Family (2) Nuclear Family

The nuclear family had its heyday between 1950 and 1965, but it was relatively rare in terms of history.

During this period, a certain family ideal became engraved in our minds: a married couple with 2.5 kids. When we think of the American family, many of us still revert to this ideal. When we have debates about how to strengthen the family, we are thinking of the two-parent nuclear family, with one or two kids, probably living in some detached family home on some suburban street. We take it as the norm, even though this wasn’t the way most humans lived during the tens of thousands of years before 1950, and it isn’t the way most humans have lived during the 55 years since 1965.

Today, only a minority of American households are traditional two-parent nuclear families and only one-third of American individuals live in this kind of family. That 1950–65 window was not normal. It was a freakish historical moment when all of society conspired, wittingly and not, to obscure the essential fragility of the nuclear family.

Several unique factors made the nuclear possible during this period.

• Women were obliged to stay at home and look after their children.

• Post-war labour shortages pushed up wages, making a single income family viable.
  

  By 1961, the median American man aged 25 to 29 was earning nearly 400 percent more than his father had earned at about the same age...
  

Disintegration

But these conditions did not last. The constellation of forces that had briefly shored up the nuclear family began to fall away, and the sheltered family of the 1950s was supplanted by the stressed family of every decade since. Some of the strains were economic. Starting in the mid-’70s, young men’s wages declined, putting pressure on working-class families in particular. The major strains were cultural. Society became more individualistic and more self-oriented. People put greater value on privacy and autonomy...

In the 1950s: “Love means self-sacrifice and compromise.” In the 1960s and ’70s, putting self before family was prominent: “Love means self-expression and individuality”...

Since the 1960s, the dominant family culture has been the “self-expressive marriage.”
Marriage is no longer primarily about childbearing and childrearing. Now marriage is primarily about adult fulfillment”...

We’re likely living through the most rapid change in family structure in human history. The causes are economic, cultural, and institutional all at once...

These cultural changes have brought about serious changes in relationships.

Over the past two generations, people have spent less and less time in marriage—they are marrying later, if at all, and divorcing more...

Over the past two generations, families have also gotten a lot smaller. The general American birth rate is half of what it was in 1960. In 2012, most American family households had no children. There are more American homes with pets than with kids. In 1970, about 20 percent of households had five or more people. As of 2012, only 9.6 percent did...

Over the past two generations, the physical space separating nuclear families has widened...

Family (1)

I recently read an article in the Atlantic Magazine by David Brooks called The Nuclear Family was a Mistake. He has an important message for people who are interested in family life and the structure of society. Brooks begins by describing the disintegration of family life in the Western World.

This is the story of our times—the story of the family, once a dense cluster of many siblings and extended kin, fragmenting into ever smaller and more fragile forms. The initial result of that fragmentation, the nuclear family, didn’t seem so bad. But then, because the nuclear family is so brittle, the fragmentation continued. In many sectors of society, nuclear families fragmented into single-parent families, single-parent families into chaotic families or no families.

If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.

Extended Families

He explains that the nuclear family is a very recent phenomenon.

In 1800, 90 percent of American families were corporate families. Until 1850, roughly three-quarters of Americans older than 65 lived with their kids and grandkids. Nuclear families existed, but they were surrounded by extended or corporate families.

An extended family is one or more families in a supporting web. Your spouse and children come first, but there are also cousins, in-laws, grandparents—a complex web of relationships among, say, seven, 10, or 20 people.

The second great strength of extended families is their socializing force. Multiple adults teach children right from wrong, how to behave toward others, how to be kind. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, industrialization and cultural change began to threaten traditional ways of life. Many people in Britain and the United States doubled down on the extended family in order to create a moral haven in a heartless world. The prevalence of extended families living together roughly doubled from 1750 to 1900, and this way of life was more common than at any time before or since.

The collapse of the extended family began at the end of the 19th century.

As factories opened in the big U.S. cities, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, young men and women left their extended families to chase the American dream. These young people married as soon as they could… The families they started were nuclear families. The decline of multigenerational cohabiting families exactly mirrors the decline in farm employment.

By the 1920s, the nuclear family with a male breadwinner had replaced the corporate family as the dominant family form. By 1960, 77.5 percent of all children were living with their two parents, who were married, and apart from their extended family.

I presume that the extended family lasted longer in the US, because the industrial revolution came later than in England.

Permanent Record

I have just read Edward Snowden’s book called Permanent Record (McMillian 2019). It is a disturbing account of how the CIA and the NSA collected the data of Americans (and the people of the world) although they knew it was unconstitutional. They then lied to the media, so the public would not know about it.

Public servants with power can be dangerous, because they slip into assuming that they know what is good for people, better than they know themselves. It then become easy to slip into to doing evil assuming that it serves a greater good.

Snowden explains the significance of the collection of metadata.

The unfortunate truth, however, is that the content of our communications is rarely as revealing as its other elements—the unwritten, unspoken information that can expose the broader context and patterns of behaviour.

The NSA calls this “metadata.” The term’s prefix, “meta” which traditionally is translated as “above” or “beyond,” is here used in the sense of “about”: metadata is data about data. It is, more accurately, data that is made by data—a cluster of tags and markers that allow data to be useful. The most direct way of thinking about metadata, however; is as “activity data,” all the records of all the things you do on your devices and all the things your devices do on their own. Take a phone call, for example: its metadata might include the date and time of the call, the call’s duration, the number from which the call was made, the number being called, and their locations. An email’s metadata might include information about what type of computer it was generated on, where, and when, who the computer belonged to, who sent the email, who received it, where and when it was sent and received, and who if anyone- besides the sender and recipient accessed it, and where and when. Metadata can tell your surveillant the address you slept at last night and what time you got up this morning. It reveals every place you visited during your day and how long you spent there. It shows who you were in touch with and who was in touch with you.

With the dizzying volume of digital communications in the world, there is simply no way that every phone call could listened to or email could be read. Even if it were feasible, however, it still wouldn’t be useful, and anyway, metadata makes this unnecessary by winnowing the field. This is why it’s best to regard metadata not as some benign abstraction, but as the very essence of content: it is precisely the first line of information that the parity surveilling you requires.

We Need Prophets, Not Partisans

Brett McCracken makes a good point in his article called We Need Prophets, Not Partisans.

Many Christians today are being more powerfully catechized by voices on cable news, talk radio, and podcasts than they are by voices from within the church. The average American Christian is likelier to have their views shaped by a political pundit than a preacher...

The gospel’s power is not the power to win elections, legal protections, or economic prosperity. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16). It’s incumbent upon churches and Christian institutions today that they orient around this true gospel—the one given to us by God in Scripture—rather than around the various perverse gospels that tempt us: prosperity, power, politics, self-help.

Churches in America used to be places where people of diverse political opinions integrated and learned how to have civil, charitable political discourse. “But when politics affects whether and where Americans go to church, even our houses of worship become political echo chambers” (quoting Michelle Margolis).

The gravity of this problem cannot be overstated. If the church of Jesus Christ becomes more shaped by the temporal concerns of contemporary politics than by the eternal, kingdom concerns of Scripture, we’ve surrendered our last shred of relevance in a secular age. Why would a spiritually restless 21st-century person care about faith if faith turns out to be just another clanging cymbal in the deafening cacophony of politicized noise? Yet if faith offers something different—a confident, prophetic clarity that takes its cues from an eternal agenda and speaks to politics rather than from politics, or from anything else peripheral—then it might be worth preserving.

Authority and Control

When God made us free, he gave us authority over our own lives, and he will not take that back.

So we can give God permission to speak to us and guide us, and bring events our way, but we cannot give all control over our lives to him. We have to listen to his leading, and choose to obey. And we have to take responsibility for our decisions, and accept the consequences, though he will rescue us from mistakes.

So If we are under attack from demonic powers, he will not deal with them if we remain passive. He expects us to exercise our faith, and take up the authority that he has given us and command them to leave.

Change

Only a fool thinks that you can get something different by carrying on doing more of the same.

Yet the church has been doing the same thing for the last 30 years and expects a different outcome. This does not make sense.

The modern pastor-leader model that we persist in relying on does not exist in the New Testament. Churches were led by a team of elders. Paul was never “the pastor” of a church in the modern sense of the word. The church in Antioch where he got his ministry underway was led by several “prophets and teachers” (pastors) (Acts 13:1).

When Paul was sent out to start new churches, he was part of an apostolic team (Acts 13:2-5). In all the churches founded by Paul and his team, elders were appointed to lead the church. Paul never appointed someone to be “the pastor” (Acts 14:23). When Paul met with key people from Ephesus towards the end of his ministry, he met with the elders and encouraged them to shepherd (disciple) the people in their care (Acts 20:17,28).

Paul did what Jesus had demonstrated. Jesus took twelve people with him everywhere he went. They watched what he did and learned how to do it. The best way to learn to pray for the sick is to stand alongside someone who knows how to do it. The best way to learn how to cast out deacons is to join with an experienced person when they are doing it. The best way to learn how to share the gospel of the kingdom is to be with someone who knows how to do it.

A dozen people will be too many for most people to manage. Paul only took two or three. But if every Christian who has developed a ministry took wone or two people with them when engaging in their ministry, the number of people able to minister in Jesus name would grow rapidly. This would be far more effective than the modern model of one person engaging in ministry while 200 people watch and listen.

The benefit of having teams of elders was that all new followers of Jesus were quickly and effectively discipled. The elders replicated their ministries in the people that they were watching over, so a ready supply of new leaders was available when the church grew quickly. Under this leadership model, the church grew quickly.

The modern church has rejected this model and relies on a professional paid-pastor, who gives teaching at a Sunday meeting. This method distributes knowledge, but falls far short of the discipling provided by the elders in the early church, where people learnt by doling stuff with the elders who were discipling them. The professional pastor model trains people to be passive observers, which massively weakens their effectiveness.

The church has persisted with this model for many years, without achieving the desired effect. There is no reason why more of the same will do anything different. Maybe its time to try the leadership model that worked so well in the time of Paul.

Apostle

Apostle is a relationship role, not a governmental role.

Paul had authority, because he had strong relationships with many people in the churches of Asia Minor (he had discipled many of them), not because he was appointed to a governmental role.

Jesus called twelve disciples and called them apostles.

He appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, to send them out to preach, and to have authority to drive out demons (Mark 3:14-15).

He did not appoint the twelve to a governmental role. He appointed them to be with him and learn how he did things. Once they had learned how to what he did, he would send them to preach the good news and cast out demons. Like him, they would heal the sick and cast out demons as confirmation of the truth that Jesus is truly Lord and saviour.

What Mathew literally said is the following.

He makes twelve, whom He also names apostles, that they may be with Him, and that He may be apostling them to preach.

We lose the sense of this declaration because English translations use the word "sent" for the verb apostle. The apostles were called apostles because they were sent/apostled to preach. Being sent is what apostles do.

They do not stay behind and rule and control. They are sent out to preach and enforce the of defeat the spiritual powers of evil that Jesus established on the cross. And they form the people they rescue together into new churches, like Paul did.

More at Apostle.

COVID-19 Virus

After reading a report of a Christian prophet suggesting that the COVID-9 Virus is coming to an end, I began to wonder what type of event this pandemic is. Nothing big happens on earth by accident. All serious events are the result of interactions between the spiritual realms and the physical world that we see.

When I worked as a statistician, I discovered that the key to understanding activities and event is to classify them correctly. If a business codes some of its expenses as loans, its profit will look better, buts its accounts will be a distortion of reality. A key to classifying events correctly is understanding the full range of events that can occur. If we only expect one type of event, we will assume that is what they all are. A secular materialistic world view assumes that all events are the result of physical causes. People who believe in meticulous providence assume that every event is totally controlled by God. Both of these views result in a distorted understanding and confusion.

In an article called Prophetic Events, I describe the range of possible prophetic events and set out criteria for distinguishing between them. Understanding this range makes it easier to categorise particular events when they occur. This enables us to be clearer about things that are happening in our world.

I conclude that the COVID-19 virus was not a Shaking Event, in which God shakes the people to shock his people into turning back to him. The reason for this conclusion is that, as far as I can tell, no Christians prophets warned of this pandemic in advance and God does nothing with warning his prophets (Amos 3:7). None of the prophets mentioned the COVID-19 virus in their y2020 prognostications. Since God did not warn of this event, so he is most likely not the cause of it.

Therefore, I conclude that the pandemic is what I have called to as a Warning Event in the article.

When the Christian influence declines and society is close to the tipping point, the powers of evil begin to show off. The devil is not very creative, so he just does on a smaller scale, what he would like to do, if he had much more authority, but does not. These events are warning signs for those who alert. Christians who understand their times will able to discern these signs and get an early warning of what is going to happen, if society continues in the way that it is going.

Jesus described warning events in (Luke 13:1-5). As explained in my article Warning Events have the following characteristics (there are more listed in the article).

1. Warning Events are not sent by God.

2. Minor occurrences of evil are often a sign that society is getting close to the tipping point.

3. Being abnormal and unusual, these events are noticed by everyone.

4. These mini-disasters may appear to be random events, but they have spiritual significance.

5. The forces of evil begin to show off and try out the evil they intend to do, if they get greater control of society.

6. They are a warning of more serious perils that will follow, if people do not get back under the protection of God.

7. Warning Events reveal the mind of the devil, as they are often a type of what he will do if he is given a free hand to wreak worse evil.

8. Warning Events are indiscriminate. They can hurt sinners and the righteous, because the devil does not care who he hurts.

9. The event says nothing about the character of the people who are harmed and everything about the nature of the society they live in.

10. These events are not redemptive; just destructive of relatively innocent people.

The spiritual powers of evil are not very creative, so when they discover a tactic that works, they are like to keep on doing it.

During a Warning Event, follows of Jesus should gather together, so they can provide spiritual protection for each other.

Hidden Church

I went for a walk through the city a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the church has disappeared from sight. Once churches were built on the corner of busy streets with a tall steeple that made them stand out. Now all the lively churches meet in converted warehouses or office blocks. These are usually on back sections, because the land is cheaper and there is plenty of room for car parking.

The result is that most residents of the city never see the church in action. To see the church operating, they would have to go into a building that is off the track, where they would never usually go.

This contrasts with Jesus who conducted his activities in the market places and open places in the villages and towns that he visited. People could see him heal the sick and open the eyes of the blind. It was hard to deny that something was going on.

The people the city meet Christians, but they usually meet them while they are on their own. Christians are always more effective when they are working pairs, but that is something that most citizens of the city never encounter.

Meetings

Church leaders should be thinking about what they will do if their government decides to prohibit meetings of more than 30 people for the next four months as part of their efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus. What will you do? What will happen to your church if it is unable to meet for a few months?

Prophets and Guidance

I have just updated this section of my teaching on the Prophetic Ministry.

Prophets bring the word of the Lord to the church. Christians can get so caught up in the events of the world that they do not see what God is doing. This is particularly true in tumultuous times, when it can be very hard to see the hand of God at work. Prophets will give direction and vision in these situations, so that God's people know what is happening, and what they should do. For example, the prophet Gad provided guidance to David and showed him how to avoid trouble.

Prophets can give direction to those who are seeking the will of God. Sometimes the prophetic word will be for the church as a whole or for the leadership of the church.

Personal prophecy must be treated with caution. The gift of prophecy is not usually directive, so it is dangerous to make life-changing decisions on the basis of a prophecy uttered by a person who has not been recognised as a prophet. Prophets will sometimes give direction, but generally this should come as a confirmation of something that God has already spoken to the person concerned. God wants to lead his people by his Spirit. He desires that every believer should learn to hear the Spirit's voice. A message from a prophet should normally come as a confirmation of something that the Spirit has already spoken.

Making important decisions on the basis of a word from another person is dangerous. It is wrong to be totally dependent on others for guidance. Many Christians have been led astray because they failed to get their own word from God.

Christian prophets do not tell people what to do, they confirm what God is saying. To go to a Christian prophet for direction and guidance is to violate the New Covenant which gives us direct access and approach to God through Christ by the Spirit (Graham Cooke - Developing Your Prophetic Gifting p.199).

The exception to this principle is when a follower of Jesus is so beaten down or defeated that they cannot hear what God is saying to them. They just cannot conceive that God might have something good planned for them. If a person has disqualified themself, a word from a prophet might be needed to break through the cloud of doubt that blinds them.

When the prophet speaks to people who have written themselves off, the word usually comes as a shock, but it will crack through into their heart and open their mind to what God is saying. As the word of the prophet sinks into the person's soul, they will be able to grab it for themselves.

The ideal is that we hear God's word and get confirmation from a prophet, but sometimes that does not work. In these situations, the prophetic word does not come as confirmation. It comes as an intrusion of the wisdom of God, when he has been unable to speak to the person. Later, they will get confirmation for themselves. This is not the ideal, but God sometimes has to give the revelation through a prophet first, as that is the only way that he can breakthrough.

Weak and Strong

People are different. Some are weak and others are strong. In a free-market economy, some people make it and others don’t. The people that made it cannot say to the people who didn’t, “I made it, so you have too”. People are different.

Christ

I recently realised that I have stopped using the word “Christ”. The reason for this is that the word has no meaningful content in the modern world.

When people talk of Jesus Christ, the word is said as if “Christ” was a surname. When people call him “Christ, it is like the school teachers at the high school that I attended calling their students by their surname. “Stand up, Smith”.

Christ is not a surname. It is a transliteration of the Greek word “Christos”, which means anointed. Ascribing this word to Jesus was a way of saying that he was the “anointed one” that God had promised.

The Jews were looking for a promised Messiah. The Hebrew word was “Meshiach”, which means “anointed”. It refers to the anointing of a person who would be the saviour, rescuer of God’s people. The expected Messiah was often referred to as “Melekh Meshiach” which means the Messiah King.

The Greek Testament calls Jesus “Messias” and “Christos”.

The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ) (John 1:41).

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming: (John 4:25).

John makes it clear that Jesus was Christ and Messiah.

The reason for calling Jesus Christ is that it is a way of acknowledging him as the messiah/rescuer, but that does not work these days, when the word Christ has become expletive.

I refer to Jesus as Jesus, because most people still know who he is. If I want to express his role as the messiah, I would refer to him as Jesus the rescuer, or Jesus the Messiah, as these words better convey a sense of who he is and what he has done. I wonder if I should be referring to him more as “Jesus, the rescuing king”.

Mosaic Covenant and Prophecy

The Mosaic covenant was an agreement between God and the children of Israel. Breaking this covenant brought trouble on the promised land.

Who is wise enough to understand this? Who has been instructed by the LORD and can explain it? Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert that no one can cross?

The LORD said, “It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts; they have followed the Baals, as their ancestors taught them” (Jer 9:12-14).

When the people rejected the law, they lost that protection and the spiritual powers of evil were able to work their harm and make the land desolate.

God has not made a similar covenant with the nations, so the consequences of disobedience described in Deuteronomy 28 do not apply to them. However, the people of the world are engaged in the same spiritual battle as the children of Israel. The spiritual powers of evil are not very creative, so they used the same methods to attack them as they used against the children of Israel. If the people of nations do not have the spiritual protection provided by the cross, they will vulnerable to evil, just like Israelites when they rejected t law. They can expect the same types of troubles and plagues as the OT prophets announced for Israel.

Jeremiah confirmed this when he warned that the uncircumcised nations—Egypt, Edom, Ammon, Moab—can experience the same destructive events as disobedient Israel, whenever the spiritual powers of evil choose to inflict them (Jer 9:25-26).

Removing Evil Rulers

The exception to my previous post is that God does sometimes pronounce judgment against kings, rulers and political powers who are doing serious harm. These leaders have demanded that the people of their nation accept their authority and submit to them. The people who submit to them become vulnerable to any spiritual powers that the rulers have given a place. If the rulers are not careful, they can leave the people open to attack by powerful evil spirits that can do terrible harm. In this situation, the people who trust their rulers to protect them from the physical threats that they fear are betrayed, and left exposed to far worse spiritual and physical evil.

When kings and rulers surrender to spiritual evil (often unwittingly), God pronounces judgment against them, because they empower the spiritual powers of evil to do great evil amongst the people that they are responsible for protecting. God will use his prophets to pronounces judgment against them to remove them from their position and protect the people who trusted them.

Babylon the Great is an example. It opens the people it controls up to great evil, so it has to be removed from power. John announced God’s judgment against Babylon the Great in the book of Revelation (Rev 18).

The prophet's declaration and intercession give God authority to deal with evil rulers. When a situation turns sour and God needs to take action, his prophetic voices announce his condemnation of the evil government. This prophetic declaration gives God permission to send a preventive judgment against the evil ruler that the prophet had pronounced judgment against. The prophet's declaration expresses God's judgment/verdict on the evil ruler. God's action against the Evil ruler represents his sentence against him.

In these situations, prophets and judgments go together. Without the prophets, God would not have authority to bring preventive judgments against evil rulers. Unless God sends judgments against evil rulers, the prophets would be just crying in the wind. Prophets and judgment of evil rulers are part of God's strategy for constraining evil in the world.

The modern world thinks of judgment as a grumpy god going around whacking people. However, most people in the world do not get justice. Their life is full of injustice. Various empires and political leaders have promised to get them justice, but the ordinary people never receive it. Fair judgment is good news for most people.

If we want to understand God's judgment we should read the Beatitudes. The poor will be blessed. The rich will be disappointed, because they have already received their comfort. Those who have had plenty and privilege might miss out.

Warning without Judgment

Some Christian prophets like to announce the judgments of God on peoples and nations, but this is a misunderstanding of their role.

The common view that the Old Testament prophets announced God’s judgment on the children of Israel, or the surrounding nations is not quite right. The Hebrew word for “judgment” is mishpat. It means a judicial judgment or verdict. It is never used to describe the message of the Old Testament prophecies.

The Old Testament prophets only rarely used this word to describe the message they were proclaiming. They spoke frequently about the failure of kings and judges to give wise judgment (mishpat) (Isaiah 42:3 and Jer 21:9 are examples), and they spoke of God’s verdict (mishpat) on Israel’s behaviour, but they never referred to the events they were announcing as God’s judgments.

The prophets were actually warning of the consequences of rejecting God and his law. The law provided Israel with protection from the spiritual powers of evil. When they rejected God and stopped applying his law, they lost their spiritual protection. This enabled the spiritual powers of evil to attack them and wreak havoc on their land. God’s verdict on Israel’s behaviour gave the evil powers authority to act and bring harm to the nation.

The Mosaic law provided the Israelites with spiritual protection. Obeying the law kept them separate from people and things carrying evil spirits. The tabernacle sacrifices provided further protection. When the people rejected the law, they lost that protection and the spiritual powers of evil were able to work their harm and make the land desolate. The role of the OT prophets was to announce the consequences of rejecting God and the spiritual protection that his law provided.

God was not the initiator of the troubles released by the rebellion of the children of Israel. They were inflicted by the spiritual powers of evil. They gained the power to do this, because the people had squeezed God out of the land so he could not protect them. The people cut themselves off from the protection that God provided through the law.

The troubles announced by the prophets were initiated by the spiritual powers of evil when they had gained a free hand in the land. The prophets did not understand the operation of these spiritual powers, so they often described the coming troubles as if God was responsible for them. He seemed to be happy taking responsibility for these events, because he created the situation where they could occur.

In the modern world, God loves the people of the world, even when they have rejected him. He does not want to harm them, even if they deserve it. His desire is to rescue them and protect them from the spiritual powers of evil, but many choose not to be rescued by him, partly because they do not realise it is possible. Because he loves them, he does not use his prophets to pronounce curses or judgments against them. He loves the people of the world and wants their friendship.

Because they have rejected God, the people of the world are vulnerable to attack by the spiritual powers of evil. These attacks are the consequence of their rejection of his love and the protection that he could provide. God knows what the spiritual powers of evil are planning to do, so he can use his prophets to warn his people of the harm they are planning.

God does not use his prophets to announce his judgment on the people of the world, because that would nullify the message that he loves them. The message of the prophets should be the message of Jesus.

God loved the world so much that he sent his son so it would not perish (John 3:16).

God may use his prophets to warn the people of what the spiritual powers of evil will be able to do because he has not been able to rescue them. He does this in the hope that they would turn to him for help so he can rescue them from what the spiritual powers of evil plan to do.

God has not made a similar covenant with the nations, so the consequences of disobedience described in Deuteronomy 28 do not apply to them. However, the people of the world are engaged in the same spiritual battle as the children of Israel. The spiritual powers of evil are not very creative, so they used the same methods to attack them as they used against the children of Israel. If the people of nations do not have the spiritual protection provided by the cross, they will vulnerable to evil, just like Israelites when they rejected the law. They can expect the same types of troubles and plagues as the OT prophets announced for Israel.

Christian prophets may sometimes need to warn the people of the world of the consequence of rejecting God’s offer to rescue them. However, they must not say that God is judging them or that he is initiating the events that they are prophesying. The prophets must explain that dark events are the works of the spiritual powers of evil. They should declare that God still loves them and wants to rescue them from the trouble that is coming.

The Old Testament prophets were sometimes blunt because they did not have the fullness of the Spirit that we have. God was not reaching out to the nations in their season, so it did not matter too much, but in the new covenant age, excessive bluntness and condemnation is an obstacle to a gospel of God’s love.

Socialism (8) American Corporatism

Claiming that the economic system that operates in the United States is superior to socialism is misleading. Most American corporatism’s big businesses collude with the government to protect their patch. They cluster in Washington DC, looking for subsidies and bailouts, and press for laws that protect them from real competition. American corporatism is socialism for big business.

Claims that corporate socialism is superior to ordinary socialism will not work. Under corporatism, government money and power flow to the benefit of big corporates and then on to their wealthy owners. The classic example is the government generosity to the big businesses that caused the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Those who criticise socialism, but remain silent about follows wealth, money and power to the benefit of big business are being dishonest.

Neither corporatism or socialism are ideal economic systems. Both have serious flaws. The ideal economic system is God’s Economy under the Government of God.

Socialism (7) My Experience

On a holiday-weekend last July, I developed severe abdominal pain. I have never had a urinary tract infection, so I wondered if that was the cause. I went to the after-hours health clinic and was examined by a doctor. They did some blood tests, and he prescribed an antibiotic, because the physical examination indicated that could have a bladder infection. Over the next couple of days, the pain went away.

On the following Tuesday, I got a phone call from my own GP (general practitioner doctor) who had received the results of my blood test electronically. He said that the tests indicated something more serious and that he wanted me to have a CT Scan to check it out. Strangely enough, by then, the pain had gone. The same afternoon, I received a phone call from Pacific Radiology with an appointment for a scan later that day.

When the scan was complete, the radiographer suggested that I needed to go back to my GP that night. I phoned his reception and she said that he would see me after his last appointment at 5pm. The radiographer said that he would have the electronic results of my scan would be available for the doctor to see by then.

I called to see my GP on the way home from the radiology service and he explained that my scan showed that I had severe diverticulitis, which is normal for someone my age, but that diverticular on the lower part of the bowel was seriously infected. He said that I needed to be admitted to hospital to receive Intravenous Antibiotics. He told me I should go home and pack a bag and go up to Christchurch Public Hospital and I would be admitted.

I was admitted to hospital at 8pm, was examined by a doctor and received my first antibiotics within about half an hour. This all happened within a half a day of my doctor receiving the results of my blood tests.

I stayed in the hospital for five nights, receiving IV antibiotics three times a day. The hospital staff were great. The meals were basic but good. The nurses were kind and thoughtful. The surgical registrar who visited every morning was very skilled at explaining the nature of my problem and what they were doing to treat it. She said that they would organise a colonoscopy in a few months’ time, when the inflammation in my colon had cleared. After five days my blood test had returned within the normal limit, so I was sent home with oral antibiotics for another week. Six months have passed now and I have no more problems with my bowel.

Two other things happened. The original scan identified two other incidental unrelated problems that needed to be checked out. The first incidental item was a narrowing of the duct coming out of my left kidney. A month later, I received an appointment for a CT Urogram to check this. After injecting a marker, they electronically monitored the impact on my kidney while my bladder was emptying. A week later I saw a urologist. He explained that my case had been discussed at a meeting of specialists. They had reviewed my results and decided that because I was asymptomatic, and an intervention to correct the problem is quite risky, they would take no further action, but continue to monitor how it developed.

The second incidental problem that was identified on the original scan was a cyst on my pancreas. Within about six weeks, I had a received an endoscopic ultrasound scan of my pancreas in which they put a tube down my throat and took a picture and biopsy of the cyst. When I met with a general surgeon a few weeks later, he explained that because the cyst was small and benign, they would prefer not to intervene, but would wait and check it again in six month’s time. His decision had been discussed with other specialists. He explained that it grew larger or became malignant, then it would be relatively easy to remove by surgical intervention.

The outcome was reassuring. Overall, I am really healthy for someone of my age. I am praying for the conditions to be healed.

My main point for recording this here is that I received this medical care from a socialistic health system. The only cost was a payment of $NZ50 for my original consultation at the after-hours medical centre. Everything else was covered by the health system. The urgent medical condition was treated urgently. I received a scan and was put on antibiotics on the day the problem was diagnosed. I received specialised scans and follow-up appointments for the two incidental issues within a couple of months of diagnosis.

All the decisions about my treatment were made by clinicians after discussion with other specialists, not by insurance administrators or blind application of rules. Some of the specialists that looked at my results engaged in ground-breaking research with collaborators in the UK and US.
I realise that the cost of this service was paid for out of my taxes. However, my taxes over the years, and have not been much greater than would have been paid if I lived in the United States.

So, people who say that socialist health care does not work simply do not know what they are talking about. Morality is a different issue.

Socialism (6) Effective Medical System

New Zealand has a socialist health care system. Most health care is funded by the government, ie it is a single-payer system. District Health Boards receive grants from the government and are required to provide health care for the people living in their district. The government specifies the quality and quantity of the service that they must provide.

People are free to have medical insurance if they choose. Medical insurance is mostly taken out by people who are quite well off. The benefit is that they can get elective surgery, for knee and hip replacements quicker. However, most acute surgery is provided by the public system. Treatment of chronic sickness cancer is mostly provided by the public system, even for people with medical insurance. The difference is that people with medical insurance can sometimes get new extremely expensive cancer drugs that are not yet available through the public system.

A government entity called Pharmac purchases all prescription drugs and medicines. The big pharmaceutical companies hate it, but being the single buyer for the entire nations enables it to get better purchase prices by pitting them against each other. This limits brand choice a little, but the lower costs mostly outweigh this disadvantage.

My impression is that the NZ healthcare systems functions much better than the United States insurance-based system, yet it costs much less. New Zealand spends about 10 percent of GDP on health care, whereas the United States spends nearly 20 percent (of a much larger GDP). We don’t have people going bankrupt because their medical insurance has introduced unexpected charges. We do not have people who cannot get treatment, because the insurance has failed. Life expectancy is increasing and infant morbidity is declining, unlike the Unites States where the opposite is happening.

The US health care is not free market. It is an uneasy collusion between big insurance, big pharma, big health care providers and the government. This is corporatism, and it does not serve people well.

People who say that socialist health care does now work do not know what they are talking back. Socialist health care does not always work, if the government undermines it by providing insufficient funds, as has happened with the UK system or if the managers of the system are foolish or corrupt, but that happens in insurance-based systems too.

Many American tourists visiting New Zealand who find themselves needing emergency surgery receive it without hesitation. If they are having health insurance, a claim is made on their insurance. Those without health insurance cover still receive surgery. They are given an account when they leave hospital, which they are supposed to pay. Unfortunately, many don’t. Once they leave the country, they just forget about paying for the service they have received. The legal costs for pursuing them are too great, so their debts eventually have to be written off. I find it ironic that people who believe in free markets, who can afford international travel, are quite happy to rip off a system that they think is inferior.

Saying that socialism never works is a bad argument, because there are plenty of situation and examples where it works well. If Christians wish to argue against socialism, they need to do it on moral grounds on pragmatic grounds. Arguments that one system works better than the other will usually fail.

Socialism (5) Management

If sufficient resources are available, and there is clear demand for the output, the difference between a successful project and a failure is the quality of the managers. This is true whether the project is free-market or socialist. Some socialist projects attract really good managers. That is the situation with the health care system in my city. It was true of the government department of works that built the hydro-electric schemes in the South Island.

Many projects end up with poor management teams. That happens for many socialist projects, but it happens just as often for free-market projects. Identifying good managers is not easy and the owners of a business often get it wrong. Fonterra is a large dairy cooperative owned by New Zealand dairy farmers that processes much of the milk produced in New Zealand. In the last few years, it has been managed really badly and had to write off several large investments, because the CEO was not up to the task, despite being recruited from overseas with free-market experience and paid a huge salary.

Another example is the large Australian construction company, which has messed up the construction of a new hospital in Christchurch.

Good management is not as common as we would hope, and bad management is ubiquitous. That happens regardless of whether the project is free market or socialist.