The core request Jesus makes to God in his prayer is ‘hallowed be your name.’ The word, ‘hallow’, means ‘to make holy’. The request for God’s name to ‘be hallowed’ or ‘to be made holy’, implies that right now God’s name is ‘not holy’, and we – as the people of God – are invited to ‘make God’s name holy’.

The truth is that God has a bad reputation because bad things are going down in God’s world. I’m not alone in thinking we are moving into a ‘New Dark Age.’

Jacques Attali, who was a professor of economics at the Polytechnique in Paris, and who was appointed as the president of the European Bank for Re-construction and Development based in London, says:

‘By 2050, 8 billion people will populate the earth. More than two-thirds will live in the poorest countries. Seeking to escape their desperate fate, millions will attempt to leave behind their misery to seek a decent life elsewhere. But neither the Pacific nor the European spheres will accept the majority of poor nomads.  They will close their borders to immigrants. Quotas will be erected and re-strictions imposed. (Renewed) social norms will ostracize foreigners. Like the fortified cities of the Middle Ages, the centres of privilege will construct barriers of all kinds, trying to protect their wealth.’[i]

As I look around, I can see signs the ‘New Dark Age’ has begun. Some of the features of emerging neo-feudalism that I observe include:

1. The emergence of powerful, unelected and/or unaccountable leaders.

2. These ‘lords’ offer protection in return for subservience and services.

3. People are given a choice – they are either ‘for’ or ‘against’ these ‘lords’.

4. Those people who are ‘for’ these ‘lords’ live their lives as their ‘vassals’.

5. ‘Vassals’ wait on the ‘lords’, live off the crumbs that fall from their lords’

‘tables’, and find refuge – in times of danger – inside their lords’ ‘castles’.

6. Those people who are ‘against’ these ‘lords’ are branded as ‘infidels’.

7. The ‘lords’ wipe out ‘infidels’ either by leaving them to starve ‘outside

their gates’-  in times of hunger – or by slaughtering them in ‘crusades’.

8. There are no universal basic human rights. The only ‘right’ is ‘might.

9. ‘Civilisation’ is the private preserve of these ‘lords’ and their ‘vassals’.

10. And they justify this iniquitous ‘civilisation’ in the name of religion!

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as the National Security Advisor in the Carter administration, supervised the beginning of the Afghan war and credits himself for having bought down the Soviet system, in the true spirit of the son of a Polish aristocrat that he is, says: ‘The three imperatives of geopolitical strategy are to maintain security dependence among the vassals, keep tributaries pliant, and keep the barbarians from coming together.’ [ii]

Australian sociologist, Ghassan Hage, says ‘not so long ago the state was co-mmitted to the welfare of everyone within its borders.’ We even called it ‘the welfare state’. ‘That is no longer so.’ [iii] ‘We seem to be reverting to neo-feudal times, when the boundaries of civilisation no longer coincide with the boundaries of the nation, but the boundaries of upper class society’ [iv] Hage says ‘there are no universal rights – only the privilege of the elite.’ [v] He says ‘we are increasing-ly witnessing the rise of a culture that combines a siege (castle) and warring (crusade) mentality; by necessity it emphasizes the exclusion (and/or) erad-ication of the potentially threatening other.’[vi] He says that ‘in each country now – there are first world elites and third-world threats to the elites. In this neo-feudal age the challenge is not how to integrate the marginalised but how to rid ourselves of these third-world (threats – not just the terrorists, but the refugees and refugee claimants we have on our doorstep.)’  [vii]

We are beginning to build more and more of what we euphemistically call ‘gated communities’. Citadels guarded by walls, infra-red cameras, heat-sensitive alarms and private security companies. Purpose-built – as the developer of Sanctuary Cove – put it: ‘to keep the (human) cockroaches out!’ And there is some evidence to indicate that the previous government tried to turn the whole of the continent in Australia into a ‘gated community’ like Sanctuary Cove. Millions of dollars of government funds – dedicated to foreign aid – have been spent on what the previous government called its ‘Pacific Solution’ – a flotilla of heavily-armed patrols dedicated to preventing asylum seekers from ever setting foot upon our shore. It is a policy that is neither ‘pacific’, nor a ‘solution’. It was simply meant ‘to keep the “illegal” “queue-jumping” cockroaches out!’

Inside the walls of our well-protected pleasure dome we enjoy a life of un-paralleled luxury. As part of the top twenty per cent of the world’s population, we have more than eighty per cent of the world’s total income. In the last decade of the last century more of us became millionaires than during any decade in history. And when it comes to our comparative level of income, we are so well off by world standards – even those on the bottom of our society, living on social security – are in the top twenty per cent of the global population- with incomparable access to world-class social, educational, and medical services.

Outside the ramparts of these fortresses of safety and security, others are condemned en masse to an existence characterised by cycles of increasing degrees of deprivation and violence. The bottom twenty per cent of the world’s population try to survive on less than one and a half per cent of the world’s in-come. So more than twenty-five thousand people die every day of every week of every year – simply because they cannot access their fair share of the world’s income! In desperation, many sell their labour for a pittance. More than two hundred and fifty million children work for as little as twenty-five cents a day. As  a last resort, many even have to sell their bodies. More than a million children are forced into prostitution every year. Millions of kids, under the age of fifteen, are developing HIV and dying of AIDS. Life is literally ‘hell on earth’.

More than one hundred and twenty million people were killed in wars during the twentieth century. Currently more than twenty million people are fleeing from carnage and ruin. Some beg for entry to our country – but in Australia we take less than five thousand a year! Some beg for charity – but apart from giving generously for aid in the occasional spectacular disaster on our doorstep – like the recent tsunami appeal – Aussies give on average less than five dollar a year!

And where is God in all this? Well, if you believe the two most famous ‘God-fearing leaders’ of our times, God is only making things go from bad to worse.

On 9-11-2001, Osama Bin Laden ordered an attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center at the heart of the American Empire. As the world looked on in astonishment  Bin Laden cried ‘Here is America struck by God Almighty in one of its vital organs, so that its greatest buildings are destroyed.’ [viii] In retaliation George W. Bush ordered an attack on Osama Bin Laden in Afghan-istan – and also an attack on Saddam Hussein in Iraq (who did not have any weapons of mass destruction, or anything to do with the 9-11attack, but had tried to kill Bush senior.) Bush claimed ‘God told me to strike al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike art Saddam, which I did.’[ix] Gods got a bad reputation because God gets blamed for the violence on both sides.

In spite of what Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush have said, Jesus’ prayer protests loudly that God’s will is not being done on earth as it is in heaven!

In fact Jesus’ prayer insists that God’s damaged reputation will only ever be able to be truly restored when God’s will is really ‘done on earth – as it is in heaven!’