Firstly, you
should never be expected to say sorry for what someone else has done. Now that
this simple and plain bit of truth is out of the way, let’s go further on this
issue.
Why does our
culture, and not only our culture, but the prevailing progressive culture
across the West put so much emphasis on telling the descendants of colonial
powers that they should be sorry for living in these abundant and wonderful
lands? Again and again, we are told how sorry we should be, how we should have
a sorry day, how if you don’t feel sorry you are a terrible person. Why does
this happen? Because this is a direct inversion of what we should be doing, and
our culture is currently overlorded by an evil ideology and what does evil do, it subverts.
Not only
should we not be sorry about living in modern Australia, we should be thankful,
hopeful and watchful. We should be thankful that God gave us this land. We
should be hopeful of the good things our nation could be going forward. And we
should be watchful to make sure that we do not fall into sinful depravity,
because we know that if we do, God may decide to punish us, as he has many
other people throughout history. We learn these principles both from the Bible and from the history
of our people, the Anglo-Saxons.
The Bible
gives us a deep theology of dispossession. It teaches us that God owns all the
land, everywhere, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world
and those who dwell within” (Psalm 24:1). This is the first pillar of this
theology. No people on earth, whether pagan or Christian, homeowner or national
sovereign, should view their land as anything more than a stewardship. God
shows us very clearly in his own Scriptures how he takes lands from wicked
peoples and gives them to new peoples. You might be thinking immediately of the
Israelites. But if you read Deuteronomy 2 to 3 you will see that God does this
for other nations as well. He worked through the Edomites and Moabites to
punish the former inhabitants of the lands he gave them to steward. But God
also does this for his own people.
We read in
Leviticus 25:23, “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is
mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me. 24 And in all the country
you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land.” The land the Israelites
inhabited was only theirs to steward, they were not the owners of it. Jesus
reiterates this with several parables in the New Testament, and they were also
warned that if they lived wickedly, God would take it from them (Deut. 28). The
Israelites only had the land under the condition they lived as God’s people,
8 “You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I
command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the
land that you are going over to possess, 9 and that you may live long in the
land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their
offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey (Deut. 11:8-9).
At many
points the Bible emphasizes that those who inhabit the land of Israel were
nothing more than stewards of God’s land. But this theology extends far beyond
the Israelites. It applied also to the Canaanites and Amorites and other
people’s whose land was given to the Hebrews. This teaching in emphasized from
Moses to Jesus throughout the Bible.
These
passages allow us to build a theology of dispossession. God owns the land, he
grants usage of the land to a particular people or nation, and he expects those
people to live up to a certain standard. If they do not, he will take the land
from them and give it to someone else. This happens again and again in the
Bible, and throughout history.
History also
shows us that Christian nations had this same view in the past. A good example comes
from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England. Bede gives the history of
the English people. In fact, Bede, and through him the Church, give us our
first complete and written understanding of the English people. He begins his
history by reference to the original people of the land, the Britons, who
existed there before the Romans. His perspective, as an Anglo-Saxon, of the
Britons is scathing. Look what he observes,
“When however, the ravages of the enemy at length ceased, the
island began to abound with such plenty of grain as had never been known in any
age before; with plenty, luxury increased, and this was immediately attended
with all sorts of crimes; in particular, cruelty, hatred of truth, and love of
falsehood; insomuch, that if any one among them happened to be milder than the
rest, and inclined to truth, all the rest abhorred and persecuted him, as if he
had been the enemy of his country. Nor were the laity only guilty of these
things, but even our Lord's own flock, and his pastors also, addicting
themselves to drunkenness, animosity, litigiousness, contention, envy, and
other such like crimes, and casting off the light yoke of Christ. In the
meantime, on a sudden, a severe plague fell upon that corrupt generation, which
soon destroyed such numbers of them, that the living were scarcely sufficient
to bury the dead: yet, those that survived, could not be withdrawn from the
spiritual death, which their sins had incurred, either by the death of their
friends, or the fear of their own. Whereupon, not long after, a more severe
vengeance, for their horrid wickedness, fell upon the sinful nation. They consulted
what was to be done, and where they should seek assistance to prevent or repel
the cruel and frequent incursions of the northern nations; and they all agreed
with their King Vortigern to call over to their aid, from the parts beyond the
sea, the Saxon nation; which, as the event still more evidently showed, appears
to have been done by the appointment of our Lord Himself, that evil might fall
upon them for their wicked deeds.”[i]
Bede here is
describing how a wealthy and prosperous people, living at ease, became
corrupted and fell into depravity and decadence. And because of this God judged
them. But the more frightful punishment he brought was not the plague, but their
dispossession from their own lands. God judged the Britons with the invaders
that they had allowed to come in, even invited, and handed the land of the
Britons to the Angles and the Saxons.
“In short, the fire kindled by the hands of these pagans
proved God's just revenge for the crimes of the people; not unlike that which,
being once lighted by the Chaldeans, consumed the walls and city of Jerusalem.
For the barbarous conquerors acting here in the same manner, or rather the just
Judge ordaining that they should so act, they plundered all the neighbouring
cities and country, spread the conflagration from the eastern to the western
sea, without any opposition, and covered almost every part of the devoted
island.”[ii]
The view of
Bede was that the Britons had abandoned God, and therefore were dispossessed by
the hand of God, through the Anglo-Saxons. This was the standard view of the
Church throughout most of Christian history, and it is also the teaching of the
Scriptures. But added to this is the idea that the new people in the land stand
under the precise same warning. They too must hold to faithfulness in God,
otherwise they too will be removed from sovereignty or even possession in their land. They cannot
become proud and arrogant and think they are better than those they
dispossessed, because if they do, they will simply face the same fate.
This theology
places us as stewards under the humble authority of God. It encourages us to
live well in the land, but also warns us not to let prosperity corrupt us.
Whereas a theology of “sorry”, places us in a man centric ideology, which says
that people who were previously here are of the land, and anyone else who comes
in is just an invader, always, and must feel guilty about this in perpetuity.
This is not a biblical theology of land ownership, it is pagan. And much of the
church has taken on this way of thinking, and called it “advocating for
justice.”
But justice for whom?
No one today perpetrated the dispossession. We are the descendants of those who came. And all Australians live now in a wonderful land, and can prosper if they set their mind to it. In fact, many Australians are now the combined descendants of the Indigenous and the British settlers, we have been intertwined, and speaking of separate destinies now is no longer a simple issue. We should not be sorry about living in the current Australia, but rather we should be exceedingly thankful. We live in a land blessed with much. We should be thankful that God has allowed us to live in such a country, and thankful for the great abounding plains he has afforded to all Australians. And thankful that we can have a bright future if we so choose.
But we
should also be humble. We should not celebrate the fact that the previous
stewards of this land have been dispossessed. We should be watchful, that we do
not reject righteous living otherwise we too will be dispossessed. In fact, I
would argue that this process has already begun. Australians are losing their
land to an increasingly large supply of immigrants from very alien cultures
that in many ways are opposed to our Anglo-Saxon way of life. And, at the same
time, we see the rise of the concept of giving the land back to the descendants
of the older inhabitants of this land, and increasing moves to go further on this issue.
Nations that lose their sovereignty often regain it, after sometime, especially
when those who took them, start to degenerate in culture. And Australia is
seriously degenerating in culture. In fact, I would argue that all the talk
about sorry is a false spirituality that has been designed to cloud over how
Australians should really think about themselves in this land: as stewards who
are here at the pleasure of the King of kings, which, remember, our Constitution acknowledges.
None of this
wipes away the pain and suffering that nations feel about losing
their own lands and self rule. It is understandable to feel deep pain about the situation. I have Slavic and English
ancestors, and both those peoples were brutally conquered by others at points
in their history, especially the Slavs - look up what happened to the Slavic
world under the Mongols and various German peoples. It is the way of this world for nations to rise and
fall, and then, to rise again in diminished glory. But what a nation must never do, is forget
who is our true God, the Lord God, and how we should live in His land.
Because if we do forget that, God will discipline us. He has done it
consistently throughout history, and I suspect Australians are facing this
possibility today. May we repent as a nation and turn to the Lord.
List of
References
[i] The
Venerable Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (p. 20).
Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition.
[ii] Ibid,
pg 21.
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