Chew the Fat

I have moved down to Wellington. I’m living away from my partner, I’m poor, eating rice and tuna, and sleeping in the store room of a dirty flat. I’m here doing a graduate diploma in Journalism. It’s depressing. The more I read and the more I see journalists chasing people down the street for a silly emotive quote the more I wonder what the hell I’m doing here.

At the edge of ditching it all I remind myself why I’m putting myself though this.
I want to change the world, I believe it can be changed and I think its worth changing.

I believe that journalism, real journalism, gives me a platform to do this. I will use this year to learn tools and find ways to communicate and challenge others and myself on dumb ideologies and stereotypes.

What stings me the most is that I don’t know where to start or how to do it. I’m not fascinating, talented, nor brilliant. But I see a gap and want to meet it. I’m saving up for a camera and there is an editing suite at university. I’m going to begin by making some small docos. I will make mistakes and I will be frustrated and hungry. But I will be satisfied that I’m doing what I’m made for.
I am no longer satisfied in waiting for the right time to do what I really want to do. It’s all in my court. All of the people that I knew five years ago who were faking it have now become what they were pretending to be.

I cannot see any good thing that comes from a partnership with religion and state. I am still looking for an example of this kind of state control that is not totalitarian. In fact, religions states bear a long list of human rights atrocities.

The notion of Christian politics is interesting, and could been seen as a bit of an oxy-moron. Jesus was recognized as a revolutionary not because of his moral stance, but because he taught that issues were not a matter of religious action but of the heart.

According to Christianity, coercing the population to obey Christian laws will not make a nation closer to God because they will still not love God in their heart. A ‘Christian‘ nation does not mean that the population is Christian at all, it means they are forced to obey laws based upon the bible.

In fact one could argue that this does the very opposite of what Jesus intends. It places people under the burden of the old testament law, which according to Christianity humanity should be free from.

Forcing someone to obey the bible does not make them closer to God, and isn’t that the point of Christianity?

The only way for a legitimate Christian nation to exist, would be for it to happen organically, from the ground up, and that appears a very long way off.