rhodes

When Christians believe that they are in exile in Western societies, contrary to the evidence of our position and power, it points to the fact that Christians are experiencing a collapse in sense-making. The effects, if not remedied, will be disastrous for Christian witness, and for society.

How widespread is this trend? It is now common to see Christian ministry framed as taking place in the context of exile. So common, in fact, that David Starling, writing in Eternity News in August mused that "exile, it seems is the flavour of the year." 

...

The predominant responses from the Church to the intersection between Christianity, place and identity - co-option, competition and commodification - are all attempts, Luke Bretherton argues, to "create a peace in the church and pursue justice for the church by prideful means." But we should seek first the peace and prosperity of the city, not the Church, and do so using alternative means.

What we learn through the heuristic of Jeremiah, by allowing the words to affect our interpretation of our own reality, is that we have a God who has a history of helping his people to imagine and to pursue patterns of faithful witness.

What we experience is different from what has occurred in the past, but it is not entirely new. God has been before us, and he is with us today. He gives us the ability to make sense of our context, and commands us to learn to bless from a position of diminishing power: to love our neighbour, and work for the common good.

Kate Harrison Brennan is the CEO of Anglican Deaconess Ministries. She is a NSW Rhodes Scholar and holds a DPhil in Politics from Oxford. She is a former Advisor to Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She is the editor of Making Global Institutions Work.

don't read more:
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/12/16/4593491.htm

------------------------------

Gus: Hummmhum...

No wonder Julia Gillard was badly advised on some important stuff… Who knows what was this advice given to an atheist by the now CEO of Anglican Deaconess Ministries. But I digress.

The point is about exile. So some poor petals in the Western World feel they are in “exile” because they are Christian. Kate sees it well: This is contrary to the evidence of position and power. The religious mob controls far too much of our social relationships. Say New South Wales for example — an Australian state run by a religious government which is more in tune in making a buck by selling all the PUBLIC assets than professing chastity and poverty. 

So why do some believers feel in “exile”?. Simple. Christian reject reality. Believers reject reality.  They invent a future which is totally disconnected from reality. But reality bites nonetheless. So they feel they don’t belong to this world. They have been in “exile” since the day Eve and Adam goofed in the Garden of Eden. Along the way came a few redemptory solutions to maintain the illusion of god. Add a few rituals, some golden goblets and a guy nailed to a cross — and the narrative is fed to the sheep, including the black ones, since all of us are in a grey area. Religion is sophism of the pure kind, where all the premises are wrong and the resultant is only valid if you believe the trick. It’s idiotic but it works because the alternative is hard work to make sense of it. We’re descendants of a monkey without knowing where we’re going in evolution. Fuck. That’s the truth but it’s fucking annoying.

So it’s better for some believers to feel in “exile” while the masters of their beliefs control the public purse and the moralisation of the whole place. It’s vicious and dangerously retarding, like a dumb inquisition on heat. But we, of the non-believing variety, cope with this hypocrisy that rules with daggers to maintain the top bunk. We still need enlightenment, away from religious influences and the misunderstanding crap that goes with it.

Life, humans and the universe do not have a sense nor a meaning. The only way to make “sense” of the place is by scientific observation of our relative position on a small planet in which evolution took place in a 1/100,000,000,000 chance in a space/time/energy construct where such chances are so afforded more than a billion times over, in many other star systems. We are unique where we are nonetheless because somewhere else with the same random opportunity will be different. Our cell phone work because some clever people worked out the relationships between the components of matter in various ways — from Einstein’s theory of relativity to quantum mechanics — via bio-mechanics and the consciousness of matter in which transforms and memory are the key. At this little planet level of energy — where temperature and components such as water, salt and silicon are conducive to a somewhat pleasant environment in which chemical evolution of life can survive — we are doing a good job at destroying the place.

Dreaming of “exile” is an excuse for trying hard (or not trying hard) not to understand the place AS IT IS. Many people botch up Einstein view on imagination, and go on imagining things without proper knowledge, preferring fairy tales and idiotic propositions.

Reality is harsh but rewarding. God is a cloud-clown invented by men to rule the roost and treat reality with contempt. 

Go away.

A Rhodes Scholarship to express this grand religious rubbish? They’ll give any diploma with a ribbon to any idiots who polish the benches and pay cash… Tony Abbott is a point in case as well — a full religious mongrel with tons of well-learnt Rhodes hypocrisy to sell. In these cases, the cash is "gifted" from Cecil Rhodes who was a racist ruthless imperialist bastard who made moneys from exploiting people and controlled the diamond trade with his company De Beers… His legacy should be erased from this planet. If I was a Rhodes Scholar, I would hang my head in shame.

Exile?
Most of those who feel in exile are religious nuts who have lost power to control the other mobs. In Yamerika, some of them talk of taking the Benedict option while they voted for Trump, who in his funny ways will humour them... That they feel like Judases, badasses and carcasses for it, is their tiny problem compared to the destruction we and they are inflicting on this little ball we call the Earth.

Gus Leonisky

Your local not-a-Rhodes-Scholar in chief