2007-10-29

Do politicians deserve to go to heaven?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Loved the spin on this sad survey by the Australia Institute to see what the public thought of Australian politicians:

How can Peter Garrett possibly be more deserving of heaven than Bob Brown? Do people really love a Judas who cashes in his environmental principles for a seat in the Labor Party? What a tragic lot we are.

Or is it that Peter’s sins are covered by joining a respectable mainstream church instead of opting for one of those “sects”? Beware the idealistic purism of the sectarian?

Is Bob Brown less deserving because of latent attitudes towards gay issues? Gays may deserve rights here on earth but not in heaven? But why is it the women who don’t want him there? Is there some vengeance against good looking successful males they can’t have?

Or is it rather that we just don’t like or trust politicians who take their principles too seriously? We prefer them to be more like us — they can put out a good performance when needed, but are willing to stuff any issue if it gets in the way of day to day getting on and getting ahead?

Or maybe humans were not meant to function well in such large nation-states. Size makes disengagement the default position?

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waltzingaustralia says:

2007-10-31 11:29:06 GMT+0000 at 11:29

I suspect that what really lies behind people thinking all these politicians will go to heaven is that people don’t really think much about things like heaven and deserving. If they think of “the beyond” at all, it’s usually, “well, I’m no worse than the next bloke” or “I haven’t murdered anyone.” So I don’t really believe anyone has analyzed the actions of the politicians in question and really come up with a rationale for why they qualify for a pleasant afterlife. It’s more like “don’t we all get to go — well, except Hitler maybe” — that’s the default position.

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