God is a Bullingdon
Daveybloke has been doing the Blair thingy again, with expectably salubrious results. Daveybloke had a bit of an Easter burble at Downing Street, during which he burbled about the Bible and Jesus and things. "The New Testament tells us so much about the character of Jesus; a man of incomparable compassion, generosity, grace, humility and love," Daveybloke burbled.
We must, of course, immediately put aside the cynical hypothesis that Daveybloke's transfiguration is just another Big Society thingy or Falklands 2.0, a bit of One Nation rah-rah designed to distract a gullible public from its fleecing. Christians are not like that, and certainly not Conservative Christians, let alone the kind of Conservative Christians who do this sort of thing with their children. That said, it does appear that Daveybloke has got his Biblical knowledge from Michael Gove, or some equally sophisticated and reliable source. The New Testament tells us that Jesus invoked the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah on those who ignored his ravings (compassion), refused to heal a Canaanite girl until her mother grovelled to him (generosity), blasted a fig tree for failing to bear fruit when figs were out of season (grace), proclaimed himself the Messiah (humility) and consigned all who disagreed with him to eternal torment (love). Such values, Daveybloke burbled, "are values people of any faith, or no faith, can also share in, and admire", which is perhaps why Daveybloke took care to burble in the name of "we Christians", thereby distinguishing himself from those who vote for the likes of Galloway and are not Some of Us.
Daveybloke burbled that "the values of the Bible, the values of Christianity, are the values that we need". Of the Bible's sixty-two books, only twenty-seven are Christian; and only the four gospels, their pulp-adventure sequel and the demented revenge fantasy at the end are actual books, the rest being fairly short items of largely spurious correspondence. Daveybloke burbled a quote from the Gospel of Luke: a good bland PR choice, relatively free of the barbarities of Mark and Matthew and handily removed from the theological convolutions of John. The chosen quote was "Do to others as you would have them do to you", a Christian value which had the misfortune to be articulated by Confucius, Gautama Buddha, Socrates and a few other persons of no consequence before Jesus (or those who cleaned him up after his death) came along to rescue it. Still, it is true that the values put forth in the Bible include slavery, absolute monarchy, genocide and keeping the little woman in her place; so it is fairly easy to see how the modern Conservative Party might find them largely acceptable.
We must, of course, immediately put aside the cynical hypothesis that Daveybloke's transfiguration is just another Big Society thingy or Falklands 2.0, a bit of One Nation rah-rah designed to distract a gullible public from its fleecing. Christians are not like that, and certainly not Conservative Christians, let alone the kind of Conservative Christians who do this sort of thing with their children. That said, it does appear that Daveybloke has got his Biblical knowledge from Michael Gove, or some equally sophisticated and reliable source. The New Testament tells us that Jesus invoked the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah on those who ignored his ravings (compassion), refused to heal a Canaanite girl until her mother grovelled to him (generosity), blasted a fig tree for failing to bear fruit when figs were out of season (grace), proclaimed himself the Messiah (humility) and consigned all who disagreed with him to eternal torment (love). Such values, Daveybloke burbled, "are values people of any faith, or no faith, can also share in, and admire", which is perhaps why Daveybloke took care to burble in the name of "we Christians", thereby distinguishing himself from those who vote for the likes of Galloway and are not Some of Us.
Daveybloke burbled that "the values of the Bible, the values of Christianity, are the values that we need". Of the Bible's sixty-two books, only twenty-seven are Christian; and only the four gospels, their pulp-adventure sequel and the demented revenge fantasy at the end are actual books, the rest being fairly short items of largely spurious correspondence. Daveybloke burbled a quote from the Gospel of Luke: a good bland PR choice, relatively free of the barbarities of Mark and Matthew and handily removed from the theological convolutions of John. The chosen quote was "Do to others as you would have them do to you", a Christian value which had the misfortune to be articulated by Confucius, Gautama Buddha, Socrates and a few other persons of no consequence before Jesus (or those who cleaned him up after his death) came along to rescue it. Still, it is true that the values put forth in the Bible include slavery, absolute monarchy, genocide and keeping the little woman in her place; so it is fairly easy to see how the modern Conservative Party might find them largely acceptable.
2 Comments:
At 7:54 pm ,
Madame X said...
When you take a closer look at the prophets, you realize that they are largely railing against accumulated wealth and the poverty of the masses. So I consider Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky part of that biblical tradition.
At 8:35 pm ,
Philip said...
Presumably it was these materialistic delusions which prompted Skydaddy & Son™ to issue their famous clarifications about love being all that matters and that, therefore, slaves should be obedient and masters should be as kind as the dictates of the market allow.
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