The millstone and the rainbow.
Temptations are now instutitionalized and mandatory. If you do not belong to the crowd that tempts the vulnerable and young you will lose your advertisers, your contacts will shun you, and you will be threatened. Your business, like White magazine will become non viable and need to be wound up.
Last year the Australian law was changed to allow same-sex couples to marry. Since then we have been asked repeatedly why our magazine had not yet featured all couples.
Like many people, we have had to reflect on our beliefs, not to judge ourselves or others, but to intentionally make space for new conversations. It’s a long and continuing journey, it’s not black and white, there are so many grey areas that need to be explored. Our greatest mandate is to love and the biggest question we’ve continued to ask ourselves throughout it is, how do we best love?
White Magazine has always been a secular publication, but as its publishers, we are Christian. We have no agenda but to love. We have no desire to create a social, political or legal war, which only divides people further and does more damage than good. To us, our faith is anchored in love without judgement.
Recently we’ve experienced a flood of judgement. We know much of that comes hand-in-hand with running a public magazine. But we are also just two humans fumbling our way through these big questions and like anyone else, and we don’t have all the answers.
Instead of allowing us the space to work through our thoughts and feelings, or being willing to engage in brave conversations to really hear each other’s stories, some have just blindly demanded that we pick a side. We’re not about sides, we’re about love, patience and kindness. A campaign was launched targeting the magazine, our team and our advertisers. Couples who have featured in our magazine have also been the subject of online abuse despite their individual beliefs. We’re really saddened by this.
The result has been that a number of advertisers withdrew their sponsorship out of fear of being judged, or in protest. We have had to recognise the reality that White Magazine is no longer economically viable.
--Farewell Statement, White Magazine
I write backwards from the bible reading: something that at times will offend, because the text we have reads harshly to our fallen ears in this time when the corrupt make the praise of their habits mandatory. We are talking here about temptations: Christ says we will be tempted, and we are not tempted by things we don't like.
A trivial example. Gambling bores me. Games and books don't. If you want to tempt me to open my wallet (and the jokes about Presbyterian Scrooges were based on a reality) then make a cool game or book.
But I know people where gambling is a real, horrible, destructive force. And you should never take such a person near a casino. Ideally, you should convert the casinos into housing for the poor, and ritually burn the gaming tables.
17 And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. 3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4 and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
7 “Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? 8 Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”
I have enough problems with my own bad habits. We all have our burdens, and we are all called to obedience. At times it is not easy to obey. We need to support each other and cover for each others weaknesses, not celebrate and encourage them.
The Alt Right have this correct: do not preach degeneration. Instead, look to what is more noble, more perfect. More righteous. Yes, we all have our flaws, but do not proclaim them as good or demand that those who do not join you in your errors must praise you. One of the sins of Sodom was that all the men of the city were degenerate, and there was but one broken man who would offer hospitality, that drunkard Lot.
And the fallen elite who want to run Australia so that it heals the false wounds of its richest electorates? Do not be like them.