The ALP and Fatso The Fat-Arsed Wombat

Cast your minds back, dear readers, to the dawning of the new millennium - the year 2000. 'Twas a time of happiness and joy for those of us blessed to live in the Harbour City for a momentous event was ready to take place - the Sydney Olympic Games! Even the most jaded got into the spirit of things for that glorious two weeks. We shined our shoes, put away the Drop Bears routine, and tried to be as helpful as possible to the Unwashed Foreign Filth who had come for the celebrations and were trying to understand the complexities of our public transport system.

But 20 million Australians couldn't be on their best behaviour for that long! Someone was going to have to take the piss in a major way at some point. There were, naturally, only two men for the job...

Olympic Mascots have had a certain amount of Groan Factor for a number of decades now. Perhaps since LA '84 no-one has paid them much respect, but they are acknowledged as part of the kitsch that goes along with hosting the Games. For the Sydney Games the organizers came up with a particularly uninspiring set:

Not only were these nauseating natives extremely ugly, but the fact that there were THREE of the buggers screamed loudly that the Games Committee were less than optimistic about making their money back and had put the family silver on tripling their merchandising revenue. Such a balloon was ripe for bursting.

Enter "Rampaging" Roy Slaven and H.G. Nelson! Visitors to our shores (particularly those from the USA) were bewildered at the fact that not only were these two loonies conducting a public satire of this prestigious event (including merging Greco-Roman wrestling with Barry White music), but that they were allowed to be broadcast on the Official Television Channel in prime time! If American comedians had attempted something similar (assuming that they understood the concept of "satire") they would have been subject to a long stint in Guantanamo Bay.

Roy and H.G. unmasked the Official Mascots for what they were - a symbol of the fact that the Games had been removed from the control of the People. Australians would never have voted for these critters (soon dubbed "Syd Ollie & Dickhead") if they had been given a free choice. So Roy and H.G. put up their own mascot. One that could be embraced by the Australian Public. The Little Guy, the People's Prince...

Fatso The Big-Arsed Wombat!!!

Fatso was a sensation. His fame spread throughout the land, while the Games Committee did their best to stop it. The Australian athletes entered into the spirit of the rebellion, bringing Fatso up onto the podium and throwing him off the high diving board. In the end the Games Committee admitted defeat. A statue of Fatso is now a permanent fixture outside the Main Stadium at Homebush. To my knowledge, no memorial of Syd Ollie and Dickhead has yet been erected.

This morning a former Prime Minister, who was elected on a huge wave of popular support, was denied the opportunity of returning to the highest office by the same cabal who had knifed him in the back 20 months ago. Australian Labor Party ministers and members spewed forth vitriol of the most poisonous type over the weekend to defend their view that Kevin Rudd should never again be given the keys to the Lodge, even as the party heads towards a massive electoral defeat and the return of a conservative government. At the same time, popular support seemed welded solid to Mr Rudd, even as tales of mismanagement and temper tantrums flooded the airwaves. His polling has been significantly above that of Prime Minister Julia Gillard for well over a year. Overnight busloads of True Believers headed to Canberra to protest outside Parliament House, hoping against hope that their chosen leader, Kevin Rudd, would be brought back to lead our nation. Those hopes have now been dashed, and it is unlikely that they will ever be revived. Our elected representatives have chosen Syd Ollie & Dickhead over Fatso.

I am not a member of the ALP, my political loyalties lie elsewhere. I don't think the ALP made a bad decision today, I think they made bad choices long ago and today's leadership ballot was a consequence of repeated and systematic failures.

Note: I also think Kevin Rudd is in the wrong party. Kev, call me! It's not too late.

What the events of the last 5 days have taught us is that something is fundamentally wrong with the manner politics in our nation is being conducted. People have been complaining about the system, as though it is the system's fault that the will of the people is failing to be heard. But there is something much more rotten in the state of Orstrailya. The power is out of our hands. We can't choose who leads us. Faith is put in political parties that have long since stopped being accountable to the people they represent. What happened this morning should not, by all political logic, have happened - members of Parliament have voted in a way that has guaranteed that they will lose their seats in another 18 months. They no longer represent their electorates but their political masters. I'm not just picking on the ALP; the Libs are just as bad. But they have us all convinced that we have No Other Option but to go for the lesser of two evils when we put the slip of paper in the box. This, my friends, is a lie!

Fatso The Fat-Arsed Wombat has achieved something that few characters in Australian culture have - he has a Legacy. I imagine I will be explaining that statue at Homebush to my grandchildren one day. Whether Kevin Rudd will have a similar monument dedicated to him remains to be seen. He probably deserves one, given that he walked into the lion's den this morning on a matter of principle knowing that it was the will of the People, his true masters. Somehow, I don't think that those who have retained power today will be getting a monument of any sort.

J. Gresham Machen on Public and Private Education

I came across this quote recently and am using it in a speech tomorrow on the Christian Vote in Contemporary Australian Politics. I couldn't have said it better myself:

A public-school system, in itself, is indeed of enormous benefit to the race. But it is of benefit only if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely free possibility of the competition of private schools. A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective. Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of the parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to then to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as it is by a perverse technique used as the instrument in destroying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword permitted thought at least to be free.

J. Gresham Machen. "Christianity & Liberalism", pp.11-12.

Reformed Romantics: Ezekiel 24 and the Death of Marriage

It has been a while since I posted, for which my sincere apologies. The business of preparing for and then receiving a new baby in the house has occupied my mind considerably. But Onwards and Upwards I say...

I'll also flag that it is at this point that my reflections on Biblical marriage will take a slight deviation from the mainstream. I'm also going to skip over a lot of material so we can move forward to Ezekiel 34, which I believe marks a turning point in God's plans for human marriage in relation to his plan of redemption.

Marriage as a human institution takes a bit of a backseat for most of the Old Testament. There are, of course, passages in the Torah regarding the regulation of marriage for the nation of Israel (e.g. Leviticus 18, Numbers 36). Following this, it is assumed that human marriage continues, with young people being given in marriage to each other, begetting children, and so progressing the covenant. When marriage is discussed it is usually when there is a problem (e.g. Samson's taking of a Philistine wife in Judges 14). These problems function as warning signs that spiritual trouble is not far away. Solomon's taking of many wives from foreign kingdoms and Jezabel's domination of Ahab may also be cited as examples. Song Of Songs is a notable exception, but the restraint and yearning of this romantic drama contrasts markedly with the absence of such behavior in actuality.

As Israel moves into the Prophetic Age, "unfaithful marriage" is an image used by the Pre-Exilic prophets in particular to describe the deterioration of the relationship between the Jewish nation and God. In all cases, God is described as the husband betrayed by an unfaithful wife (e.g. Jeremiah 3, Ezekiel 16). The prophet Hosea is even commanded to take a woman of soiled reputation as a public display of the shame that Israel has brought upon their God.

As the situation cannot continue, God eventually brings things to a head and judgment is visited on Israel and Judah in turn. Yet the question must be asked: does the end of the spiritual marriage between God and Israel signal an end (or at least a shift) in the physical marriage of Man and Woman?

I believe that the answer lies in Ezekiel 24:15-27 and the death of the wife of the prophet. For years I spent wondering if God was a Moral Monster. Here was a woman, who had apparently committed no great sin, brought to an early death by a God intent on making a point. Moreover, her husband was not allowed even to mourn for her death as a sign of the coming judgment. Ezekiel's pain is evident even through the restrained narrative. I could understand and accept God taking away an unfaithful wife as a symbol, but to wrench the delight of a man's eyes away from him seemed heartless and cruel.

After much thought, I have come to a tentative solution:

The death of Ezekiel's wife represents the end of human marriage as the central mode of covenant progression and identity.

What has struck me as I read through the promises of deliverance from exile in Ezekiel and Jeremiah in particular is that the concept of marriage is not "resurrected". God does not "divorce" his bride and then "remarry" again. The image of marriage is basically insignificant to the Post-Exilic prophets as well. Instead, the image of Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 is God forming a new covenant with the lost who have been scattered through their rebellion. Those who will be part of the New Covenant will be Spiritually rather than Physically begotten. However good human marriage remains in its created state, it will never occupy the same central role in the redeemed community as it did for Israel under the Old Covenant. Marriage will no longer be the procreative means to a redemptive end and will not theologically dominate the covenant community.