TEACHING CHILDREN TO HATE

Apologies that I missed doing this blog last week. But a picture in today’s Herald Sun made sure I was motivated to write my Answers for Audacity for this week.

The annual May Day march in Melbourne, organised by unions, included children wearing t-shirts that read “F--- Tony Abbott” or “Abbott Hater”.

In what moral universe is that OK?

There are many heated political and cultural issues. I fully appreciate, of course, that people get angry. But don’t we all want to live in a decent, respectful society? Don’t we want our children to grow up in a society where people can state a case and make a point intelligently, without obscenity and hatred? Have we discarded the old mantra that you “play the ball” not “play the man”?

The problem, of course, is that we are a media driven society now. And the media aren’t interested in nice, peaceful arguments. They would rather report obscenity than decency. If you want your protest to get air time, you have to do something shocking.

And as for the organisers of the march this past weekend – shame, shame, shame! John Roskam, from the Institute of Public Affairs, was reported as saying: “The idea that children are being used to push offensive views reveals the depths of (sic) which the Left in Australia will dive.”

How sad that we have come to this.

 

IMPRESSIONS OF EASTER 2014

It’s Easter Monday, a public holiday in Australia. And my thoughts today are probably getting a bit away from the Audacity theme. Easter 2014 has been a mixed bag.

The media always gives some time to reporting the Christian emphasis of Easter, especially Good Friday and Easter Sunday. But, if you’re a church that wants more than a token exposure, it’s a good idea to preach a sermon about something that’s currently high on the agenda of mainstream Australia. One Queensland Church focused on the problem of domestic violence. Others focus on ongoing problems of poverty or bullying.

The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne ran their most successful Good Friday appeal ever this year, raising almost seventeen million dollars. Would such an appeal work as well on any other day? Who knows? It may be that sacrificially giving to those who are suffering is a subtle outworking of the Christian heritage that we have as a nation.

There have also been suggestions that next year the AFL will abandon it’s long-standing policy of refusing to stage football matches on Good Friday. I think there’s a general willingness to respect the day but it seems inevitable that commercial interests will encroach still further into Australian spirituality. We have become an extremely secular nation that gives the occasional nod to Christianity but then gets on with the “real” purpose of life – the pursuit of happiness through financial gain.

Perhaps, in the end, the ultimate audacity of a godless society is not to rail against Christian culture and ritual but to marginalise it, to divert attention away from it, and to condescend to it like the party hostess who finds an unwanted acquaintance and quips: “Oh, are you still here?”

Yes, Christians are still here. And we are an important part of this nation. We will continue to testify to the death and resurrection of Christ because that is the only real hope for life that anyone can possess.

THE DEBATE ABOUT CRE IN VICTORIAN SCHOOLS

When you visit the religionsinschools.com website, you are immediately confronted with a picture of Fr Bob McGuire and a quote: “At school, there ought to be a general religious curriculum to introduce children to the ideas and motivations and rituals – in a word the ethos – of all the religions.”

Really? All the religions? Must schoolchildren be taught about Sikhism, Shinto, Scientology, Mormonism, Bahai, Unification Church, etc, etc? And what about all the multiple sects of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism? Sorry, Fr Bob, there literally wouldn’t be time for anything else in the school curriculum.

Christianity is different because a basic understanding of Christianity is necessary for understanding Australia and the values that have made us what we are.

Back to the FIRIS (Fairness In Religion In Schools) website. Another headline quote comes from Cathy Byrne who, among other things, a sociology and ethics teacher. She says: “It is time to expel dogma, discimination and special privileges and to teach children to think critically about religious ideas and ethical worldviews.”

Well, Cathy, the CRE program in Victoria is certainly not pushing dogma. Volunteer teachers cop a lot of very unfair flak on this website and others like it. They are actually trained to say “Christians believe…” rather than to dogmatically assert their own beliefs.

Jacqui Tomlins, another freelance writer, says: “Why would you expose your kids to unqualified volunteers teaching a curriculum you know very little about? And do you really believe they’re teaching acceptance, tolerance and open-mindedness – or something else entirely?”

Well Jacqui, you can always opt your own children out of the CRE program. But the truth is that CRE helps to open the minds of children to things that are otherwise kept from them in school. Do you really think that your lack of “acceptance, tolerance and open-mindedness” when it comes to CRE is helping to broaden the minds of children. I would suggest you are doing the exact opposite.

The battle over religion in schools is dangerous because it’s being fought on the wrong issues. A truly comprehensive, multicultural approach to religion in schools is impossible but, I repeat, Christianity deserves special privilege in Australian schools because Christianity has been by far the dominant religion ever since the First Fleet.

If you are a Christian reading this, I urge you to pray for Access Ministries, the provider of CRE in Victoria. They really are facing extraordinary pressure at the moment, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of schools appreciate the half-hour CRE class each week and the volunteers who work so hard to do it well.

EMERGING AUDACITY IN CHRISTIANITY

OK, so it’s not only non-Christian heathens who come out with outlandish stuff. Some Christians are very good at it. Hey, I might even be accused of audacious writing myself at times.

Today, I’m sharing a book review that I did back before Christmas last year. I have no doubt that the author is a very sincere Christian but… well, the review can speak for itself.

BOOK REVIEW – THY KINGDOM CONNECTED - Dwight J. Friesen

I understand that some people will love this book, especially those who are following in the footsteps of Emergent Village. The back cover contains the following gems of praise: "a treasure chest of insights" "for a unified and healthy body of Christ in a connected world", "the first contextual ecclesiology for a networked world."

But, to be honest, this book just annoyed me.

It didn't help that the author goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid using masculine pronouns for God. 'Godself' instead of 'himself' just seems too ridiculous to be cute. But this is only the beginning. A whole new vocabulary is invented to make subtle nuances seem like radical new thinking. Language becomes almost fluid. For the purpose of "reimagining the body of the institutional church" a local church becomes a "Christ-Common". For the purpose of "reimagining the soul of the local church", gatherings of Christians become "Christ-Clusters"."Chaordic life" is a strangely positive term for the interaction of chaos and order in the Kingdom of God. Pastors become "network ecologists", whose main task is "stewarding" a network of nodes and links. Even worse, relationships between different things are often described in terms of a "dance".

The occasional stories in this book that are intended to demonstrate the practicalities of these supposedly new paradigms are unconvincing. There are plenty of churches doing innovative things in their communities but they don't talk a foreign language amongst themselves.

Ultimately, I think the message of this book is that networks are everywhere in nature so the Kingdom of God is learning to function more connectively, with "flattened leadership".

Without its excessive verbosity, this book could have been much shorter, and possibly more helpful.

THE AUDACITY OF MODERN SCIENCE

Some of the most audacious (and ridiculous) comments are coming these days from otherwise respected scientists and academics. I’ve just finished reading a 2013 book called “The Science Delusion” by Curtis White. Here’s a part of my review of the book.

“From a Christian perspective, one may cheer from the sidelines as one anti-faith mentality is thoroughly and wittingly dismembered, but then, we must shake our heads at the stubborn refusal to consider the possibility of a Creator God as the answer to the supposedly unanswerable questions posed in the book. Art is put forward as our best approach to the unknowable metaphysical aspects of life but, ironically, in a discussion of what it means to be an "I", the author fails to even mention the God who identified Himself to Moses as ‘I Am’
 

This book strongly challenges the philosophical self-limitations of science and the deterministic idea that we are all basically just very complex machines, but it fails to break free of a different kind of self-limitation, the idea that humanity must find its own way to explain its own existence without reference to God. The author accuses science of ruling out any knowledge outside its own but, really, he does the same thing by ruling out, in effect, the knowledge of God.”

So the book is a rather audacious attack on the audacity of science. (How could I resist doing a blog about that?!? I hope I didn’t come across as audacious in my review!)

To be clear, we are talking here about neuroscientists, evolutionists and molecular biologists who have been making grandiose claims that their scientific disciplines are on the verge of explaining things like human thought, creativity and personality. Richard Dawkins talks about ‘memes’, which are basically the cultural equivalent to genes. In other words, we inherit a set of genes that determine how tall we will be, what colour eyes we will have, etc, and we also inherit a set of views and values (memes) that determine our culture and personality. Why is this audacious? Because it’s presented as fact (or so highly probable that we may as well present it as fact) when it’s actually nothing more than sheer imagination.

The great obsession of science is to be able to explain everything – yes, literally everything! But, by ignoring the evidence for God (eg, in the brilliant natural design that we see everywhere in the world) on the basis that they will someday be able to explain these things without reference to God, these modern scientists only demonstrate their own foolishness.

(By the way, if you can't read the slogan on Dawkins' shirt, it says "RELIGION - together we can find the cure."

THE DEFINING POWER OF A NAME

I was astonished to read an online article this week about names that are banned in Saudi Arabia. The list of mostly Arabic-sounding names also included ‘foreign’ names like Linda, Alice, Elaine and Sandy.

Then, yesterday, there was an article in the Herald Sun about names that have been rejected in Victoria by Births, Deaths and Marriages. To be honest, I hadn’t even realised that B,D & M had authority to do that.

But it makes sense.

What parents, in their right minds, would name their child Lord or Prince or Fireman Sam? Sadly, one of the responsibilities of government continues to be protecting citizens from their own stupidity.

Other names that B,D & M rejected, as listed in the article, were Glory Hallelujah New Covernant (sic), Princess Diana and Anarchy. One couple apparently wanted their baby to be called Wonderful Beautiful. Umm, really? That might be ok when the child is a babe in arms, but how is that child going to cope at school, not to mention later in life?

Reminds me of that old Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue”.

Some really bad names were given to babies in Bible times as well. Think Ichabod, which meant ‘no glory’ or Beriah, which meant ‘in trouble’, or Nabal, which meant ‘fool’ or ‘dolt’. Isaiah called one of his sons Mahershalalhashbaz, which meant ‘they hasten to the booty, swift to the prey’. But we can’t blame Isaiah for that one; he was only obeying God. The boy with the unfortunate name was a prophetic message to the nation.

Jacob’s wife, Rachel, dying in childbirth, wanted to call the child Benoni, which means ‘son of my sorrow’. Fortunately for the newborn boy, his father overruled, calling him Benjamin, 'son of my right hand'.

The audacious, ridiculous names that some parents give their children only serves to highlight the importance of our names. Parents should consider several factors in naming their children. Pretentious, unconventional or embarrassing names, even sometimes names with absurd spellings, can become a heavy burden, leading, in the worst cases, to resentment and alienation.

Good names, however, help to create a positive identity. The message of the Gospel is uniquely expressed in Isaiah 62:2 – “The Gentiles shall see your righteousness, And all kings your glory. You shall be called by a new name, Which the mouth of the LORD will name.”

Jesus offers a new life and a new identity. When we become ‘Christian’, we have a whole new name to live up to.

CELEBRITY AUDACITY

Why does our society continue to celebrate celebrities who indulge in bold, audacious behaviour? Gossip columns in magazines and online are filled with stories and pictures about shocking things said and done by famous people. It might be a near-naked selfie, a cheeky outfit, a nasty tweet about another celebrity or an overly extravagant purchase. Things hardly worth viewing or reading about but millions of people will.

These things are audacious in the sense that they are brash and daring. They push the limits of decency. Music videos, by artists who want to be noticed, commonly feature scandalous and outrageous behaviour. It’s not new. Think Madonna, the Rolling Stones, or even Elvis in years gone by. But I think it’s definitely getting worse.

So what’s the problem here? And how can the Christian Church compete?

The following quote from my book “Our Culture in Christ”, p80, seems relevant.

“When it comes to appealing to the flesh, the world will always do a much better job than the church. If we’re trying to grab the attention of the world through worldly methods, we will run up against a major problem. The world entertains by sexual titillation, innuendo, violence, crudity and profanity, all things that do not belong in Christian witness… Christian [TV] programmers may be creative geniuses but there is a line that they cannot cross because… well… they are Christian… The problem is not that the Christian program is boring. The problem is that so many of the people we are hoping to reach are steeped in sin.

“Non-Christian songwriters and performers are not limited in their lyrics, their stage effects or their off-stage antics. They will always be more interesting to unsaved people. They routinely do and say things that would cause Christian artists to lose their ministries.”

So the problem is that Western society glorifies sin rather than honouring integrity and righteousness. The audacious behaviour of celebrities will not stop as long as there is a market for their shock tactics. We can’t change that but we can certainly pray!

ps: Apologies that this blog didn’t come out last week. I had a week’s holiday in beautiful Tasmania.