Showing posts with label Great Powers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great Powers. Show all posts

Sunday, 22 November 2020

Monarchs obeying the Bible turned out miserably

 For centuries, certain W European Great Powers have ​been guilty of piracy, ​​sailed around the world exploring​, settling down in far off lands​ and trading - ​mostly ​uninvited!  It led to coercion, exploitation, slavery, empire building and countless wars where the blacks got the rough end of our supposed '​white, democratic, Christian based ​civilisations'. ​ Yet, remarkably, our subjugated subjects still helped us fight our wars in the last century!

E​very English monarch,​ in recent centuries, has had these words said to them as part of their vows:

Our gracious Queen/King:
to keep your Majesty ever mindful of the law and the Gospel of God
as the Rule for the whole life and government of Christian Princes,
we present you with this Book,
the most valuable thing that this world affords.

And the Moderator shall continue:
Here is Wisdom;
This is the royal Law;
These are the lively Oracles of God.

​But the monarchs sanctioned piracy, colonisation and warfare.  ​From the white peoples of Western Europe ​who colonised N America, the native American tribes succumbed to "God, guns and germs".  God because the believers thought that the Lord was paving the way for them in the New Promised Land when the inhabitants fell like flies - no immunity at all - to the diseases that the new settlers​, unwittingly,​ had brought with them.

"We see asylum seekers washed up on the beaches dead.  Held in inhumane conditions behind barbed wire around Europe.  W​hat​ does our message say to them?  What should the Gospel be to them?"  John Neale - talk on Sun 22 Nov 2020

SELF: From the terrible way that our ancestors treated strangers and foreigners, you would think that we would now be more empathetic and compassionate and even wanting to help the descendants of those we treated so poorly​.  Really poorly in capturing, enslaving and deporting them to work in foreign fields under the baking sun to make us as wealthy ​as ​we are now​.​  A​nd, without even paying them a cent for their manual labours in atrocious conditions​.  Any employer or business would be successful on that basis​!

Monday, 3 August 2015

War, violence and aggression are the norm for the rich West and set a dreadful example

We must work to end all wars because it leads to yet more wars, revenge, bitterness and spiraling violence.  The colonies were captured by the western European Great Powers and their empires were maintained by violence to put down unrest.  Centuries of warfare between the western European powers made violence the norm.  This led to WW1 led to WW2 that led to the Cold War that led to the War of Terrorism that includes killing by remote control from thousands of miles away.

No empires would have meant much less killing down the centuries and the Christian nations actually complying with their Founders rejection of empire building.  Extraordinary that such a clear and simple command was so soundly and outrageously flouted by the vast majority of good Christians for the last 1700 years!

Sunday, 8 March 2015

Anti-semitism is a product of Israeli behaviour to the stranger in its midst

Or, I think, it is a direct correlation to its partly justifiable paranoia that for 67 years has meant periodic bouts of aggression towards the surrounding countries that never agreed to a Jewish state in the heart of the Arab/Muslim Middle East.  A Middle East dominated by the Great Powers, first at the beginning of the 20th century, that was intensified as the Christian West and their empires tightened their hold on the rich oil fields that were so essential for their wars and, from 1945, their ever richer, oil addicted life styles.

In the inter-war years, the UK had the mandate to govern Palestine.  From '45 to '47 Jewish terrorist gangs,with the help of American mercanaries, fought the British Army.  So we saw the State of Israel born out of terrorism, as the Jewish Gerald Kaufman MP once said on 'Any Questions' many years ago.  Since 1948, Israel has been part of the Christian West.  Hence, the Judeo-Christian world has thrown its weight about on holy Muslim soil for the last 67 years with all our many wars and coups.  No wonder, militant, extremist, radical Islam is now the whirlwind of barbarity that was sown by the brutality of domination from the disobedient Christian West.  I say disobedient because of their Master's somewhat different attitude and teaching.  Yet, obedient when it came to Old Testament ethics and the violent jihad and genocide that we read about as Israel claimed Canaan for itself, the first time round, two and a half thousand years ago or more.

For me, anti-semitism is as unacceptable as Islamaphobia and homophobia.  But, for true, born again Christians, love of Israel and the Jews is a lot more prominent than love for Muslims and gays!