A Letter from Victoria in our Time of Crisis
Updated 24 July 2020
We are thankful for the thoughts and prayers of many around the nation for Victoria at this time. While this letter is not from every single Victorian, we write to give many the opportunity to express the true cry of their hearts. We acknowledge, and send our blessings and love to persons who will disagree with some or all of what follows. We, as
the authors, are a small number of individuals of Indigenous, European and Asian ancestry: we write in the name of no organisation, only in the name of Jesus.
To our Brothers and Sisters in every State and Territory of Australia:
The people of Victoria are beautiful, diverse, and greatly cherished by God. He is reaching out in blessing to each Victorian at this time. The authors of this message believe God has an amazing destiny for Australia, and for our own state.
As those in lockdown in our capital don masks in an effort to combat the virus, we share with you a truth which many of us are only beginning to discover. Namely, that the virus we face today is not the biggest crisis we face. Our loving God knows it is the lesser of two evils. For the root of our crisis in Victoria is our own pride. As a state, while Victorians have in general been hard-working and good citizens, our own pride has contributed to our crisis.
In the public life of our state:
• In our pride, we have turned from recognising and honouring the God who made us, and we fail to give him thanks.
• In our search for security, we have broken solidarity with the leader of this nation, and with the rest of Australia, in our making of agreements with overseas powers.
• In our pride, we have turned from God’s love and supernatural knowledge, and we have
embraced questionable ideologies, agendas and theories — even those which have never been proven — which we knew in our hearts, were contrary to God’s path for us.
• In our pride, we have taken God out of our schools, our government, our political parties, our policies, our legal system, our hospitals, our media, and have often even removed God from our families.
• In our pride, injustices have been committed against, and among, the different racial groups in our state, often spilling over to elsewhere in Australia.
• In our pride, we have held judgement and offence in our hearts against those around Australia with whom we have disagreed.
• While our Victorian flag bears the symbol of the cross in several forms, in our pride, we deleted the teaching of Jesus from our schools and universities. We have set aside the wisdom of God, yet made education an industry, building our state on selling human knowledge.
• Priding ourselves in providing safety for our children, we have taught questionable ideas to our children about their very own identities. We failed to teach our children their precious identity as children of God, and their heaven-appointed callings and destinies, instead teaching that humanity is ultimately a product of random chance. We exported our own ideologies, bringing pain and confusion to children right around the nation.
• In our pride, we did not honour or embrace men and women of God, whom your states received with joy.
• We prided ourselves on women’s rights, yet we allowed the most profound variety of harm to them as part of our health services, telling ourselves it was the progressive way. Policies like ours have been spreading around the nation ever since, bringing pain to many.
• While priding ourselves in our families, we have abused the covenant of marriage. We have pushed marriage to the margin of our culture, and we have abused God’s gift of sexuality. We have removed fathers from expressing Godly, loving and humble leadership in their own families, and removed children from servant-hearted parents.
• While priding ourselves in combating bullying and abuse, we ourselves have chased down upright men and women, ruining their reputations and livelihoods. In doing so, we have caused grief to many around Australia and elsewhere.
• In our pride, we have devalued God’s gift of life and failed to teach the reality of eternity,
allowing a culture of death. In our pride, we put the timing of death into the hands of humans: allowing us to sacrifice both the elderly, and many of the next generation in the womb.
While not every individual Victorian has done every one of these things, many of us have watched silently while these have happened. We call all Victorians to stand in together in admitting our own pride.
Our pride justified dehumanising and controlling our first nations people for our own means. Our pride underlies the policies and structures in our political and social systems which have perpetuated dishonour and disinheritance through this nation’s history. This continues to impact our first nations people today, and so in seeking to follow God’s ways, we invite all Australians to seek God’s strategies for recognition and restitution to bring this into right order.
Our brothers and sisters throughout Australia, please do not make a light thing of our pride. For our pride has contributed to profound pain and grief to many children, men and women in your states and territories. We ask that you forgive Victoria for the hurt caused to you and your children by Victorians, and for the ideologies that came via here. We, and those who have joined with this message, express deep sorrow at the path we, as a state, have been treading.
We call ourselves and our fellow Australians to listen for, and to heed the voice of God. In falling to our knees before Jesus, we know that he is loving and compassionate, full of mercy and forgiveness. We know that our God is forgiving, and none of the fruits of our pride are outside of the forgiveness of God. For the dear price of Victoria’s pride and arrogance has already been paid in full by Jesus, paid with his blood when humanity put him to death two thousand years ago.
To all Australians, if it is the cry of your own heart, we invite you to join us in praying:
Father God, We stand as brothers and sisters with Victoria at this time. We weep at the effects of the virus in Australia, and especially in Victoria. We believe you have the power to deliver Victoria and our nation. We weep at the effects of our own human pride in Victoria and in our own states and territories.
We believe that you, our creator, can change our hearts, so we turn to you, trusting in your mercy. We ask for your Spirit to speak into our hearts and to guide our lives, our families, and our nation into your way of thankfulness, faith, and honouring the name of God. May this time be the time our nation turns back to you as our creator and God. We ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Do not look for a list of signatories or organisations standing behind this letter, for that is not the point. Rather than listening to the opinions of any organisation, please pause to listen for what God is saying to your heart. In our pride, we, as the State of Victoria, for too long have followed the opinions of men, rather than the voice of God. Please do not follow us in our attitude of pride. We are ordinary Victorians calling on you to humbly know the loving God who made us, and to resolve to worship him with thankfulness.
We recognise that many Australians may not be sure what to think of this message, or feel they do not agree. If you feel this is you, we invite you to listen for the spirit of God in your own heart: for Jesus promises that he will send his spirit to those who seek and ask. If you feel the voice of Jesus leading you to share this message with others, we invite you to share this letter in any manner, language or forum that he leads you.
We are trusting that God will save us from this current crisis, and may the recognition go to him alone. It is Jesus who holds our destiny. May God be with you.
This message was written by a small team of Victorians in Melbourne and elsewhere, in the name of Jesus.
If you wish to partner with Victoria in praying for our state, we recommend the following website, “Will you pray with us for Victoria?” http://partnersinprayer.org.au/pray-for-victoria
This edition has been updated with some text received from contributors since the original release of 20 July 2020.
Facebook page with printable .png version: https://www.facebook.com/Letter-from-Victoria-106631137808422
Letter as a Facebook Post: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=106723231132546&id=106631137808422
