Helen Haines and the Australian Heart

The attack on independent MP Helen Haines outside her electorate office in Wangaratta has shocked the nation. Scripture reserves the word outrage for sins that wound not just one person but a whole community, and an attack on an elected representative is exactly that kind of wound. It has rightly prompted a national conversation about the increasingly toxic nature of our political discourse.

Commentators have rightly called for greater civility, less inflammatory rhetoric, and an end to the outrage culture that dominates social media. We need to learn how to disagree without demonising one another. Those calls deserve our full support.

But I wonder whether Christianity has something deeper to contribute to this conversation?

Let's begin with Jesus, who teaches that our words reveal what is happening in our hearts.

He made this point in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:21–22, he takes the commandment against murder and redirects our attention: "You have heard that it was said, you shall not murder. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Anyone who says to another person, you fool", he warns, 'will be in danger of the fire of hell."

Now, a cruel word and a car driven at a person are not the same thing, and Jesus never says they are. Nor is he banning anger. Jesus himself was angry at hypocrisy and at the traders in the temple, yet he never laid a hand on anyone. His point is about where violence begins. The seeds of destructive behaviour germinate in our hearts long before they become visible in our actions. Proverbs says that fury is overwhelming (27:4), and the Hebrew word there literally means a flood. Outrage is anger that has burst its banks. Murder is contempt grown to full height.

That's an uncomfortable thought. It moves the problem from out there to in here.

It's easy to condemn politicians' hateful rhetoric or the cruelty of anonymous social media commentators. It costs us nothing. But how often do we secretly enjoy seeing someone we disagree with humiliated? Aristotle noticed that ὕβρις (hubris), the Greek word the New Testament uses for outrage, differs from ordinary anger in exactly this way. Ordinary anger is painful. Outrage carries a rush of pleasure. How often do we watch a politician stumble ("please explain" Pauline Hanson, "suppository of all wisdom" Tony Abbott, "Have you got Tourette's or something?" Anthony Albanese) and feel that flicker of satisfaction? How often do we dismiss people with different political convictions as stupid, ignorant or morally inferior?

We might never threaten anyone. But contempt shapes how we see other human beings. It teaches us to see a person only as a position. It trains us to hear an argument and assume the worst motive. Over time, the people on the other side stop being neighbours and become a category.

Perhaps that's the deeper problem with our increasingly polarised culture. We're moving from disagreement over ideas to despising the messenger.

Sin is a disorder of the human heart. We become curved in on ourselves. We put ourselves at the centre and measure everyone else by how they serve or threaten us. From that centre, the person who disagrees with me becomes an obstacle to be removed.

This is why calls for civility, good as they are, can only take us so far. Civility manages the symptoms. It teaches us to speak more carefully while leaving the contempt underneath untouched. Jesus is after the thing underneath. He wants new hearts.

The good news is that Jesus offers a cure.

The prophet Ezekiel spoke of a God who would remove the heart of stone from his people and give them a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). Jesus came to do exactly that. The old rule of an eye for an eye limited revenge. Jesus went further and set retaliation aside altogether (Matthew 5:38–39). Then he lived it. An outraged crowd shouted for his crucifixion, and on the cross he bore the full weight of human contempt, including ours, and answered it with forgiveness. Father, forgive them, he prayed, for they do not know what they are doing. The one person with every right to despise his enemies chose instead to die for them.

That changes how we, his followers, should see people. If Christ died for the person I disagree with, I cannot treat them as disposable. If God has been patient with me, I have no grounds to hold anyone else in contempt. Jesus presses further still. He tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44), not just tolerate them, but love them.

None of this means Christians go soft on truth. We will still argue, vote, campaign and disagree. But we do so as people who have been shown mercy, and who know how badly we need it ourselves. That knowledge takes the sneer out of our voice before we speak a single word.

Australia is right to want a kinder public conversation. We should pray for Helen Haines and her family, and we should back every effort to lower the temperature of our politics.

And we should also be honest about how far the problem reaches. The rot has spread far beyond Parliament House and social media. It's in the way ordinary people like you and me have learned to see those who think differently.

Civility is a good start, but it isn't the destination. What Australia ultimately needs is a change of heart. No commentator can legislate that, and no algorithm can deliver it. It's the work of God, and it begins with each of us asking him to do it in us.