(CNN) — Each Christmas, Christians tell stories about the poor baby Jesus born in a lowly manger because there was no room in the inn.

But the Rev. C. Thomas Anderson, senior pastor of the Living Word Bible Church in Mesa, Arizona, preaches a version of the Christmas story that says baby Jesus wasn’t so poor after all.

Anderson says Jesus couldn’t have been poor because he received lucrative gifts — gold, frankincense and myrrh — at birth. Jesus had to be wealthy because the Roman soldiers who crucified him gambled for his expensive undergarments. Even Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph, lived and traveled in style, he says.

“Mary and Joseph took a Cadillac to get to Bethlehem because the finest transportation of their day was a donkey,” says Anderson. “Poor people ate their donkey. Only the wealthy used it as transportation.”

Many Christians see Jesus as the poor, itinerant preacher who had “no place to lay his head.” But as Christians gather around the globe this year to celebrate the birth of Jesus, another group of Christians are insisting that Jesus’ beginnings weren’t so humble.

They say that Jesus was never poor — and neither should his followers be. Their claim is embedded in the doctrine known as the prosperity gospel, which holds that God rewards the faithful with financial prosperity and spiritual gifts.

A clash of gospels?

The prosperity gospel has attracted plenty of critics. But popular televangelists such as the late Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin and, today, Creflo Dollar have built megachurches and a global audience by equating piety with prosperity.

The prosperity gospel, however, clashes with the traditional depictions of Jesus as poor. That’s because the traditional image of Jesus as destitute is wrong, says the Rev. Tom Brown, senior pastor of the Word of Life Church in El Paso, Texas.
The proof, he says, is scattered throughout the New Testament. One example: The 12th chapter of the Gospel of John says that Jesus had a treasurer, or a “keeper of the money bag.”

“The last time I checked, poor people don’t have treasurers to take care their money,” says Brown, author of “Devil, Demons and Spiritual Warfare.”

A debate over the economic status of Jesus may seem nonsensical to some. Does it really matter whether Jesus was rich or poor?

It matters to people like Luke Timothy Johnson, a prominent New Testament scholar and author. He says that a rich Jesus is a distortion of history and a threat to one of Christianity’s core teachings: God’s identification with the poor.

“If Jesus reveals God, there is something powerful about God appearing and working among the poor,” says Johnson, a New Testament professor at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia.

“Jesus’ lifestyle is not of one in a gated community or a corporate office,” says Johnson, a former Benedictine monk. “You don’t have to go through a security gate to get to Jesus. People touch him. He reached out and touched children. His accessibility is one of the most powerful messages of Christianity. In Jesus, God is with us, and the majority of us are poor.”

‘The poor won’t follow the poor’

Some prosperity preachers extract a different message from the same biblical texts. Brown, the El Paso minister, says he doesn’t say that Jesus was rich because he wants to give people an excuse to live self-indulgent lives. He wants people to understand that Jesus used his material and spiritual riches to help people — and so should they.

Brown says Jesus’ own words prove that he wasn’t poor.

“Jesus said you will always have the poor, but you will not always have me,” Brown says. “Jesus did not affirm himself as being part of the poor class…

“I believe he was the richest man on the face of the earth because he had God as his source,” Brown says.

Jesus’ wealth is evident even in the Gospel accounts of his execution, some pastors say.

The New Testament reports that Roman soldiers gambled for Jesus’ clothing while he hung on the cross. They wouldn’t gamble for Jesus’ clothing unless it was expensive, Anderson says.

“I don’t know anybody — even Pamela Anderson — that would have people gambling for his underwear,” Anderson says. “That was some fine stuff he wore.”

Anderson says Jesus never would have had disciples or a large following if he was poor. He would not have been able to command their respect.

“The poor will follow the rich, the rich will follow the rich, but the rich will never follow the poor,” Anderson says.

Twisting scripture for personal gain?

Johnson, the Emory University New Testament professor, calls Anderson’s argument “completely illogical.”

“So Martin Luther King must have been a millionaire,” he says. “Crowds followed Siddhartha Buddha and he was poor. And mobs followed Mahatma Gandhi, and Gandhi wore a diaper, for God’s sake.”

The argument that Jesus was wealthy because the soldiers gambled for his clothes at his crucifixion doesn’t makes historical sense, either, says Johnson, author of “Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity.”

“Crucifixion was the sort of execution carried out for slaves and for rebels,” Johnson says. “It wasn’t an execution for wealthy people.”

A Baylor University religion professor who specializes in the study of the poor in the Greco-Roman world also says there is “no way” that Jesus could be considered wealthy.

Bruce W. Longenecker says life in Jesus’ world was brutal. About 90 percent of people lived in poverty. A famine or a bad crop could ruin a family. There was no middle class.

“In the ancient world, you were relatively poor or filthy rich, there’s very little in-between,” says Longenecker, author of “Engaging Economics: New Testament Scenarios and Early Christian Reception.”

The New Testament is full of parables where Jesus actually condemns the rich and praises the poor, Longenecker says. In the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus actually curses the rich, he says.

“The only way you can make Jesus into a rich man is by advocating torturous interpretations and by being wholly naive historically,” Longenecker says.

Anderson, the Arizona pastor, doesn’t buy that argument. He says the church has actually been damaged by teaching that Jesus was poor. God wants his followers to be rich, not for selfish gain, but to help others in need and spread the gospel.

When he first preached that Jesus wasn’t poor to his church, Anderson says he “ruffled some feathers.”

Now, he says, his church has 9,000 members and a global ministry.

“That’s so pathetic, to say that Jesus was struggling alone in the dust and dirt,” Anderson says. “That just makes no sense whatsoever. He was constantly in a state of wealth.”

SINGAPORE, Dec 21 (IPS) – To activists more accustomed to working against Burma’s military junta than with it, any engagement with the recalcitrant regime will amount to nothing. But to 2001 Nobel Prize winner Josepth Stiglitz, it is a window of opportunity for a country that has known only poverty and repression.

Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz (left) and U.N. ESCAP executive secretary Noeleen Heyzer (right).

At a press conference organised here Monday by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Stiglitz expressed optimism over the prospects for change in Burma’s rural economy. “In general, there is the hope that this is the moment of change for the country,” Stiglitz said.

The former chief economist of the World Bank was in Burma last week to meet with the state’s Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Maj Gen Htay Oo and National Development Minister Soe Tha. He was part of a mission organised by ESCAP aimed at assessing and improving Burma’s rural economy.

ESCAP held a wide-ranging dialogue with the South-east Asian state to boost the country’s agricultural sector and to help it reclaim its status as the rice bowl of Asia. It was a “moment of hope,” said Stiglitz.

“This is the moment of change for the country,” opined the noted economist. “And it would be a mistake to miss this moment.”

But some are sceptical about the changes that Stiglitz and ESCAP expect to bring to a country still ruled by a regime notorious for its oppression and secrecy. “The same as the junta’s sucker bait,” charged one irate member of the audience, as he marched up to Stiglitz after the conference. The colloquial phrase suggests a scheme to deceive the ignorant.

To some observers, however, it is precisely this softer, non-confrontational approach that has seen ESCAP make some headway toward improving the economic conditions of the rural poor in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Some 75 percent of the country’s estimated 57 million people live in rural areas and make up the largest slice of the country’s poor. Malnutrition is rampant and affects over a third of the country’s children.

Burma is still reeling from the effects of Cyclone Nargis, which tore through the rice-growing Irrawaddy Delta in May last year, killing more than 140,000 people.

“The effects of a cyclone last long after the cyclone itself,” said Stiglitz, adding that disaster had devastated the credit system in Burma, affected the supply of fertilisers, and destroyed the livestock.

The long-term impacts of the disaster combined with the effects of the global economic crisis and climate change on Burma have put the country in an even more precarious state. Thus, Stiglitz believes this is an appropriate time for the United Nations regional body, headed by Dr Noeleen Heyzer, to engage with one of Asia’s most oppressive regimes to hasten the country’s development.

“Even a country that is not integrated in the global economy is affected by the global recession,” said Stiglitz. There is increased realisation within the regime that “the world is changing, and you have to change even if nothing else is going on,” he added.

“It is my hope these ideas and analysis will open a new space for policy discussion and a further deepening of our development partnership,” Heyzer said at the event held in Burma’s administrative capital, Naypidaw.

“These development objectives can only be achieved through the successful engagement of local experts and people who know what is happening on the ground. This development partnership, requested by the Government of Myanmar, provides a unique platform for eminent international scholars and local researchers to exchange experiences and ideas with government agencies and civil society,” Heyzer added.

Based on his talks with farmers during his visit to Burma, Stiglitz identified the high cost of credit in the rural areas, with interest rates of at least 10 percent a month, as one of the issues Burma will have to overcome.

“Irrigation has increased the potential for productivity, but because many could not get credit to buy fertiliser and for hydro-electricity, the full potential could not be reached,” he said.

He urged the Burmese government to promote access to appropriate agricultural financing, to boost access to seeds and fertilizers as well as spending on health and education, and create well-paid jobs in rural infrastructure construction in order to stimulate development and raise incomes and spending.

“If you don’t renew your human capital, it depreciates, just as fiscal capital depreciates,” Stiglitz said as he urged the country to do more to bridge the demographic gaps in education in the country.

Stiglitz also noted that well-functioning institutions were critical to success, and that Burma could learn from the mistakes of other resource-rich countries. “Revenues from oil and gas can open up a new era, if used well. If not, then valuable opportunities will be squandered,” he said.

“Economics and politics cannot be separated,” Stiglitz added. “For Myanmar to take a role on the world stage and to achieve true stability and security there must be widespread participation and inclusive processes. This is the only way forward for Myanmar.”

STRASBOURG/ROME – THE European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Italian schools should remove crucifixes from classrooms, sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.

‘This is an abhorrent ruling,’ said Rocco Buttiglione, a former culture minister who helped write papal encyclicals. ‘It must be rejected with firmness. Italy has its culture, its traditions and its history. Those who come among us must understand and accept this culture and this history,’ he said.

The court ruling, which Italy said it would appeal, said crucifixes on school walls, a common sight that is part of every Italian’s life, could disturb children who were not Christians.

Italy has been in the throes of national debate on how to deal with a growing population of immigrants, mostly Muslims, and the court sentence is likely to become another battle cry for the centre-right government’s policy to restrict newcomers.

The Vatican spokesman said he would not comment until he knew more about the ruling but Italy’s powerful bishops’ conference said the ruling ‘evokes sadness and bewilderment’.

Members of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government bristled, weighing in with words such as ’shameful”, ‘offensive”, ‘absurd,’ “unacceptable,’ and ‘pagan’. — REUTERS

But I can already see the “foreigners-shouldn’t-meddle-in-Singapore-politics” arguments coming in. And I know at least a handful of Singaporeans who dislike Chee because he seems determined to “paint a bad picture of Singapore to foreigners”.

Perhaps it is not our culture to wash dirty linen in public. Or really? Explain Stomp, that disgusting governement-controlled web portal, the pinnacle of public linen-washing. Then again, who else will listen? Definitely not our own government, who last week revealed that they will only engage citizens on existing government platforms i.e. REACH (who is doing such a hopeless job in engaging citizens, you wonder if they really want you to be involved, or merely put up a show that they want you to be involved).

A government’s role is to serve the people. Well, apparently not this government. How else do you explain the power inequality between the government and us “mere mortals“? I am sick of having to bow down and beg for what should be a given in the first place. If for nothing else, that is a good reason to celebrate Chee’s success — again — in reaching the international media.

SINGAPORE (AFP) — The leader of a Singapore opposition party, jailed numerous times for defying local protest laws and for other offences, has posted a video message asking for US President Barack Obama’s support.

Chee Soon Juan, secretary general of the Singapore Democratic Party, posted his “message to President Obama” on the video sharing website YouTube, where he called Obama’s Tuesday inauguration “an occasion of great moment.”

Chee expressed hope that the United States “will pay more attention to the human rights abuses of the Singapore government and take positive steps to help Singapore join the community of democracies.”

Chee, dressed in a dark suit and a tie, sat at a desk to deliver the message lasting more than five minutes.

He said his party was especially encouraged by what Obama, the first black president of the United States, has said about human rights.

“Under your leadership I look forward to a world that is freer, more democratic and more just,” said Chee.

He is one of the few Singaporeans who have publicly spoken against Singapore’s People’s Action Party, which has ruled since 1959.

Since independence in 1965, Singapore has grown from a Third World country to an Asian economic powerhouse. But critics say this has come at a price, in the form of restrictions on freedom of speech and political activity.

The ruling party has all but two of the 84 elected seats in parliament, and the opposition’s complaints include a lack of access to mainstream media in the country.

Except for a park that serves as a designated area for limited free speech, it is illegal to hold a public gathering of five or more people in Singapore without a police permit.

Singapore’s leaders say tough laws against dissent and other political activity are necessary to ensure the stability which has helped the city-state achieve economic success.

The government has said allegations that Singapore fails to meet international standards for political and human rights are without substance.

Take away hope, convince yourself that you are the master of your own destiny, yada-yada-yada. All well and good. Until shit hits the fan, and you realise you are powerless. But, oh no, there isn’t a greater supreme being to turn to. God doesn’t exist, remember? Then what? Go jump in front of the bus?

What exactly do these people gain from trying to “convert” others to Atheism anyway?

ROME (Reuters) – Italian atheists have lost a bid to run “no God” advertisements on city buses after strong opposition from conservative political parties, a member of the group said on Saturday.

The ads reading “The bad news is that God doesn’t exist. The good news is that you don’t need him” were to have been put on buses in the northern city of Genoa, home to the Catholic cardinal who is head of the Italian Bishops Conference.

The mock-up was ready and the contract was sent to the group for signing but the publicity agency changed its mind and said the ad could not run it because it violated an ethics in advertising code, according to Giorgio Villella of The Italian Union of Atheists and Rationalist Agnostics (UAAR).

“Right-wing politicians criticized us ferociously,” Villella said by telephone from the group’s base, adding that at least one bus driver in Genoa said he would refuse to drive a “no God” bus.

“It’s strange that in a country where ads depicting near-naked women wearing skimpy lingerie is permitted on buses that we can’t run ads about atheism,” Villella said.

Villella said the group’s lawyers would likely file an appeal to a court to overturn the decision and that the group would try to run the ads in other Italian cities.

Atheists in Barcelona, London and Washington have already run “no God” ads on city buses.

2008 marks the year JBJ passed on. A true Singaporean hero who fought every step of the way for democracy. “Come, walk with me!” he said.

The lighting was terrible; the audio system left much to be desired. But for the small group of less than 100 gathered at Speakers’ Corner in Singapore, there cannot be a more fulfilling way to welcome the new year.

Don’t miss the video at the end of this post!

Dr Chee Soon Juan and Chee Siok Chin serving up Democracy Dogs and Freedom Fries.

Except I suspect even the half-mad pirate has more brains than to dally in these murky waters in my flooded room.

Rascal had ripped a water pipe off the floor. What type of dog destroys a reinforced PVC pipe? Apparently Rascal is no Beverly Hills Chihuahua. And he was eager to prove it.

I was tempted to shove the pipe down his throat. But you don’t mess with a dog like that. So I did the next best thing: I called the plumber.

“Yes, hi, I need a plumber.”

“Ok,” replied a gruff voice.

“Erm.. Ok..” What do you say to a monosyllabic man who wields a wrench for a living? Probably less than you would to a dog who can tear a pipe off the floor. “Do you need my address?”

“Ok,” the voice said again. As I was about to rattle off my postal code, he continued: “But first, you have to get 100,000 people to sign a petition for me to fix your pipe.”

“What? You need 100,000 what??” I started to wonder if I was getting seasick, with all that brownish water sloshing about my ankles. “Why do you need 100,000 signatures to fix a bloody pipe?”

“I need to know you really want change,” he replied, matter-of-factly. “I don’t need to [do this]. I have enough money and I lead a simple life. I travel by bus and MRT even though I can afford a car. So what’s the point? I don’t need this kind of trouble.”

“I will only do it if enough people want me to lead. If Singaporeans want change, they must have a stake in it and show their commitment by putting down their names. I cannot do this without strong support,” he adds.

That has got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard since, well, forever.

I hung up, thinking where in the world I was going to get 100,000 people to care whether my pipe gets fixed.

For that matter, why would 100,000 Singaporeans care if Tan Kin Lian runs for president? Why should we? After all, he is as likely to succeed where Ong Teng Cheong failed in overcoming the hegemonic machinery as Rascal is likely to ever turn into a well-behaved showdog: virtually impossible.

Even if Tan does become president, 100,000 people will be disappointed to find their efforts have merely contributed to electing yet another president who makes but a few public appearances each year to wave at us. It’s not Tan’s fault: it simply takes more than one man – even as president – to make a change.

Forget 100,000 signatures, Tan only needs 100. Bah, all right, make that 10. If Tan Kin Lian can gather just 10 capable Singaporeans committed to making a change, he might be in for a shout. Instead of the presidential elections, this Singaporean Ocean’s 11 can mount a serious challenge at the general elections.

Remember: 100,000 will do wonders for the ego, but just 10 could make a true difference. Sparta only needed 300 men, why the hell do we need a hundred thousand? We are a pragmatic bunch. Show us an opposition team that is more credible than a motley crew of Kangaroo t-shirt activists, and then you’ll have yourself more than 100,000 supporters faster than Rascal can run with the tail between his legs when I screamed at him like a banshee on heat.

Otherwise, I’ll just have to keep swimming in the shit while the plumber acts like he’s some bigwig former CEO of a multi-million dollar company.

Hold your breath while I go play Pirates of the Caribbean with my dog. It might take 100,000 page views to convince me to keep writing.

I’m Not One Of Those ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ Christians
By Janet Cosgrove \ The Onion

Everybody has this image of “crazy Christians” based on what they hear in the media, but it’s just not true. Most Christians are normal, decent folks. We don’t all blindly follow a bunch of outdated biblical tenets or go all fanatical about every bit of dogma. What I’m trying to say is, don’t let the actions of a vocal few color your perceptions about what the majority of us are like.

Like me. I may be a Christian, but it’s not like I’m one of those wacko “love your neighbor as yourself ” types.

God forbid!

I’m here to tell you there are lots of Christians who aren’t anything like the preconceived notions you may have. We’re not all into “turning the other cheek.” We don’t spend our days committing random acts of kindness for no credit. And although we believe that the moral precepts in the Book of Leviticus are the infallible word of God, it doesn’t mean we’re all obsessed with extremist notions like “righteousness” and “justice.”

My faith in the Lord is about the pure, simple values: raising children right, saying grace at the table, strictly forbidding those who are Methodists or Presbyterians from receiving communion because their beliefs are heresies, and curing homosexuals. That’s all. Just the core beliefs. You won’t see me going on some frothy-mouthed tirade about being a comfort to the downtrodden.

I’m a normal Midwestern housewife. I believe in the basic teachings of the Bible and the church. Divorce is forbidden. A woman is to be an obedient subordinate to the male head of the household. If a man lieth down with another man, they shall be taken out and killed. Things everybody can agree on, like the miracle of glossolalia that occurred during Pentecost, when the Apostles were visited by the Holy Spirit, who took the form of cloven tongues of fire hovering just above their heads. You know, basic common sense stuff.

But that doesn’t mean I think people should, like, forgive the sins of those who trespass against them or anything weird like that.

We’re not all “Jesus Freaks” who run around screaming about how everyone should “Judge not lest ye be judged,” whine “Blessed are the meek” all the time, or drone on and on about how we’re all equal in the eyes of God! Some of us are just trying to be good, honest folks who believe the unbaptized will roam the Earth for ages without the comfort of God’s love when Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior returns on Judgment Day to whisk the righteous off to heaven.

Now, granted, there are some Christians on the lunatic fringe who take their beliefs a little too far. Take my coworker Karen, for example. She’s way off the deep end when it comes to religion: going down to the homeless shelter to volunteer once a month, donating money to the poor, visiting elderly shut-ins with the Meals on Wheels program—you name it!

But believe me, we’re not all that way. The people in my church, for the most part, are perfectly ordinary Americans like you and me. They believe in the simple old-fashioned traditions—Christmas, Easter, the slow and deliberate takeover of more and more county school boards to get the political power necessary to ban evolution from textbooks statewide. That sort of thing.

We oppose gay marriage as an abomination against the laws of God and America, we’re against gun control, and we fervently and unwaveringly believe that the Jews, Muslims, and all on earth who are not born-again Pentecostalists are possessed by Satan and should be treated as such.

When it comes down to it, all we want is to see every single member of the human race convert to our religion or else be condemned by a jealous and wrathful God to suffer an eternity of agony and torture in the Lake of Fire!

I hope I’ve helped set the record straight, and I wish you all a very nice day! God bless you!

My initial thought was: “What the…? Someone’s daughter is going to be taken away from her? Oh no!” It took a few seconds for the word “abuse” to register in my brain. And when it finally did, I could not resist reading the story.

Apparently, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NPSCC) has caught up to Jean, a mother of a 4-year-old girl named Nakai. Jean writes:

First thing in the morning my 4 year old daughter normally says to me, “I am going to be a good girl today mummy”. When she says this she really means it, and I can see how she longs to finish even just one day in her life without doing anything wrong. However my daughter knows as well as I do that within at the least an hour of saying she is going to be good, that promise will be broken…  So we have a problem, and this is an everyday battle. The problem is sin. I never taught my daughter to sin. This is because she, and as well as the rest of the human race have inherited a sinful nature from Adam. From the moment we are conceived we are sinners, Pslam 57:5. We are born with a desire to sin. We are all born God hating and evil.

Wow. Telling a little girl every day that she has sinned; that she has done wrong, that she is a sinner, that she is evil. And we wonder, 20 years down the road, how a beautiful young woman could turn out to be so screwed up emotionally and mentally. Because YOU made it so. Yes, you, who are supposed to protect and nurture her.

And if reading this post on her blog left me shaken, reading the comments on Word and Verse sent shivers up my spine.

Here are some examples:

What in the world? How dare they? I’m furious!!! May God punish the soul who picked up the phone to call the NSPCC?

More amazing is the sheer number of folks who read their own stuff between the lines and twist what Jean said ….never seen so many straw men in my life.

Sure, what’s next? Calling your child naughty and mischievous will soon be child abuse too?

She’s just stating the truth, and sadly, you just can’t handle it.

What the..? No, seriously. What??? This cannot be serious. I am not sure what God meant for us, but it is certainly not this. Then again, it’s not entirely Jean’s fault. It’s what she has been taught, by her church, presumably. It’s the same thing these other commentators believe. And that scares me even more.

Is this Christianity? It’s definitely not how I know it to be!

I will be praying, not for Jean to keep her daughter by her side, but for her to realise the horrors she is inflicting on poor Nakai.

I’m getting increasing peeved with health minister Khaw Boon Wan, who has accumulated, in my mind, three strikes in recent times to his name.

Strike 1: he suggested sending the aged in our population, who were uncared for, to live in a village in Batam, Indonesia. Say what? In the subsequent uproar, he claimed to have been misunderstood and misquoted by the media. After all, he said, he was a staunch Buddhist who believes in filial piety.

Right. What, we wonder was his original meaning? Between ‘land is expensive’ and ‘Johore, Batam and Bintan’, we can’t think of anything else that he could mean. for the record, here is what the “good” man said:

“My personal view is, our land is expensive. But we have nearby neighbours in Johore, Batam and Bintan. The elderly want to reach their doctors within half to one hour. So retirement villages in neighbouring countries is possible, barring the cross-border hassle. It is best to find cheap land on short leases.”

Srike 2: following a string of organ trading cases in Singapore, including the high profile case where the CK Tang chairman was charged and convicted for buying a kidney, Khaw proposes the legalization of organ trading.

Brilliant. Money can truly buy you anything in Singapore eh? The donation of one’s organs is a free act of charity, and should not be submitted to the “logic of the market,” says Pope Benedict XVI. Never mind that this opens the door for the poor to be tempted, or even coerced, into selling their body parts. After all, who cares about the poor; it’s only the elite that matter. Bah.

Strike 3: he is currently toying with the idea of legalizing euthanasia in Singapore. Of course, the Catholic Church and MUIS, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore, have voiced opposition to this proposal.

Wow. This is not a debate on human rights. We don’t have the right to murder another human being, and we certainly do not have the right to kill ourselves. Some call it ‘mercy killing’, pointing to the suffering and citing euthanasia as a humane way to make a dignified exit.

No prizes for guessing what God thinks.

Yes, the ageing population is a key problem facing our society. But I don’t think shipping our old folks off to an island, or allowing them to kill themselves, are plausible solutions!

To have intelligent leaders is essential, but inadequate. We also need stuff like integrity, morality, ethics, and principles. More than academic and corporate success, we need leaders who know what is right, and are willing to stand by it even if it means they risk losing their jobs.

Do men like these actually exist? Yes. Former president, the late Mr Ong Teng Cheong, is an example.

But others, like Khaw, are an embarrassment to the PAP. And it’s about time someone bats them out of the political ballpark.