Before there is Hate, there is Hope.

I spent most of yesterday with my wife and daughters at an amazing outdoor playground in Homebush, Sydney. It is a truly extraordinary (and free!) playground, that could much better be described as a play ‘wonder land’. My kids absolutely loved it, as did the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of other kids that were there yesterday too.

Though I enjoyed just taking some time out with the family and watching the joy on the faces of my girls as they played on the swings, climbed soft-fall rock climbing walls to go down giant slippery dips, scurried over the huge rope-netting area and journeyed to the top of the massive cubby-house tower, I was also struck by a profound realisation.

As we were watching our kids as they rapturously ran under the synchronised water fountains, I became aware, firstly, of just how many different cultures were represented by these sometimes giggling, sometimes squealing children and, secondly, of the complete lack of hate shown by these kids, united in their joy and sense of wonder.

Gun Reform or the Horrifying Norm?

The recent mass shooting of young school children (and some of their teachers) in Newtown, Connecticut, has shocked the world. It is truly horrific. It’s hard to even think about without feeling physically ill or having tears begin to well up.

Somewhat predictably, it has also resulted in the same media frenzy – verging on the obsessive – that usually follows such events, as well as the tired emotive rhetoric that stymies actual discussion and which usually results in the maintaining of the status quo (once the news cycle has moved on to the next tragedy, or some Royal somewhere does pretty much anything).

Much has already been written on these events, and there will be much more to come. Knowing this, I would just like to offer a couple of thoughts that, I hope, might be helpful.

Redeeming My Roots

For almost a decade now, I’ve been thinking about the concept of ‘redeeming my roots’.

Please let me explain what I mean.

Before I became a Christian, I was a reasonably open-minded individual. Working from the foundation of a basic liberal worldview, I was an advocate for freedom and equality and the necessity of a good classical liberal arts education as the corner stone of a strong society. From that foundation, the framework of my political and philosophical outlook on life was built around a fairly strong suspicion of authority, taking the shape of anarchism.