Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

This essay seeks to examine the state of play three years on from the launch of the COVID-19 operation, now that it seems to be winding back its central rule over society. I will try to explore outside the box, leaving nothing taboo or tolerated. Here we consider the covid hoax, the state takeover of healthcare, personal autonomy and digital identity, the green agenda and climate change, the war on the West, the complicity of the church and the death of democracy.

You may label me a ‘conspiracy theorist’ for sharing these views, and yes, you might be right if you accept the mainstream media’s definition of a conspiracy theory:

a theory that rejects the standard explanation for an event and instead credits a covert group or organization with carrying out a secret plot.

It is interesting that the defining criteria here is ‘the standard explanation’. Surely that puts up a barrier, right there to honest exploration of an ‘alternative explanation’? So, bear with me — give me the benefit of the doubt; perhaps my perspective is no mere conspiracy theory, but rather, simply an alternative perspective.

Further, note in the definition above, the assumption of a ‘covert group’ and a ‘secret plot’. In my search for ‘alternative perspectives’, I make no assertion of a covert group with a secret plot. Rather, I propose the direct opposite in my alternative perspective, a group ‘hiding in plain sight’ with a very ‘public agenda’. So it is not me with a conspiracy theory — rather, it’s the global elite’s narrative that is the ‘conspiracy theory’!

The Covid Hoax

Back in late 2019, the term ‘Covid-19’ was being discussed in the literature, months before the ‘outbreak’ was declared in early 2020. From then on, the number of ‘dots that did not add up’ kept growing. I will only highlight a few for the sake of my argument.

The precise harmonisation of strategy across the Western world without an evident accountability or mechanism of coordination. Looking back, it was the workings of a ‘one-world government’. Never in my life had I witnessed such a unity of purpose — it was even more seamless and ‘spontaneous’ than the military alliance in World War Two!

The brutal response of law enforcement forbade healthy people from keeping fit and healthy with a day at the beach or in the surf. Naturally, there was no medical justification for such enforcement, and the public soon became accustomed to the complete absence of any explanation in their blind acceptance that the ‘government knew best and had our best interests at heart’.

There was the outlawing of cheap generic medications for early treatment in preference for expensive toxic alternatives such as Remdesivir in the US, which killed thousands while purportedly saving some.  This was followed up in 2021 by government-indemnified untested ‘vaccines’, which have now resulted in an upsurge of unexplained sudden death syndrome around the world, particularly amongst the most athletic and healthy in sport and the military.

The economic cost to national economies and personal business of prolonged lockdowns for a disease with a morbidity rate no greater than the seasonal flu. Coupled with the requirements for ‘vaccine passports’, to travel and to keep our livelihoods; these measures seemed to be incomprehensible and were never challenged by the people other than by mass rallies around the world that hardly got a fair analysis in the mainstream media.

Let me conclude this parade of ‘dots that do add up’ with the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Tests and Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs). The PCR was not developed to test for a contagious disease, rather it was simply designed to identify fragments of genetic material in a sample. Many questions surround the validity of the RATs as well and yet these two have become the world standard for diagnostic data gathering. This speaks more to my first point of global harmonization than to verifiable scientific enquiry.

It seems to me that the only things that add up here are the surprising ease with which a one-world-government, was so adept at manipulating the globe’s population through intimidation and fear to surrender their freedoms, their personal responsibility, their capacity for self-sustainability and self-determination and their ability to demonstrate basic humanity towards their fellow man.

At the heart of this surrender has been society’s abandonment of critical thinking skills, the scientific method, problem-solving strategies and the principle of evidence-based research.

So, what was the covid operation? It was the ‘simulation’ of a real pandemic designed and implemented by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to soften up the world’s population for their larger social, demographic, economic, political and environmental agendas. Sadly, only a minority could see this and because of this, they were dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

State Takeover of Healthcare

An important traditional step in becoming a doctor, is the medical students’ taking of the Hippocratic Oath (c. 400BC). One version of an extract from it reads:

I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.

Sounds good? Yes, I agree. I draw our attention to the phrase ‘for the benefit of my patients’.  This is the point I would like to consider. In order for the doctor to know what will benefit their patient, they must first know their patient. They must understand the whole array of symptoms and consider them in the personal environment of the presenting patient. It is not sufficient to understand a set of symptoms, out of context, which appears to be the approach that has developed in recent years.

During the covid operation doctors were required to refrain from voicing any of their concerns surrounding treatment regimens and ‘vaccine roll-outs’. If they failed to curb their commentary, they were threatened with de-registration. Some who did go public with their concerns were de-registered. The corollary of this has been that individual patient care was superseded by statewide standards that at best could be described as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

Why would the state agree to indemnify the pharmaceutical industry with our tax dollars against any adverse effects from the new, untested experimental vaccine? When I first saw the roll-out of this new drug, I was concerned that I could not read up, either on the packaging or on the internet, any details of the ingredients and any potential side effects. This was a first in my experience. This did not add up, it called for a huge leap of faith on the part of the recipient of this new, untested experimental vaccine. They were active and healthy, yet they had to submit to this treatment to travel or to keep their jobs, and the manufacturers were not going to be held accountable, but the active, healthy taxpayer was going to pay for any potential adverse effects!

It seems to me that the only argument that holds together here is that it was part of a bigger plan that the state would manage the nation’s healthcare and that this somehow married together with the one-world-government, adept at managing the globe’s population through its healthcare protocols.

Customarily, when I booked to see my doctor, what I was looking for was that they would be able to bring their training and experience to bear on my particular complaint without having to conform to the straight jacket of a state-mandated regimen that feels very much more like ‘mandatory sentencing’ than personal health care. The new approach seems to me to be alienating the doctor from their professionalism and denigrating her or him to simply be required to read a computer-generated algorithm.

A further consideration is the very sound principle of seeking a ‘second opinion’. All through my adult life, I have always held out the rational, sound idea that if we get a diagnosis from our healthcare provider that does not ring true or is so devastating, then it is certainly advisable to go down a different track before signing up for irreversible surgery or a treatment regimen. In situations like this, the patient might consider the option of a dietary change before surgery, or they might like to consider acupuncture before submitting to chemotherapy.

Surely such an approach is wise? But with a one-size-fits-all approach and doctors banned from raising concerns for fear of being de-registered, this seems to cut against the grain. So, imagine my surprise this week, when visiting my doctor and he didn’t immediately dictate a line of treatment for me from his ‘manual’. In fact, he was very obviously holding back from proffering his view. He was hinting to me that I needed to take responsibility and I needed to decide the way forward myself! This was far from state control, it was a shock to my system, but a most welcome shock as I had been so conditioned to being told what to do by my doctor, no questions asked.

Personal Autonomy and Digital Identity

It seems to me that, in recent years, I can’t recall governments ever discussing our personal autonomy:

Personal autonomy refers to a person’s sense of self-determination, of being able to make choices regarding the direction of her or his own actions, including the freedom to pursue those choices.

How important is personal autonomy? For me, I would go so far as to say it’s one of my foundational principles; it is one of my core beliefs.

What do I mean? I can never shift the responsibility for my future to another or to an external body or an institution. I must and I always will seek to take personal responsibility for myself and those around me.

But when society or more specifically, the state, take that responsibility from me, I am left feeling like a fish out of water or an emasculated male. I feel weak, demotivated, helpless and above all dependent, like a chronically ill patient in hospital on life support. This is no way to live!

One of the principles I have always taught my education students is to seek to build personal autonomy into their students at age-appropriate stages. Yet here we have a society that is peeling back any such responsibility from us as they seek greater and greater control of our lives.

For me, the pinnacle of this during the covid operation was when the state regulated our lives, the meeting, the travelling, the eating and sleeping decisions of perfectly healthy citizens. Perhaps there is a place for the state to regulate the chronically ill for the safety of the healthy majority but never for them to take away the personal autonomy of the healthy.

I might have felt slightly better if ‘the people’ had voted to give our politicians that right to curtail our self-determination, but no society that I am aware of, ever gave their politicians such a mandate, they simply took it, on the pretext that ‘the opinion poles’ supported their actions. But there is the rub. I firmly believe that a circular argument was at play. They crafted the opinion poll questions designed to gain the answers they wanted, much in the style of ‘Yes Minister (1986).

In October this year, the Australian government made it a requirement for all company directors to have a digital identity: ‘You must apply for your own director ID.’

A director ID is a unique identifier that a director will apply for once and keep forever — which will help prevent the use of false or fraudulent director identities. All directors of a company, registered Australian body, registered foreign company or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporation will need a director ID.

The state argued that a director ID would allow regulators to track the activity of directors, rather than just companies in an effort to stamp out illegal activity such as phoenixing; that is when a director transfers assets to a new company in order to continue operating a business, while the previous company, with bad debts remaining, is placed into liquidation.

I can hear the argument, that that is a reasonable justification for a director’s ID. Surely, we want to root out all illegal activity, don’t we? Yes, but this line ignores personal autonomy, a person’s freedom to make choices regarding the direction of his or her own actions, for good or ill. The director’s ID might give authorities another tool to identify fraud, yes, but it does nothing to build up personal autonomy that would surely be the true basis for stamping out illegal activity.

Can rules and more rules or control and more control make us do right? No. All rules and controls do are identify the breaches. Personal autonomy lies at the heart of doing the right thing. Integrity can be defined as doing the right thing when no one is watching. I want to be part of a society that champions personal integrity, not one that boasts its level of control.

The demand for director’s ID is yet another example of the state’s desire for greater power and control over the individual and the diminution of personal autonomy. Do we want to live in a society controlled by fear down to the minutia of every action or do we want to celebrate the freedom of diversity, individuality and creativity? For me the choice is simple.

The Green Agenda and Climate Change

Hopefully, the threat from COVID-19 won’t last. One day, it will be behind us. By contrast, the threat from climate change and its associated extreme weather events will be with us for the foreseeable future and beyond. The climate risk is unfolding more slowly than the pandemic did, but it will have even more severe consequences. To a great extent, its severity will depend on the policy response to the pandemic.
— Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret (2020), Covid-19: The Great Reset, WEF

As we emerge from the covid operation, as Klaus Schwab and the WEF predicted, we are now facing the threat of climate change. Or are we?

I am not going to argue the for-and-against of climate change here. Let’s say yes, it’s true and yes, some of it may be attributed to the activity of man. What I want to highlight is, what then should we do? What should our response be? Is the so-called green agenda the right way forward? Should we simply submit to the state’s directives without thinking?

Jordan B. Peterson has just released a new video about this, and I commend it to you. Here he says:

One of the consequences of C0₂ overproduction over the last 15 years… paradoxically, and contrary to all predictions on the environmentalist side is that the planet is now 15% greener than it was in 2000 and the majority of that greening has occurred in semi-arid areas. The deserts have not expanded, they have shrunk!

The green agenda can be simplified to the claim ‘net-zero by 2030’. Meaning that a nation that signs up to this goal will not emit any excess carbon dioxide by 2030. So, this agenda primarily targets fossil fuel energy production and its use by transport systems in particular. In its place, renewable energy technology will need to expand exponentially to fill the gap.

I am aware that this is a huge topic, so my arguments will focus on the green agenda’s implications for the individual and society at large.

There is no green energy alternative to power aviation, so global air travel, perhaps the single largest carbon emitter of all modes of transport will need to cut the number of airlines and the numbers of flights to meet the target. This will raise the costs to the public and therefore reduce demand. A very neat equation but what if people still want and need to travel and still want and need to visit overseas relatives? This green agenda simply disenfranchises a whole segment of society while reserving aviation for the rich elites who manage and control the rest of us.

Right across the western world, fossil fuel production has been slashed as part of the green agenda before any viable sustainable alternatives have been brought onstream. The impact; soaring prices, crippled economies, at both the national and personal scale, sending countless numbers into poverty with heating and cooling stress increasing personal misery and the potential of premature death during cold winters or summer heatwaves. Is this part of the agenda?

And to cap it all, the introduction of price caps for energy bills! Surely this demonstrates a confused agenda. Cutting the production of fossil fuels to increase the price is a logical green agenda. It decreases demand, and that’s surely the objective. But now capping energy prices cripples the capitalists who produce the fuels which in turn cripple national economies. Is this the best way forward, increasing state control and increasing the people’s dependence on the state for handouts?

So, to sum up, the green agenda for climate change increases state power and control, decreases personal autonomy and cripples national economies.

The War on the West

The war on the west: how to prevail in the age of unreason (2022) Douglas Murray, HarperCollins Publishers, is a gripping read covering critical race theory, China, History, reparations, religion, gratitude and culture.

In recent years it has become clear that there is a war going on: a war on the west. This is not like earlier wars, where armies clash, and victories declared. It is a cultural war, and it is being waged remorselessly against all the roots of the Western tradition and against everything good that the Western tradition has produced (Douglas Murray).

As an educator, I am particularly stirred by this as the enemy has systematically targeted education, starting in academia, moving down to high school, then primary school and now preschool and even the nuclear family.

The other day I caught the audio from a snippet of the latest Harry and Meghan Netflix series. I was astonished (I guess I shouldn’t have been), as it seemed that the script was straight out of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) playbook. There was the ‘surmising’ of racist attitudes and thinking.  There was the advocacy for the highest calling of becoming an ‘anti-racist’.  The whole British Empire, post-colonial independence, was being re-told as a mega narrative of ‘exploitation’ and ‘subjugation’. The overarching message was that everything ‘white, male and Western’ was painted as ‘shameful’ and to be replaced with Harry and Megan’s ‘pure view of the world’.

For the first time, I was not seeing this as a Harry and Meghan petulant tirade of hurt against the Royal Family. No, this was a cold-hearted, hard, calculated narrative against everything in my civilization and the values that I hold dear. It was so sad! And I feel most sad for those who, subconsciously, will come to believe it.

This so-called docudrama was just the latest evidence, should I have needed more, that the war is real. Two elements awoke me earlier. Firstly, the breakdown into pure anarchy in Portland, Oregon, in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter riots there following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.

In this Democrat-controlled city, the ‘authorities’ turned the other cheek as society crumbled and the economy was destroyed. The calls for ‘defund the police’ on the back of their inaction to restore law and order and security ironically made sense. But what would be left without them? Everyone simply doing what was right in their own eyes.

The second piece of evidence for me was the boarding up of the Winston Churchill statue in London. Yes, there was public condemnation for the attacks on statues across the West, but little attempt to understand the war that this was demonstrating.

I am not belittling or seeking to excuse any anti-racial behaviour, but I am questioning the overall narrative that is clearly intent on dismantling Western traditions and achievements. Parenthetically, seeking to trash the Christian West’s own campaign, led by Clarkson and Wilberforce in the early 1800s to outlaw slavery at huge cost at both personal and national levels.

While Douglas Murray’s book carefully and systematically dismantles each of the cultural wars’ strategies, I fear it does not mount a counter-offensive. Sadly, it seems that the war on the West has been waged so successfully over recent decades that, as Murray argues, there is little fight left in the West. The war is nearly over and victory for the neo-cons, the socialist left and the neo-Marxists is within their grasp.

How then should we live? The left has no clear leadership structure, other than perhaps Klaus Schwab’s WEF, whose young Turks have infiltrated nearly every government cabinet in the Western world. Yet they have been enormously successful at capturing nearly every pillar of society. A remarkable achievement.

I would argue that they have been so successful, so quickly, as the majority of the West has been asleep at the wheel and has no idea what has been happening. There has been no leadership to counter Klaus, with the possible exception of Donald Trump. But the left demolished him before he could really mount a global counterattack.

So, what’s next on the menu? I believe that the tide is turning. There are more and more examples coming to light where the latest attack is being challenged, and by more and more people. It seems that the West is waking up. If each of us were to wake up, just one, we would have a mighty army. The prelude to us waking up the one, is that we must ensure that we remain awake ourselves. Then from a platform of acute consciousness, let’s make our stand. That will look so different for each of us, but if we all take a stand, I believe we can begin the turn the tide.

For me, one of my first stands was to refuse to describe ‘my wife’ as ‘my partner’. I married her 46 years ago before God and before the people. I am not going to be ashamed of my stand then, what a denial that would be after all this time!

For you, your stand might be much more theatrical than my proclamation of a word. For example, you may have to pull your child from their school as you develop your capacity to home school instead. You may have to adjust your work schedule to part-time to accomplish this and as a consequence, with increasing mortgage rates, you may have to relocate your family to a new, cheaper home. Yes, your stand could be devastating.

If all of us take a stand, I do believe that together, we can turn the tide of war and see the enemy begin to retreat. They don’t really have anything to stand for when all is said and done. Their objective is simply the destruction of the good and its replacement with evil. That’s hardly a bright future to look forward to. Their economy will be trashed, the divide between the rich and the poor will be greater, and starvation and disease will be rife. Try an analysis of life expectancy in the British Empire compared with the British Commonwealth after the granting of independence to a range of nations across the globe.

The Complicity of the Church

Where are the Martin Luther King Jrs? What a calling he had, what a message he rang and what a following came forward. What did the church do when the covid operation arrived? They went home. They neglected the gathering together of the saints, and their leadership shrivelled up and died.

All, I recall from the height of the covid operation were the very few who took a stand. They were lampooned by the media and prosecuted by the authorities and very few followed them. At times it became evident that the churches were being paid to parrot the government narrative and in particular, they were right on board pushing the uptake of the injection of the brand new untested, experimental drug for the healthy.

So, for whatever reason, the church was complicit with the state in the covid operation. What will they do now? Will they push the green agenda? Will they surrender to the war on the West? Will they comply with digital identity, and will they be counted as complicit in the continuing murder of infants and those who are depressed?

Will they have the courage to take a stand? Or will they simply slip into ‘business as usual’ and pretend that nothing ever happened. Will they simply say, yes, we lost two years, but now’s the time to build back better — but in reality, it’s business as usual.

What would taking a stand look like for the church? I think it would look very different depending on the churches’ constituency. I think that the churches’ leadership will also look very different depending on the context. But no matter the specifics I think there would be some indisputable commonality.

There needs to be a renewed focus on prayer, prayer for all those in authority, prayer for all those in elected roles, prayer against the deceiving schemes coming against the church designed for its destruction, prayer for those who have fallen asleep and prayer for church leadership to rise to the occasion.

In echoing the title of Melody Green’s 2008 book, No Compromise, particularly when it comes to financial matters, it seems to me that perhaps the biggest failure of the church in recent years has been their reluctance to rely on God rather than the promise of advantageous tax breaks from the state. Becoming unequally yoked with the state simply brings a gospel without the power, a form of Godliness that denies the power of the Holy Spirit.

The church must call out evil, rather than turning aside and looking the other way. Yes, this may well attract accusations of becoming too political, but I believe the church needs to hold the politicians to account, as our political systems and the media are no longer able to fulfil this vital role. Someone needs to do it, and the church which stands for the truth is best positioned to do this without partiality. I foresee church leadership calling out evil from the pulpit, no longer hamstrung from fear of offending. When have we ever heard the church coming out against abortion or euthanasia? I would have to go back over forty years in my memory to recall those days.

Perhaps one strategy that the church can adopt that will really put the church in the limelight. The church can take a stand with those that are taking a stand in their congregations. Rather than the church simply becoming aware of the ones and two in their midst who are taking a stand, the pulpit can call them out, give public support and prayer for them.

Just imagine, the pastor gets up on Sunday morning and recounts the events that led to one of their members, a medical doctor, finding themselves de-registered for speaking out their concerns over the experimental new drug for the healthy. The church then pledges to support them in their legal battles and organises some meals-on-wheels for the family while their income is withheld. That would be sure to get some media coverage, social media for sure, and one day maybe mainstream media as well, if they could stomach a good news story!

The Death of Democracy

With the rollout of the covid operation in 2020, the first thing that struck me about the Australian parliament was that the Labour Party and the Liberal National Coalition, the left and the right, simply closed ranks. There were no debates, no heated exchanges, no reaching out to the people. It was as if both sides of politics had picked up the same run sheet from their global oversight and they were singing in perfect harmony with each other. This was the first nail in the democracy coffin for me.

Then for about a year and a half, perhaps approaching two years, I began to reach out to my federal member. He and I had had a personal relationship that I had valued over several years but now, during the covid operation, my federal member never agreed to meet, either by phone, digitally or in person. It was as if he simply cut me off from our relationship. It became evident that, as I did not hold to the same narrative as he did, he was not going to engage with me.

As 2022 has rolled by, I have not continued my requests for a meeting; neither have I received any belated invitation from the previous years that he could have been put down to covid measures restrictions. This has been my second nail in the democracy coffin. I no longer vote for him or his party.

As the last three years have unfolded, I have become acutely aware of the rise of the ‘freedom parties’. Yes, there have been a plethora of them and no, they do not seem to have been able to work out any practical way of working together. I have attended a few rallies in the city in support of the freedom movement. Participating in these events, I became aware of the massive support for the movement but mainstream media have completely ignored them and consistently downplayed their numbers or their significance. It is as if they have simply been ‘cancelled’, to use the language of the war on the West.

So much so, in the lead-up to the state election in Victoria, Australia back in November this year, the mainstream media simply touted the same old two-party race, the ‘left and the right’, with no acknowledgment of any alternative. The trouble here, just like the federal situation in 2020, there was nothing to distinguish between the left and the right in Victoria. The result of the election was a re-election of the left, albeit with a slightly slimmed-down majority. This was the third nail in my democracy coffin. Democracy is broken. I am convinced that parliamentarians no longer represent ‘the people’.

This pattern seems to be repeated right across the West, Australia is certainly not unique. My impression is that there is a little more democracy left in parts of the USA and the UK compared with here, but I would not be claiming that the sacrifices and labours in the fight against dictatorship and the preservation of democracy in the second world war have been upheld. No, democracy is simply hanging in there, on life support, in the West.

What can be done to resurrect democracy? I don’t know! I would love to hear suggestions, so please post them in. However, I am not filled with doom and gloom about it. In fact, I am inwardly very excited! I never imagined that I could be living in such a time as this, these are surely the Biblical ‘end times’ right here right now.

And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that you be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. (Matthew 24:6–8)

What’s Next on the Menu?

Let me conclude this essay with a call to arms, but perhaps not in the format you might have imagined these words to depict. Let’s resurrect personal autonomy, taking up our responsibility for ourselves and our loved ones. It seems to me that the state is simply aligned with the global one-world order. As in the days of Babel when the people first tried to create a one-world governance structure with their tower and common language; I believe this time, men’s plans will also fail.

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:8-9)

So I am not buying into the left’s agenda. I am not supporting the war on the West. I believe that I am fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God. I am a unique creation, yes, a child of God but not a clone of anyone else. It does not sit comfortably for me to become a simple consumer in a vast machine. I believe I have a discrete calling and function on this earth and in the body of Christ, that I need to fulfil.

I believe all of us are unique creations, born for such a time as this and as we each severally take up our calling the future grows more and more exciting. Just imagine, three years ago, no one could have imagined the world we see around us now. So who can imagine what the future will unfold in the next three years? However, I think there are some elements in the mix that will become undisputed foundation stones for God’s people.

I believe there will be a rise in people taking up personal responsibility as they reject the blanket takeover of the state. This will generate a much stronger focus on the local, as opposed to the global, on our immediate geographical neighbourhood rather than an overreliance on foreign imports.

I believe that the globalist elite narrative will begin to fragment and crumble as more and more wake up to their agenda. It seems to me that the left’s agenda has been built on a belief in ‘the consensus’ as opposed to the application of rational deductive reasoning and the scientific method. The tide will turn as more become aware of the deceiving narrative.

I believe that the church will be revived. I confidently expect to see the rise of new leadership models in our churches that will jettison the old governance models that have been borrowed from the corporate world. It will be so exciting to see what God will do in our church communities as we pray and keep ourselves open and expectant for the new wineskins to come alive.

Let me conclude with a scripture that we may have lost sight of over the years:

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. (James 4:13-17)

___

Photo by Markus Spiske.