There will no doubt be some crossover between this one and that, but I will not be posting everything up on both blogs, so please do go over and check it out. As always, let me know what you think, and if there’s anything you would like me to blog on.
Happy reading,
Peter
There are also occasions when this is taken to extents that are not only damaging to the group itself, say by abandoning a key principle of the group, but also defy every scrap of common sense known to man.
Where am I going with this? Well, I’m not talking about the very thorny issue of homosexuality in the church, although some would see that as a prime example of the above. What I am referring to is something of far more concern, and that, if it leads to more of the same, will be disastrous.
Whether or not you hold to every teaching of the bible, it is probably fair to say that most would accept the need for the existence of God. Klaas Hendrikse, a pastor in the Netherlands believes otherwise. He says that he is an atheist believer, adding “the non-existence of God is for me not an obstacle but a precondition to believing in God.”
This would not be a problem if the Protestant Church of the Netherlands was to discredit him and, if he remains unrelenting in his unbelief, strike him off from the Church. Even to outsiders of the Christian faith looking in, surely this is the only sensible course of action. Not so.
In a letter, the relevant church authorities refused to take any disciplinary action against him, saying that any action taken would lead to "a protracted discussion about the meanings of words that in the end will produce little clarity", adding that people have debated the issue of "God's existence" throughout time. Well of course they have, but not while one of those disbelieving in God has remained an ordained member of the Church, they haven’t.
I’m very much in favour of religious and moral debate, but can they not see how utterly ridiculous this affair is? Those who remain faithful within the wider Dutch protestant church must now decided whether they will object to this farcical heresy and request to leave the church (not individually, but faithful congregations would be well advised to seek independence) or to pressure the senior level authorities within the church to push for some biblical common sense.
Can you seriously imagine a Rabbi who denies the covenant between the Jews and Yahweh? Or an Imam who doubts that Mohammed really did see the Angel Gabriel? The propositions are laughable. So is this episode, and the longer it is allowed to go unchallenged, the more of a laughing stock the Dutch Protestant Church will become. And rightly so.
A piece on the Times Online this morning, saying that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, was waterboarded 183 times has redrawn the debate surrounding this form of “harsh interrogation” to the surface.
I was also slightly concerned by James Delingpole’s blog entry that seems almost to make light of waterboarding in order to emphasise his point.
Many people know remarkably little about waterboarding, and what it entails. I feel therefore that I must upload this video of journalist Christopher Hitchens undergoing waterboarding for a Vanity Fair feature. You can read his written account here. I believe this is a video that should be as widely circulated as possible, made by a man for whom I have the utmost journalistic respect:
You can see this morning’s episode of the Big Questions here. Once again, despite having my hand up, I didn’t get a chance to speak.
So here is what I would have said:
The problem is not with the MPs themselves. Taking the example of expenses, we need to look at the other professionals in the UK (let’s not waste time comparing ourselves to other countries and then giving ourselves a pat on the back).
Other professionals, such as lawyers or businessmen, have to fill in their expenses to the penny, accounting for all that they have done and spent. My dad used to come back from business trips armed with wads of receipts for small items, such as cups of coffee, and had to go through all of them meticulously.
Currently, 52% of Conservative MPs are from a legal or business background, and 50% of the Labour MPs who were voted in at the last election have come from a professional background. These are not fundamentally scandalous individuals, whatever Guido Fawkes would have us all believe.
The problem is the culture and the system into which the MPs are integrated – a culture that expects them to claim as much as they can, a culture that remains at the regulatory whim of Parliament, and that until recently allowed MPs to purchase items of up to £250 without a receipt. The public has every right to feel outraged at what it has seen in the last two weeks, but the anger should not be directed at the MPs.
The ball now lies very firmly in David Cameron’s court.
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