“How good is God?”
Some might take that question as a philosophical inquiry about the existence of evil in a world supposedly ruled by a merciful deity.
Australians, however, may recognise the banal “daggy dad” speech pattern of former prime minister Scott Morrison.
In Plans for Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness, “how good is God?” is not a question, it’s a rhetorical preamble to a book that uses crucial political issues and personal anecdotes as mere springboards to rapturous praise of the Christian faith.
The recent news stories about the book understandably focused on Morrison seeking medical help for anxiety, but the overwhelming theme of this lumbering tome is the omniscient, omnipotent omnipresence of God in Morrison’s life.
Morrison talks to God, and God talks back.
Plans for Your Good is not written for Morrison’s “quiet Australians”. It’s not written for Australians at all.
This is a book written for American evangelical Christians, published by Thomas Nelson, a self-described “world leading publisher and provider of Christian content” in Nashville, Tennessee.
“We live in Australia in a place called ‘the Shire’,” Morrison gently explains to these readers. “In Australia, and especially in the Shire, when we want to say how excited or happy we are about something or someone, we turn it into a rhetorical question.
“We might say, ‘how good are the Sharks?’ after my local National Rugby League team has had a great win, or ‘how good is Jen?’ or just ‘how good?’”
He painstakingly explains the Australian term “pile on”, how the parliamentary system works, the history of colonisation and the significance of the Cronulla riots.
He quotes Winston Churchill saying, “Love me, love my dog, and if you don’t love my dog you damn well can’t love me” – except he, or his editors, removed the “damn well”.
Sure, there are nuggets for the political junkies. He clears up that whole misunderstanding with French president Emmanuel Macron over the submarines, and lays out his tough position on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s “neo-Marxist mission”.
But there’s more scripture than statecraft.
Morrison reveals that when he’s on his own, he likes to have an out-loud conversation with God. “Where are you, God?” he asked, when life as the nation’s leader got tough. “Things got pretty heated between me and God as I poured my heart out,” he writes.
But then he sensed God’s response, brought to him via Jesus. “So Scott, your enemies are getting the better of you, are they? You think you have been unfairly treated, have you?” Jesus said.
“You may have heard about some of my experiences … my friends deserted me … my people lied about me … I was betrayed by one of my closest friends.
“Scott, I get it. I’ve been there and worse, and you know what? I did it all for you, because I really love you … just follow me. Just believe in me and trust me.”
Morrison is quite impressed by this divine chitchat. “Now that’s a comeback!” he writes.
Morrison did not hide his religiosity when he was in office – he declared his belief in miracles, invited the media into his pentecostal church, and described practising “laying on of hands” on unsuspecting recipients.
But the depth and intimacy of the relationship still comes as a surprise. He talks about his conversations with God, the permeation of God through his life, and the need to obey God.
The man of the ministerial meshuffle, the man with the pandemic plan, the man who signed us up to Aukus, believes in total obedience to God – the God that talks to him.
“The path of our future is known only to God … as for what lies ahead, we can only trust and obey, because that’s what true faith does,” he writes, and illustrates the nature of this obedience through the parable of Moses parting the Red Sea.
When Morrison had to decide whether to put his hand up for the top job, he prayed, he read God’s Word, and then he “had to make the final decision of faith through obedience”.
“I had to decide whether to step up or step off … I decided that the path of obedience was to step up. So I raised my staff and walked toward the sea,” he writes.
And after raising his staff he hit the phones to enlist his parliamentary colleagues to vote for him in the leadership ballot.
He has already introduced readers to Moses as the guy who called out to God for help parting the Red Sea. “I mean, cut Moses some slack … come on, God, get behind the guy,” he writes, before explaining the need for faith, again.
On the day he became the prime minister, he sent a text to his pastor friends: “Staff is up, I am walking toward the sea.”
And then: “I suspect Moses liked his staff. It was probably very familiar to him, just like my favorite cap is to me. Let me tell you about my cap.”
(He wore a surf cap he liked better than an Akubra that he thought made him look “like a poser”, then someone gave him an even better cap, he writes.)
A lecture on the superiority of Christianity by a powerful man would not be complete without a warning that Christianity is under threat, and Morrison does not turn the other cheek when slapped with what he calls a growing hostility towards Jesus.
“We should continue to be bold in the confession of our faith and not be intimidated by the secularization of our society that will increasingly oppress Christians,” he writes, and: “We must be as wary as serpents and innocent as doves.
“There is so much pressure on Christians today to just adopt the secular ‘morality’ of our current age. We must resist … I believe there are things going on in Western society that we, as a church, can learn from to make ourselves a more faithful bride to our Bridegroom, Jesus.”
The other threat is Satan, he says, the “principalities and powers” that are often behind attacks such as the campaign to “humiliate, discredit, and cancel” him.
Morrison writes that he and Jen have “the strongest foundation for any marriage, a threefold cord between us and God”.
“In the Holy Spirit we have a housemate who indwells us. God has paid the mortgage and moved in.”
He can connect directly with God through prayer, he writes, in a sacred and holy space.
“In some ways, it is like when I was prime minister and I would go to meet the Queen,” he writes – quite the promotion for both monarch and palace.
He is also clear about what the Holy Trinity is not. “Jesus is not a Build-A-Bear,” he writes. And “God is not a vending machine”.
What else did we learn about Morrison from his book?
He has a knack for stating the obvious: “Our time on earth, when set against eternity, is quite short.”
He has a remarkable capacity for awe: “It blows my mind that God exists outside of time … God sees our present circumstances from a future he has already secured, while at the same time building our resilience in our past so we can deal with our present. Wow. The Marvel multiverse has nothing on that.”
He’s capable of fleeting moments of endearing honesty: “The male contribution to the IVF process was also a bit awkward.”
He can seamlessly blend daggy dad with devout dad: “When you receive the patience, intimacy, and love of your wife or husband, praise God … for a great curry on a Saturday night with all the family around the table, I praise God.”
And he has a lingering fondness for old-skool Batman: “In the 1970s, my Batman wore purple tights and black underwear over the top.”
How good.
