It has been said that a falsehood will be up, breakfasted and be halfway around the world before the truth has pulled its pants on, and so it seems is the consistent stream of falsity coming out of Gaza and finding promotion in the fourth estate.
Despite long-awaited retractions by lauded publications, it seems we are subjected daily to photoshopped images of emaciated children and scenes of devastation and destruction, even from other times and locations.
It is easy to understand how public opinion on Gaza is being manipulated Joseph Goebbels’ style with lies told loudly and often enough to convince if not cause an uninformed populous to accept it as truth.
Once such traction is gained in the court of public opinion it becomes easy for a government, already sympathetic to a cause, to simply lean into that cause.
So, the convenience of mistaking an unprecedented majority with a mandate to rule the Australian government has unilaterally decided to recognise the independent state of Palestine, as a sovereign nation, without defined borders, and without government apart from a recognised terrorist group which uses its own people as human shields and hijacks food and aid meant to provide relief for those same people.
And where is the voice in all this? No, not that voice! Where is the voice of the First Estate? The voice of the Christian church. The pulpits are silent, not a word of dissent, not a letter of petition against this absurdity nor any form of public outcry. Whether this be complacency, cowardice or simple biblical illiteracy, the voice is nowhere to be heard apart from small groups and mainstream outcasts readily classified as right-wing extremists.
Martin Niemöller highlighted the problem with complacency when speaking of Germany prior to the second world war when he wrote the immortalised ‘first they came’.
Accepted that Australia may no longer be a majority Christian nation as it may have once been, yet according to the most recent census some 44 per cent of the population claimed to be Christian. This, however, rises to 72 per cent of those who claimed to have any religion at all due to the high proportion of the population having no religious affiliation at all. In any man’s book, this is a substantial proportion which if properly informed and motivated would still wield considerable power. Yet the ill-informed and sleeping giant sleeps in the comfort of knowing problems far away will never disturb us here in good ole Oz and while we sleep, our countrymen of Jewish extraction have begun leaving the country because they feel safer in the war zone of Israel than here in relative peace and we in broken sleep awake to observe thousands of Ishmaelitish young men standing in vigil as signal intimidation of a Christian cathedral in the heart of Melbourne.
It is saddening to observe the cowardice that saw churches closed during the Covid years persist. Pulpits were silenced under such duress as having tax exempt status for church associated charities curtailed together with an incorrect interpretation of what it means to turn the other cheek and submission to unrighteous government that saw churches doors boarded up and congregations decimated to a point from which many have never recovered. How different it might have been had the bishops, the general superintendents, local priests, and pastors simply said, No! If the church doors had been flung open rather than locked and barred, if people were granted the opportunity to pray and heaven forbid maybe God had answered. What in fact might be the outcome if our current leadership were to call for a national day of prayer wherein people were encouraged to pray for the people of Gaza and the biblical imperative of peace for Jerusalem? Of course, one would have to believe that God still answers prayer and does from time to time interfere in the affairs of man.
Where is the Thomas Moore and John Knox of today’s Christian church who under fear of death spoke out and prayed and in doing so caused monarchies to crumble in deference to the Almighty? Where is the voice?
Saddest is the proposition that many in the Christian clergy are so intent on DEI and other social issues that they have become biblically illiterate. Somewhere the idea that the God Christian’s serve in honouring the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is none other than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has been overlooked or assigned lesser or non-importance, when assessing the importance of our relationship with Israel and our Jewish brothers and sisters. Notwithstanding, the bible itself warns of the consequence of standing against Israel and specifically dividing the land which God himself assigned to the nation in antiquity and miraculously restored in 1948.
For the sake of our own nation, we need to be on the right side of any argument concerning Israel lest we find ourselves standing against God Himself and that, be assured, will not end well.
Where is the Church? Where is the voice?
