Stories and stories.

It is truly amazing the sort of material that crosses my desk each day. I get updates about and from Palestine-Israel, news releases from the World Council of Churches about climate change, peace and disarmament, ecumenical co-operation, or cluster bombs, commentary about US foreign policy, or requests for support for various actions to make the world a better place.

And then I go home, and while eating dinner watch the news and see a multitude of personal and communal tragedies; and there is this very real temptation or desire to turn the whole thing off. We are buried under an avalanche of stories and events and perspectives (which I am adding to with this blog), and sometimes it is almost too much to bear.

So we sift and block out. We take an interest in some issues, and let others simply pass straight through our heads into another space. The only way to survive really.

One of my filters has to do with a desire to hear the stories of those on the margins. One of the most important things I ever learned was the need to trust the voice of those who are being oppressed, not those who are the oppressors. Too often we ask those who abuse, imprison or illegally occupy for clues to the way forward, when in reality they have no interest in a way forward. The present reality works well for them, and any change they agree to will work for their benefit.

The stories that people tell are crucial to our reflections as Christians. I have had a love affair with the works of Stanley Hauerwas for many years. I really appreciate what he says about narrative, character and virtue. But I think there is a real weakness in Hauerwas’ thought. One gets the impression that he thinks there just ‘is’ a Christian story waiting to be discovered, or that his reading is somehow a neutral reading. He does not deal with the way in which our readings are always socially interested and protect interests. Nor does he take seriously enough the way in which following Jesus demands a character and set of virtues that lead to care of the least and the search for justice for the marginalized.

I think this is because when he talks of narrative he has too narrow a view of what this means. I think ethics is about the character and practices which emerge from a genuine engagement between two stories – mine and the Bible – around the meaning of fullness of life. I think Hauerwas does not take seriously enough my story, and thus pretends a neutrality that is harmful to those who do not sit where he sits.

The stories keep pouring over us, and some of them engage us and our account of the Christian faith in ways that lead to new ways of being in the world.

Acknowledging that we live on Aboriginal land

Last night at our church we shared a meal and conversation with some Aboriginal people about the importance of the acknowledgement that people live on their land. It was interesting to hear people talk about the way such actions are really about a shift in the way we view the world, and are of deep symbolic value. Acknowledgement and, sometimes, arranging for a welcome to country, are respectful actions which honour Aboriginal people and their life and history.

I think it is also important for Christians to realize that acknowledgement is not ‘simply’ an act of justice, an attempt to build better relationships with First peoples. When Christians enact particular moral stances we are seeking to reflect our understanding of the nature and place of God in the world. We see this clearly, for example, in the way the Ten Commandments are delivered to the people of Israel. The beginning of this teaching or law is: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Deut. 5:6). The laws that follow flow from that relationship, that sense of the activity and character of God.

To make this acknowledgement is to suggest something about the way we see God, our relationship to Jesus, and the shape of the Christian life. It is a way of imaginatively reconstructing the world and the way the church lives in invaded space.

The other thing that I found really uplifting in last night’s conversation was a new awareness of how hard people are working to reclaim their culture and language, including regaining skills to make some really important things like possum skin cloaks (which were worn across a large part of the eastern regions of Australia). And there is a wonderful dynamism to this as people now have to get pelts from New Zealand, and use the materials used to stitch saddles rather than sinews from kangaroos.

I am very grateful to Aboriginal people who are willing to share their life and stories with the rest of us. Thank you for you time and courage.

The importance of work

In his 1981 encyclical, Laborem exercens, Pope Paul II develops two helpful insights about work and capital that are worth recalling in the face of disputes at Qantas and the street protests around the world with their focus on Wall Street and the controlling power of big money.

First, work is important for self-formation and human life. Pope Paul says that part of what it means to be made in the image of God is to co-operate in the tending of the earth. This work is communal.

Sadly the Christian tradition was influenced by the view that what defined humanity was reason and rationality, and the way this tradition assigned workers and women to a subordinate place. This is still reflected in the way we value different kinds of work, and undervalue manual labour. What is particularly important is the Pope’s comment that because of the importance of work for human well-being, it is also work that makes people vulnerable to harm and distortion of their proper life. It implicitly highlights the destructiveness of unemployment and underemployment as both economic and personal issues.

It may seem like a slightly old-fashioned idea, but the second of the Pope’s insights is as important as the first: the central cause of dehumanization, oppression, alienation and war is the continuing conflict between labour (meaning people in all the broad forms of work) and capital (which is the result of the heritage of human labour), and that labour should have priority over capital. That is, the issue is not – as in Marx – who owns the capital, but whether it is used to serve labour, and whether those who labour are treated simply as units of production or human beings.

If we begin with the Pope’s insights then we approach a conflict like that at Qantas with a reading that takes seriously the claims of workers about the impact on their life, and the way Qantas serves their needs and not just those of the shareholders. It may allow us to understand that the point of strikes, which Qantas complaint about so loudly, is to force companies to negotiate.

Australia is not beset by strikes. Qantas was on the front page because it was unusual, and because it impacted on so many other parts of society – like tourism. It is not strikes that are hampering productivity improvements but under-investment in education, training and infrastructure, and an obsession with maximizing outputs rather than finding productivity improvements.

Christians need to enter the debate about workplace issues.  

Continuing Colonialism

It is a miracle that Aboriginal people survive. The colonial agenda never ends. It is bad enough that the Federal Government suspended the Race Discrimination Act to put in place what is commonly called the ‘intervention’ in the Northern Territory, or that this present Government ignores all the signs that things are worse for most people in regard to health and income security and care of children than they were before.

Then we had so-called consultation that rushed around communities with far too little time to hear what people said, that interpreted what people said in ways that supported a pre-established position, and now produces another report – Stronger Futures – that does not represent the real issues. At least that is the response of a group of Aboriginal leaders headed by Rev Dr Djiniyi Gondarra and Rosalie Kunoth-Monks have said.

And now we have another attempt to undermine Aboriginal language and culture.

If people are to survive culturally they need to learn their language and see their culture valued. One way this happens is through Indigenous community television networks which facilitate local language productions for communities.

There are now plans to change the arrangements regarding direct-to-home satellite delivery of digital TV. At present the Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services have free-to-air access for three Indigenous television services (which can include local generated content), as well as four mainstream TV services. This gives people a reasonable balance of local and wider TV programs, language and culture.

However the current plans for digital TV mean that there will be 16 channels of mainstream, monolingual, monocultural English language TV; an onslaught of Western English language images and content. And no Indigenous services. Language, cultural pride, and the motivation to participate culturally will be further undermined. Big business wins at the expense of local communities. An ideology of freedom of choice wins over any proper concern for genuine choice and the value of what is local. 

The Olive trees

I am sure there are lots of things I don’t know about the conflict between Palestinian people and the state of Israel. I know I don’t feel the history, the pain, the impact of the holocaust and its deadly racism, and the feeling of being surrounded by people who don’t always want you to exist. Of course I also haven’t experience 60 years of exile and living in refugee camps, denial of statehood, abuse of human rights, or having my land stolen from me.

I don’t understand the denial and mythology, the pretence that the land was not occupied (a form of terra nullius). I don’t understand how an agreement by the UN can be honoured by the establishment of the State of Israel, but the promise of a Palestinian state can be denied year after year. I don’t understand the moral outrage against Iraq or other countries for breach of UN resolutions while settlements go on without condemnation and real action to stop them.

I don’t understand how people think they can have safe and secure borders and good relationships with their neighbours when thousands of people have lived in refugee camps for 60 years, ore when illegal settlements continue to encroach on other people’s land or state. How can you keep stealing people’s land and livelihood and expect them to make peace?

I do not understand how a people so harmed by racism can build a racist state where Palestinians are not equal citizens and, increasingly, where Palestinians are treated as less than fully human. I don’t understand the killing of the children, and the petty, bloody-mined and, at times, life-threatening road blocks and check points. I don’t understand how people can steal another’s community’s water, or pollute their water supply and expect to build a future. I don’t know how that sort of community claims to be a democracy, or claim to be interested in human rights.

Most of all, though, I don’t understand the Olive trees! I don’t understand how people can tear out and burn down ancient Olive trees; the wanton, callous destruction of people’s livelihood and the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the struggling Palestinian economy.

Somehow the Olive tress strike me as a symbol of it all – stolen land, illegal settlements, pointless and wanton destruction, disregard for ordinary human beings trying to live, and a state that has no respect for international law, genuine peacemaking, or the rights of all citizens, and which shows a willingness to turn a blind eye to the sort of racism that has harmed so many of its own citizens.

Can someone help me understand how a people with Amos and Micah in their holy book can do this?

Please remember if you respond. This is a critique of the policies and actions of the state of Israel. Don’t accuse me of anti-Semitism, because as a follower of the Jewish Jesus it is not true. Just help me understand how this terrible injustice continues and can be defended.