An Obadiah Slope column
None of these rescuers/restrainers would have planned for this. They were ambling along, crossing the bridge. Maybe it is on their way to work, but they look a bit casual for office workers. The policewoman on the left has just arrived, Obadiah thinks. Someone has found a rope. Human beings can be good.
###
Hair splitting: Kelli Underwood, compere of the Offsiders sports show on the Abc has this take on Andrew Thorburn (Christian, forced to resign as Essendon CEO) and Haneen Zreika, (Muslim, GWS footballer not playing in the pride round game.)
“We’ve got pride round coming up in the AFL next weekend. We saw early celebrations of that last night at Arden street celebrating diversity, where the AFLW says you are all welcome. And they have managed this issue around the Giant’s Muslim player Haneen Zrieka really well. She says her beliefs don’t marry up to playing the game for pride round so therefore she sits out the game next weekend..
“It’s very different for Zreika because she is a player. But Thorburn is a leader of a church. … there’s no difference between homophobia and racism, so ask yourself if they were racist comments that were posted on a website which he represents, what would have been the outcome? He’s not the player. But Thorburn was the leader of the church.”
One response for Christians, for example by blogger Murray Campbell is to question the arbitrariness of this leader/player distinction “Trying to split hairs over being Chair of the Board s vs being a church member, or belonging to church vs holding religious beliefs, is ridiculous and ignores the very words spoken by the various parties involved.”
Another response from a very different source comes from the NYTimes Ethicist column by Kwame Anthony Appiah, responding to a reader writing in about a co-worker who conceals her anti-abortion views and where these views (repugnant to the elicits columnist and the reader) should be outed.
“Employers ought not to penalize workers for views within the range of reasonable political opinion, but they do,” the Ethicist responds. The columnist is right, sadly, and Obadiah has always thought Christians bear that burden. At least in his experience. But then he chose to work in very secular places.
And suggests a thought experiment.
“Try reversing your positions. Imagine that you’re in a workplace where most people think that abortion is murder. A friend of yours knows that you think otherwise and decides to spread the word because, as she sees it, the implementation of your views has led to the death of millions of innocent human beings. (As in the case you are considering, you are not yourself responsible for these results.) Suppose, in other words, that people on either side of this debate adopted the policy of outing, denying job advancement to and severing friendships with those on the other. Would we be able to have the vigorous public discussions on which democracy depends?”
Obadiah notes that there are such places, such as Christian schools. But agrees with the Ethicist in taking the view of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty encouraging free speech as much as possible in society. “If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
###
Quote of the week:
###
Another baby Jesus: When I went outside to hang out the washing a parcel blocked the front door. The recipient, Obadiah’s more significant other, on opening it exclaimed “I only wanted the baby Jesus, but they sent the whole creche.”
I should explain that she is the 28-year play group lady at St Obadiah’s. Every Christmas the baby Jesus goes missing, setting off a desperate search., so she wanted a spare. The baby Jesus gets manger-snatched.
But now, after the bigger-than-expected parcel arrived she has six wise men, two Marys etc.
Obadiah thinks that there’s a heap of sermon illustrations in there for desperate preachers. Glad to be of service.
###
Maths test: Obadiah is too thick to read the articles in Scientific American. He’s tried and failed. But for those who can, this month they have published “Can God Be Proved Mathematically?”
Predictably perhaps, mathematicians (or are they philosophers?) Blaise Pascal and Kurt Gödel show up, but so do some formulae. Obadiah would love to read your review of the Scientific American piece.