I've been writing about human rights, in the light of Australia's debate about religious freedom and the Government's proposed Religious Freedom Bill. In the first post I had a look at the controversy over Israel Folau's infamous meme. In the second I provide a beginners guide to the international covenants which provide the basis for human rights legislation and the question of what happens when rights collide. In the third I provided a quick analysis of the proposed Australian legislation. To conclude I'd like to share some thoughts on how Christians should approach human rights.
Christians often make the claim that the idea of human rights is founded in a Christian understanding of humanity. The Centre for Public Christianity's documentary For the Love of God provides a good example. Christians adopted the Jewish idea that humans are made in the image of God, and this was profoundly countercultural in the Roman Empire where human worth was judged by social position. One outworking of this is that Christians intervened decisively in the widespread Roman practice of infanticide, adopting babies who had been exposed and ultimately bringing an end to the practice.
Of course this idea is often honoured in the breach. For the Love of God does not shy away from this fact, highlighting elements of the darker side of Christian history such as the persecution of heretics and the subjugation of women. If you take the documentary at face value you might think that the record was about 50/50, but this is more an artefact of the way the documentary is structured than any kind of historical assessment. The take home message is that the teachings of Jesus and his followers are forces for liberation, but the church is easily corrupted. You don't have to look very far to find evidence of this corruption, from the ease with which Constantine and his successors co-opted the church into their schemes of empire, through to the ease with which Christian missions were transformed from places of safety for the first Australians to places of detention.
If we are to be true to history we must also ask ourselves this: why is it that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights emerged from the post-war United Nations, dominated by a highly secularised liberal-democratic Western Europe and Northern America? Why not in the previous 15 centuries of Christendom? Whatever it may owe to the deep influence of Christian ideas on liberalism, it is in itself not a Christian document.
Now let me be clear about this. I believe the Declaration of Human Rights and its associated covenants represent a beacon of justice and humanity in a world full of injustice and inhumanity. The fact that they are often honoured in the breach, even in Western liberal democracies, shows just how ambitious they are. What they represent is a kind of grand bargain, a 'live and let live' approach to communal and international relations which represents a political extrapolation of the Golden Rule, 'do to others as you would have them do to you'. This principle is articulated by Jesus (e.g. Luke 6:31) but is in no way unique to Christianity. Is asks us to accommodate one another, to make allowance, to make space for difference.
This is perfectly consistent with Christianity, but this does not make it Christian. I have said many times on this blog that what we often present as Christian morality is actually a form of Pharisaism. This applies to the position taken by Israel Folau and that advocated by the Coalition for Marriage in the marriage plebiscite, applying sexual morality as a pharisaic set of rules to be enforced. It is well summed up in Mr Darcy's brutal self-assessment in Pride and Prejudice: 'I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.'.
It is only when confronted by the multiple failures of the application of his principles in relation to the Bennet family that Darcy grows into a more mature morality. This is the message Jesus attempts to get us to understand in the Sermon on the Mount. Even good things - fasting, prayer, giving to the poor - can become evil when done out of self-righteousness or with wrong motives. Sometimes we are not even aware of the evil we are doing, and need God or circumstances to intervene and show us.
What has this to do with human rights? Well, the international human rights covenants are like any other set of rules. They can guide us towards being better people and communities, but they can also be misused. Such frameworks are always starting points for Christian ethics, not end points. We can apply them in a selfish or self-righteous way, or we can use them to advance the Kingdom of God.
As I argued in Part 2, the most difficult challenge for human rights is how competing rights are negotiated. How is Israel Folau's or the Catholic Church's right to say same sex relationships are sinful (their freedom of conscience) balanced against the right of LGBTIQ people to live free of vilification and harassment (their freedom of sexual expression)?
The first and most obvious answer is that we should assert our own rights over against those of others. This is the answer given by those who are campaigning in favour of the government's current Religious Discrimination Bill, and most especially by those who are claiming that it still doesn't go far enough. Some people of faith are asking for their rights to be promoted more or less explicitly at the expense of the rights of others. In the contest of rights we fight to win.
We should not be too quick to criticise this approach. Oppressed peoples do not get their rights recognised by waiting patiently. Women did not get the vote by politely asking their husbands to give it to them. They got it by marching in the streets and chaining themselves to parliament buildings. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples did not get what meagre rights they have managed to win by the grace of kind white people, they got them by striking, marching and fighting in the courts.
These facts of history, repeated over and over by oppressed peoples around the world, show that simply having a human rights framework does not guarantee human rights. Human rights are guaranteed by people's vigilance and persistence. The Australian Government did not hesitate to suspend the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act in order to implement the Northern Territory Intervention, nor to create loopholes in the international right to seek asylum so it could implement the Pacific Solution. When push comes to shove, human rights yield to the imperatives of power. We might wish otherwise, but this is the sad fact. To achieve genuine human rights we must sometimes, perhaps often, defy the powers that be.
However, there is a difference between appropriate behaviour for the powerless and for the powerful. Like it or not, we do not live in a society where power is shared evenly. Our society has plenty of powerless poor people, but no powerless billionaires. I would suggest that the Christian church, despite the relative decline of our social position in recent decades, is still in the billionaire class. Four out of our six most recent Prime Ministers have been practicing Christians. We have friends and allies in high places. We occupy a privileged place in society. We need to be careful how we use this privilege if we are not to end up subverting the message of our founder.
The second option is that we can negotiate. This is what most of our Australian human rights frameworks are set up to achieve. If you feel someone has violated your rights, the first course of action is to engage in mediation and try to reach a settlement. The two parties will sit down with a mediator, discuss their perspectives on the issue and, if all goes well, reach a compromise. Perhaps someone will apologise, or clarify their intent. Perhaps they will agree to a new code of conduct in order to prevent the offence or injustice from recurring. Perhaps someone will be compensated in some way. Or perhaps none of these things will happen but the two parties will walk away with a better appreciation of each others' points of view. The tension may not be resolved, but we will be better able to live with it.
Where this option is available it is, I would suggest, better than the naked exercise of power. At least it allows space for the other, acknowledges their existence and their right to be. However, I would like to argue that a genuinely Christian ethic should take us further.
In Matthew 16, Jesus presents a challenging view of discipleship.
Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
In Philippians 2 Paul makes the same point in the words of an ancient hymn or piece of liturgy.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Jesus' death on the cross can be contrasted with another option, presented to him by the Devil prior to the start of his ministry as told in Matthew 4.
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’
What are we to make of these three quotes, and what have they to do with human rights?
To start with the temptation story, I think Matthew is pointing us, in a very graphic way, towards a hazard we easily fall into as Christians: the illusion of power. This illusion has led to so much of the tragedy alluded to in the dark side of For the Love of God. When Christians celebrated the conversion of Constantine and their own legitimation within the Empire, no doubt they felt that this was the dawn of a great era for the advance of the gospel. No longer would they have to fight the empire - now they could work hand in hand with a Christian Emperor. Who can blame them for feeling relief after almost three centuries of intermittent persecution?
Yet looking back in history it is hard not to see this as the Devil's bargain. Before Constantine the church was counter-cultural, rescuing babies abandoned by the parents, feeding the poor and treating slaves as equals. After, it became an enforcer of laws, blessing the Emperor's wars and torturing those who threatened the hierarchies of church and state. While we are gradually becoming less entangled with the State in our current post-Christendom world, the risks are still there. Christian missions were places of State-sanctioned detention for Aboriginal people within my lifetime. And to this day, certain parts of the Christian church in the USA insist that it is a Christian duty to vote for a lying, philandering, climate destroying, militaristic President because he supports one or two causes they hold dear.
But of course this is not just a problem for Christians on the Right. Our most recent Christian Socialist Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and his supporters faced just the same problem. They argued, 'you can't implement your policies from Opposition' as they compromised their way into government. Then, to their and everyone else's disappointment, they found that they couldn't implement them from government either, since they had given up on many of them in order to get there and more of them in their determination to stay there. They found out what Jesus already illustrated - when you make a bargain with the Devil, you end up doing his diabolical bidding.
I think the current Religious Discrimination Bill risks being such a Devil's bargain. This is not because the legislation itself is bad (as I noted in Part 3, it is neither terrible nor ideal) but because it represents the same kind of assertion of power. Parts of the Christian church have supported the Government on the basis of its promise to enact this legislation, despite the fact that this same government is committed to inaction on climate change (which will harm millions), is pursuing an agenda of persecution of welfare recipients, is determined to continue imprisoning asylum seekers and so forth.
We have, in other words, chosen to pursue our own rights in competition with the rights of others. Indeed, the arguments for this legislation are framed quite explicitly this way. Christians are asking for the right to vilify and persecute LGBTIQ people in the name of our religion. If you want to know how broad and disinterested this advocacy of religious freedom is, ask yourself this: where were these same advocates in 2014 when the Abbot Government tried to ban face-covering Islamic garments from the Parliamentary precinct? What they are seeking, quite simply, is protection of their own interests, and they are prepared to do so at the expense of the interests of others.
This is the opposite of both Jesus' and Paul's description of Christian discipleship.
The way of the cross is to do the opposite of what seems natural in the world of power politics. Jesus did not go to the cross for his own sake, but for the sake of others. He did not even do it for the sake of his friends and allies. As Paul says elsewhere:
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
This is the standard he holds up for us. He who would be the greatest of all must be the servant of all. The king must be the one who washes everybody's feet - not in some farcical ceremony held on stage where he washes the feet of selected poor people in front of the adoring masses, but quietly, in secret, where only God will know.
The true Christian, if I understand this correctly, is not the one who asserts his or her rights over and against those of gay people, or Muslims, or anyone else. He or she will not even be the one who reaches out to gay people despite their sin. The true Christian will reach out to them because of their sin. The true Christian will be one who says 'I am also a sinner, I am no better than you, how can I serve you?'. Because they will have first looked within, seen themselves as they are in the sight of God, and been inspired by the cross and the message that God loves his enemies (us) supremely.
The true Christian will be the one who looks around for the outcast in the room, in the city, in the nation, and walks alongside them, seeking their rights. You remember the story in Luke 7 where Jesus is invited to dinner by a Pharisee named Simon, and a woman 'who lived a sinful life' washes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair? Simon is shocked that Jesus lets such a woman touch him but Jesus is unfazed, assuring her of God's forgiveness.
There is something about this story you may not have noticed. In response to Simon's unspoken censure, Jesus sets out a scenario of two men who are forgiven debts, one a small debt, and one a big one. Who will love the merciful creditor more? Simon answers that of course it will be the one who has been forgiven more. But notice what Jesus says next.
Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.
Who is the greater sinner here? It is easy to assume that it is the woman, whose 'many sins have been forgiven'. But whose behaviour does Jesus criticise? Not hers! All his criticism is reserved for Simon's lack of hospitality, which in ancient Near Eastern culture was a much more serious sin than in our own. Simon's coolness is not a sign that he is more righteous than the woman, but that he has yet to understand just how sinful he is and hence his need for great forgiveness. This message is driven home in the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18, where the humble, repentant tax collector goes home justified while the self-righteous Pharisee does not. Jesus concludes:
For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Simon is yet to be humbled, but make no mistake, this humbling will come.
We can apply this message to those of us who want the freedom to criticise LGBTIQ people, or Muslims, or poor people, or to make racist statements, or any other modern-day manifestations of Christian Pharisaism (including, perhaps, my own penchant for criticising fundamentalists!). All of us need to understand the depth of our sin. This will keep us from self-righteousness and hypocrisy, and allow us to understand that these 'sinners' are our equals, equally in God's image and equally forgiven by God's grace. We will then be ready, perhaps, to take up our cross on their behalf.
This taking up of the cross is not, as some would have it, an indication of passivity in the face of oppression. If Jesus had been passive, had been quiet in the face of evil, he would never have been crucified. It was his public confrontation of the authorities, his breaking of barriers and championing of outsiders, that got him killed. It is no accident that his most provocative public act, his protest at the temple, took place in the Court of the Gentiles, the area of the temple open to all-comers, and in explanation he quoted Isaiah's words:
...for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.
This was a defence of inclusiveness, a cleansing of the space that was meant to be for all those made in God's image regardless of race, creed, ritual cleanliness or ability. This was not a Jewish rights protest, it was a human rights protest.
This, then, is why I find the Christian campaign for religious freedom legislation, and the championing of Israel Folau, disquieting. We are playing the game of power politics on our own behalf, trying to put a fence around our tribe and our world view. We are particularly focused on our right to critique others, to assert the superiority of our own morality. This is the opposite of where we should be. We should be stepping out of our privilege and searching for those who are despised and outcast, and defending their rights. As long as we are not doing that, we are merely defending our right to be Pharisees if we choose, and this doesn't seem worth defending.
Christians often make the claim that the idea of human rights is founded in a Christian understanding of humanity. The Centre for Public Christianity's documentary For the Love of God provides a good example. Christians adopted the Jewish idea that humans are made in the image of God, and this was profoundly countercultural in the Roman Empire where human worth was judged by social position. One outworking of this is that Christians intervened decisively in the widespread Roman practice of infanticide, adopting babies who had been exposed and ultimately bringing an end to the practice.
Of course this idea is often honoured in the breach. For the Love of God does not shy away from this fact, highlighting elements of the darker side of Christian history such as the persecution of heretics and the subjugation of women. If you take the documentary at face value you might think that the record was about 50/50, but this is more an artefact of the way the documentary is structured than any kind of historical assessment. The take home message is that the teachings of Jesus and his followers are forces for liberation, but the church is easily corrupted. You don't have to look very far to find evidence of this corruption, from the ease with which Constantine and his successors co-opted the church into their schemes of empire, through to the ease with which Christian missions were transformed from places of safety for the first Australians to places of detention.
Now let me be clear about this. I believe the Declaration of Human Rights and its associated covenants represent a beacon of justice and humanity in a world full of injustice and inhumanity. The fact that they are often honoured in the breach, even in Western liberal democracies, shows just how ambitious they are. What they represent is a kind of grand bargain, a 'live and let live' approach to communal and international relations which represents a political extrapolation of the Golden Rule, 'do to others as you would have them do to you'. This principle is articulated by Jesus (e.g. Luke 6:31) but is in no way unique to Christianity. Is asks us to accommodate one another, to make allowance, to make space for difference.
This is perfectly consistent with Christianity, but this does not make it Christian. I have said many times on this blog that what we often present as Christian morality is actually a form of Pharisaism. This applies to the position taken by Israel Folau and that advocated by the Coalition for Marriage in the marriage plebiscite, applying sexual morality as a pharisaic set of rules to be enforced. It is well summed up in Mr Darcy's brutal self-assessment in Pride and Prejudice: 'I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.'.
It is only when confronted by the multiple failures of the application of his principles in relation to the Bennet family that Darcy grows into a more mature morality. This is the message Jesus attempts to get us to understand in the Sermon on the Mount. Even good things - fasting, prayer, giving to the poor - can become evil when done out of self-righteousness or with wrong motives. Sometimes we are not even aware of the evil we are doing, and need God or circumstances to intervene and show us.
What has this to do with human rights? Well, the international human rights covenants are like any other set of rules. They can guide us towards being better people and communities, but they can also be misused. Such frameworks are always starting points for Christian ethics, not end points. We can apply them in a selfish or self-righteous way, or we can use them to advance the Kingdom of God.
As I argued in Part 2, the most difficult challenge for human rights is how competing rights are negotiated. How is Israel Folau's or the Catholic Church's right to say same sex relationships are sinful (their freedom of conscience) balanced against the right of LGBTIQ people to live free of vilification and harassment (their freedom of sexual expression)?
The first and most obvious answer is that we should assert our own rights over against those of others. This is the answer given by those who are campaigning in favour of the government's current Religious Discrimination Bill, and most especially by those who are claiming that it still doesn't go far enough. Some people of faith are asking for their rights to be promoted more or less explicitly at the expense of the rights of others. In the contest of rights we fight to win.
We should not be too quick to criticise this approach. Oppressed peoples do not get their rights recognised by waiting patiently. Women did not get the vote by politely asking their husbands to give it to them. They got it by marching in the streets and chaining themselves to parliament buildings. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples did not get what meagre rights they have managed to win by the grace of kind white people, they got them by striking, marching and fighting in the courts.
These facts of history, repeated over and over by oppressed peoples around the world, show that simply having a human rights framework does not guarantee human rights. Human rights are guaranteed by people's vigilance and persistence. The Australian Government did not hesitate to suspend the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act in order to implement the Northern Territory Intervention, nor to create loopholes in the international right to seek asylum so it could implement the Pacific Solution. When push comes to shove, human rights yield to the imperatives of power. We might wish otherwise, but this is the sad fact. To achieve genuine human rights we must sometimes, perhaps often, defy the powers that be.
However, there is a difference between appropriate behaviour for the powerless and for the powerful. Like it or not, we do not live in a society where power is shared evenly. Our society has plenty of powerless poor people, but no powerless billionaires. I would suggest that the Christian church, despite the relative decline of our social position in recent decades, is still in the billionaire class. Four out of our six most recent Prime Ministers have been practicing Christians. We have friends and allies in high places. We occupy a privileged place in society. We need to be careful how we use this privilege if we are not to end up subverting the message of our founder.
The second option is that we can negotiate. This is what most of our Australian human rights frameworks are set up to achieve. If you feel someone has violated your rights, the first course of action is to engage in mediation and try to reach a settlement. The two parties will sit down with a mediator, discuss their perspectives on the issue and, if all goes well, reach a compromise. Perhaps someone will apologise, or clarify their intent. Perhaps they will agree to a new code of conduct in order to prevent the offence or injustice from recurring. Perhaps someone will be compensated in some way. Or perhaps none of these things will happen but the two parties will walk away with a better appreciation of each others' points of view. The tension may not be resolved, but we will be better able to live with it.
Where this option is available it is, I would suggest, better than the naked exercise of power. At least it allows space for the other, acknowledges their existence and their right to be. However, I would like to argue that a genuinely Christian ethic should take us further.
In Matthew 16, Jesus presents a challenging view of discipleship.
Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
In Philippians 2 Paul makes the same point in the words of an ancient hymn or piece of liturgy.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Jesus' death on the cross can be contrasted with another option, presented to him by the Devil prior to the start of his ministry as told in Matthew 4.
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’
What are we to make of these three quotes, and what have they to do with human rights?
To start with the temptation story, I think Matthew is pointing us, in a very graphic way, towards a hazard we easily fall into as Christians: the illusion of power. This illusion has led to so much of the tragedy alluded to in the dark side of For the Love of God. When Christians celebrated the conversion of Constantine and their own legitimation within the Empire, no doubt they felt that this was the dawn of a great era for the advance of the gospel. No longer would they have to fight the empire - now they could work hand in hand with a Christian Emperor. Who can blame them for feeling relief after almost three centuries of intermittent persecution?
Yet looking back in history it is hard not to see this as the Devil's bargain. Before Constantine the church was counter-cultural, rescuing babies abandoned by the parents, feeding the poor and treating slaves as equals. After, it became an enforcer of laws, blessing the Emperor's wars and torturing those who threatened the hierarchies of church and state. While we are gradually becoming less entangled with the State in our current post-Christendom world, the risks are still there. Christian missions were places of State-sanctioned detention for Aboriginal people within my lifetime. And to this day, certain parts of the Christian church in the USA insist that it is a Christian duty to vote for a lying, philandering, climate destroying, militaristic President because he supports one or two causes they hold dear.
I think the current Religious Discrimination Bill risks being such a Devil's bargain. This is not because the legislation itself is bad (as I noted in Part 3, it is neither terrible nor ideal) but because it represents the same kind of assertion of power. Parts of the Christian church have supported the Government on the basis of its promise to enact this legislation, despite the fact that this same government is committed to inaction on climate change (which will harm millions), is pursuing an agenda of persecution of welfare recipients, is determined to continue imprisoning asylum seekers and so forth.
We have, in other words, chosen to pursue our own rights in competition with the rights of others. Indeed, the arguments for this legislation are framed quite explicitly this way. Christians are asking for the right to vilify and persecute LGBTIQ people in the name of our religion. If you want to know how broad and disinterested this advocacy of religious freedom is, ask yourself this: where were these same advocates in 2014 when the Abbot Government tried to ban face-covering Islamic garments from the Parliamentary precinct? What they are seeking, quite simply, is protection of their own interests, and they are prepared to do so at the expense of the interests of others.
This is the opposite of both Jesus' and Paul's description of Christian discipleship.
The way of the cross is to do the opposite of what seems natural in the world of power politics. Jesus did not go to the cross for his own sake, but for the sake of others. He did not even do it for the sake of his friends and allies. As Paul says elsewhere:
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
This is the standard he holds up for us. He who would be the greatest of all must be the servant of all. The king must be the one who washes everybody's feet - not in some farcical ceremony held on stage where he washes the feet of selected poor people in front of the adoring masses, but quietly, in secret, where only God will know.
The true Christian, if I understand this correctly, is not the one who asserts his or her rights over and against those of gay people, or Muslims, or anyone else. He or she will not even be the one who reaches out to gay people despite their sin. The true Christian will reach out to them because of their sin. The true Christian will be one who says 'I am also a sinner, I am no better than you, how can I serve you?'. Because they will have first looked within, seen themselves as they are in the sight of God, and been inspired by the cross and the message that God loves his enemies (us) supremely.
The true Christian will be the one who looks around for the outcast in the room, in the city, in the nation, and walks alongside them, seeking their rights. You remember the story in Luke 7 where Jesus is invited to dinner by a Pharisee named Simon, and a woman 'who lived a sinful life' washes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair? Simon is shocked that Jesus lets such a woman touch him but Jesus is unfazed, assuring her of God's forgiveness.
There is something about this story you may not have noticed. In response to Simon's unspoken censure, Jesus sets out a scenario of two men who are forgiven debts, one a small debt, and one a big one. Who will love the merciful creditor more? Simon answers that of course it will be the one who has been forgiven more. But notice what Jesus says next.
Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.
Who is the greater sinner here? It is easy to assume that it is the woman, whose 'many sins have been forgiven'. But whose behaviour does Jesus criticise? Not hers! All his criticism is reserved for Simon's lack of hospitality, which in ancient Near Eastern culture was a much more serious sin than in our own. Simon's coolness is not a sign that he is more righteous than the woman, but that he has yet to understand just how sinful he is and hence his need for great forgiveness. This message is driven home in the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18, where the humble, repentant tax collector goes home justified while the self-righteous Pharisee does not. Jesus concludes:
For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Simon is yet to be humbled, but make no mistake, this humbling will come.
We can apply this message to those of us who want the freedom to criticise LGBTIQ people, or Muslims, or poor people, or to make racist statements, or any other modern-day manifestations of Christian Pharisaism (including, perhaps, my own penchant for criticising fundamentalists!). All of us need to understand the depth of our sin. This will keep us from self-righteousness and hypocrisy, and allow us to understand that these 'sinners' are our equals, equally in God's image and equally forgiven by God's grace. We will then be ready, perhaps, to take up our cross on their behalf.
This taking up of the cross is not, as some would have it, an indication of passivity in the face of oppression. If Jesus had been passive, had been quiet in the face of evil, he would never have been crucified. It was his public confrontation of the authorities, his breaking of barriers and championing of outsiders, that got him killed. It is no accident that his most provocative public act, his protest at the temple, took place in the Court of the Gentiles, the area of the temple open to all-comers, and in explanation he quoted Isaiah's words:
...for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.
This was a defence of inclusiveness, a cleansing of the space that was meant to be for all those made in God's image regardless of race, creed, ritual cleanliness or ability. This was not a Jewish rights protest, it was a human rights protest.
This, then, is why I find the Christian campaign for religious freedom legislation, and the championing of Israel Folau, disquieting. We are playing the game of power politics on our own behalf, trying to put a fence around our tribe and our world view. We are particularly focused on our right to critique others, to assert the superiority of our own morality. This is the opposite of where we should be. We should be stepping out of our privilege and searching for those who are despised and outcast, and defending their rights. As long as we are not doing that, we are merely defending our right to be Pharisees if we choose, and this doesn't seem worth defending.
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