The ALP and Absalom

So it's all over the Australian newspapers: we're set to have another Labor party leadership challenge, less than two years since the last one, and it's the reverse of the last one, this time with Kevin Rudd challenging Julia Gillard. And the whole thing seems very, very messy. One of my colleagues today expressed that she hasn't been able to look at the newspapers since it all started heating up, she finds it that frustrating. "It must be making us the laughing stock of the world," was how she summed up the situation.

Now, I'm not wanting to evaluate which of Gillard or Rudd was the better, or, as one infamous campaigner once put it, "the least worst", Prime Minister. It's not something I could possibly judge. But one thing does strike me - that, if you're going to challenge your leader, this isn't the way to do it.

This quote from Gillard particularly struck me when I read it paraphrased in The Age today:

Ms Gillard said that she did "everything" she could as deputy prime minister to try and get the Rudd government functional, but it became "manifest" to her that continuing with Mr Rudd as prime minister was not going to work. (Judith Ireland and Michelle Grattan, "Gillard throws down gauntlet", The Age Online, Thurs 23 February 2012)

Well, perhaps she means what she says. Perhaps she really did try. But why, I wonder, did it occur to her that she was the one to replace him? Did someone tap her on the shoulder and suggest to her the idea that would otherwise have been unthinkable, that she was the one for the big job? If so, how did she respond? "Oh, no, not me, don't dream of it..."? (The whole situation seems very reminiscent of Yes, Minister..."If one was asked, one might consider..." Or Mrs Elton in Emma: "I wouldn't call myself a potential prime minister, but my friends say...")

It makes me think of a story from a small kingdom in the ancient Middle East, where the second ever king of that kingdom, a man named David, was being challenged for the leadership of their fledgling nation, Israel, by his son, Absalom. That boy had been approached by the people; they had said to him, "This father of yours, he's treating us all very badly." And Absalom had stood at the gate of the palace and heard all their grievances, nodded, made sympathetic noises, said, "Oh dear, that is bad." And he'd done a very good job, fooling perhaps even himself into thinking that it would be for the good of the country if he were king instead - not because he wanted the job, of course, but because...well, someone had to do it, and the people seemed to want him...

Was he fooling himself? He no doubt believed it. But, in acting the way he did, he showed how unlike his father he really was, though not quite in the good way that he had thought. You see, his father reacted to the leadership challenge with quite an extraordinary attitude, one we rarely see in politicians at the best of times, least of all at the worst: he showed humility.

David had once been the popular young leader. At a time when the first king, Saul, had become a mad tyrant, David was the nation's hero. But he had never stood in a leadership challenge. When given multiple chances to stab his king in the back, he had chosen not even to stab him in the front. When the king had died, David had grieved.

And now, challenged by his own son, David remembered what he had known then: that God was the one who appointed kings, and if He wanted him to be king, then He would make it so. His job while Saul had been king was to submit to Saul's kingship, broken and tyrannical though it was. And now, perhaps this challenge to his leadership was not a threat he had to stand against but an indication that God no longer wanted him to be king.

You can read the whole story in 2 Samuel 13-18. It has also been brilliantly adapted into a parable about leadership by Gene Edwards in his Tale of Three Kings. The moral of the story, according to Edwards, is this: if your superior is a Saul, it is still not your place to overthrow him. Or, if you are a David and you are challenged by an Absalom, approach God with humility. Seek His protection, or accept His judgment. Either way, He is right.

And if you are an Absalom? Woe to you. You may become king, but being king by foul means is never, ever going to be satisfying.

So which, you may wonder, is Kevin Rudd in this parable? And which is Julia Gillard?

I cannot say. But I wish that they both knew that there never comes a time when stabbing in the back is appropriate. And the good of the nation should never be used as an excuse for our own petty power plays.

Perhaps one day 2 Samuel 13-18 will be taught in politics classes, but I doubt it. In the meantime, let it be a voice in the wilderness, showing how things should be done if people had their hearts and minds in the right place.

All the secrets of fitness

There's something that happens to a man when he has spent around 20 years, give or take a few, thinking of himself as inherently bad at physical activity, only to find that he can run quite well, quite fast and over quite a long distance. I believe the common expression is that it "goes to his head". Suddenly, he wants everyone to see him running, especially those who ridiculed him at school for his not-very-athletic physique. "Take that," he wants to declare. "Just look at my correct running form. Note my endurance." That sort of thing.

Then he starts working on his speed, partly with a healthy desire to keep improving, partly because, well, he can. So he does so, knowing, somewhere in his head (someone told him) that working on speed increases the possibilities of injuries. "Yes yes," he says to that part of his head. "Yes yes, I know that. But it isn't going to happen."

Perhaps you can guess the rest.

It isn't a bad injury; just a strained muscle or tendon somewhere between my calves and my Achilles Heel. But it stops me from running, and slows me down a little in my everyday life - in subtle ways, in a way that says, continually, "Remember, Matt, that you aren't actually invincible."

It's a good thing to be reminded of, I suppose. I should be thankful for it. But I'm not. I'm grumpy that I can't run.

Then I remember this song that comes onto my regular running playlist somewhere around one of the footbridges that cross over the Maribyrnong River. It's called "Don't Kid Yourself, You Need a Physician", by Anathallo, a band I love very much. I'm particularly chastened when I hear it, running or otherwise, by these slap-in-the-face words that form the chorus:

"All the secrets of fitness

All the fitness He requires

Is to feel your need for Him."

Ouch. Yes, that is true fitness. I had better remember that before I set out to run again.

Don't you know who I am?

I suspect that tempers boil a little quicker in hot climates. Make the weather particularly humid, and it gets even quicker. Add an Air Asia flight to the mix, and the boiling point is probably brought down a good (or bad) ten degrees.

When I first came to Sabah, I came knowingly as a servant. I came determined to accept whatever situation I was put in. This proved harder than I had thought it would be, though sometimes the situations I found myself in were far easier than I had expected (and also sometimes far harder). I was sometimes looked after very well, sometimes not at all. Often I was given nice, comfortable accommodation. Often that accommodation came with heavy responsibilities, eg. looking after 8 teenage boys. I was required, I suppose, to put Philippians 4:12-13 to the test.

This time round, I told myself that I was going to come with no expectations, to once again accept whatever situation I found myself in. If I was treated like a celebrity, so be it. If I was treated like dirt, well, I didn't much fancy that, but so be it, I suppose. But in my heart I said, "But really they should treat me like a long-lost friend."

And in Tawau that's how I was treated, mostly. In KK it's been a bit different so far. The friend who was supposed to pick me up from the airport didn't. The room that I had stayed in on my first night here - small but nice, and with an en-suite - had been changed to a smaller one, with no en-suite, and where the adjoining communal bathroom seemed to have no hot water and not even really something I would consider a shower.

Pride, of course, kicks in very quickly in these circumstances. "Don't you know who I am?" the fleshly spirit rages.

Yes, there are many in Malaysia with better accommodation than I will have tonight. Yes, it is annoying that I was not collected from the airport. Yes, it is frustrating that these are my friends who seem to be letting me down.

Then I think of a garden where the best of all men knelt crying and sweating blood while his closest friends slept and their spirits began to prepare to abandon, even deny, him. If anyone deserved to say, "Don't you know who I am?", it was him. Yet he never did. The one time he declared his identity, it was at an impromptu and shoddy trial for his death, and the declaration sealed his fate.

My flesh tells me I should not have to put up with this on a holiday. "Go and book yourself into a hotel where at least they'll book you a taxi and give you breakfast", it says. But then my mind is half-drawn back to the one who can show me how to handle this situation properly, and I am humbled.

Who am I? I am nothing, if I am not like Him.

Sabah Reflections #1: On being foreign (and not especially humble)

I’m not sure how regular my internet access will be over the next two weeks, so my blogging may well be sporadic at best. This post is being written offline while the ideas are fresh in my mind and will be uploaded as soon as an opportunity arises. It’s early evening in Kota Kinabalu – the end of my first day back in Sabah. It’s been a day of ups and downs, not helped perhaps by the fact that I did not get to eat anything until around 12:30. But it’s also been a day of wonderful rememberings and reflections. Some solitude in the afternoon afforded me a lovely leisurely time roaming the familiar streets of KK, going to old haunts and taking far more photos than I was actually aware of. You can expect to see some uploaded here presently, but I might just focus on thoughts for the time being.

Returning to a place that was once very familiar is a strange experience. The first few days, I suspect, are a mix of delighting in becoming reacquainted with it all and being reminded of things that you had not once thought about since leaving, some of them good, some of them not as good.

It’s amazing, for instance, how simply being back in Malaysia helps me make sense of aspects of my life here that had become distant memories, even beginning to take on the atmosphere of myth. My writings from the first half of last year, for instance, attest that while living here I grew in God in ways that, back home, I have come to question, even potentially doubting that it ever happened. Being back here I can see why. There is something so humbling about life here, at least for a foreigner. You could live in far less resourced places, but enough things just won’t work, or simply don’t work how you’d expect, that you either become very quickly angry, or learn that the world does not revolve around you. There’s also a gratitude for simple blessings that develops in a place like Sabah. Functioning hot water systems can come, appropriately, to seem luxuries. Drinking water can be an unalloyed pleasure. On the other hand, rarely knowing how to do some of the most basic things has a similar effect, I suspect, to being an adult who, for whatever reason, loses the ability to walk and must learn to do so again.

When faced with humbling situations, there are two choices: accepting humility, or being humiliated. The latter regularly stems out of pride and leads only to further hardness of heart. The former leads to joy and gratitude: the sort of gratitude that, 18 months ago, prompted me to write this simple poem/prayer, which I will share with you today:

My heart is full

(sweet syrup of

your love, and each

and every gift; with sap

my tree-trunk spirit fills);

my hands, though empty,

better suited are to reach

inside my heart and take

full quota of this

liquid-blessing. Full

my heart to overflowing.

(Blessed be the hands that give.)