Christians are everywhere these days — in our schools, in our shopping centres, even in our churches! But of all the Christians that ever Christianed across our great country, not one Christian ever did more Christianing in a more Christian way than Jim "I’m A Christian" Wallace, former SAS he-man and head of the Australian Christian Lobby, a powerful group that represents more than several Christians living in a variety of houses in certain streets somewhere in Australia.
The job of the ACL is to campaign tirelessly for the rights of Christians in today’s society, an important task given that Christians are, according to the ABS, the most persecuted minority in Australia today, especially since the 2007 election introduced Sharia law. Wallace himself is close to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who as an atheist needs to keep Christians close to her in order to hide her true face, in much the same way as a gay man will acquire a girlfriend to act as "beard"; or as a Nazi will disguise himself as a priest.
Now, it has been fairly obvious for a while that Jim Wallace is a very Christian man, but we probably didn’t realise how Christian he was until Anzac Day this week, when through the medium of Twitter, he made what may have been the most Christian comments made in Australian public life since John Howard declared himself to be, literally, Jesus. That comment was, verbatim, "Just hope that as we remember Servicemen and women today we remember the Australia they fought for — wasn’t gay marriage and Islam!"
Now, there are some who think this was a little bit harsh. Some have even dubbed it "un-Christian", which is a pretty absurd accusation. First of all, the guy is head of the Australian Christian Lobby, so to call him un-Christian is like calling Barnaby Joyce "un-National", or calling Nick Xenophon "uninterested in publicity". Secondly, what he said was profoundly Christian, in the classical sense. Firstly, it was anti-Islam, and one thing everyone notices about Christianity is that it’s not Islam. It’s like a bedrock tenet. Secondly, it was anti-gays, and another thing everyone notices about Christianity is that it’s not man-on-man sex. At all.
But the most Christian thing about Wallace’s comment was how Christlike it was. "Oh, but Jesus was all about love!" the naysayers cry, like the pussies they are, deep down. And OK, technically this is true, but what you have to realise about Jesus is that his love is "tough love". So he was loving, but also harsh. Sure, he associated with prostitutes and lepers, but he also gave them a good kicking, when nobody was looking. Just to keep them in their place. That’s the true message of Christianity — reach out to all people, but don’t let them get any funny ideas.
And that’s all Wallace was saying, really — on this most sacred of days on the Australian calendar, let’s not let the disenfranchised and unconventional feel they can share it with us. I don’t really see what’s so controversial about this: it’s just like how we make the children eat Christmas dinner at the little table, or how we don’t let Chinese people have Easter eggs. Not that gays and Muslims are like children, or Chinese people — they’re much more perverted — but the point is, tolerance is a two-way street. In return for letting them live here and publicly state their opinions, we have to ensure that certain minorities don’t try to steal any of our precious Anzac spirit. Fair enough, I would have thought. But then, unlike most people, I’ve read the Bible.
But of course, Wallace’s comment raised broader issues, as everything always does when columnists want to write serious and important things. Because quite apart from his own personal views and psychoses, it brought to the fore the most vital issue pertaining to our sense of national identity: just what did our troops fight for?
We know they didn’t fight for Muslims or gay marriage, of course: that goes without saying. In fact, they fought against Muslims, at Gallipoli, and gay marriage wasn’t even on the agenda. Oh sure, some people speculate that a percentage of diggers signed up for service in outrage at the Kaiser’s feet-dragging on civil union legislation, and there is a school of thought that Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Franz Ferdinand was due to the Archduke’s spurious analogies involving men marrying dogs; but the historical records on this issue are, at best, contestable. Overall, we probably have to accept that the Anzacs did not, specifically, fight for gay marriage.
But it’s not enough to simply say "well the diggers didn’t fight for gay marriage or Muslims" and go on our merry way, as if we lived in a naïve, pre-9-11 world, before political correctness went mad and Play School put lesbians on. The world doesn’t work that way. If we’re to move forward, we have to recognise the realities, and make sure we are all fully aware of exactly what our diggers did, and did not, fight for.
Luckily, all of the things fought for and not fought for are laid out quite specifically in Section 34, Article 18, paragraph 8, Floor 15, lane 6 of the Australian Constitution. To wit, things our diggers did fight for are:
– Freedom
– Justice
– Liberty (see Freedom)
– Hope
– Love
– Children
– Bunnies
– Puppies
– V8s
– The underdog
– Some more children
– Especially sick children in hospitals who maybe have no hair
– Larrikins
– A fair go
– A cold beer
– Pies
– To build a better world for their children
– So women wouldn’t get raped by Lebanese gangs all the time
Contrariwise, things the diggers did not fight for include, but are not limited to:
– Islam
– Gay marriage
– Indian students
– Taxi drivers who don’t speak English
– Nudity on TV
– Granny bashers
– Samsung
– Sushi
– Bad manners
– American spelling
– Modern art
– Universities
– Yuckiness
– So arrogant kids can run around talking filth to their elders
– Drugs
– Out-of-touch judges
– Detention centre fires
– Vegetarians
– No-smoking areas
– Nanny states
– Handicapped pagan transsexuals
– New Zealand apples
– A great big new tax on everything
And so you see it is actually relatively simple to get a grip on what our diggers fought for, as long as you have a good working knowledge of constitutional law and a fairly unfocused sense of personal frustration. And from there it is but a hop, skip and a jump to recognising just what this country means, and how important it is to defend the values that make us better than people who aren’t us. Particularly the ones who live here.
So in the end I think we owe Jim Wallace a debt of gratitude. Of course we already kind of did, for teaching us the lesson of Jesus and how to live our lives with grace and righteousness. But we also have to thank him for reminding us, at the most appropriate time of year, of our proud military history and just what all the hardship and bloodshed was in aid of.
So next Anzac Day, don’t just use it as an excuse for a day off, or for jingoistic triumphalism, or for dividing the population of this country into "those who deserve to be Australian" and "those who are gay or Muslim or something even worse". No, besides all those excellent ways to use Anzac Day, also use it to raise a glass to Jim Wallace, the plucky Christian who when the going got tough, stood up for our country, our history and our fighting men and probably sort-of women in uniform, and for once showed us all the answer to the question: What Would Jesus Do?
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