers, because ‘woke Jesus’ is only a false god of self-righteous hypocrites, an idol made of human imagination and ignorance.
But He shows patience, mercy and grace to those who are poor in spirit and grieving their terminal unrighteousness – those who humble themselves willingly before Almighty God.
Yes, Ms Milne, expect a debate on debatable issues. Expect Christian behaviours like praying [gasp]. And expect more Bible-believing Christians to take an active interest in the injustice, oppression and chains which extreme left-wing worldviews are imposing upon vulnerable and hurting people.
Because as much as it might trigger God-mocking Greens, we still have democracy in Australia.
