This article from American Vision is about the U.S. but applies equally to Australia
The battle today is over lordship. The issue of politics today is the issue of sovereignty. Who is the Lord of all of life to whom man must give his total allegiance, Christ or Caesar? The answer to this question is the difference between liberty and slavery, justice and tyranny.
The critical issue of our day is the relationship of Jesus Christ and His Word to our political and legal system in the United States. Who has jurisdiction over every aspect of American society, Jesus Christ or the State? Is this to be a nation founded on the precepts of the Bible or one founded on the shifting sands of humanism? The only faithful answer that a Bible believing Christian can give is this: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12). “For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; He will save us” (Isaiah 33:22). Benjamin Franklin, addressing the Constitutional Convention, quoted Psalm 127:1: “Unless the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain who build it.”
The Christian’s study of God’s Word must bring with it the desire and the ability to make application where Scripture makes application. If Scripture speaks to civil government then civil government must be called upon to acknowledge the Lord of Scripture and be reconstructed according to His demands. A. A. Hodge’s words are to the point and just as applicable today as they were a century ago:
If Christ is really king, exercising original and immediate jurisdiction over the State as really as he does over the church, it follows necessarily that the general denial or neglect of his rightful lordship, any prevalent refusal to obey that Bible which is the open law-book of his kingdom, must be followed by political and social as well as moral and religious ruin. If professing Christians are unfaithful to the authority of their Lord in their capacity as citizens of the State, they cannot expect to be blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in their capacity as members of the church. The kingdom of Christ is one, and cannot be divided in life or in death. If the Church languishes, the State cannot be in health; and if the State rebels against its Lord and King, the Church cannot enjoy his favour. If the Holy Ghost is withdrawn from the Church, he is not present in the State; and if he, the only “Lord, the Giver of life” be absent, then all order is impossible, and the elements of society lapse backward to primeval night and chaos . . . I charge you, citizens of the United States, afloat on your wide sea of politics, there is another king, one Jesus: the safety of the State can be secured only in the way of humble and whole-souled loyalty his person and obedience to His Law.” [1]
The political choice before us is Christ or chaos. Is Jesus “the King of kings and Lord of lords”? That is the question before American Christians. The issue is anything but peripheral.
Plastics are a free dinner for life on Earth so it was just a matter of time before microbes evolved to eat it.
A PET bottle normally takes 16 – 48 years to break down, but if it were lunch for microflora it would take weeks instead. Hydrocarbons are ultimately just different forms of C-H-O waiting to be liberated as carbon dioxide and water. The only question was “how long” it would take bacteria and fungi to break those unusual bonds.
Sooner or later all plastic will be biodegradable.
A new study shows. Instead of hunting for single bacteria Zrimec et al mined through collected metagenomes of soil and ocean and found not just 5 or 10 new enzymes but 30,000. It appears that they could metabolize at least ten different types of plastic.
And in places where there was more plastic pollution, there were more enzymes. All over the world a whole new ecosystem is rising out of the puddles and bubbles and grains of sand.
Enzymes that degrade plastics are found all over the world
FIG 2 Plastic-degrading enzymes across the global microbiome. Depicted are 11,906 enzyme hits in the ocean and 18,119 in the soil data sets, obtained by constructing HMMs of known plastic-degrading enzymes and querying them across metagenomic sequencing data sets. The potential to degrade up to 10 and 9 different plastic types was observed in the respective ocean and soil fractions (Fig. S3A).
Mother Nature has a big toolshed of genes to play with:
With a library like this, is it any wonder life on Earth could find and amplify the right tools to process plastics?
For example, global ocean sampling revealed over 40 million mostly novel nonredundant genes from 35,000 species (35), whereas over 99% of the ∼160 million genes identified in global topsoil cannot be found in any previous microbial gene catalogue (34)
So there are 200 million genes to work with.
Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds
Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 15 Dec 2021
The explosion of plastic production in the past 70 years, from 2m tonnes to 380m tonnes a year, had given microbes time to evolve to deal with plastic, the researchers said. The study, published in the journal Microbial Ecology, started by compiling a dataset of 95 microbial enzymes already known to degrade plastic, often found in bacteria in rubbish dumps and similar places rife with plastic.
About 12,000 of the new enzymes were found in ocean samples, taken at 67 locations and at three different depths. The results showed consistently higher levels of degrading enzymes at deeper levels, matching the higher levels of plastic pollution known to exist at lower depths.
The soil samples were taken from 169 locations in 38 countries and 11 different habitats and contained 18,000 plastic-degrading enzymes. Soils are known to contain more plastics with phthalate additives than the oceans and the researchers found more enzymes that attack these chemicals in the land samples.
Nearly 60% of the new enzymes did not fit into any known enzyme classes, the scientists said, suggesting these molecules degrade plastics in ways that were previously unknown.
The new 250 page “Consensus” Study (their words) by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, is as out of date and useless as it sounds. While it is scoring headlines, scaring us about accumulating plastics, it largely writes off the idea that microbes will evolve to degrade plastic, saying “measurable biodegradation (complete carbon utilization by microbes) in the environment has not been observed.” Which is one of those true but useless statements.
Some 40 year old theory says it won’t happen:
Plastics with hydrolysable chemical backbones (e.g., PET and polyurethanes) may be more susceptible to enzymatic degradation and eventual biodegradation than those with carbon-carbon backbones (Amaral- Zettler, Zettler, and Mincer 2020), as illustrated by the discovery of PET-degrading bacteria isolated from a bottle recycling plant (Yoshida et al. 2016). However, Oberbeckmann and Labrenz (2020) argue, based upon Alexander’s (1975) paradigm on microbial metabolism of a substrate, that the very low bioavailability and relatively low concentration of plastics in the ocean together with their chemical stability render these molecules very unlikely candidates for biodegradation by marine microbes, despite their potential as an energy and carbon source.
But if plastics are so tiny and low in concentration, it’s a big “so what” — they are unlikely to be a problem. If they were concentrated in one place or collected in an organism, they could be bad, but then, of course, they also become fodder for microbes.
The bottom line: We don’t want to drown dolphins and trap turtles, but we shouldn’t demonize plastics either.
Don’t throw rubbish in the ocean or toss hype in national news. It’s all litter.
Vaccinated people can share the same space with the unvaxxed.
I felt quite naughty going to the Crossing Theatre with no mask and not even pretending to check in.
Let’s pray that these liberties are not quickly given up again.
We also had 1360 new cases today, which makes me wonder why we did all of that llockdown and masking stuff.
Despite the high case number,s hospitalisations remain low (166) showing that the vaccine is working and the pandemic is progressing normally with the initial high fatality strains giving way to low fatality but quickly transmitted strains.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1
A friend of mine shares with me how she’s watching her mother die slowly. The matriarch of the extended family, always feared dementia and initially joked to her children that she’d rather die. It may have started as joke, but it turned into a plea as her personality slowly retreated. Raw in her grief, her daughter’s angry question is posed by wives, husbands and children in nursing homes across the globe: ‘If it were a dog, you’d sooner shoot it than watch it suffer. Why should my mother deserve any less?’
You’d sooner shoot a dog than watch it suffer. Why should my mother deserve any less?
My friend’s premise is valid: In NSW, ending life is already permitted in certain circumstances—for animals, including injured pets and wildlife. Euthanasia is the intentional and premature ending of a life due to the belief that the subject would be ‘better off dead’. It is best understood from a consequentialist ethic: That the result (an end to suffering) justifies an otherwise immoral method (the deliberate ending of life). As my friend’s rhetorical plea suggests, one response to the suffering of terminal illness is to permit the premature and intentional end of a human’s life.
In mid-October 2021, NSW MP Alex Greenwich presented a Bill to enshrine a modified form of human euthanasia into NSW law. A week later, his Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2021 was referred for parliamentary review, delaying any result by several months at least. As the Bill’s name indicates, the ethical considerations for euthanasia include whether the subject dies of their own will (in this case, voluntarily) and who takes the final step in the process (in this case, the patient, assisted).
Supporters of voluntary assisted dying are quick to point out that it’s not euthanasia: The patient not only requests it, but the patient also completes the act—armed with a prescription of lethal chemicals, the patient self-administers. Such a system, proponents say, gives autonomy and dignity back to the dying, saving them unnecessary agony, returning to them some of the power that disease has cruelly taken from them. The end justifies the means. However, for several reasons, this argument is not compelling.
After months of lockdowns, restrictions, and unprecedented attacks on freedom, the Covid pandemic is nearly done. I am so looking forward to ditching the masks for ever – as soon as I put one on, I feel my whole body tense up.
I am thankful to be living in New South Wales which has generally gone through the panic with a lighter touch than other States. We have kept open borders and minimal lockdowns. Other States have scorned this lighter touch, but we are coming out earlier than those states.
So, God willing, by December there will be very few restrictions in force. We can get back to life as normal.
Covid has been a great disruptor over the last two years. Many have died, others have become extremely ill.
For christians, the Good News is that even in this messy tme, God has been with us and contrinues to be with us.Of all people, we have the right to be hopeful.
As we move towards summer, Christmas, and freedom, remember that our God is greater – greater than the virus, greater than the Government, greater even than death.
Flight 93 was the plane that on September 11th 2001 crashed in Pennsylvania following an audacious bid to wrest control from the control of hijackers. Yjis brave act undoubtedly saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives.
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The transcript from Flight 93
Eternity News | September 12th, 2021 11:40 AM | Add a Comment
Todd: Hello… Operator…listen to me…I can’t speak very loud. – This is an emergency. I’m a passenger on a United flight to San Francisco.. We have a situation here….Our plane has been hijacked…..can you understand me?
Lisa: (exhaling a deep breath to herself) I understand… Can the hijackers see you talking on the phone?
Todd: No
Lisa: Can you tell me how many hijackers are on the plane?
Todd: There are three that we know of.
Lisa: Can you see any weapons? What kind of weapons do they have?
Todd: Yes…. they don’t have guns….they have knives – they took over the plane with knives.
Lisa: Do you mean…like steak knives?
Todd: No, these are razor knives…like box cutters.
Lisa: Can you tell what country these people are from?
Todd: No…..I don’t know. They sound like they’re from the mid-east.
Lisa: Have they said what they want?
Todd: Someone announced from the cockpit that there was a bomb on board. He said he was the captain and to stay in our seats and stay quiet.
He said that they were meeting these men’s demands and returning to the airport… It was very broken English, and… I’m telling you…it sounded fake!
Lisa: Ok sir, please give me your name.
Todd: My name is Todd Beamer.
Lisa: Ok Todd….my name is Lisa…Do you know your flight number? If you can’t remember, it’s on your ticket.
Todd: It’s United Flight 93.
Lisa: Now Todd, can you try to tell me exactly what happened?
Todd: Two of the hijackers were sitting in first class near the cockpit. A third one was sitting near the back of the coach section. The two up front got into the cockpit somehow; there was shouting. The third hijacker said he had a bomb. It looks like a bomb. He’s got it tied to his waist with a red belt of some kind.
Lisa: So is the door to the cockpit open?
Todd: No, the hijackers shut it behind them.
Lisa: Has anyone been injured?
Todd: Yes, ..they…they killed one passenger sitting in first class. There’s been lots of shouting. We don’t know if the pilots are dead or alive. A flight attendant told me that the pilot and copilot had been forced from the cockpit and may have been wounded.
Lisa: Where is the 3rd hijacker now Todd?
Todd: He’s near the back of the plane. They forced most of the passengers into first class. There are fourteen of us here in the back. Five are flight attendants. He hasn’t noticed that I slipped into this pantry to get the phone. The guy with the bomb ordered us to sit on the floor in the rear of the plane……….oh Jesus.. Help!
Lisa: Todd….are you ok? Tell me what’s happening!
Todd: Hello…..We’re going down….I think we’re going to crash……Wait – wait a minute. No, we’re leveling off….we’re ok. I think we may be turning around…..That’s it – we changed directions. Do you hear me….we’re flying east again.
Lisa: Ok Todd…. What’s going on with the other passengers?
Todd: Everyone is… really scared. A few passengers with cell phones have made calls to relatives. A guy, Jeremy, was talking to his wife just before the hijacking started. She told him that hijackers had crashed two planes into the World Trade Center……Lisa is that true??
Lisa: Todd…..I have to tell you the truth…..it’s very bad. The World Trade Center is gone. Both of the towers have been destroyed.
Todd: Oh God —help us!
Lisa: A third plane was taken over by terrorists. It crashed into the Pentagon in Washington DC. Our country is under attack….and I’m afraid that your plane may be part of their plan.
Todd: Oh dear God. Dear God…….Lisa, will you do something for me?
Lisa: I’ll try….if I can….Yes.
Todd: I want you to call my wife and my kids for me and tell them what’s happened. Promise me you’ll call..
Lisa: I promise – I’ll call.
Todd: Our home number is 201 353-1073…….You have the same name as my wife…Lisa….We’ve been married for 10 years. She’s pregnant with our 3rd child. Tell her that I love her…….(choking up)..I’ll always love her..(clearing throat) We have two boys.. David, he’s 3 and Andrew, he’s 1…..Tell them……(choking) tell them that their daddy loves them and that he is so proud of them. (clearing throat again) Our baby is due January 12th…..I saw an ultra sound…..it was great….we still don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy………Lisa?
Lisa: (barely able to speak) I’ll tell them, I promise Todd.
Todd: I’m going back to the group—if I can get back I will…
Lisa: Todd, leave this line open…are you still there?……
Lisa: (dials the phone..) Hello, FBI, my name is Lisa Jefferson, I’m a telephone supervisor for GTE. I need to report a terrorist hijacking of a United Airlines Flight 93….Yes I’ll hold.
Goodwin: Hello, this is Agent Goodwin.. I understand you have a hijacking situation?
Lisa: Yes sir, I’ve been talking with a passenger, a Todd Beamer, on Flight 93 who managed to get to an air phone unnoticed.
Goodwin: Where did this flight originate, and what was its destination?
Lisa: The flight left Newark New Jersey at 8 A.M. departing for San Francisco. The hijackers took over the plane shortly after takeoff, and several minutes later the plane changed course – it is now flying east.
Goodwin: Ms Jefferson…I need to talk to someone aboard that plane. Can you get me thru to the plane’s phone?
Lisa: I still have that line open sir, I can patch you through on a conference call…hold a mo…..
Todd: Hello Lisa, Lisa are you there?
Lisa: Yes, I’m here. Todd, I made a call to the FBI, Agent Goodwin is on the line and will be talking to you as well.
Todd: The others all know that this isn’t your normal hijacking. Jeremy called his wife again on his cell phone. She told him more about the World Trade Center and all.
Goodwin: Hello Todd. This is Agent Goodwin with the FBI. We have been monitoring your flight. Your plane is on a course for Washington, DC. These terrorists sent two planes into the World Trade Center and one plane into the Pentagon. Our best guess is that they plan to fly your plane into either the White House or the United States Capital Building.
Todd: I understand…hold on……I’ll…….I’ll be back..
Lisa: Mr Goodwin, how much time do they have before they get to Washington?
Goodwin: Not long ma’am. They changed course over Cleveland; they’re approaching Pittsburgh now. Washington may be twenty minutes away.
Todd: (breathing a little heavier) The plane seems to be changing directions just a little. It’s getting pretty rough up here. The plane is flying real erratic….We’re not going to make it out of here.
Lisa: Todd, what are you going to do?
Todd: We’ve hatched a plan. Four of us are going to rush the hijacker with the bomb. After we take him out, we’ll break into the cockpit. A stewardess is getting some boiling water to throw on the hijackers at the controls. We’ll get them….and we’ll take them out. Lisa, …..will you do one last thing for me?
Lisa: Yes…What is it?
Todd: Would you pray with me?
They pray: Our Father which art in Heaven Hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive our trespassers, And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want… He makes me to lie down in green pastures He leads me beside the still waters He restores my soul He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me….
Todd: (softer) God help me…Jesus help me….(clears throat and louder)
BREAKING: Religious Leaders File Huge Lawsuit Against State Governments to Restore Freedoms · Caldron Pool
Internationally renowned COVID-19 expert, Jayanta Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University in California has provided an independent expert report in support of the action brought forward by the plaintiffs.
Three evangelical pastors, along with several Jewish congregations, have filed a joint lawsuit with the Australian Federal Government, seeking an injunction against the New South Wales and Victorian Government’s current COVID-19 lockdown measures.
The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in the Federal Court, argues the state governments have selectively discriminated against religious groups in denying citizens the ability to congregate in Houses of Worship by arbitrarily deeming them “non-essential,” while allowing the public to gather elsewhere, such as in supermarkets and liquor stores.
The lawsuit will argue that Houses of Worship provide significant spiritual, psychological, and emotional support for communities, especially those who are suffering financially and psychologically from the impacts of the state government’s lockdown policies.
Furthermore, it will be argued that the governments’ indiscriminate selection of “essential” and “non-essential” venues under the Public Health Order is not supported by robust scientific or medical evidence.
According to the complaint, neither the NSW nor Victorian Governments have the constitutional or common law power to deny citizens their religious freedom which includes their ability to fulfill particular religious obligations and practices in their designated House of Worship.
Internationally renowned COVID-19 expert, Jayanta Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University in California has also provided an independent expert report in support of the action brought forward by the plaintiffs.
Lawyer Tony Nikolic said his clients were forced to appeal to the courts after the matter had been repeatedly ignored by the NSW state government, in particular.
“My clients have attempted to engage with the NSW and Victorian Premiers and their Ministers as well as various NSW, Victorian, and Federal Parliamentarians to have their grievances addressed in a diplomatic and respectful manner.
“Unfortunately, in the context of NSW, the NSW Government has been unwilling to engage with my clients in any meaningful dialogue. As a result, our only last venue for relief is the courts.”
Pastor Robert Ayoub, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said they have exhausted other options to no avail.
“Now we have. a legal option, where we take the matter to the courts and have it heard by a court,” Pastor Ayoub said in a recent interview. “We believe this is a respectful way to do things, and importantly, a legal way to do things.
“We’re not here to be vindictive, or dishonouring towards the government, we’re just seeking to be able to practice our religion freely, and we’re appealing to our government to allow. us to love our God and also love our neighbour, to love our community.”
The plaintiffs in the case have also backed The Moses Statement, an open letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the State Premiers, urging a reopening of churches across the nation.
A commonly-repeated criticism since the beginning of 2020 has been that if you prioritise freedom over safety, you are being selfish. In many Christian circles, it is said to be “not loving your neighbour” if you vocally defend freedom. Such ideas continue to circulate, even as heavier lockdowns and curfews are imposed in Victoria, New South Wales and beyond.
But they mostly miss the point. Such criticisms assume that every measure that could be introduced to protect Australians against covid is by definition necessary and good. They seemingly deny the possibility that any cure could be worse than a disease, or that there is such a thing as going too far.
The executive director of the Menzies Research Centre Nick Cater has expressed sensible concerns about this. He argues that good public policy has been near-impossible to implement over this period because fear has overtaken reason in our risk assessments:
We are caught in a feedback loop, a vortex of fear, where politicians can no longer act sensibly because they have to respond to public fear. If they opened up now people would go berserk and say that it’s not safe to go outside…
I have come to the conclusion that the government has lost control. It has to obey this mantra of fear, and as a result of that it takes no risks whatsoever.
This reflects the broader culture of our times, not just in Australia but in the Western world more broadly. Nobody is prepared to put up with the slightest amount of risk. Wherever risk occurs the government has to deal with it.
Consider, for example, that while daily case numbers of covid reached into the hundreds this week in Australia, daily calls to suicide helplines reached into the thousands. Lifeline has had its three busiest days in history since Monday, with up to 3,500 people calling the helpline per day. And that’s just one of many such services available to distressed Australians.
Surely “loving your neighbour” also means being concerned — and indeed, speaking out — about government policies that are inflicting this level of distress. As Christians, we believe that people are not machines that merely require a certain set of material inputs to get through life. We are made in God’s image. We are relational creatures who survive and thrive through active involvement in our communities, and meaningful work and service to others.
Even the World Health Organization recognises this holistic view of health, or at least it did until recently. While we seem to have redefined ‘health’ to mean the absence of sickness, the WHO’s Constitution, drafted in the 1940s, pushed back against this reductionistic view:
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity… Governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures.
Of course, covid is deadly. But so are many things — including some of the measures our governments have implemented in the name of ‘health’. We have allowed fear to redefine our most basic understanding of what it means to live and function as a healthy human being.
To protect their health, Australians have been told to not talk to their neighbours, not to engage in outdoor recreation, not to attend church, not to watch sunsets, not to leave home for more than an hour a day. In all this time, we are yet to hear a single public health official or minister promote exercise, good diet, sunlight, weight loss or vitamin supplements. All of these simple, everyday strategies are important aspects of health, and are known to boost our immune systems and reduce our chances of suffering the most debilitating impacts of the virus.
