Jesus Goes To Hill$ong Because The Corporate Catering’s Better

Another reason the various Jesus franchises are irrelevant these days, is that Jesus only appears to have a selective social conscience. Back in the (alleged) old biblical days when there were stern regulations on everything, there were rules against withholding pay and entitlements. Yes, these are those same rules and reg which are cherry-picked when Benny Mk 16,

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Fred the Nihilist,

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or some other upstanding Fist Of God wants to have a go at the gays or some other group.

Anyway, what did the old version have to say?

Leviticus 19:13 – Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.

Let’s chuck in a couple of prophets from the old testament, just to show that the Leviticus thing wasn’t a blip on an otherwise-clear radar…

Jeremiah 22:13 – Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;

Malachi 3:5 – And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.

So, among the other poor and powerless, workers getting stiffed for wages and entitlements gets a specific mention.

You’d think the holy-rollers would have put down their copies of Brian Houston’s “You Need More Money” and showed up, en masse, in solidarity at a picket or two by now, but nah.

Here‘s a situation:

Three hundred and thirty eight workers at Drivetrain Systems in Lavington (Albury),the only manufacturer of gear boxes in Australia, have been sacked without pay or entitlements as management proceeds to strip the factory of an estimated $17 million in assets.

Workers are camped at the gates of the factory demanding about $25 million dollars in entitlements owed to the workforce. In December management and the AMWU assured employees that their entitlements were safe at the troubled business. On Friday workers were sacked without pay, and informed that there was simply no money.

“Between now and December they’ve been spent our entitlements” said one worker “we don’t know what on”.

Whilst all workers were sacked without pay, management and executive staff were retained on full wages. Management still occupies the factory.

Workers say that there are still $17 million dollars worth of gear boxes still at the Kaitlers Road factory, but they fear they won’t see a cent. The administrator has announced that the payment of financial creditors comes before giving workers their due entitlements.

Management has embarked on a deliberate campaign to split workers at the Kaitlers Road factory. Management has said they will re-employ a third of the workforce for a period of eight weeks, but have not stated which third of the workforce will be re-employed.

So, that’s bad dealing by old testament standards. Can the christians of the 21st century ignore it, along with that silly ban on eating molluscs, and hack into another half-dozen oysters Kilpatrick while those scruffy lefties shuffle up and down outside the perfectly respectable factory?

Here’s just one from the new testament, to whet your appetite if the oysters didn’t get you going…

James 5:4 – Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

Now I don’t expect this to make a single bloody whit of difference. Any christian reading this will have worked out any dozen reasons to dismiss what I’m reading from their very own sourcebook. After all, I’m a vile apostate.

And Jesus, as they will be told from respectable pulpits up and down the country, was a conservative. A guy who never raised his hand to a profiteer.

General General