advoc8

As of today I'm blogging at advoc8 as well as here.
(advoc8 is Tear Australia's site for youth and young adults.)

Identity and social justice

Convicts in London, about to be sent to Australia
Have been thinking about how ancient Israel's identity as liberated slaves shaped their approach to social justice. A creed they recited before offering the first part of their harvest to God says,

My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor. Then we cried out to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me.
(Deuteronomy 26:5-10)

I seems that this had alot of influence on how the the poor and the enslaved were supposed to be treated in ancient Israel. (I wrote a bit about this in January, here and here.)
Thinking about where our country has come from. Some of us have been living in this land longer than anyone can remember. Some of us are descended from poor people who were set out here as punsihment for petty crimes. One of the best known characters in our history was a bush-ranger. Some of our ancestors were persecuted in the goldfields because of their race. We had more casualties in the First World War than any other country, because our soldiers were put on the front line, even though it wasn't our war. Some of us ended up here because our homelands have been torn appart by war and genocide.
That's definitely not the whole picture of where our country's come from, but I'm wondering about how all this should influence the way we approach social justice.

Advocacy: social justice in Deuteronomy

Last Tuesday morning, after we looked at the passage in Leviticus, we looked at the fifteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, which was Moses' last speech before he died. It covers a lot of similar stuff to the Levicticus passage.
Some other stuff I noticed in this passage though, is that Moses doesn't tell the Israelites not to make money by lending to other countries. I suppose that might've been so that other countries who wouldn't be generous in return wouldn't be able to abuse the Israelite economic system. Dunno what I think about it though.
Another thing I noticed is that their slavery system seems a lot different to how Africans were enslaved to work in North America, or how Pacific Islanders were enslaved to work in Australia. Slaves had to be freed in the Jubilee year, and they had to be paid for the time they'd spent working for their masters. (12-18)

Advocacy: social justice in Leviticus

Tuesday morning we talked a fair bit about advocacy and social justice and stuff, and looked a bit at what the scriptures say about these things.

First we looked at chapter 25 of Leviticus, which was the ancient Israelites' law book. Here's some interesting stuff we noticed:

• Every seven years there was a complete holiday, not just so the people could have a rest, but also for the land. (1-7)
  
• Every fifty years (so, once a generation) the land had to be redistributed to it's traditional owners. Each generation would have gotten a new start, so there wouldn't have been as much opportunity for generational poverty to develop, like it has in Australian society. (8-13) Debts also had to be cleared every fifty years. (25-31)
  
• The land isn't understood as being the people's property, but more like a loan from God. (23-24) Reminds me that the indigenous Australians didn't traditionally believe that they owned the land that supported them.
• Poor people had to be supported by everyone else, and weren't to be charged interest if they got into debt. (35-38)
  

Tell me if you come up with anything else. Any thoughts on the slavery bits? (39-53)

Baptist John on ubuntu

'What should we do then?' the crowd asked.
John answered, 'The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.'
Tax collectors also came to be baptized. 'Teacher,' they asked, 'what should we do?'
'Don't collect any more than you are required to,' he told them.
Then some soldiers asked him, 'And what should we do?'
He replied, 'Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely — be content with your pay.'
(Luke 3:10-14)

'Ubuntu'
'Ubuntu and shalom'