Toward a Christian Public Theology of Grace-based Justice - A Theological Exposition and Multiple Interdisciplinary Application of the 6th Sola of the Unfinished Reformation - Volume 7

By James Waller

Gospel and Kingdom and New Covenant coherent Theological system, Church and Public praxis, inclusive of the theological discussion and application of the 6th Sola of the Unfinished Reformation, viz: Justice by Grace Alone WITHOUT the ongoing Retributive, (or partially Retributive, Purgatorial, Expiational, or non-Redemptive Church and State atoning) Punishments of the Law, whether of God or man. This breaks major new ground for the advancement of the Kingdom of God on earth in the here and now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387804573

Book preview

VOLUME 7: BOOK 13

LOVE’S UNFOLDING DREAM

AN INTRODUCTION TO

A CHRISTIAN PUBLIC THEOLOGY OF

GRACE-BASED JUSTICE

AN INSIDER INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY

FROM THE UNDERSIDE

(IN EPIC, POLEMIC and PROPHETIC POETIC PROSE)

AUTHOR:

JAMES C. WALLER

Table of Contents

Volume 7: Book 13:Love’s Unfolding Dream

Christianity Is Christ

Divinely Ordained Prominent Double Proxy Agent

Legislatures And Courts Are Beholden To Listen

By Treating The Weak And ‘Wicked’ Alike

Like Us And One Of Us

Human Rights Caution

Is Judge Sockdolager Out Of Order And

I Am No Judge Jobbery And I Do Not Commit

Highway Robbery

The Professional Lawyer And Law Itself

Dr Pullum-Strangelove Was Educated

Under Hans Kelsen

Becoming More Human

Some Final Thoughts On A

Trinitarian Theology Of Love, Law And Mercy

Exploring The Interface Of Spirituality

Discipleship, Therapeutic Faith Community

Political Theology And A Viable Sustainable

Social Ecology

These Seven Supertheses Of Emmanuel Jesus

With Their Doublemindedness And Defeatist Mentality

With Their Levee-Headed Containment (Of Evil) Mindset

[All This Hoo-Ha Is Giving Me The Abdabs]

With Their Graveolen Gibeonite (Slavish) Belief

God’s Gate-Crashers And Two-Pot Screamers

So The Fissilingual Feminals And The Furioso Feminists

Dishonourable Defeat In Time And History

Why Should We Settle For A Race To The Bottom

When The Future Is Ours To Win?

Up Our Game, Go All In Together To Win The Future

Leading With Everything To Give

Leading With Nothing To Lose

Where Is The Pulsating Virility Of A Pentecost?

Because Humanity Needed A New Justice Beyond Law And Punishment

Where Every Law Aims At Establishing Friendship

Since Morality (And The Authority Of Legality) Does Need God

No Imaginative Connoisseur Of Good Overcoming Evil

The Dark Ages Of Hard Rock Logic All Over Again With Its

Hell’s Performance With Heaven’s Imprimatur?

Conscripting Rather Than Consecrating The Gift Of Life

Needing To Be E-Constructed And Re-Constructed

New Native Epic Consciousness

Collapsing All Centralisms And Totalitarian Control

A Congruency Of Life As The Light And Liberty And Law Of Love

A New Geisteswissenschaften Or Sciences Of The Spirit

But Still We Milk The Sacred Cow Of Law For All Its Unworth

Shifting From The Rock Hard Logic Of A Lamech And A Moses

Let’s Shut The Pandora’s Box On Law As A Panacea

Let’s Be Watchful Of The Pendragons Of War

Don’t Be A Mug For Establishment Thinking

Bifurcations Of Western Theology

Watching Out For Those Who Want To Value-Add The Gospel

Thus Every Evil System Is Sustained By A

Moral Plausibility Hypothesis

A Realistic Christlike Law That Makes Sense To Believers And Non-Believers Alike

Refusing To Be Institutionally Sabotaged And Blackballed

Jesus Alone Is Our Shining Sky-God In Human Flesh

What We Hypocritically Want Others To Experience Is The Justice Of Deserts

Thus Earthly Authorities Should Act In Accordance

With God’s Gracious Wrath And Merciful Intent

Not A Justice Of The State Over The Justice Of The Gate

Not A Justice Of Experts Over The Justice Of Christlike Elders

An Insouciant And Unsustainable Black-And-White Blizzard Justice

Denying Us Hope In An Organizational Context

Denying Us Love In An Organizational Context

Likewise Tim Newell Writes Of The Exploration Of Spirituality

Within Criminal Justice In The 13 Step Process

Public Theology For A Global Society

Economic Trinitarian God

The Fullness Of God Is Tri-Personal

Law As Legalism Makes It Easier For The Business Of Justice

For A Just And Caring Community That Puts People Ahead Of Profits And Power

Government Is Therefore Religion Applied To Economics

Aware That "Bureaucrats Treat Foreigners Better Than Their Own Citizens

The Subservience Of Unthinking Obedience And Naive Compliance

Not Neglecting The Shared Economy Of The Father As The Planner Or Architect

Not Neglecting The Economy Of The Son As The One Who Paid The

Not Neglecting The Economy Of The Spirit As The Executor Of Redemption

To Expose The Valorization Of False And Implicit Systemic Vandalising Values

A Concluding Miscellany Of Thoughts:

Common Grace And Uncommon Justice

Mandatory Reporting False Faith In Managerial Systems

Nice Little Earner And No Two-Ways About It

But Romans 13 Does Not Provide A Place Setting

For A Church On State Piggyback Ethic

Nor A State On Church Erastian Ethic And Ontic

Why Should The Church Of Christ Be Made A

Legate Of Such Loveless And Christless Law?

Where Christ Is Functus Officio

Instead Trading In The Principles Of The Gospel In Order

But With A Governmental And Gavel Gosplan

Over And Against The Gospel Or God’s Plan

Old Fools Holding Onto Old Fictions Until

Balkanizing And Bastardizing Our Brother

Not Dealing With The World As We Wish It Was

The Bible As An Epic Romance:

The Sacred Romance Of The Ages

God’s Wrath ‘Cross Examined’ In Rom 13

There Was A Woman Inside Of God Before Time

Mercy Is The Apex Of God’s Glory

Thus Reflecting God’s Glory In Our System Of Justice

Because The Earth And Its Justice Belong To God

The New Eve Is The Full-Orbed Glory Of Jesus Christ

Volume 7: Book 14:Love’s Unfolding Dream

The Global Confederacy Of Christ

The Christocentric Concordat

Some Other Pied Pipers Continued

Some Other Pied Pipers

Stop Reducing Christ To Barely An Envoy Extraordinary

To The So Called ‘Sovereign’ State

Blood Diamond Jubilee Justice

Is The Sinner Bid To Come To Judge Dread?

The Tale Of The Two Swords

Providing A Learning Algorithm

Aligned With The Hedonia Of Jesus Christ

To A Fair Dinkum - Jesus Like, Jubilate, Jubilee Justice

All Waxwork Dummies Found In

Madam Tussauds (Or Two-Swords!)

With Many A Fat Finger In The Justice Pie Of Scambodia

Requiring The Relinquishment Of Retribution As A

Whether Private Or Public Or Statist Man

Romans 13 And Grace-Based Justice In Broad Context

Taking Some Exegetical Soundings

Toward A Consensual Excurses And A

Congruent Theological Exposition

The Righteousness Of Christ And The Corresponding/Conforming Justice Of God

Recognizing The Supercession Of The Gospel

As The New Law Of Love

Anchoring Christ To Both Persons And The State (Gal. 3:28)

To Put Or Prioritise Justice Over And Against

Or Higher Than Love Is

A False Dichotomy And A Disparate Disjunction

Avoids Learning Anything Positive From Jesus

This Modern Disjunction Between Law And Love Is Quite Foreign

It Deradicalises The Lawful Demands Of Jesus

In His New Demand For Love Of Enemy Across The Board

70 Strategic Questions

‘P’ Plater Press Club Christianity Versus Power Christianity

A Personal And Public Testimony

‘Music On The Wind – Final Movement’

The Parable Of The Two Debtors And Grace-Based Justice

The Quantum Merit And The Quantum Valebant

Or The Full Merits Of Christ’s Public Worth

Thus We Witness The Creation Of A Rationality Of Instrumentalist And Procedural Justice

Abstracted From The Real World

With A Veil Of Ignorance Drawn Over

All Critical Human And Familial Relations And

Which The State May Not Unjustly Supervene

Nor Seek To Override And Overturn

Private And Public Collectivist Governmental Man

Are Truly Guilty Of An Ultra Vires Criminal Act Of

Unilateral Defiance And Criminal Usurpation

But These Legal Alibis And Sin-Induced Akrasia

Can Never Help The Sex Offender Nor The State

To Do What Is Right In God’s Sight

Nor Truly End The Alienation Between God And Man And

Between Sex-Addicted Man And The Rest Of Humanity

Nor Secure Reconciliation And Restoration And

Cessation From Litigation And Legal Retribution

Beware Of The ‘Empedo-Clean’ Super State

Mingling Fire And Water Or Strife And Love

To Substitute A ‘Politically Correct’ Blind Faith In Power

Demanding Unqualified Submission To The State As Absolute

To Render Christ’s Sovereign Law Of Love

Unjustifiably Divided And Divisible

By The ‘Sovereign’ Secular And Pluralistic State

Ministry, Society And Theology

Overcomers Of Sexual Abuse Healed By Faith In Christ

A Challenge To The Quasi Graced

Pseudo Legality Of The

Legally Religious And Religiously Legal

When Radical Personal And Public Transformation

Must Be Extrinsically Grounded In Jesus Christ Alone

Failing To Acknowledge That Christ’s Agape Love

Necessarily Reverses Fallen And Mere

Human Valuation And Judgment

Christianity IS Christ

Christianity is the one religion in the history of the world

That focuses upon the fate of a single man – Jesus Christ

As THE CENTRAL ISSUE OF THE ENTIRE CREATION

AND AS THE MOMENTOUS FIGURE OF EARTHLY HISTORY

AND OUR FUTURE ON A NEW HEAVENS AND A NEW EARTH

As McMaster notes well –echoing the message of the Bible

Jesus Christ was/is the transitional bridge between man and God

Bridging heaven and earth

The infinite and the finite

Eternity and time

Spirit and matter

The perfect and the imperfect

THE ONE AND THE MANY

"It is no accident in today’s New Age that everyone

GETS to be a God or Goddess

EXCEPT Jesus Christ"

(R.E McMASTER: 1994 in The Power of a Total Perspective)

Matthew Boulton avers that the type of questions that have been raised

By the parable of the Good Samaritan

Should be made and asked by criminal Justice professionals

‘On their own’

And in cooperative consultation with social workers

Clergy, family members and other community leaders

"With key stakes in the conflicts and

Key connections to the victims and perpetrators"

Since these consultations are

"Crucial for discerning wounds

Patterns of exclusion

Fronts of hostility, as well as for

Implementing strategies for reconciliation and building up"

(Rothchild, Boulton & Young (Eds): 2007, Doing Justice to Mercy)

He goes on thankfully to include

Significant responsibilities for imagining and maintaining such initiatives

That will fall to some community institutions....

Who have not traditionally understood themselves to be

Criminal Justice professionals"

And who can provide some conceptual frames and clear rationales

For the development of a Christlike restorative Justice

So that the ‘conventional professionals’ may be better enabled to

Rethink and retool the judicial system

With the assistance of community leaders etc

However I am not optimistic that the lawyers can be trusted

To be sufficiently self-critical and competent and caring enough

To be left to take the helm of the Justice Ship of State

And give away their monopoly of power and prestige

And share it with the community

Without a lot of persuasion and pressure

From the disqualified and uncertified common Samaritan

And other ‘outsider’ practitioners who dare to assume

Justice to be their peculiar responsibility and response-ability

Rather the Church of Christ must as a FIRST priority establish

Its own policy and praxis of Samaritan like Justice

With or without the permission or licence of the State

And its judiciary

In obedience to the command of Christ

The Righteous Judge and Saviour of humankind

After the example of the Good Samaritan and indeed

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself

……………………………………………..

Too often the Church accepts the counsel of its

‘Shadow’ Director – even that

Of obsolete Old Testament civil and criminal Law

Or irresponsibly delegates its power to the Anti-Christ State

Contrary to its ‘non-delegable duty’ of

Grace-Based Justice ALONE

Foolishly and Culpably delegating Christ’s and its New Covenant Testamentary Dei Gratia Power

To a Lifeless and Loveless and Powerless

And thus Lawless

Dehumanised Mechanistic Legality and

Formal Lawism only

Buying into the LIE of the State’s Duplicity

Of denying Christ’s Rightful and Remedial Royal Purchase of the

Fully Legal Prerogative and NOW Mandate of Magistral Mercy

Refusing to employ Christ’s ‘Red Light Approach’

And the deployment of ‘co-ordinate liability’

With co-equal authority and co-responsibility

Seeking to protect Families and Citizens against

The wrongful exercise of ‘legal’ power by

Statist officials and bureaucrats

And in so doing curb the power of the State

With its use and misuse of ‘due process’

Discountenancing any life-giving ‘easement’ of

Practical, Just and prudential and Familial necessity

Denying Christ’s Absolute Right of ‘easement’ of

His ‘Light’ and ‘Air’ and Salvific Support

As a ‘fit and proper’ Public person

To discharge His SOVEREIGN Public Law

In the Public interest as its Highest voluntary Good

Instead the Anti-Christ State is unapologetic and unrepentant

In ‘Foreclosing’ on or forestalling Christ’s Personal and Public

Equity of Redemption and equanimity of Shalom

Using forcible unconscionable ‘entry’ to unjustifiably

COERCE human persons and their actions

Through Mandatory Reporting and other

Repressive State Agendas

Co-opting BOTH the CONSCIENCE and the

Salvific Mission of the Church of Christ

With the State’s False assumption of Totalising power

Positive Law and Fiat Justice

Arguing that any ‘ecclesiastical’ law has no application

To the ‘colony’

Contending unreasonably and unrighteously

For the Total Separation of Church and State

And of God and Grace from the State and its Sword of Justice

Instead Church and Society should be acting

As conscientious BUFFERS and response-able agents

Against Statist tyranny and other disobedience to

The ‘Do no Harm’ principle that

Denies Christ’s Law of Love as the highest Law; that

Denies Christ’s true Headship

Of both humanity and the State

Denying Christ’s and the Church’s

‘Heard and determined’ verdicts

From the High Court of Heaven upon earth

Instead the Church of Christ is consenting to

The State’s harsh, unjust and unreasonable laws

That Defraud the people

That Oppress and Disable persons and aggrieve Families

With their Half-Truths, Harassment and Coercion

Not acting with care, compassion, skill and diligence

With the State operating with a ‘Dworkian’ right answer

Thesis and praxis legalism that assumes that

The ‘King’ State can do no wrong

While simultaneously DENYING not only

Christ’s Right of Entry to the State

And Christ’s absolute Sovereignty over the State

As its Creator and Redeemer

But also denying the human right

To bring action against the State

And its bureaucrats when they abuse their power

With the para-governmental subversion of our

Democracy and right of Public participation

In outcomes that can adversely affect citizens

And when they act unilaterally in a dominating fashion

Refuse to act in Good Faith with only Goodwill

Or act in a manner contrary to the New Covenant of Grace

With its Gospel Justice and Goodwill for criminals of all stripes

With little ‘Monkish’ Reflection on the Centenary

Of Lenin’s seizure of Power

And little understanding of the Divine intervention

In the last victorious charge of the courageous

Australian Light Horse into Beersheba

‘As dinky-di as meat pie’ with their well-trained ‘Whalers’

Against the dark odds of machine gun fire

With the liberation of the Land from 400 years of Ottoman domination with its ‘Dragon Law’

And its showcase of ugliness and violence

With its ‘Desert Olympics’ and ‘Drama of Horse flesh’

All in preparation for the establishment of the modern State of Israel as promised in Scriptures

And ‘Who Cares’ about the 500th Anniversary of the Lutheran Magisterial Reformation!!

With the egalitarian empowerment of the

The Gospel ‘monism’ of the Priesthood of all believers

With Responsible Individualism and Principled Pluralism

With a Morally Responsible committed citizenry

With a true Montesquieu like safeguard of a

Constitutional democracy and Separation of powers

Making for a Peacemaking and Salugenic society

Making for a safe and minimal

Servant minded Collectivism

Assuming a Godly and Grace honouring populace

Now we are beggared by a false Messianic State

Refusing the ‘Root Cause’ analysis and

‘Graced’ and ‘Truthed’ Transformational ‘Cure’ of souls

Of the Grace-Based ONLY Gospel of Jesus

With its Unmerited Favour and Gift of Righteousness

For even the most heinous of now pardoned Criminals

Thus evidencing the Humanistic Idolatry of Seditious Intention

Exciting disaffection against Christ the Sovereign

With the State acting as a Hostile Witness against Christ

Rather than an independent supporter

Of the LORDSHIP of Christ over all

Limiting law and Justice to horizontal relationships only

Thus regulating in a Hobbesian ‘Leviathan’ fashion

‘The war of all against all’

Holding Out Against Christ as some Political moron

Without sufficient reasonable and moral grounds

With its own Monopoly and Moneyed Power

With its Marxian Resurgence and Moral superiority

With its Rawlsian ‘Social Contract’ praxis –

Exploiting ‘The veil of Ignorance’ - instead of

Acting in a Christlike and God honouring way

Bearing Life-giving, Judicial and other witness to

Christ for all and in all who will believe!

DENYING Christ’s and the Church’s Right of

Audience and Advocacy in Court – along with

Denying to the former criminal the Right

Of Redemption in Christ

And so the Right of Free Access to Free Pardon

With no further State imposed retribution or

Criminal penalties for crimes already pardoned

With the aberrant Church’s open door to Satan with its

Two Kingdom and Two Swords anti-Gospel Dualism

With its loss of true expectation of Unmerited Life in Christ

Thus sinfully accessing that of ‘His Shadow’ Satan himself as

The Prosecutor at Law and Accuser of the sinner/criminal

With his shifting burden of proof and

Sham un-salvific Justice

Instead of employing Christ Himself

With His Just and Justifying Jubilee Justice for all comers

Who does NOT share His SOLE Kingship

And His Undivided Kingdom

With Moses or Satan and his human hosts

But Christ provides a true ‘Shield’ of Full Pardon and

Legal Protection from severance from His Atoning merits

To those who believe on Him

Unlike Marxism and its modern stepchildren

And Islam

That allows no distinction between Church and State

With the assumed Right to Total Power and Fiat Justice

With its Mechanical and Merciless Adjectival Procedural Law

In Public, Administrative, Civil and Criminal Law

Contumaciously contradicting Christ’s Reconciling

Pardoning and Liberating Joy-filled Jubilee Justice

…………………………….

Of course we also should simultaneously seek

To speak Gospel truth to Governmental power

The manifold wisdom of God for the foolishness of man (1 Cor. 2:7)

Requiring the State to be truthful, peaceable and gentle

A good ‘Father’ and a true ‘Mother’ and fellow ‘Big’ Brother

A defender of victims AND the outcast

Attentive, cooperative and easy to be entreated

FULL OF MERCY AND GOOD FRUITS TO MATCH (James 3:17)

‘Compelling’ us to

Speak Grace to Law

Mercy to Justice

Love and Forgiveness or

Pardon FOR Punishment and

Future for the past

Hope for despair

Tenacious Good for overcoming Evil

In a Christlike pluralistic way

Neither requiring the total separation of Church from State

Nor requiring the State to be overtly Christian and

Whether the State be humanist or pluralist

For even unbelievers know the difference between

Unconditional love and retributive punishment

In the hope that even through the power of common Grace

People power and especially empowered spiritual leadership

The ‘authorities’ will comes to their senses

And do a better job at Justice

As evidenced in the restorative Justice project

That has given us more room to hope for further progress

So that what is done AWAY with is the idea that because

Someone has committed a crime and by virtue of that

(Or by some other discriminating distinction

Allegedly justifying neglect, abuse or worse

Even the deliberate infliction of pain and harm)

I cease to be his neighbour and

I and the community are relieved of our obligation

To show him and his family mercy, hospitality and costly care

And the supernaturally endowed ‘Extreme Love’

That they so desperately need

Precisely because of his guilt and shame among other things

So that "whenever and wherever calls for so called

Retributive Justice and discriminating care-less Justice

Precipitate this kind of humiliation and alienation

They, according to the Good Samaritan parable, take place, UNLAWFULLY

Over against mercy as its adversary and reversal

And so constitute BOTH an attack on the

Dignity of the individual

And neighbourhood - akin to the original crime itself

Serving only to exacerbate the evil

Rather than being a transforming initiative, and instead

Being a violation of reconciling Justice and the law of love

Thus MERCY, as Boulton summarises, "constitutes

BOTH a rebuke and a constructive counterpoint

To all the demands in their various forms and disguises

Of retributive Justice or consumption by fire (Lk 9:54)

Thus MERCY and Grace construe Christian practice

As a life-giving and life-enhancing - a

Theatric of counter-terror and costly care

And will not simply surrender moral legitimacy

And personal agency and creative power to a

Monopolistic legal authority and to the

Unrestricted power of the post-modern Nation State

As unfettered wielders of State-sanctioned force

Out of a dark chaotic feminist need and

Womb-based desire and concern for security

At any price

Amid paralysing fears of crime and disorder

Particularly when the powers that be disseminate terror

And impoverish families and communities

And that reinforce self-serving, fear based and exploitative

Patterns of political, economic and social power

Handing our children over to the captivity of empire

Grants permission to the empire to re-educate them to become

Unquestioning dutiful subjects and

Obedient consumers of Statist propaganda

Who have lost any heart for any kind of meaningful resistance

Freedom and responsibility run hand in hand

Bureaucrats, whether corporate, military, charitable

Educational, religious or governmental

Seem almost inhuman at times

As so many of us have experienced

But Why? McMaster and I ask

Obviously they are not free nor are they responsible

The Church and the community must NOT make their peace

With an ENSLAVING EMPIRE

Must NEVER GIVE UP on their tenacity for TRUTH

Including Gospel truth

"NEVER TRADE THE RICHES OF CHRIST

FOR A DECEITFUL WORLDVIEW THAT TAKES US CAPTIVE"

BY DIVIDING OUR LOYALTIES

The Church of Christ through its compliance

With the Mandatory Reporting laws

"Serves to give an air of normality

To an idolatrously constructed culture

Thereby functioning as a polite cover-up for a

Comfortable life in the empire"

(Walsh & Keesmaat: 2004, Colossians Remixed, p 167)

Thus our justified suspicion of mass

Mandatory and State-controlled education, reporting

And other compulsory overt and covert agendas of State

Where lawyering and bureaucratic intervention are

NOT negotiated and NOT conducted in an

Ethos of MUTUAL FORBEARANCE

MERCY AND FORGIVENESS

Thus violating God’s covenant with His New Creation

And the State’s covenant with its citizens and the

Poetics of Community shalom

Like Paul in Colossians we must DENATURALISE these

REIFIED social/political/judicial structures

And UNVEIL them for the cultural lies that they are

That are ultimately a

Denial of the creation of humankind in the image of God, a

Denial that all things COHERE in CHRIST, a

Denial that ALL things ARE already reconciled in Christ

So also the community that bears His image is called

To embody that RECONCILIATION in its

Hospitable inclusiveness

Speaking Truth to lies and Grace to Power and Legalism

CROSSING all the old imperial and discriminating divisions

Pursuing and practising a Justice that is

RELATIONAL, RESTORATIVE AND RECONCILING

EXPOSING the real abusive and harmful ‘Justice’

In language that sanitises ways of thinking and talking

That serves to make the culture of law, sin and death

Appear normal and acceptable

So that our political language does NOT become

"DEBASED AND DEFORMED INTO A DISCOURSE of

DECEIT THAT JUSTIFIES VIOLENCE"

That "entails the REDUCTION of another PERSON

TO AN OBJECT OF CONTEMPT with whom we have

NO CONNECTION, NO COMPASSION AND NO COMMUNITY"

(Aforementioned quotes from Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat)

Contrary to the Sermon on the Mount

Contrary to the purpose of the story of the Good Samaritan

Contrary to the express teaching and

Compassionate committed example of Jesus Christ

And of the Apostles

Only faith in a good and gracious loving Sovereign God

Is both doggedly realistic, truly freeing

Powerfully enabling and releasing of our great E-Motion

And is sustainably futuristic

Being thus "the essence of growth and progress

The antithesis of uniform control

Retrenching fear, security craving and group approval

Which lead to stagnation, decay and death"

As R.E. McMaster so skilfully states in

His unconventional but searching wisdom as

Christian and Calvinist and a recognized

Expert in analysing the links between government

Religion, economics, science and psychology

On an international scale

"The (fundamental) importance of grounding ourselves

In values arising from supernatural law

Law from outside of nature

Coming from a Source (a Person and Law) he identifies

As the Lord Jesus Christ – the Middle Eastern Man

Who exists in the open system

As the zero crossover point of the sine wave

Integrating linear with cyclical time

So that our own natural E-motion and chaotically flawed values

Stemming from our ancestry and culture

Don’t lead us into error"

Too often this reality escapes the Church of Christ

"And in its rush to hand out eternal life and fire insurance policies

It gives de-facto consent to hell on earth...by sleeping in the

Unconsciousness of the traditions of men

By covering traditions with some type of pious religious blessing

BY BEING LEGALISTIC TO THE CORE WITH MERCILESS LAW

And by attempting to access and activate

The power of the supernatural without the foundation of

Obedience to God’s Law (which he identifies as Christ Himself)

Thereby sending Charismatics reeling off into witchcraft"

Unfortunately we are still living in the OLD paradigm

Where un-Samaritan like - status-based, fascist/socialistic

Educationally expert and immoral

Instrumental rationalist moralistic entrepreneurs

With its parasitic bureaucratic governance and ruling elite

Both in Church and State

Are bringing on chaotic disaster

"FEW CAN CONCEIVE OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE EASTERN YIN/YANG BALANCE

AND OF THE SIMULTANEOUS WESTERN

DIRECTIONAL/HIERARCHIAL/MASCULINE LEAD VECTOR"

"It is the emphasis on diversity, individuality – a masculine impulse

Which leads to risk-taking, progress

The multiplicity of richness of the marketplace

And eventually unity in society

Yes diversity produces unity because the diversity of

Specialization in the division of labour

Yields to cooperation in the exchange of goods and services

And thereby harmony

The many voluntarily become the one

"AT THE SAME TIME

WITHOUT THE GENTLE, KIND AND COLLECTIVE

CHAOTIC FEMININE IMPULSE TO BALANCE

THE MARKETPLACE BECOMES CUTTHROAT AND WARLIKE

LEGALISTIC, HARSH, DESTROYING ITSELF

THUS THE ACID LEGALISM OF THE MASCULINE IMPULSE

BY ITSELF – KILLS

IT NEEDS THE ALKALINE FEMININE OFFSET"

(Quotes from R.E McMASTER: 1994 in The Power of a Total Perspective)

Let’s be clear then about the laid-back species of

Postmodernism and pluralism

Where people are called to abandon any attempt to

Make any truth claims beyond their own local narratives

And traditional communities

It may LOOK like a way to end the violence

To respect otherness

And stop marginalisation and genocide

But the empire makers know differently and

We know that it is irrevocably impotent to accomplish this

Because as Walsh and Keesmaat say so well

It has only a mere appearance of wisdom with no depth of vision

It even looks like humility but it continues

To lay on the guilt pretty thick

For the history of violence legitimated by

Religious and other metanarratives

But it lacks evident discernment and humility

Because it fails to see that the REAL ISSUE OF VIOLENCE

EXCLUSION AND MARGINALISATION

Goes MUCH deeper – because it lies in the violence

Rebellion and deceitfulness of the human heart

BUT IT IS ALSO AMPLIFIED

And further distorted by the fallen dynamics

Of the HERD INSTINCT and the ‘normalising’ processes and is

Further corrupted by self-serving organizations and institutions

With their tall tale, inflexible, polarising and scapegoating

Decrees of governance

Looking to control and manipulate engineered outcomes

Conveniently ignoring the real world and that

Imposed postmodern guilt trips can do nothing to

HEAL THE HEART AND STOP THE VIOLENCE

So it invents and invokes its own humanist

Counter-metanarrative and counterfeit grand story

Of humankind reinventing and reconstructing him/her self

Of death, burial and resurrection and ascension to a

New World-New Age agenda – aping Christ Himself

BUT WITHOUT A GROUNDING AND DIRECTING

UNIVERSAL AND SELF-AUTHENTICATING META-NARRATIVE

WITH A REAL AND RADICALLY SUBVERSIVE HOPE

OF PERSONAL, PUBLIC AND HISTORIC

CONCRETE REALISATION

WITH NO ONTOLOGICALLY JUSTIFIED

AND NO META-PHYSICALLY REVEALED AND

ESCHATOLOGICALLY-ETHICALLY ORIENTED

AND WITH NO

TRANSCENDENT – IMMANENT GROUNDED NARRATIVE

NO SUSTAINABLE PRAXIS IS POSSIBLE

OR EVEN DESIRABLE

MUCH LESS BINDING ON PEOPLE AND

NOTHING LESS IS CAPABLE OF ANIMATING AND

EMPOWERING US TO PUT OUR LIVES ON THE LINE

AND SUFFER POSSIBLE LOSS OF ALL EARTHLY HOPES

AND EARTHLY LOVES

FOR THE SAKE OF GENERATING

SOLIDITY AND STABILITY

PASSION FOR CHURCH AND COMMUNITY

FOCUS AND FLEXIBILITY

FIDELITY AND CREATIVITY

CONSISTENCY AND INNOVATION

COST AND SACRIFICE

FOR ITS PROGRESSIVE COSMIC VISUALISATION

AND PROGRESSIVE HISTORIC IMPLEMENTATION

AND ULTIMATE FULFILMENT

ON A NEW HEAVENS AND A NEW EARTH

FREE OF SIN AND CRIME

AND TEARS AND PAIN

WITH AN ASSURED PARADAISACAL FUTURE

FOR BELIEVING HUMANITY

FROM CREATION, CRIME, CRISIS, CHRIST AND CHURCH

FROM THE UNFINISHED DRAMA

PARTICULARLY WITHOUT ANY

CANONICALLY ESTABLISHED SCRIPT

TO GET US FROM HERE TO THE FINAL ACT - TO

THE CONSUMMATION OF THE SECOND COMING

OR ESCHATON

ALL WE CAN EXPECT without this

Cosmically seconded and human co-signed

Countervailing and prevailing metanarrative is

"The bewildering cacophony of voices calling out to us

In the carnival of the postmodern mind, to

The disorientation and moral paralysis of radical pluralism

The loss of self in a multiphrenic culture

The masturbatory self-indulgence of linguistic and societal games

The struggle NOT to become road kill on the information highway"

(Walsh & Keesmaat: 2004, Colossians Remixed)

"In the dead-end way of life that characterises our

Cannibalistic and predatory culture" (op. cit.)

Robbed of our life and purpose and exhausted on the treadmill

Of an insatiable imperative to consume

AND to implicitly obey the new global imperative of EMPIRE

In another but much more sinister and emasculated dress!

So let us NOT buy into a stultifying conservatism

The phony imperialism of humanistic empire

One that grinds the Biblical narrative to a premature halt

But instead engage in imaginative improvisation

In contradistinction to a confining deadbeat legalistic exegesis

By immersing ourselves in the Comprehensive

Whole of life, whole of creation vision of the Biblical text

Particularly the Person and Work of Christ and

The Acts of the Holy Spirit

In the Acts of the Apostles

Serving God and grace as an exemplum

Requiring OUR executory interest and proactive involvement

So that both our imaginations and corporate public lives and

Governmental praxis are transformed by a Biblical epistemology

And accompanying Christological ethic of Grace-Based ONLY dominion

Without having to wait for madmen riding on Horseflesh

To bring on the future Kingdom with force majeure

Rejecting the executor de son tort of false authority by false gods

Rather executing Christ’s Great Commission Mandate without apology

To the Politically Correct Multicultural democratised

And humanistic idolatrous demonised State

Providing no exeat of premature exit for the duty voiding

Pessimistic and violence loving ‘believing’ pre and amillennialists

As if the interadvental period provides a (false) justification

For a legal excursus or an exclusion order

For a now secular only pluralistic State with its EXCESS of power

Thus the religious apostates from Grace and Gospel TRUTH

Buy into the lie and denial of the NOW

Christian world exclusive Jesus ALONE Kingship and Sovereignty

Thereby EXCUSING their Christian Irresponse-ability and Irresponsibility

As a now Debt to the LOVE of God in Christ for all sinners/criminals

Rather than strict Justice per se which was satisfied at the CROSS

To NOW execute Christ’s NOW world dominion NEW Covenant ONLY and

NOW Kingdom project in the name of the Triune God

From exercising the NOW regnant Grace-Based ONLY

Now KINGDOM of God Jubilee JUSTICE power of Christ

For a THIS WORLD now progressive and predestined Dominion

But one that struggles and never gives up to discern,

As Co-Heirs with Christ of THIS world, to

Walk in and work out the Christian paths in politics and juridics

Hand in glove with the Holy Spirit and

Not with religious or legal flesh

Not with a half-baked and corrupted or

Politically compromised ‘Gospel’ of Grace PLUS Law

So as to bring every thought and action

Through Public preaching, teaching and proselytising

Through Holy Spirit persuasion and regeneration

And so NOT by coercion through force from above

Bringing persons and institutions into conformity to

The Gospel and NOW Kingdom of God on earth

Working out the full implications and applications

Of the Unique Person of Jesus Christ and

The ‘Essential Facilities’ of the Christian Governmental Personal, Pastoral and Public and Political Praxis

Of the New Covenant ONLY and NOW Kingdom of God

In Christian Education, Governance, History

Science and Technology

In the Arts and all of Culture

In Business, Ethics, Ecology and Economics

With its Revealed Maxims of Pardoning Justice and

Imputed Righteousness (or FREE Justification AND Justice)

With Equity and equal opportunity empowerment for all

Based on the Unmerited favour of God to all –

Especially believers to whom it is made a reality

Because of the Meritorious Person and

FINISHED Atoning work of Jesus Christ

Made safe and secure for all comers and doers

AND ALL THE REST OF OUR COMMON LIVES BECAUSE

THE VERY PLAUSIBILITY OF THE GOSPEL HANGS ON IT

Providing a living incarnated personal witness

And corporate truth

An embodied enfleshed TRUTH with spiritual power

Writ large across the full spectrum of society

A faithful witness before a watching world

An alternative social philosophy and a

Listening community fully engaged with the dire concerns

The sites of bitter enmity and UNCARING inhospitality

And MERCILESS judgments of the real world

Particularly attentive to those of the poor and marginalised

The victimised and criminalised

One that will topple the idols of the ubiquitous graven images

Of God and gavel and governance and good

The bitter fruit of good works

Which have become a lucrative enterprise

For the economic and political stakeholders

That effectively maintain the status quo

A departure from the stasis quo or Christ re-created

And redeemed state of manhood, womanhood and fatherhood

Is to fall from the Grace ONLY

NOW KINGDOM Stasis of the New Creation

Of a Legally and Relationally Redeemed Humanity

And such a FALL represents the APOSTASIA of the

False Messianic State and the Fallen Apostate Church

What we need is a Christlike or better a

Christian Status-stasis quo

One that will inspire and energise an alternative

MERCIFUL JURIDICS AND GRACE-BASED JUSTICE

AN EQUAL AND EQUALISING FREELY AVAILABLE DISTRIBUTED JUSTICE

FOR THE TAKING - even

THE ALTERNATIVE ECONOMICS OF GOD’S KINGDOM

One that will confront a culture of disconnection

In a culture of power as truth

In a culture of radical uncertainty

Yet of imposed uniformity and conformity to a false absolute

Calling for a Christlike - critical, constructive and creative

Communal, organic, organizational and

Institutional engagement

Particularly by churches and citizens

Claiming ownership of BOTH the outcomes

And processes of Justice

Particularly those explicitly Christian

Gospel value bearing institutions as the BRINGER of

Good News for victims AND outsiders

Censuring the current criminal Justice system

For its wilful justification, creation and

Proliferation of harms

As a ‘necessary’ collateral evil, its

Contempt of the innocent who ‘must’ suffer

Its neglect and re-victimisation of the victim

Its neglect and abuse of the abuser

Its breaches of human rights and responsibilities

Not accepting co-responsibility for free Pardon

Healing, Rehabilitation and Restoration

Not listening to the community and involving them

In the promotion of communal judicial and social goods

As potentially a far more viable and alternative

Vision of criminal and civil Justice

NOT focusing on deterrence and incapacitation

As the principal purposes of punishment

BUT reconceiving Justice as Truth and Reconciliation

Which objectives cannot be met

"WITHOUT the DEMANDS of MERCY, forgiveness

(Pardon) and healing

Values intrinsic to the Christian tradition"

"Focusing primarily on the legal infraction WITHOUT

A recognition of the HUMAN damage does NOT advance

Our (Christian) values"

(Here I acknowledge my indebtedness to Jonathan Rothchild and Lois Livezey in Rothchild, Boulton & Young (Eds): 2007, Doing Justice to Mercy)

Calling for the abolition of Statist monopolies of ‘Justice’

Creating social space and ‘market value’

Public intercourse and a free exchange of ideas and practices

For all owners and stakeholders of equitable Justice

Creating alternative Justice–as-mediation

And Justice-as-reconciliation

And Justice-as-prevention arrangements and outcomes

And effective ‘treatment’ or better

Personal Transformation opportunities for

Abusers and victim-survivors via

A Justice ‘system’ not owned or even controlled by

A conga line of uncaring complicit professionals

In the pay of the government

But much more accessible to all, with

Much more dialogue between participants

And far greater discretion and room for leniency for ‘judges’

A much more ‘edible’ Justice devoid of scales and harmful bones

Using non-incarcerative options for ‘punishment’

Far more focused on needs rather than deserts

Recapturing the good and not merely measuring harms

Much more cost effective and available at a much lower cost

While not dismissive of non-quantifiable goods and values

Conformable to social flourishing and better futures for all

Expanding the scope of criminality to interpret the criminal act

Within the narrative of the criminal’s life context and so

Interpenetrating the web of the

Complex relational connectivity between the offenders

The victims and their families and Church

Friends and support networks, if any,

Society and State

Thus one can more fully discover and

Demonstrate the potential resources

Available to promote and effect

Successful strategies for (Christlike)

Habilitation and habituation

Thus upholding and rewarding profound opportunities

For genuine transformation

Including consequent ceremonies that

De-certify the offender as deviant

That removes him from any sex-offender list or registry

And further enables him and rewards him by

Offering him the opportunity

To be now actively engaged if he will

In preventative solutions rather than

Still being categorised as another insoluble problem

Person waiting in the wings

What is required are new

Centres of conscience, consent and choice

"Direct co-working relationships with other

Cultural and spiritual communities of conscience"

Taking a stand on "sites of advocacy/mimesis/kinesis

Where Christians can position themselves to experience

CONSONANCE with their founder’s gospel

And to contribute to the liberation and flourishing of

The larger human project"

Through non-adversarial practice

Theatrical action (nonviolent mimesis) and

Organized movement (sustained kinesis)

(After Mark Lewis Taylor in Rothchild, Boulton & Young (Eds): 2007, Doing Justice to Mercy)

Emphasising the necessity, indeed ‘lawfulness’ and centrality

And mutual benefit of a societal covenant of love

In a thickly textured web of nurturing and counselling relationships

Re-humanising and re-lumining the law and

Relocating it within a

Renewed redistribution of power and participation

Reaching beyond the letter of the law, enabling it to

Recognize and renounce the dynamics of captivity

Control and domination, scapegoating and abuse

Of men and women in the criminal Justice system, to

Reject all dehumanising and ineffective policies and protocols

That leave criminals at risk of another

Not so ‘Cool Bananas’ Dodge City Gang

Living or rather dying in another Tombstone in another Arizona

With their extreme ‘love’ of Dragonese Law

With another version of a ‘scrappy’ NBN Co ‘No Show’ Justice

Instead embracing the spirit of compassion and care

And costly commitment

For BOTH the abused AND the abuser

To consider criminal Justice in the light of the mandate of Christ

To Do Justice to Mercy

By – among OTHER things - not imposing retributive penalties

"That aspire to annul the crime by imposing suffering

On the perpetrator equal to that criminality

Inflicted on the victim"

(Nigel Biggar: 2001 in Burying The Past)

But only such ‘remedy’ that can reasonably and humanely and

Realistically annul the relative advantages

Unfairly seized in the criminal act

But forcible restraint and forcible reversal of advantage

Even when warranted and right

Must not overwhelm mercy or Grace

Precisely because acts of mercy enact and testify to

The worth of persons and

The merciful nature and salvific Loving purposes of God

Beside and beyond their past criminality

And particularly when Personal and Familial or

Relational human worth is

Endangered and effaced by the so called structures of Impersonal, Procedural, and Punitive Justice

Just as Jesus showed in John 8

When He snatched an individual –

A woman and an adulterer

Un-made of the same crooked timber like us

Even a woman before, besides and beyond an adulterer

As in woman, an adulterer whose behaviour was evil

Noun first and adjective after

A WOMAN, fallen - rather than evil or irredeemable

Still beloved and valuable as the Blood of God

[Similar to the child sex offender, fallen rather than evil

Still beloved by Christ – no less valuable and still redeemed by Christ]

DELIVERED from the thrall of fear of further punishment

FREED from the ‘necessities’ of a system of

Loveless Justice and MERCILESS judgment

That DEMANDED Justice without mercy and without Love

Being an impossible people as guardians of a blasphemous State

In a ‘war of spirits’ conducted without character and civility

Even a religious secularisation still lacking something radical

One that has transitioned us from a thick sense of

Shared community

With shared responsibility, burden bearing and Communal empathy and caring commitment

To the Jesus kind of ‘Extreme Love’

Now instead transitioned

To a thin sense of association no longer defined

By the God of Love

No longer caring enough to incarnate Christlike close family ties or

Committed salugenic love of neighbour

Much less love of enemy as another one of us

Remembering all the way God has led us and all the time His mercies

Have never failed us – treating with us according to our crucial needs

Rather these sinners and criminals have been

Betrayed by a system which failed to show unconditional Love–

Refusing to disavow its fictional authority and its powerlessness

Passing onto future generations its own generational baggage

And its own ‘legitimated’ generational dysfunction and vicious cycles

Displaying empty moralism and lifting up the ‘preening virtues’

Of this puritanical yet diabolical P.C. generation of Governance

Smashing the family to smithereens while justifying the bloody

Breaching of the Covenant love loyalty of its sacred bonds

With heaven and hope and help and healing overridden

Overtaken by the social contract of Rousseau and a warring Hobbes

With all things legally contracted and

All persons demeaned and detracted

Soliciting the hell of punishment – ‘crushing the infamous thing’

Without a shred of pity and an ounce of compassion

But still wanting to look, sound and feel pious

With deceit, dissimulation and ‘duty’ – read hypocrisy, writ large

Stringing us along with pragmatic and practical a-theism

Unlike Christ who bore our sin in His costly love on the Cross

The adulterous woman was

NOW freely pardoned and made a child of God

And was further empowered by Christ Himself to live justly

So much so that Jesus could challenge the judges

Woman, where are your accusers?

Thus Jesus’ act of Unmerited Personal and Judicial Favour

In His Act of Responsible MERCY affirmed

The dignity of her individuality

Apart from and above her behavioural criminality

GIFTING and upholding her redeemed potential and so

Demonstrating the integrity of her LIFE as precious to Him

As the purchase of His forthcoming shed Atoning Blood

Assuring her with His FREE-OF-CHARGE-TO-HER

Gift of NO CONDEMNATION

Even Justification and a NEW Justice START

With her NEW Identity and her NEW Destiny all wrapped up together

In that beautiful bundle of Love called Present cum Future Grace

Being the NECESSARY human ANALOGUE of

The divine act of The New Creation

Or RECREATION in Christ

And as the condition or manifestation of the

New Covenant Justice established by Christ

With no longer the harsh judgment of the broken Law

Whether of God or man

With no Dark shadow of a death-wish

Of punishment or vengeance

Hanging over her head or lingering

In the corners of her conscience through

Guilt and personal shame or a lingering sin-consciousness

Or through the demonising adversarial

Satan inspired prosecuting attorneys at Law

Nor held captive by her memory

With NO MORE Ministry of Condemnation

Or paralysing guilt and disabling shame

With NO MORE payment to be made for her sin and crime

Against both God and man

Since Jesus paid for it in full

No more sin consciousness or abject fear of God

No more fear of vengeance or punitive retaliation

Nor even limited vengeance

No more limited or conditional love

But now ONLY unlimited ONE-WAY unfailing love

And the superabounding salvific Grace of God

Being also clothed with the perfect Righteousness

Of Christ her Saviour and Friend

And so NOT her accuser

Much less her Judge

Now the highest GOOD and solemn DUTY that

All Law and Justice must NOW SERVE

Requires an indissoluble UNITY between the

Sometimes apparently competing

Claims of Justice and MERCY

But with each supporting the other’s purpose

And modus operandi

A unity required not only by the very structure

Of our existence as the

Synthesis of finite and infinite, but also

Because of the union of female and male

In His Familial image

Because of the unity of the Godhead

A Family God and a Redemptive God

Of eternal, unconditional and unrelenting love

And magnanimous even magisterial Mercy

Overriding the now FULFILLED demands of

Strict retributive and ongoing non-redemptive ‘Justice’

Fully incarnated in Christ who is

Full of Grace AND truth

Treating with all of us FAR above

What we deserve and

According to our deepest need

Remembering that the CENTRAL Christian message

Concerning divine-human and

So human-human relations

AT ITS CORE – is forgiveness which includes

THE ANNULMENT OF PUNISHMENT

Since MERCY has already passed through the

Wrath and Judgment and Punishment of God

In and through the AT-ONE-MENT of Christ

And so MERCY has been elevated

Legally to the status of a JUST and Justifying pre-eminence

OVER retributive or atoning Justice

Manifesting the central authentic LOVING character and

Redemptive purposes of God for fallen human beings

So now the State

As an institutional servant of God - is bound to be a

Divinely ordained prominent double proxy agent

The servant of both God and man serving the greater public good

Of a principled, ‘pluralistic’ proximate Christlike peaceable Justice

Being a delegated ‘sovereign’ ‘law’ sphere

Distinct and separate from the Church of Christ, but

Both with their own ‘sovereign’ sphere of operation

And their own ‘peculiar’ Justice and distinctive modus operandi

Thus the State is now responsible to recognise

God’s self-disclosure in Christ and so to

Bring its own administration of humane peacemaking Justice

Into conformity to the person and

MERCIFUL purposes of Christ

Serving and advancing the highest public good

And the peace of the community

Since with the first coming of Christ

The ‘times of ignorance’ and excuses are GONE!

NOW giving full scope for the proper consideration of

The unique Justice claims of the Gospel of Christ

To be heard and implemented in and/or

Alongside the judicial system

At least in an approximate principled way

Without confusing Church with State

Without at the same time, excusing the State from

Its responsibility of obedience

To the Highest Law of God in Christ

While recognizing the very real DUALITY between

Church and the World –

At the same time

"Repudiating any DUALISM in God’s will

That sanctifies a SUB-CHRISTIAN Ethic

For (any) one sphere of life"

(Christopher D. Marshall: 2001 Beyond Retribution)

AND REPUDIATING ANY DUALISM THAT JUSTIFIES

THE UNLAWFUL DISSOCIATION

OF JUSTICE FROM THE RIGHTFUL CLAIMS

OF NEIGHBOURHOOD LOVE AND

THE CRITICAL HUMAN NEED FOR

PARDON AND RECONCILIATION

AND SO MANDATORILY IMPLEMENTING

THE DUTY OF TIMELY MERCY

ALONG WITH THE CONSONANT

DEED OF GIFT AND GRANT OF GENEROSITY AND

SO GRACE-BASED JUSTICE

AS ALONE FULLY HUMAN AND

ALONE TRULY HUMANE JUSTICE

Therefore:

Legislatures and Courts are BEHOLDEN to listen

To Christians and others that would

Seek to encourage and show them WHY and HOW

The legal system should establish

DIFFERENT principles and protocols and procedures of Law

Embrace DIFFERENT aspirations

Develop a DIFFERENT socio-political and judicial VISION

EMBRACE a more redemptive IMAGINATION

Employ TRANSFORMING INITIATIVES

That will embody and execute agreed upon

CHRIST-LIKE principled socio-legal values

TAKING FAR MORE SERIOUSLY THE ROLE OF

FORGIVENESS AND PARDON IN THE REALISATION OF JUSTICE

Recognizing that FORGIVENESS is of the ESSENCE of LIFE in GOD

And life-in-community patterned after God

"INDISPENSIBLE TO THE PROPER FUNCTIONING OF

ALL HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

WHETHER THEY ARE OF A PERSONAL

SOCIAL OR POLITICAL NATURE" (Christopher Marshall)

One that will make it possible, desirable and workable

To move in the direction of the personal and relational and

Communal values and virtues expressed in Jesus’ call

To become more human

To have compassion and exercise mercy

Love the other as another self

To pardon and love the ‘enemy’

As well as on the more pragmatic grounds of reconciliation

Equity, and better, more realistic and financially responsible

And humane gold standard do-no-harm outcomes

Empowering response-able community

To participate in and foster/enact proactive reconciliation

Along with healing Justice

To secure the highest possible healthful outcomes

As a win-win for all

Thus encouraging and even exhorting victims’ representatives

And their oppressors with his support circle

With the help of local mediators of acknowledged maturity

And experience LOVE power

Along with the cooperation of family and interested persons

To hear (shama) intelligently and seek to understand

The other and diligently seek to

Resolve their differences out of court where possible

As the legislated place of first resort

Even and especially in matters of sexual offences

As is currently being initiated outside the court system

In Victoria (18th April 2017 ABC News)

One that helps BOTH victims and offenders

With a far less burden on both the public and private purse

Cutting right through the complications and costs of bureaucracy

And with a greater likelihood of a

Greater victim participation and valuation

A more contextualised, ‘heard’ and humane

More personable and effectual

Victim and offender, family and communal

Salugenic healing Justice outcomes

Including the likelihood of preventing further offences

Simon Walker illustrates this in the case of a young racist

Child abuse sex offender in an (English?) primary school

That illustrates

"The power of the community collectively to

Deal with its own problems...

Without resorting to expensive legal proceedings

And the structures of the bureaucracy"

"The problem was addressed and sorted out locally and directly

Instead of acting out of fear the group chose to trust one another

And indeed to trust the bully

Instead of seeking to defend themselves or to retaliate

They chose courageously to make themselves vulnerable

DIFFERENT FORCES were brought into play

Forces of SOCIAL BELONGING

Shame and guilt

Forgiveness and acceptance

Help and mutual support (of the offender -jcw)

These forces PROVED to be powerful enough

To RESOLVE the situation more QUICKLY and less expensively

Than any formal proceedings COULD have done

And WITHOUT the Organizational DAMAGE"

Simon concludes:

"THINK what potential there would be to REDUCE violence and

FEAR in the neighbourhood IF communities would TAKE

THAT KIND of COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY

ALL it took was the MOBILISATION of the

FORCES OF SOCIAL BELONGING, shame and guilt

Forgiveness and acceptance..."

(Simon Walker: 2007-2009 Leadership Trilogy)

AND a LEADER who was willing

NOT to GIVE IN to feelings of hate

NOT to seek revenge

(NOT seek legal recourse -jcw)

BUT INSTEAD to act COURAGEOUSLY and

Make himself undefended

It took a LEADER who decided that

TRUST was MORE POWERFUL than FEAR

And he was RIGHT

(And would you believe that this leader was a child of eight years?)

The language of those who will confront the powers that be

Around these issues of Justice

Initially may have to be couched in the more

‘Neutral’ ‘non-religious’ terms of

Becoming more human

Human rights and Responsibilities

[See Note below re HUMAN RIGHTS CAUTION]

Human and Social psychology

More equitable and equalising power arrangements

Evidence based community practices and protocols and

Alternative experimental based Justice programs

And more accountable protocols

Initially as an aside to the present ‘system’ but

Requiring the State to be open to new and better

Less harmful and more humane and all-inclusive

Much more consultative and accommodating

Mediative and reconciling/restorative

Justice principles, practices and protocols –

To be openly cooperative and not competitive

Not giving into law as legalism and impersonal proceduralism

And the dead weight of deterrence and the

Death-dealing hand of punishment

In effect perpetuating the

Cause of the uncritical assumptions of the

Canon of retributive Justice, of the

Continuum of the cycles of violence and

Convulsive change

Cloning the past and causing more chaos and

Closing the door

ON better more hope-filled futures for all

And effectually, allegedly and legally

Conferring the powers of all seeing with predestinating

Control and presumptive professional prowess over so many

(Often the fluent product of erudite scholarship –and Sometimes the ‘benign’ effluence of the affluent)

SHAPING THE WORLD IN THEIR IMAGE OR

IN THE IMAGE OF LAWMAKERS AND/OR AS THEIR

SOCIETAL REPRESENTATIVES

Constantly REMADE in their own changing image)

But WITHOUT the capacity or concern or compassion for

Climbing the rigging of the ‘Cosmic crow’s nest’ and

Consulting with Christ, the confessed

Creator and Saviour

Lord of Heaven and Earth and

Coming Judge

Who to the Historian’s and Judge’s chagrin

Has more than the Gift of the dervish in the

Thousand and One Nights

Has more than the Magic of Borges’s Aleph

Much more than the Orbiter Dicta of an opinionated Judge or

Arrogant legalist and incendiary activist

NOT OPEN or responsive to God’s calling to the eternal good

Or to a Theology of the Blessed Concord of God in Christ

Being the express image of Him who is BOTH Alpha and Omega

Who is in the bosom of the Father AND made Him known

In whom the FULLNESS of the Deity dwells and

Who bears the very stamp of His nature and thus who

Fully reflects the character and purposes of God as

Omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent

Divine-Human LOVE

Negotiating for a mutual and reciprocal exchange of

Concessions of Justice and power arrangements and

Less coercive intimidation into submission

More gestures of good faith and goodwill

NURTURING OFFENDERS AND VICTIMS AND THE COMMUNITIES

Back to normalcy and recovery in Christ

Speaking Christlike Truth

Showing Responsible Mercy

Proffering Transformative Grace

Working diligently for Local Community Ownership

In a Salugenic Faith and Theocentric Kinship Community

With a Community Built on the ‘Solidarity of the Shaken’

Creating

PLACES OF REFUGE or SAFETY for offenders

Without the indulgences of passivity or cover-up

Where we can express our deepest feelings

Without death-dealing criticism, judgment, rejection or fear of betrayal

OASES of Containment and Confidence in a Culture of Safety

FORUMS of Mediation and Reconciliation

SITES OF SALUGENIC HEALING for both victim AND victimiser

SETTLEMENTS of HONOURABLE PEACE and

SOCIETAL SHALOM

CADRES of CARING and COMPETENT COUNSELLORS AND

CIRCLES of COMPASSIONATE FRIENDS

Where all can potentially become skilled helpers to each other

In a Therapeutic Christlike Community Model of health

Which MUST live separately from but can usually live alongside

And so benefit from traditional psychological ‘therapies’

But ONLY in so far as they are FULLY congruent with the

Person, Truth and Grace of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ

With the caution that the principal aim of

These traditional common Graced therapies is recovery –

Which often falls short of this

And they do NOT suggest the need for

Personal transformational change

In a living and vital relationship with Jesus Christ

Constituted by a palingenesis or new birth/new life and

Justification from a state of condemnation and

Consequent alienation from the Life and Love and

Liberty and Laughter (Joy) and Long Term view of God

As the basis for Personal and Relational Wholeness with God

And with the Other and ONE Another in the MIDST in the

Koinonia of Authentic Christian or Christlike Community

Where the koinonia of mutual need expressed in

Covenanted, authentic, unconditioned and tenacious

(Unfailing or faithful)

Spirit-Filled and Controlled Familial/Filial Love

Flowing out from the indwelling and

Corporate perichoetic dance of the Life of the

Intramural tripersonal God of Indwelling and

Outgoing and overflowing Love

In a dynamic ontology and Life-Giving

Eschatological Ethic of Sovereign Grace in

LIFE RECEIVED AS A GIFT –

NOT LIFE OWNED AS A POSSESSION but

IN A CHRIST-CENTRED - Christ-and-the-Other and

Christ-in-the Other and Christ-in-Each-Other

Which takes priority even over – but not in competition with

Kerygma, diakonia, charisma and prophetica

And phronesis – or the use of theology as practical wisdom

(See Peter R. Holmes: 2005 in his excellent book Becoming More Human for further expansion of these thoughts)}

These are people who can trust themselves and

Trust God to work in them and others, those who

Possess the capacity and freedom to

Think for themselves and enact

Cooperative workable solutions

Under the leading and counsel of the Holy Spirit

Without having to sacrifice themselves

Or their confidants

By betraying their Trust

On the altar of Statist or other control

Whose supreme and UNDIVIDED loyalty is

To Jesus Christ and so

Who do NOT have to KOWTOW to STATIST CONTROL or to

THE DICTATES OF LAW as the

Solution to humanity’s problems

And prohibiting civil disobedience

With a required New Self and Other

Mutual and Equalising Justice perception

The force and substance of a NEW Shift of Initiative

(Without the heavy artillery of the Guns of Retribution

The Silver Braid of soldiers of ‘peace’ making war not love

Making Law but not Justice)

BY TREATING THE WEAK AND ‘WICKED’ ALIKE

LIKE US and ONE OF US

Friends and NOT foes, our other selves

Not engaging in undiplomatic and heavy handed

Confrontative / conflictual modes of mindset and manners or conduct

Where POWER is number one

Nor allowing the State to usurp the monopoly of Justice

To preserve and perpetuate the privilege and power

Of the princely plutocracy and legal gerontocracy

And the overall oligarchy

Or the rule of the nomenclatura or the professional meritocracy

Especially when they pander to their own and/or vested interests}

Thus acknowledging BOTH victims of injustice

And victimisers

The right to be heard

The choice of alternative Justice models

And the right of a limited and peaceable remedy

When possible and desirable

But nevertheless requiring them to

Forfeit their claims of institutionalised vengeance

Of reciprocal and hurtful retaliatory and inhumane Justice

Or right of claim to any form of imposed punishment as a

Governmental service to private parties or

Other vested interests as a form of

State-sponsored psychotherapy

As political and/or judicial payback or payoff

But victims and perpetrators are entitled to a form of Justice

That should assist and enable and resource them

With the assistance of mediators and family members

To firstly confront the perpetrator and then

Speedily and actively seek to be reconciled with him

Even as they simultaneously seek

With equal compassion and energy and resources to

Provide for and assist him in his

Personal transformation and healing

And possibly urging and assisting perpetrators to

Make reasonable restitution or humane reparations

Where it lies within the power of the offender

As an appropriate expression of genuine love

Rather than being coerced from the offender

But mediated as a transformative initiative –

Where possible or desirable to help

Break the cycle of unforgiveness, hatred and violence

But not further unduly burdening them financially or impoverishing

Or sabotaging already emotionally strained and fragile

Individual and familial relations

While assisting them all

By putting in place the needed financial and

Human local resources to ensure that

Significant and sustained efforts are made

And SEEN to be made by all interested parties

To keep families together or to reunite them speedily

In the process of fostering healing and restoration

With a win-win for better futures for ALL

And greater communal maturity and shalom

As gold standard – desirable and testable and so

Verifiable Christlike societal outcomes

To grant mercy as BOTH a matter of Grace AND

Dutiful Justice – particularly when there has been

Evident faith in Christ with godly sorrow and

Confession - where SAFE and appropriate only

And when there are ways of vindicating the victim

That do not involve (further) punishment of the perpetrator

Evidencing a new Christ-like social order where everything is

REDEFINED from the BOTTOM-UP

But where the bottom ‘dwellers’ do NOT then

Participate in the

POWER GRABS characterised by those

Who so often are at the top and want to

Keep us under their thumb

And not up their nose!

To break the spirit and will of the ‘foreigner’

And the ‘alien’ outsider

In self-righteous exclusion

As their clients and servants and

As a victim of their

Consumptive practices of imperial ethics

Where so much of their business is pandering to

And promoting a climate of conversation of

Unbelief and unlove

Hate and unforgiveness and legalised vengeance

Rather than have them as one of us and one with us

And an essential part of Christ’s Kingdom of loving inclusion

And the Government as a hired decentralised

Servant of FREE MEN

To ensure that the Creator or Christ’s laws for men

Are valued in the free market of ideas

And recommended and preferably enacted

For the betterment of humankind

Just look at The Whites of their Eyes

In their Black Letter laws and Red-Blooded judgments

A