The story is told of two people chatting one day, “You know, if I ever get to meet God, I’m going to ask him straight out why he let all those children in Africa starve to death?” The other person responds, “What a coincidence, because he’s going to ask you the same question.
It is one of the most profound questions mankind ever asks, “If there’s a God, why do bad things happen to good people?”
It was famously asked by Gideon three thousand years ago.
In the Gideon story, the archangel Gabriel meets the young Gideon in a forest and greets him as if he were a 5-star General – “Hail thou mighty Man of Valour!” says the archangel, “The Lord is with you.” At this stage, Gideon was a nobody – “… my family is poor and I am the least in my father’s house”, Gideon responds. I’m sure if someone had told Gideon or his family that he would one day lead the armies of Israel or that a worldwide organisation would be named after him – Gideons International – they wouldn’t have believed it!
“Hail though mighty Man of Valour! The Lord is with you.” Now Gideon doesn’t take this lying down but responds with that most profound of statements – “If God is with us, why do the Midianites do these terrible things to us?” In other words, “If there’s a God, why do all these bad things happen?
The Midianites were a ferocious race of people. They swarmed around the Middle East like locusts raping and pillaging wherever they went. They were not merchants, they were not farmers, they were not traders, they were warriors. And the archangel answers Gideon the same way we are called to respond to poverty and injustice – “Go and do something about it!” So Gideon did – and in no uncertain terms – eventually defeating the Midianites.
In the Old Testament book of 1st Chronicles, King David spoke of ‘The people of Issachar’, people who “understood the times and what needed to be done”. In 2022 we need modern-day ‘people of Issachar’. People who understand the times and what needs to be done.
At the Australian Family Party, we believe we know what needs to be done. We talked about it a fortnight ago:
More: Respect, courtesy, courage. Honesty, humility, tolerance. Generosity, compassion, discernment, common sense. Marriage, children, adoption and income-splitting for stay-at-home parents. More pro-family policy. More recognition of Australia’s Judeo-Christian heritage. More patriotism and support for our armed forces. More self-reliance and personal responsibility. More freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion. More doctor-training, palliative care, affordable housing, support for grandparents. More roads, ports, reservoirs, independent schools. More property rights, small businesses, and funding the ‘user’ of services such as aged care, child care, disability care, energy, housing, superannuation, pharmaceuticals, education and public transport – instead of the ‘provider’ of those services.
Less: Gambling ads, alcohol consumption, poker machines, tax. Divorce, suicide, loneliness, fatherless households, crime, prostitution. Less hubris. Less abrogating responsibility to un-elected bureaucrats and the duplication of Federal and State functions – health and education in particular. Fewer cost of living rises – food, petrol, childcare, mobile phone and internet costs. Less rules that apply to some but not to others. Less government spending and fewer international treaties. And less factional politics, social media and government surveillance.
Get rid of: Fearmongering and the weaponization of issues such as climate and covid. Price-gouging and profiteering from climate and covid. Wastefulness, hypocrisy, double standards. Barriers to home ownership and the distortion of Australia’s history. Pornography, abortion and euthanasia. And let’s get rid of vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, social distancing, masks, perspex screens, lockdowns, dobbing in your neighbours, discrimination based on medical status, QR codes and the testing and quarantining of healthy people.
This would certainly be a good start.