How to research your vote
With the New Zealand election less than a month away, here's some notes I put together for a new voter. I'm putting it here mostly for my own records, but also in the hope someone else may find it useful :-)
Posts
There are no good people
On Radio New Zealand National, Kim Hill recently interviewed Reni Eddo-Lodge about her 2014 blog post Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race and its aftermath.
Listening to her speak, Martin and I realised that Christianity has something really important to offer here. Reni Eddo-Lodge is concerned with the way we white people simply do not notice our own racism. One of the things that prevents us from doing so is that we are perpetually dividing the world into 'good people' and 'bad people'. When it comes to race, racists are clearly the 'bad people'. This means that, when a person of colour calls out racist attitudes in a white person, that white person isn't in a good place to hear that message as they're likely to assume they're a good person and hence know that they can't be a racist.
But one of the core tenants of Christianity is that none of us get to be the 'good people;. I came across this again just today in …
Listening to her speak, Martin and I realised that Christianity has something really important to offer here. Reni Eddo-Lodge is concerned with the way we white people simply do not notice our own racism. One of the things that prevents us from doing so is that we are perpetually dividing the world into 'good people' and 'bad people'. When it comes to race, racists are clearly the 'bad people'. This means that, when a person of colour calls out racist attitudes in a white person, that white person isn't in a good place to hear that message as they're likely to assume they're a good person and hence know that they can't be a racist.
But one of the core tenants of Christianity is that none of us get to be the 'good people;. I came across this again just today in …
So many good things to look at right now!
I'm loving all the flowers I have in my room at the moment:
Boldly asking God for my needs
At the moment our church is doing the New Zealand Bible Society's Six Month Bible Reading Challenge, reading through the New Testament section of the Bible over the course of six months. At the moment I'm most of the way through Mark, the second book within the New Testament.
As I've been reading, I've been struck by how often Jesus seems to commend people for boldly asking them for what they need. The first time I noticed it was this:
but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him [Jesus], and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” So she…
As I've been reading, I've been struck by how often Jesus seems to commend people for boldly asking them for what they need. The first time I noticed it was this:
but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him [Jesus], and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” So she…