See you at the Barricades!

“[Jesus] said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”. (Luke 5:4-5)

Hi Fighter,

I love this scene on the beach where Jesus encourages Simon Peter and his crew of professional fishermen to try fishing a little further out from the shore. I think it highlights the qualities Jesus looks for in His disciples.

“Master, we have worked all night long and have caught nothing”, says Peter (Luke 5:5). In truth, what sort of fisherman sits for hour after hour in his fishing boat, catching nothing, but keeping the whole team sitting there in the dark, shivering, hoping that their luck will change?

9 pm, 10 pm, 11 pm, midnight, 1 am, 2 am … at what point do you say, “this isn’t working” and decide to live with being hungry, rather than being both ridiculously tired and hungry. Fishing necessitates patience, yes, but keeping going with your team for an eight or ten hour stretch, despite getting zero results – that requires something beyond patience! It requires good old-fashioned stubbornness.

Peter’s response to Jesus’ suggestion – that they try going out a little deeper – is gracious. In truth, if they’ve been there for eight or more hours, they’ve already tried going deeper. Indeed, they must have tired everywhere and everything they could think of by that stage. Even so, Peter will try anything Jesus suggests, no matter how crazy, though I suspect that some of the others in the boat thought him an idiot.

Peter displays the two essential qualities of discipleship – stubbornness and stupidity. We prefer more noble-sounding terms for these qualities, such as ‘perseverance’ and ‘daring’. I think we should call them what they are – stubbornness and stupidity.

Do you measure up? Are you stupid enough to try things that common-sense tells you can’t possibly succeed, simply because some voice inside our heads keeps urging you to try,. And are you stubborn enough to keep hammering away at your crazy project long after all your friends have gone home? If that’s you, welcome to the team! You officially have all the personality defects necessary for discipleship.

Stubbornness and stupidity! We are going to need plenty of both if we are going to get this country back on track, and I’m expecting to see plenty of both on display in our nation’s capital this weekend!

Yes, I’m heading to Canberra this weekend to join the thousands of people who have been gathering around Parliament House, calling for change.

‘What?’, I hear you say. ‘There are thousands of protesters gathering in Canberra? If that were true, why haven’t I heard about it?’ That’s a good question, and I’ve tried to give you a good answer today in the form of the images I’ve included with this post.

Take a look at the pic of me at a press conference in Iran where we were launching our 2014 peace mission into Syria. The violence in Syria was at its height back then but we’d assembled a powerful team of international peace activists to fly into Damascus. The cluster of microphones gives you the impression that the whole world was watching, but take a closer look at those microphones.

There are five of them. One belongs to RT (Russian TV). Another to Press TV (Iran). The other three I don’t recognise, but none of them belong to the ABC or to CNN, or even to Al Jazeera. Our mainline media simply don’t report on events like these. Unfortunately, Big Media don’t monitor events because they are important. They make events important by monitoring them.

If you look at the other images I’ve added today, they represent some of the most ‘newsworthy’ events I’ve ever been involved in:

Being reunited with nuclear whistle-blower, Mordechai Vanunu, in 2004, after his 18 years of imprisonment.
Boxing with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2014
My 2015 meeting with the Prime Minister of Syria
Boxing in Palmyra, days after it was recaptured from ISIS in 2016
Hanging out with asylum-seekers, after breaking into the Refugee Processing Centre on Manus Island in 2017

I’ve been featured hundreds of times in the mainline media over the last 30 years, both for my work with at-risk youth and for my boxing, but we received almost zero coverage for these events, some of which had far-reaching consequences.

The business of the media giants is to decide which events to give attention to and which to ignore, and there are multiple forces at work influencing those decisions. Of course, there comes a point where some events are so significant that the mainline media can’t ignore them, and I think we are reaching that point now in Canberra.

The protest this Saturday, February 12th, looks like it is going to be huge. I will be there. A lot of my colleagues in the Freedom Movement will be there. Perhaps this time something will change? If not, I’m confident that most of us are stupid and stubborn enough to get trying. Either way, it starts at Old Parliament House at 11 am.

Our Sunday Eucharist

Last Sunday I was back in the bush, accompanied at Binacrombi by Scottie and Boe. We also had Doug join us as Bible-reader and commentator, all the way from Washington State in the USA! This weekend I’ll be heading back to Binacrombi briefly, but only as a stop-over, en route to Canberra.

Expect an interesting line-up this weekend as we broadcast directly from the heart of the Canberra rally. Our friend, George Christensen, has said he will join us. I’m expecting other leaders of the Freedom Movement like Joel Jammal and Mack to join us too. Who knows who else we might have with us? Either way, we will be broadcasting this Sunday at midday via:

The Father Dave Facebook Page.
Twitter
YouTube

Support the work

Please consider becoming my patron, especially if you’re looking for someone to help you get fit and lose weight. I’m in a space now where I can take on one or two more people for private weekly training sessions, designed to both get you fit and teach you how to box. Just sign up for one of the heavier divisions on the Patreon page. I will contact you to work out the details:

Middleweight Division ($10/month) where you get access to the member site, along with the videos and other resources.
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