Conforming

There has recently been a story about animal cruelty in the media, prompted by a video that went viral on a social media site. Here are the protagonists –

South Australian (SA) indigenous Police Officer, Waylon Johncock 

SA Police Commissioner, Grant Stevens

Ngarrindjeri elder, Major Sumner

SA Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)

Constable Waylon Johncock, a man of aboriginal heredity, had himself filmed stoning to death a poor, helpless wombat. This he did with pride and sadistic pleasure shown by his laughter and performance for the camera throughout the wombat’s ordeal. As if this wasn’t enough, his next shameless act was to post the whole gruesome thing on social media. The story was first brought to my attention by Rita Panahi of the wonderful Outsiders (SkyNews), which we record for later viewing. I am grateful also to David Penberthy, SA Correspondent for The Australian, for his article of 8 December 2019.

The public response demonstrates a level of outrage that reveals a well-working moral compass. They and I are outraged at there being no repercussions for Waylon Johncock because “he is an indigenous police officer who successfully argued that his killing of the wombat was protected under tribal law and the wombat in question was eaten by him and his family.” (The Australian). Aboriginal elder, Major Sumner spoke of there being no resemblance to ancient aboriginal hunting practices in Johncock’s actions. Johncock has shown a level of callousness and cruelty that Western law recognises as such but political correctness, aka Marxism, does not. Of course, killing an animal for food isn’t what is in question. There is nothing wrong with that although some would disagree. Western butchering practices include stunning an animal before killing it. This is rightly considered humane. This contrasts with Johncock’s act of getting a thrill out of tormenting an animal to death and proudly advertising it to the world.

Interestingly, SA’s laws against animal cruelty were tightened earlier this year but on the basis of Johncock’s ethnicity, he gets a pass. Although the SA Police Commissioner has outraged many with his absolution of Johncock’s crimes, neither following through with disciplinary action nor sacking him, the influence on this outcome from those at the SA Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions should not be overlooked. I went to their website and found their “objective” –

“The objective of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) is to provide the people of South Australia with an independent and effective criminal prosecution service that is timely, efficient, and just. The office pursues this objective through application of the DPP’s guidelines. The benefit to the South Australian community is the provision of an effective prosecution service which is essential to the rule of law.”

I see neither justice nor rule of law in their handling of this case, neither do many South Australians, not to mention aborigines. Two months earlier the Police Commissioner had used terms like “totally abhorrent” and “do not align with the values and behaviour I expect from employees” to describe Johncock’s actions. What happened in between his initial and later judgement? Anyone of white colour would be fined and/or rightly imprisoned. Instead, the SA Office of the DPP had told the commissioner that there would be “no reasonable prospect of a conviction for any criminal offence’’ on account of the clash between Western and tribal law. The West bowing to people of aboriginal descent when guilty of a crime, no matter how strongly natural law and Judeo-Christian values and laws might have been violated, is nothing other than intimidation of justice in the face of cruelty and wickedness. All human beings must be equally accountable.

People’s sense of natural law which I believe is placed in every human being by God, is being tampered with by leftist Marxists with their high and mighty morals. How does this “natural law” get obliterated in people? Through a belief system or religion that flagrantly defies God and invents its own moral code based on faulty premises and a heart that resists God. Too many in my Christian tradition (and outside of it but I will discuss my own tradition, evangelicalism) bow to the Marxist Left by taking upon themselves causes that appeal to the Left, the default belief system we in the West all now have to deal with. I give two examples :

an evangelical Church leader has written a paper suggesting that all whites leave Australia on the basis of “invasion” by the first white settlers

an evangelical acquaintance, in conversation, claimed that murder in a certain context within aboriginal culture is permissible based on tribal tradition

Whilst the first point is outside of the immediate discussion here, it does further highlight leftist-approved thinking on race relations and colonial history. The second point is a variation on the theme of one law for one group and a different one for another. I accept neither of these positions and I find it difficult to believe that aboriginal Christians share the views of Leftists that there is one law for white Australians and another for Australians of aboriginal descent. There has been dissent from some aboriginal leaders on the “racism” idea. Note the decent, sensible views of aboriginal leaders such as Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine on these race matters.

Our laws should reflect God’s ways and certainly not a bunch of Marxists’ beliefs. With Marxism, aka political correctness, you get high-minded-sounding ideals that have no place in the real world that is full of real people with real sin from which they need deliverance, not accommodation. This story highlights the problem of multiculturalism, a darling ideology of the Left. It is multiculturalism and pluralism that are being battled over in this case. What looks great on paper with all the spin and hype and backing of academia, the bureaucracy, the media, and now even private enterprise, works out a nightmare for some real victim – in this case, a wombat.

I haven’t written this article over my concern for a poor creature although I was disturbed by the cruelty involved. My deeper concern is that justice is being trampled upon as Western elites decide the new deal for judging what is morally right and morally wrong. They believe it is more virtuous to allow people off the crime of cruelty and wickedness than it is to uphold justice. Multiculturalism takes aim at Christianity for its single-eyed prescriptiveness for what is good and what is evil. Leftists’ skewed moral compass shown in this story reveals how poverty-stricken are their ideals. The Church is caught up in adherence to the spirit of the age – Marxism.  The Church needs to re-define its moral compass to be in keeping with God’s ways, not those of the world in which it finds itself. Unless this is done, many in the Church will remain not only in the world but lamentably, of it. I am not speaking of all of the Church nor of all Christians by any means. Many churches and Christians provide fine examples of beautiful service to God and humanity and this could even have once been said of the person behind the first of the two examples just noted. But too many allow themselves to get swept up by the culture around them, much like ancient Israel copying the nations round about her and instead of fulfilling her commission to be a light to the nations, copied them in all their diabolical cruelty and error. Let not the Church follow the example of ancient Israel at a particularly low point in her history.