The Earth Is the Lord’s: A Christian Ontology of Land, Race, and Resurrection

A Canonical Theology of Welcome to Country from Genesis to Revelation

Dear friends,

Welcome to Country—Welcome to Christ!

Years ago, I wrote that we owe respect to traditional landowners because God gave them their land. Like Israel was told to honour the Moabites and Edomites because YHWH had assigned them territory, so we too should honour those who first walked this land.

But I now see more.

Welcome to Country isn’t just cultural formality—it is an ontological act. It acknowledges a creational entrustment, encoded into people, place, and time. It is not political theatre. It is a kind of general revelation. And for me, as a Christian and a descendant of Bourrakooroo, a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman, it’s personal.

The gospel does not erase culture; it raises it. The resurrection doesn’t bypass creation; it transfigures it. Aboriginal identity, story, and stewardship are not obstacles to the gospel. They are part of the land’s own cry for redemption.

So when a Welcome is given, I now hear more than ceremony. I hear the land groaning. I hear a people remembering. And I hear Christ calling us—not just to acknowledgment, but to resurrection and recommissioning.

We honour elders for their age, rulers for their office, and landholders for their title. But traditional custodians? We honour them for their original entrustment—given by God, sustained through story, and waiting for restoration.

This is not wokeness. It is waking up. It is Genesis. It is Revelation.
And it is time.

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1: Another Election—Time to Go Back onto Facebook

Dear Herbie, Fiona, and all who are reflecting with her,

Thank you for bringing this back to my attention. I’m humbled and grateful that my earlier online reflections during the 2022 Election period windup stayed with you. As you know, what I wrote then was never about politics or tribalism. It was an attempt to start from Scripture and honour the deep structure of reality—the reality that the Bible tells us God made and still sustains, even now.

The passage I referred to was primarily from Deuteronomy 2. In verses 4–5, 9, and 19, God explicitly instructs Israel not to harass or provoke the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites, because He had given them their lands as a possession. These were not Israelite lands, but the inheritance of other peoples—descendants of Esau and Lot—under YHWH’s sovereign decree. The land was sacred because God had spoken.

So yes, Israel was commanded not to dispossess those peoples, even as they were commanded to dispossess others (i.e., the Canaanites). This shows us that divine command doesn’t operate in a vacuum—it’s grounded in God’s distribution of history, inheritance, and moral order.

But I would now go further than I once did—not to contradict myself, but to fulfill what I only saw partially.

What follows is a series of further reflections that have developed in my mind and heart since 2022 when in February of that year I also took to Facebook to share my reflections so that more people (like you) can think about this more!

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2: Aboriginality and Welcome to Country as Ontological Acts

What we call “Welcome to Country” should not be seen merely as cultural performance or symbolic appeasement, nor simply as a justice act to rectify colonialism. It is more than recognition. It is ontology. It is the re-acknowledgement of a creational order, encoded into place, people, story, and spirit.

To receive a Welcome to Country is not to take part in a modern invention. It is to rejoin a ceremony that was already happening—before colonisation, before federation, before the Enlightenment—before even the Torah, in a sense. It is to recognise that the land speaks because God spoke it. That people belong to land not merely by historical accident, but by divine permission—even where such divine permission was not explicitly known, it was implicitly structured by the “things that have been made” (Romans 1:20) and the “law written on their hearts” (Romans 2:14–15).

And this is where General Revelation takes us: not to vague natural theology, but to a creational order in which Aboriginal custodianship, story, and culture—while fallen like all cultures—retain ontological significance as revelatory acts, not merely traditions. They are signs that point to the deeper truth: that land and people and time and story are not neutral, but ordered by the Word of God.

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3: My Grandmother Bourrakooroo and the Recovery of Being

I did not always know this, but I know it now: my grandmother, Bourrakooroo, carried in her name, body, and story a dimension of Being that I had not seen.

To discover this is not to make a claim for status or funding or identity politics. It is to weep. To realise that God had planted in my ancestry a testimony that I did not tend to. I now see that Aboriginality is not just biological or cultural—it is ontological. It is a participation in the Word of God written into the land, not as Scripture, but as parable—as the outward expression of divine action in creation.

My grandmother’s name, passed to me, is now a doorway for repentance, return, and renewed commission. I am not simply a Christian who supports Aboriginal respect. I am an Aboriginal Christian who now sees that the land knows more than we do, because the land remembers what we forget. The land groans (Romans 8:22). It is waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. And that revealing begins when we remember who we are—not only in Christ, but also in creation.

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4: Beyond Critical Theory—The Canonical Shape of Reality

What I am outlining is not Critical Race Theory in Christian clothing. Nor is it just “acknowledgment of country” as PR. What I am describing is Christian Ontology—the belief that God speaks reality into being, and that all created things carry real meaning.

Genesis 1 does not begin with politics. It begins with God speaking light out of darkness, order out of chaos, form out of formlessness. This is not just cosmology. It is ontology. And it is Revelation—General Revelation, but real revelation nonetheless.

This means that the original custodians of this land, including those in Lutruwita (Tasmania), were not just inhabitants. They were appointed lords, in the creational sense. “Lord” does not mean divine—it means entrusted. And that entrustment remains, whether recognised by the state or not. The authority to welcome, to bless, to speak over the land is not derived from democracy. It is derived from Being. From what God has done and continues to do.

To fail to honour this is not just impolite. It is to ignore an act of God.

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5: What We Owe and What We Are

This is why we do not merely “acknowledge” country. We honour it.

We honour the people—not because they are perfect, but because God gave them place. We honour their right to speak over the land—not as priests of another gospel, but as custodians whose calling reflects something creational that we must reckon with.

Just as we honour elders for their age, rulers for their office, parents for their sacrifice, so we honour traditional custodians for their original entrustment.

This is not about relativism. This is about truth—the truth that “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1), and that He assigns boundaries and seasons (Acts 17:26) so that people would seek Him.

The welcome we receive is not a courtesy. It is an echo of a deeper welcome—the welcome of creation itself, when it recognises the image of God walking again upon it.

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6: Resurrection and Recommission—Aboriginality in the New Creation

The gospel does not end with forgiveness. It ends with resurrection.

Resurrection is not the undoing of creation—it is the fulfilment of it. The seed dies, and the body that is raised is not another body, but the same body transfigured. What was sown perishable is raised imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:42). The same is true of people, cultures, and land.

This means that Aboriginal cultures are not bypassed in the New Creation—they are transfigured. They are raised, not erased. The blood of Christ does not wash away culture—it washes away sin. And in so doing, it restores the creature to its Creator, including its memory, its meaning, and its voice.

Therefore, to honour Aboriginal voice is not to canonise tradition, nor to baptise uncritically any cultural form. It is to recognise that, like Israel, Aboriginal nations were meant to be priests of the land, even if they did not know the full gospel. Now, in Christ, those who were once far off are brought near—not just for reconciliation, but for recommissioning.

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7: From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22—The Canonical Ontology of Land

Genesis 1 begins with land being formed by the speech of God. Revelation 22 ends with land being healed by the river of life.

In between, we see the tragedy of land being defiled (Leviticus 18:24–28), bought and sold (1 Kings 21), cried over (Jeremiah 4), and redeemed (Isaiah 35). But the land never stops being God's. And God's people never stop being called to steward and not steal, to honour and not usurp.

This is why the final vision of Scripture is not just of saved souls—but of healed nations (Revelation 22:2), kings bringing their glory in (Revelation 21:24), and trees whose leaves are for healing. It is a global, ontological return—not to Eden as myth—but to Eden fulfilled, multiplied, and glorified.

What does this mean for us? That Aboriginal Australia is not a pre-Christian relic. It is a creational appointment, awaiting redemption, renewal, and resurrection in Christ. That the Welcome to Country, in the hands of a believer, could become a prophetic act—a prelude to the return of the King.

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8: Aboriginal Custodianship as Parable of the Kingdom

Jesus taught in parables—earthly stories with heavenly meanings.

So too, creation itself is a parable (Romans 1:20). And Aboriginal culture, story, dance, and ritual, when rightly seen, can function as parables—not replacements for the gospel, but refractions of creational truth, awaiting clarification in Christ.

The corroboree is not the gospel, but it can be a signpost. The smoking ceremony is not the blood of Christ, but it can be a parable of cleansing. The stories of spirit beings and ancestral tracks are not the Bible, but they echo a deeper truth: that meaning is embedded in the land, that history is sacred, and that the past speaks.

To honour these rightly is not syncretism. It is what Paul did at Mars Hill (Acts 17:22–31). He saw the altar to the unknown god—not as a rival, but as a bridge. He didn’t affirm their idolatry. He reinterpreted their hunger. And he proclaimed the One in whom “we live and move and have our being” (v.28).

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9: General Revelation and the Deep Memory of Land

Romans 2:14–15 says that the Gentiles “who do not have the law” nevertheless “do by nature things required by the law.” Why? Because the law is written on their hearts.

This is the deep structure of General Revelation: the law of Being imprinted on the conscience, the land, the body. Aboriginal law—the Dreaming, the land codes, the sacred places—may not be Torah, but they are not arbitrary either. They arise from participation in the order of things.

This is not to say every tradition is righteous. But it is to say that every culture bears witness—a witness that condemns and convicts, but also prepares the way.

This is why we must not reduce Welcome to Country to a box-ticking exercise. It is a moment that can become holy—if the hearers have ears to hear.

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10: From Blindness to Sight—Repentance as Ontological Awakening

The modern mind repents of actions. The Christian mind repents of unbelief. But the renewed, resurrected mind repents of ontological blindness—the deep refusal to see the world as it truly is: as spoken by God, filled with meaning, and awaiting glory.

To ignore the land is to ignore God’s voice. To erase a people is to erase a parable. To participate in the benefits of colonisation while remaining numb to the spiritual dislocation of its legacy is not just injustice—it is epistemological sin. A denial of how things are, and were, and shall be.

So repentance here is not political appeasement. It is spiritual awakening. It is the moment when the scales fall from the eyes (Acts 9:18), and we realise that Christ is not just Lord of our souls, but Lord of space, history, land, and lineage. To honour Aboriginal people and country, then, is not “wokeness”—it is waking up to the order of God.

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11: The Ethics of the Ontological Turn

What follows from this awakening?

Acknowledgment must become Alignment
Not just a gesture of recognition, but an intentional reorientation of our speech and posture in light of how God has acted in history.

Respect must become Relationality
You cannot honour custodians in the abstract. The gospel leads to communion, not category. It demands that we listen, walk with, and share bread—as Jesus did with those on the road to Emmaus.

Land must be re-understood as Liturgical
Church buildings are not the only sacred spaces. All creation groans and waits. Therefore, we must learn to gather in such a way that reflects the land’s longing and joins its cry for liberation.

Discipleship must include Deep Time and Deep Place
Our spiritual formation must be localised. We must disciple Australians into the story of this land—not as an add-on to the gospel, but as the context in which the gospel comes.

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12: A Christian Response to Welcome to Country

When we hear a Welcome to Country, what can we do as Christians?

Listen with reverence. Not as a formality, but as the beginning of a sermon written in General Revelation.

Receive it as grace. You are being granted entry—not into neutral space, but into story-soaked land. Grace has already begun before the gospel is preached.

Respond with blessing. Do not let the Welcome be the final word. Offer back a blessing in Jesus’ name. Not to overwrite, but to complete. Not to dominate, but to testify.

Disciple others into understanding. Teach your children, your churches, your peers that this is not a ceremony for others—it is a moment of revelation for all.

This, then, is the Christian Welcome to Country: to receive it not only with respect, but with prophetic vision, recognising in it the echoes of Eden, the ache of exile, and the hope of return.

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13: My Aboriginality and the Collapse of the Secular Frame

For me, this is not abstract.

I am a Tasmanian Aboriginal man—Joseph Rex Towns, descendant of Bourrakooroo, confirmed by those who know. But this confirmation is not the end of my journey. It is the undoing of the split between sacred and secular, between biblical and ancestral, between theology and country.

I now see that the line dividing my Aboriginality and my Christianity was a false line—a colonial construct masquerading as doctrinal purity.

My Aboriginality is not a competing identity. It is part of my ontology, my creational rootedness, my place in the great mosaic of the nations who will bring their glory into the City (Revelation 21:26).

It is not relativism to say this. It is eschatology. It is Revelation 22. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations—including this one.

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14: Toward a Christian Doctrine of Land in Australia

Here, then, is what I would propose as the beginning of a Christian doctrine of land in this country:

• God is the giver of land, and He does so not arbitrarily, but according to His redemptive purposes in history.

• Land is never neutral—it is always relational, revelatory, and responsive (Leviticus 18:28; Romans 8:22).

• Aboriginal occupation of the land was a providential entrustment, and the attempt to erase this occupation is an ontological sin, even if forgiven.

• Colonial displacement cannot be spiritually repaired through policy alone. It must be met with repentance, restitution, and reconciliation—all through the lens of Christ and the cross.

• The gospel does not erase identity, but re-commissions it (cf. Acts 2: all nations, all tongues, none deleted).

• Aboriginal Christians are not cultural tokens. We are eschatological signs—witnesses to the raising of what was buried, the remembering of what was erased, the healing of what was desecrated.

The land will not be healed without the people being honoured. And the people will not be fully honoured without Christ. But Christ does not come to overwrite—He comes to fulfil, restore, and resurrect.

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15: The Spirit and the Bride—They Say “Come”

The Welcome to Country, when heard through Christian ears, is no longer a preliminary ceremony. It becomes a call and response. It begins with the voice of the land and its keepers saying, “Come. Be received.” And it ends with the Church, the Bride, saying with the Spirit: “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:17, 20).

This is the full circle. The welcome of the people into country becomes a sign of the greater welcome of God into His world. And the healing of memory, identity, land, and voice becomes part of the Church’s participation in God’s final work.

So let us listen. Let us receive. Let us respond. And let us welcome—both the first custodians of the land, and the final King who returns to claim it.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Come, all creation groans.

Come, all of creation anew.

Come, Bourrakooroo.

Come, all who were here before we knew.

Come, all who will be here when we are gone to await.

Await the Spirit and the Bride, that Come.