Food For Thought is a public theology & Bible advocacy blog for Eternity from Sophia Think Tank’s David Wilson, who gathers top Christian thinkers to take a closer look at how the Christian faith addresses matters in society at large every week.

The story of Alan Jones and his highly inappropriate joke about the cause of death of Julia Gillard’s father has been the most prominent media offering over the last couple of weeks. As I write, 2GB is free of advertisements on Alan Jones Breakfast show as a consequence of some advertisers withdrawing support and others being relieved of the decision making process to do so or not.  Social media is full of calls for Jones’ blood (some of them literally) and cries for justice and revenge:  Justice for our Prime Minister and revenge against the Broadcaster. Amidst it all is a plea for the raising of the level of public debate.

I’m hearing that plea to save public debate in a lot of different places recently. I was at the ACL conference last weekend where I heard Robert McClelland talk about this. He said it was un-Australian­­–people playing the man rather than the ball. He said that the depth political debate has sunk to is undermining the very essence of democracy because people are tiring of seeing their leaders in such common warfare; it’s undermining their confidence in politics and the democratic process.

I’m reading Lindsay Tanner’s latest book, Politics with Purpose, and there is a dominant theme that the level of public debate needs to be raised, especially by politicians and media personnel. This is a theme he also covered in his book, Sideshow.

McClelland and Tanner agree.  So does Kevin Rudd.  I have already written in Food For Thought about our previous Prime Minister’s longing for a better world where people with very different ideas can have intelligent, high level conversations about the things that really matter.

And now we are hearing from all sides of politics, from much of the media, from the world of marketing, and from everyday people that we deplore the attack of the person in our disagreements about the issues.  It won’t surprise regular readers of this column that I believe the Bible has some pretty important things to say about this as well. In fact, it can be easily shown that McClelland, Tanner, Rudd, the media, and the general public all agree with the Bible at this point.  Such is the joy of common ground.

One Bible passage as a case in point: In the letter that Paul wrote to the 1^st Century church in Rome he stated that people with very different opinions on even very important matters should learn to get along. Romans Chapter 14 is actually the early church’s anti-vilification policy and it’s a very good one. It comes from the perspective that your opinions are important but so are the next person’s and you really need to learn to deal with that in the context of being an accepting and loving community, while you continue to hold to your opinions.  And in the process, in the spirit of respecting one another, realise that your opinions don’t have to be flaunted and forced onto other people. Be convinced of what you believe and then get on with it. Is this a call to relativism?  No. Is it a call to be a doormat and give in to everyone else’s opinions? No. But it is a call to play the ball rather than the man. If Paul was writing to the first church of Wagga Wagga, that’s how he would’ve put it.

Was Alan Jones wrong for that joke he made? Yes. Even he admits that. However, let’s use this most unfortunate incident to hear loud and clear the call for raising the level of public debate and let’s hold our leaders – political, media, business, church – accountable to hear that call and respond with decisive action.

Food for Thought.

Image: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/656339