If you live
in Australia and are active on social media, or are a fan of the former Deputy
Prime Minister John Anderson, you may have seen his interview with the former
treasurer Peter Costello. If not, click here on this link[i]
and go to minute 28:40 and you can watch the relevant parts of the interview,
which goes for about 5 minutes. In that interview Costello said the obvious,
Australia went way to far in its response to the pandemic. Truer words have
never been spoken.
Watching
Peter Costello talking about how crazy the overreach of the Covid hysteria was,
is both encouraging and deflating. It is encouraging because he is one of the
most prominent living Australians, a man who is respected across the country
and in this interview on this topic[ii]
he is speaking real sense. Pretty much everyone would admit this now. I have
had private conversations with people who say, "Yea, well in hindsight, we
went way to far..." Most people get it now. They realize that we threw out
our principles in a moment of hysteria.
But it is
deflating to watch this now, because thousands of us were saying this in the
middle of it all, and we were sidelined, prominent people stayed silent and allowed
those of us speaking out to be hung out to dry, because we were lacking any
prominent support. People who advocated for long held and cherished western and
Christian principles were slandered as radical libertarians, conspiracy theorists
and more. This does not mean it was wrong to speak out. In fact, this is why it
was so important that we did, so our posterity will know that some of us spoke
out against what was happening. But during the time we were abandoned in almost
every quarter and attacked from multiple directions.
All that
leaders of churches needed to do during the hysteria, was speak out as sensibly
as Peter Costello did in this interview and things would have been very
different. That is how powerful the voice of the Church can be. It has stopped
things like slavery, it has stopped wars, it has brokered peace between
nations, it has been a vehicle of the introduction of human rights[iii]
across the world. It has been a stabilizing force creating nations even, throughout
history, and particularly in the West. All that was needed was for the Church
leaders to speak the truth that was clear and obvious: we, nationally speaking,
were acting like a bunch of fools, giving into fear and calling it wisdom.
Hindsight is
not good enough. Foresight should be the specialty of the church.
Hopefully
many of us have learnt from this, because as Costello says in the interview, chances
are there will be another pandemic. How will we act then?
References.
[i] Conversations,
with Peter Costello AC, Former Treasurer of Australia, April 14, 2023, https://johnanderson.net.au/conversations-peter-costello-ii/
[ii] I
have not watched the full interview and therefore cannot speak to anything else
that he talks about.
[iii]
The good kind, not the crazy modern version.
No comments:
Post a Comment