Poirot,

So, the question is, is righteous something that can be bestowed or something that comes from a confidence in ones belief and conduct being right?

Righteousness (other than self righteousness) comes through faith in God who raised Christ from the dead. An exchange takes place. Christ took upon His body our sin in order that we can receive His righteousness. Self righteousness is simply measuring one human being against another. A self righteousness person will never receive God's grace and righteousness because they don't think they need it. They refuse to see the evil in their own life and are foolish enough to think somehow they are righteous enough to be accepted by God by their own merits or character. Without Christ one is left with nothing but self righteousness.

Someone who has received the righteousness of God will at very least call evil evil and good good. Someone who hasn't will always be content in their own self righteousness because they are only measuring themselves against others they consider worse than themselves not knowing that all fall hopelessly short of God's laws and standards.

TrashcanMan you ask or state

'Or am I wrong; is living with someone outside of marriage worse in the eyes of your church than killing thousands of innocents?'

I will be the first to admit that the topic of war is not one that any biblical based believers are united on. One major problem with your arguement is that Mr Obama & Mr Ruud/Gillard would more than likely done the exact same thing as Bush/Howard as far as Iraq. If you don't believe that you are naive or deceitful. The UK leader Blair was Labour through and through and proves that point. The horrors of wars always leads to innocent people dying. There is always a tension on whether you should kill people in order to ultimately save lives or not. Also the idea of a legal war is nothing short of a joke. All wars are horrible and whether a corrupt political organisation like the UN calls it legal or not should not matter to any fair minded person.

What Christians do know is that the murder of hundreds of thousands of unborn babies is as bad if not worse than the holocaust. There is no confusion over this. The vast majority of these murders are for convenience sake or in the name of 'women's right'. They also know that leaders who refuse to call adultery and fornication sin are far likely to be less trustworthy as leaders as those who might have failed but at least acknowledge their sinful nature. If people are likely to fornicate and commit adultery they show that they really give stuff all about the families they are ruining. They put their lusts ahead the of the common good of society. While nearly all are guilty of this, to pretend that their is nothing wrong with it is shameful. Putting the knife in a sitting pm a few weeks from election is not the sort of role model I want my children to follow

Someone who has received their self-righteousness because of belief in God will, at very least, not be measuring themselves against others they consider worse than themselves, yet not knowing they fall hopelessly short of philosophy's laws and standards.

runner,

Just because Rudd or whoever might have joined the invasion into Iraq anyway is beside the point.

Howard invaded the country with insufficient reason; hundreds of thousands died.

Howard was then voted back into office, therefore his actions involving Iraq were supported by those who re-elected him. So those Christians who voted for Howard (sorry, I'm assuming you did too) were therefore saying the invasion was ok. (of course, not only Christians voted for him).

This is the reason governments will do these things, because they can win people back over at election time with handouts etc. They are never properly held to account for what they actually do while in goverment, and often take credit (or cop blame) for what they had no control over.

It is these very same Christians, the ones who said the war was a-ok by re-electing Howard, who are now calling for Labor to be booted out of office for the following reasons:
1. Labor aren't tough enough on people fleeing persecution, war etc
2. Julia Gillard lives in a sin and is atheist.
3. We are "worse off under Labor" (because of the GFC? Remember Howard took us into debt to avoid the asian economic crisis in the 90s)
4. Abbott is going to cut the spending (by 0.02percent over 4 years, woopee doo)

So, it is clear to me many Christians pay more heed to the dogma of the church and to their own racial prejudices than they do to the actual teachings of Jesus, who they claim is the son of their god.

TrashcanMan,

You say Christians will vote for Abbott because. I will speak for myself.

1. Labor aren't tough enough on people fleeing persecution, war etc
(wrong. Labour has encouraged people smugglers and caused more deaths in doing so than Howard. I know of Tamils who have been persecuted and have been waiting years to come to Australia legally. Maybe I should suggest to their families they pay a smuggler).

2. Julia Gillard lives in a sin and is atheist. (True)
3. We are "worse off under Labor" (because of the GFC? Remember Howard took us into debt to avoid the asian economic crisis in the 90s) True but this issue would be a decisive issue for me.

4. Abbott is going to cut the spending (by 0.02percent over 4 years, woopee doo) Abbot could not possibly be a worse manager than the current Government, I think Greece would probably do as well as this mob. If it had not been for the previous Government we would be up the creek. This again is a minor issue compared with point 3.

At the end of the day it looks like Ms Gillard will win anyway. Personally I will be disappointed but won't have any trouble accepting the will of the people. Ultimately we will all answer to Someone in a far higher office.

Christians do care,unfortunately there are not enough of us to change the government. O' there are plenty of church goers and pew sitters and men who occupy our pulpits who have no idea of true christianity or salvation. we read about them in our papers almost daily.

But nevertheless God is still in control and he will judge this nation and them accordingly