Thursday, May 24, 2018

General Data Protection Regulation

I am sick and tired of this, especially endless emails and what I regard as churches craven subservience to fiat law.
   I see civil law as having various categories.
1. Law that has a moral base in revealed truth. Though half not steal means there are penalties for theft. Not to obey is sin
2. Law that contradicts revealed law. e.g. the so-called same sex marriage law. It is legalised fornication and is to be rejected. Agreement is sin.
3.  Law that follows the general equity of biblical law. Then you had parapets on flat roofs. Now we have health and safety. We are to obey. Speed limits would often come here though some seem arbitrary.
4. Fiat law with no moral basis. I am not free to chop down my own trees if there is a preservation order. OK. I may chop them down. No sin. If I am summoned and fined I pay up. Now I regard the GDPR as in this category. It comes hot off the EU press so as a keen Brexiteer I do wonder if a sovereign UK would have introduced this. I suspect so for we have legislators who love to create jobs putting civil service bums on seats. But compliance costs much effort and £40 per anuum. What a waste! Why not ignore it and see what happens? IMO nothing will happen as like many silly regulations there will not be the civil servants to enforce it. But Christian churches and groups are so keen to be thought well of that they meekly comply. It was the same when English Heritage slapped a Grade II losing on out chapel. Did we pull it down before the regulation took effect and so free up our site for redevelopment? No we meekly complied. No protest from our trustees. I confess to being depressed at the time so share some responsibility. I am often a reluctant complier with these fiat laws. For the sake of peace and quiet I agreed to comply with child protection disclosure as a trustee in order to keep the peace. I have no supervision of children and object to being suspected of being a paedophile until I prove otherwise. Presumption of innocence has gone. We are all suspected of money laundering, employing illegal immigrants and drunk driving unless we prove otherwise, when there are no grounds for suspicion. As Chesterton said, if men will not be ruled by 10 commandments there will be 10,000. Of course that was a long time ago. 10,000,000 would be my current estimate of our police state.

The concept that God has chosen Pol Pot, Erdogan, Mussolini, Hitler or any president to have the authority to create binding laws dismantles the Scriptures’ concepts. The Scriptural emphasis is that God’s Law stands in judgment over men’s laws. We therefore have the obligation to judge the laws of any country, of which we are citizens, in light of the Law to love “your neighbor as yourself” (Remember the Egyptian midwives). On this, as Christ says, hang ALL the Law and the prophets.” The whole thrust of the Scripture, in multiple reminders and instructions, is on bringing life and order, love and compassion to the stranger, the poor, the widow, and the orphan. - On Law and Authority, Udo W. Middelmann

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