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The People Smuggler

People smugglers are the comic book villains of Australian asylum seeker policy.  When he was Prime Minister in 2009, Kevin Rudd described them this way in the wake of a tragic event on an asylum seeker boat. People smugglers are engaged in the world's most evil trade and they should all rot in jail because they represent the absolute scum of the earth.  People smugglers are the vilest form of human life. They trade on the tragedy of others and that's why they should rot in jail and in my own view, rot in hell. Yet people smuggling has not always had such bad press.  As young Christians we were encouraged to read the inspiring story of Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch woman who was imprisoned by the Nazis for smuggling Jews out of the country.  Later we all heard about Oskar Schindler, the wealthy German industrialist who used his right to Jewish slave labour as a cover for an operation which smuggled some 50,000 Jews out of Poland. In even more recent history Betty Mahmoody

Good Cop, Bad War

A few years ago my daughter and I developed an addiction to the American crime drama Bones.  The story centres around a group of forensic scientists, the most brilliant of whom is forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.  This team of impossibly good looking and brilliant people work in a shiny laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution and solve grisly murders rapidly on the basis of the tiniest scraps of evidence.  In one episode they solve a murder in which the only evidence is a single finger-bone of the victim. If we switched the TV on a bit early, we would get to see the end of the previous show, which for a long time was one of those police docu-dramas where the cameras follow a group of real police officers as they go about their daily business.  The contrast could not have been more stark.  Real police work turns out to be amazingly pedestrian.  The officers pull someone over for a faulty tail-light and find drugs in the glove-box.  A serious offender is caught because som

What is 'Christian Marriage'?

So, over the next couple of months we are going to be talking a lot about same sex marriage thanks to the governments decision to hold a 'national survey' on this question in place of the promised plebiscite.  Debate is hotting up already.  The level of vitriol from some conservative Christians has risen appreciably, and it is not only directed at proponents of same sex marriage.  I have seen savage things said to and about quite conservative Christians who have gently suggested that their fellow Christians could consider voting yes , or even just abstaining  without compromising their own view of marriage.  The fear and anger in the air is palpable. I don't want to rehash those arguments.  You can follow the links or find them, and many like them, on the internet if you are masochistic enough to want to read them.  Personally I will be voting yes, but you need not let that influence your decision.  Follow your own conscience wherever it leads you. The thing is, I thi

Game of Mates

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  We all know that.  The question is, how do they do it? A couple of years ago I reviewed French economist Thomas Piketty's opus,  Capital in the 21st Century .   Piketty shows, using an impressive dataset and some simple equations, that the normal state of capitalist economies is that capital generates larger returns than labour, meaning that over time more and more of the resources in a society go to those who have capital. In Western societies this process was reversed in the immediate post-war decades by a combination of factors.  Rapid economic growth was driven by the recovery from two world wars and the Great Depression.  This led to wages growth and inflation, which redistributed income away from capital and towards labour.  To add to this, governments funded the reconstruction through high rates of inheritance tax, limiting the ability of capital to accumulate across generations. Since the end of the resulting boom in the 1

Fighting Hislam

The hounding of Yassmin Abdel-Magied is one of the more shameful incidents in the catalogue of Australian media misbehaviour.  Abdel-Magied is a young Sudanese/Australian woman who is proudly Islamic, wearing flamboyant bright-coloured headgear and speaking her mind. Her crimes, if such they be, are twofold.  During an episode of the ABC's Q&A program Senator Jacqui Lambie expressed her well-aired fears about sharia law, and Abdel Magied interrupted to explain forcefully that Lambie knew nothing about sharia and that Islam is 'the most feminist religion'.  A few months later she drew further ire by briefly posting a critical comment on Anzac Day.  Now it's probably fair to say that she was a little rude in interrupting Senator Lambie, although I doubt the senator would be much phased given that we see worse behaviour every day in parliament. Indeed, later in the same episode the pair joined forces to critique the Coalition Government's changes to early childh

The (Universalist) Lord's Prayer

Often discussions about universal salvation get bogged down in things like the meanings of particular words and the correct interpretation of certain Bible verses. Duelling lexicons, clash of the commentaries.  If universalism is just an alternative intellectual framework, what's the point? If we remain as exclusive and dogmatic in our practice as we ever were, then no-one's gained by the change. I've been thinking, then, about how a universalist faith affects our lives. How should it change the way we relayed God and one another? Perhaps, for instance, we might pray Lord's Prayer a little differently. Our Father in heaven Hallowed be your name. God is righteous and powerful but his righteousness and power are shown above all in love. We come before God in full confidence. Certainly we have shame and perhaps, because of that, some trepidation. But we need not fear, either for ourselves or for our loved ones. We know that whatever punishment we receive will only

The Four Days of Easter

Easter stretches over four days, with the day measured from sundown to sundown - for us it begins on Thursday evening and stretches through to the close of the day on Monday.  It is an emotionally harrowing time for those who take it seriously and hence requires preparation, which is why Christian traditions include Lent, a period of fasting and reflection, in the month beforehand. The period describes the four literal days of Jesus' death and resurrection, but also four figurative days or periods of time, four states of being in which Jesus' followers live and which we pass through over time.  Let me explain. Easter Friday  is a day of fear and anxiety.  Jesus and his disciples are in Jerusalem, defenceless and surrounded by powerful enemies who are closing in on them.  The idyllic, hopeful life they lived as a band of brothers and sisters, travelling together and creating a new Kingdom of God, appears to be collapsing.  As the day progresses, things get worse - they are a