Category Archives: Global issues

VIDEO: Just Us For All

This is my (rejected) contribution to the The World in Half a Century Forum 2020, held in honour of the famous Russian nobel laureate, Andrei Sakharov. I was invited to contribute a half hour virtual lecture to this forum, which had been due to be held in St Petersburg, Russia in 2020.

You will see why the organisers decided to reject my contribution, given what I say about truth, LGBTQI inclusion, diversity, communism and society. Sadly, even though Sakharov himself was a Russian dissident and activist against the Russian government, modern day Russian conferences were always unlikely to host a speaker with views that go against the current Russian State status quo.

So, here now for the first time is my contribution available for public viewing:

What do you think of my vision of how we build a society for the future, by focusing on diversity, minorities and the marginalised, and moving beyond the divided society we live in now?

Towards the end of the video I sum it up this way:
“We need to stop building a world that favours the rich and powerful. We must choose to build a society around the needs of minorities and those who have been previously excluded. … If we build a society for people who are not like us… we will build a better society… Those societies that do this will be better off than those that don’t 50 years from now.”

There are no walls

I really wish more churches would preach this: there are no walls.

The attached Naked Pastor cartoon is one of the most powerful he’s ever done (and he even managed a touch of poetry too).

Over and over and over again in his ministry, Jesus demonstrated that those people the religious leaders were excluding and judging were actually accepted and welcomed by Jesus. The only people Jesus ever warned about being “outside” were those religious leaders themselves.

Am I saying “everyone will be saved”? No. Some people don’t want to be saved. What I am saying is that it is mainly the people who want to close the doors for others who are choosing to not be saved. They’re choosing instead to build something that is the opposite of the Kingdom of God: they’re choosing to build an exclusive, exclusionary club, and so – by their own approach – they will be allowed to choose a future where live in a space as small as they wanted it to be, as excluded as they were exclusionary, as rejected as they were rejecting and as sad as they made many seekers of love and truth. Their hell has already started.

This is not what God wants. The story of the history of God is a story of ever expanding inclusion and acceptance (or more accurately, of our ever improving understanding of God’s inherent inclusionary character). From one man and his family, to his tribe and a nation, to their neighbours and eventually to the ends of the earth, and all peoples, nations, tribes and tongues. The story starts in an empty garden and ends in a limitless, sustainable city, open to everyone and capable of accommodating us all.

And, yes: it specifically includes all genders as well.

Naked Pastor Cartoon

What churches can do to support parents and students during the Covid-19 disruption

The Covid-19 disruption has had a huge impact on schools, and they are not going to be able to go “back to normal” anytime in 2020, or possibly even 2021. Parents are struggling to “home school”. Parents might be able to go back to work before children go back to school.

Here is a suggestion for churches, religious organisations, sports clubs and other community societies to help parents and children who are struggling right now.

Please listen and share this idea in your community. We all need to help each other deal with this Covid disruption.

Living the Truth in an Age of Lies

Here’s something you should hear in church this week, but probably won’t: gaslighting is real, and too many Christians are part of perpetuating it.

The Patheos blog posted an excellent article on gaslighting and how to deal with it. “Gaslighting” is a particular strategy of liars, who try and get you to question yourself and the truth. This article references Donald Trump, but I am also experiencing a lot of this in South Africa, with apartheid revisionists. These are people trying to get us to change our view of apartheid and say it wasn’t so bad – they’re doing this so as to not deal with racism’s legacy or acknowledge white guilt.

The full article is available here, or an excerpt below:

Gaslighting in the Age of Trump: 6 Tips for Survival

by Leah D. Schade, on July 30, 2018.

When the president’s lies destroy the very concept of truth and reality for a nation, we must resist the gaslighting and practice radical integrity.

It’s been 556 days since Donald Trump put his hand on a Bible and promised that he would “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, [to] preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Since then, that oath has been broken and the 8th Commandment violated. From the beginning, he asserted outright lies as truth, along with his press secretary and surrogates. For example, when the world could see in real-time the size of the crowd gathered for the inauguration and contrast that to pictures of a much larger crowd for Obama’s inauguration, we could obviously tell the difference. Yet they disputed reality right in front of our eyes, asserting “alternative facts.”

Since then, the Washington Post has counted over 3000 false or misleading claims made by the president as of May 2018, averaging 6 – 9 per day.

COMMENT FROM GRAEME: For the first time since taking office, the Washington Post fact checker has called one of Trump’s “falsehoods” a lie. They have not wanted to do this before because they define a lie as requiring “intent to deceive”. But now that Michael Cohen has said that he paid off porn stars to keep quiet at Trump’s request, The Washington Post can definitely say that Trump’s denials of this are lies. Read more here.

Most recently, Trump’s tactics seemed to come straight from George Orwell’s 1984 when he stated in a speech on July 24, 2018: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” Esquire’s Jack Holmes explains the dangerous turn with this pernicious statement: “Lies that are not merely lies, but instead serve to destroy the very concept of truth, are a cornerstone of any authoritarian playbook.”

What is going on here?

In a word: gaslighting.

Gaslighting is the attempt of one person to overwrite another person’s reality. It is a tactic used for gaining power and control. The term gets its name from a 1938 play and 1944 film Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman in which her husband would secretly dim the gaslight, but when she commented on it, he insisted she must be crazy. And he convinced others she was insane as well. Thus, gaslighting is a form of manipulation through persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying in an attempt to destabilize and delegitimize a person or group of people.

Continue reading Living the Truth in an Age of Lies

Christmas Eve Reflection: Seeing Mary’s Christmas

It might be because as the only male in my household I am surrounded by “women’s stuff” all day everyday and am privileged to be forced to see the world through a distinctly feminine (and deliberately feminist) lens, that on Christmas Eve each year, my thoughts often turn to Mary and what she must have been thinking and feeling at this time that very first Christmas so long ago.

She’d have been tired from a long, unnecessary journey, and a nine month pregnancy. She’d have been scared, just a teenager about to give birth for the first time surrounded by strangers. She’d have been concerned for her future, not yet in love with kind Joseph to whom she had been promised in marriage, and overwhelmed by all that had happened to her already in her short life.

On that night, she was an oppressed minority forcibly relocated to some ancestral town she knew nothing of by a dictatorial government who saw her and her kind as a problem. On that night, she was homeless. She would soon become a refugee, and witness to a massacre of children. And she would live to see her first born child killed savagely.

I don’t think Mary had “a silent, holy night” in mind.

And, yet, we know that she knew. This child that was to be born was no ordinary child. Her child would not live an ordinary life. He would change the world, and history, forever. That night, she knew – before anyone else did – that the Saviour was coming.

I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas. I have grown to love it more as I have witnessed it through the excitement of my own children. But I’m not convinced that the message of that first Christmas is being adequately embodied in our world today – especially to those people who are precisely like Mary: pregnant teenagers, scared women, brown-skinned poor people, refugees, those in countries that oppress their citizens or have been invaded by a hostile force, the homeless and those who wonder where their next meal will come from. What does it mean to them that the Saviour has come?

Mary’s story is as important as Jesus’ at Christmas. Christmas Eve is my moment to see the greatest story ever told through the eyes of Mary, the Mother of God.

Richard Rohr’s reflection on White Privilege

Here’s something we should hear more of at church: white people are privileged.

I receive Richard Rohr’s daily meditations by email. A month ago, he posted one that was remarkable in its insights and writing. Read it at his site, or an extract below.

The Invisible Character of White Privilege

by Fr. Richard Rohr, 17 Nov 2017

If we are going to talk about God as me, we must also talk about God as thee too! For a long time, I naively hoped that racism was a thing of the past. Those of us who are white have a very hard time seeing that we constantly receive special treatment just because of the color of our skin. This “white privilege” makes it harder for us to recognize the experiences of people of color as valid and real when they speak of racial profiling, police brutality, discrimination in the workplace, continued segregation in schools, lack of access to housing, and on and on. This is not the experience of most white people, so how can it be true?

Continue reading Richard Rohr’s reflection on White Privilege

A clash of worldviews

One of the reasons the recent US Presidential election has been so emotive is that, more than at any time in recent memory, it was also a stark clash of worldviews. Not just political doctrines, or sets of public policies, but a clash between two very different worldviews. The one has been labelled Right, Traditional, Conservative. The other Left, Liberal, Progressive.

I find myself drawn to the progressive side of this divide, without buying into everything that it stands for. I have been debating online for a few weeks with a set of people from the Right, who have been as fervent as I have to state their views and defend their worldview.

One of these gentlemen sent me two videos and asked me to respond to them: one by Andrew Breitbart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIO4oSLwK3A and another on Cultural Marxism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg3T_H2LZ54

I don’t plan to do a moment by moment response. But Breitbart is a good lightning rod for where the Tea Party, alt-right and Trump are taking America, so it’s worth taking a moment to respond to this.

At the heart of the Right’s concern with the world right now is the perceived use of a Marxist approach to society. Marxism aims to highlight the divide between the haves and have nots, encouraging the have nots to rise up in revolution. It’s goal is to destroy capitalism and replace it with socialism. ‘Cultural Marxism’ – a label the Right like to impose on almost all Liberal worldviews – is perceived to be the use of similar tactics in encouraging minority groups to consider themselves to be oppressed and to rise up against their oppressor, which is the current ruling system.

Continue reading A clash of worldviews

Missional Business Seminar, Johannesburg, 5 Nov 2016

This is your invitation to a vitally important seminar. Download a PDF brochure here, and share with your friends.

The world is changing. More Christians from developing nations are becoming interested in mission. We need more people on the mission field, coming from more diverse backgrounds and finding new methods of funding their work.

Come and join a seminar hosted by OMF International that will investigate some new models of missional business.

LEARN about…

  • NEW WAYS of doing and funding mission
  • INTEGRATING your entrepreneurial spirit and gifts with mission to the ends of the earth
  • GOD AT WORK in various parts of the world through Missional Business

Continue reading Missional Business Seminar, Johannesburg, 5 Nov 2016

I am a racist. But I do not want to be one.

CONTEXT: A few weeks ago, a young girl at a school in South Africa protested against the rules of her school by wearing a fairly sizeable Afro-style hair style. On the face of it, this doesn’t sound like much. But there are many reasons this became a flashpoint for discussion and debate.

  • Firstly, it happened in a South Africa that has just experienced a watershed election, where the balance of power is shifting in the whole of society – we’re trying to work out what it means to be South African, rather than post-apartheid South African.
  • Secondly, hair is an issue for black women. It just is. I have an adopted black daughter, and hair has been an issue in our home since she arrived. I have spent many hours with her at hair salons, and marvel at what African women must endure to do anything with their hair.
  • Thirdly, hair is more than a merely cosmetic issue – it is a political issue. All the way back in the days of slavery, hairstyles distinguished the house slaves (who had to straighten their hair or wear wigs) and field slaves. It was an apartheid test for race – if a pencil stayed in your hair, you were ‘black’. I kid you not – this was happening in South Africa in the 1970s and 80s.
  • Fourthly, our world is built with a hidden (but very much intentional and specifically constructive) white heteronormative bias. Most white people (especially white, straight males) do not even notice this. Like fish don’t know they’re swimming in water.

I recently posted a Facebook profile picture with a short statement of support for all the young black women who are standing against their schools’ hair policies. The responses I received to this indicated that many people do not understand the racism inherent in the very system itself. I realised I was one of those people. So, I wrote this:
Continue reading I am a racist. But I do not want to be one.

How to know your version of Christianity is broken

Last week, a lone gunman attacked a gay club in Orlando, Florida. Fifty people were killed, making this modern America’s worst mass shooting tragedy. We may never know for sure what the gunman’s motives were, although we do know that he made calls to 911 and the police claiming to be influenced by ISIS. For the purposes of this post, though, his motives are irrelevant.

An outpouring of grief and condolences followed. But not by everyone. Some Christians used the massacre as an opportunity to further their agenda of hatred towards the LGBT community in the most extraordinary ways.

The highest profile of these is Pat Robertson, front man of the 700 Club TV show. He used his show to claim that liberal LGBT rights advocates have aligned themselves with radical Islamists and are now reaping what they have sowed. Robertson said that liberals are facing a dilemma because they love both LGBT equality and Islamic extremism, and that it is better for conservatives like himself not to get involved but to instead just watch the two groups kill each other. Watch the video for yourself if you don’t believe me. For further quotations where Roberston explains this “dilemma” in even more detail, see this article from Right Wing Watch.

Then, in a sermon so filled with hate that YouTube has since removed it for violating their policy on hate speech, Sacramento pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church said, “Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today? Um no, I think that’s great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight…. I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a wall, put a firing squad in front of them and blow their brains out…. The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!”

Another pastor, Steven Anderson, from Faithful Word Baptist Church, Arizona, uploaded a video that is still available on Vimeo. It’s a horrific video in which he refers to LGBT people repeatedly as “sodomites”, “pedophiles” and “homos”.

Continue reading How to know your version of Christianity is broken