Couldn't Help Noticing

‘Solving’ Singleness

I was flicking through some old Briefings today, and I came across an article by Paige Benton in Briefing #221/2, ‘Singled out by God for good’. One sentence stood out (probably because it was a pull-quote and in a much bigger font):

It is a cosmic impossibility that anything could be better for me right now than being single.

I had a similar thought the other day, talking to some friends about being single (which I am). People often discuss reasons why some people are married and some aren't. How many times have I heard a variant of the question, “How is it that a nice girl like you hasn't been snatched up yet?”

But I am convinced that the only reason the married women in my church are married, is that God is sovereign. And the only reason I am still single, is that God is sovereign. And, as Paige points out, that's actually the best thing for me at the moment because I know that God is good.

None of this means that it will be easy to be single, but that doesn't change the facts.

(By the way, boys, my number is ... oh, wait, never mind).

Religious hatred law

It didn't cause much of a stir, in fact I missed it altogether at the time. But apparently the Shadow Attorney General in Australia, Labour MP Nicola Roxon, last month announced that it was Labour Party policy to introduce a Federal Racial and Religious Hatred law if they are elected to government on October 9.

(By the way, this type of law is all the rage in Western law-making around the world at the moment.)

According to Ms. Roxon's Press Release (doc file), the law will make it a criminal offence to engage “in public acts that have the intention and likely effect of inciting racial or religious hatred against a person or group”.

This is not as dangerous a law as the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001, under which, as many people will be aware, two Christian pastors are currently being prosecuted for comments they made during a seminar on Islam. That Act is worded much more broadly: “A person must not, on the ground of the religious belief or activity of another person or class of persons, engage in conduct that incites hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, that other person or class of persons.”

Now I'm no expert. So if there are any lawyers out there, could someone please explain to me why the law of criminal (and civil) defamation does not already provide sufficient protection against a person causing other people or groups of people to be shunned, vilified, hated or ridiculed (on any ground, including religious or racial grounds)?

Could it be that the safeguards and defences which the common law of defamation has developed over many years (such as notions of ‘freedom of speech’, ‘truth’ and ‘public interest’), might get in the way of the mission of those zealots of political correctness who insist that we should not be free to critique another person's belief system?

Telemarketers need love too

Are you plagued by annoying telemarketer calls? Yet you may also feel sorry for these poor folks, who have to earn a living making calls no-one wants to receive.

One possibility is to follow the example of one of my friends. He offers to listen to their spiel if he can talk to them for a similar amount of time about the Lord Jesus. At that point he either gets a gospel conversation, or the person hangs up. Ingenious.

Bruce Springsteen, Theologian

As a new, but very enthusiastic convert to the music and lyrics of Bruce Springsteen, I was heartened to notice the most recent edition of Themelios (29:2004) had for its editorial: Bruce Springsteen and the Tragedies of Modern Theology. It's about what the Boss's songs can teach us on the realities of a world marred by sin (and about how he does a better job of it than do the vagaries of some forms of liberal theology).

Take, for example, the last stanza of Springsteen's tragic modern re-telling of the Prodigal Son, in which the destructive effects of sin mean that the narrator's longed-for reunion with his father never eventuates:

My father's house shines hard and bright
It stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling so cold and alone
Shining cross this dark highway where our sins lie
Unatoned.
(My Father's House, Nebraska, 1980)

I for one am glad that Bruce is finally being taken seriously as a theologian.

Give and take

Watching TV last night, I noticed the latest Telstra ad campaign uses the slogan, “When you give, you should receive”. Sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn't it? Fair's fair, and all that. Given the current ‘The most important person in the world: YOU’ flavour of our society, I'm sure many would be quick to agree with Telstra's slogan.

But I wonder how people would react if the slogan was reversed? “When you receive, you should give”. Still perfectly fair, but it doesn't sit as comfortably, does it?