Couldn't Help Noticing

More on anti-vilification and Christians

In various parts of the world, it is becoming more and more difficult to preach the gospel in a way that highlights the differences with other religions. In Victoria, Australia, two pastors have recently been ordered by a court to apologise for explaining what Muslims believe, using the Koran as a basis for doing so. One of the pastors has refused to apologise, saying he would rather risk jail. You can read the story from the pastors' viewpoint.

This letter to the editor of the Melbourne Age made it in earlier this week.

Dear editor,

The anti-religious vilification legislation is an appalling imposition on freedom of speech, and has had the exact opposite effect to the one intended—it has discouraged thoughtful discussion and exacerbated religious disharmony. If I were in Danny Nalliah's position, I would do exactly as he has done and risk the consequences of jail.

Yours sincerely,

The Rev. Gordon Cheng

Successful Parenting part 1

In one of his many best sellers, Steve Biddulph explains why parents put their children down. In The Secret of Happy Children, he suggests three reasons why this might happen (p. 24).

Firstly, “you repeat what was said to you”. Our parents spoke to us in a particular way; we do the same to our children.

Secondly, “you just thought it was the right thing to do?”. By putting our children down, we think we can shame them into being better people.

Thirdly, “You are ‘stressed out’”. We feel tired and grumpy, and our words to our children reflect this.

But significantly for the Christian reader, Biddulph explicitly denies or omits two other possibilities that the Bible teaches. Had he not been so blinded by theory, he might have said, and we would want to add:

Fourthly, “your child is a sinner”. Sometimes we tell them they are behaving badly because, well, they have behaved badly.

Fifthly, “you are a sinner”. We say and do things to our children that we shouldn't, because we are helplessly trapped by our fallen natures.

Of course, these points run completely counter to our natural pride, and our self-help culture that says we can fix our problems by ourselves. The idea of admitting our sin and selfishness is offensive, objectionable, and obnoxious to our arrogant God-rejecting humanity. Do not expect to see this message anytime in a bestseller coming soon to a bookshop near you.

US Gospel Growth

In an online article, ‘God-Lite Doesn't Cut it’ Dave Shiflett notes the decline of many American denominations:

Progressive churches are progressing, it seems, ever closer to oblivion. The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (11,106 churches) has experienced a decline of 11.6 percent over the previous ten years; the United Methodist Church (35,721 churches) was down 6.7 percent; and the Episcopal Church (7,314 churches) lost 5.3 percent of its membership. Also, the United Churches of Christ (5,863 churches) declined 14.8 percent while the American Baptist Churches USA were down 5.7 percent.

His perspective on this decline is the unattractiveness of the “God-lite” theology to many Americans:

One group of theologians has whittled the traditional God down to 30 percent of his original power: He cannot affect the past or future and isn't holding all that many cards in the present. This 30 percent god may not be powerful enough to fix a parking ticket. For many Americans he is certainly not worth rolling out of bed for on Sunday mornings.

By contrast:

The denominations showing growth included the deeply conservative Southern Baptist Convention, a collection of 41,514 churches, whose overall growth rate was 5 percent. The traditionalist Presbyterian Church in America (as opposed the mainline Presbyterian Church U.S.A.) experienced an impressive 42.4 percent increase, while the Christian and Missionary Alliance rose 21.8 percent.

According to Shiflett, the God of these denominations is different:

This God is also a great and perplexing mystery. He brought man into being for reasons unfathomable, and with the full knowledge of what would befall this creature made in His image. There would be endless calamity, murder, and proud disbelief. By their reading man would reject the greatest offering, His Son, who would suffer to an unimaginable degree. Every trial and tear was known at the foundation of time, and still He created and still He came ... This is a serious God. This is not a lodge brother.

To begin to understand how the Southern Baptists avoided going down a ‘God-lite’ path, Al Mohler's article is a useful starting point. Mohler, now a theological leader amongst the Southern Baptists himself, refers to the story of Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler, two of the key players in turning around the Southern Baptist Convention. Mohler notes that:

The hard lessons of experience had taught Pressler and Patterson that symbolic actions would not be sufficient. The Convention had adopted resolutions opposed to theological liberalism in years past, but these had been largely deflected by the denominational machinery.

Patterson, in fact, was pessimistic about his hopes for reform in his denomination:

[He] had observed Baptist controversies for most of his life, and he had seen the Convention's bureaucracy triumph again and again. Nevertheless, Pressler and Patterson, along with a corps of determined pastors and laypersons, were determined to put their reputations and careers on the line to attempt the reformation.

For Christians everywhere struggling to achieve Gospel change and stem the move towards liberalism in their own denominations, Patterson's comments on why he persevered, despite his pessimism, are an encouragement and challenge:

In the final analysis, we did not attempt a reformation movement because we thought it would succeed but because we sincerely believed that we were right about the inerrancy of the Bible and because we did not want to tell our children and grandchildren that we had no courage to stand for our convictions. Above all, the conviction that the continued drift of the Southern Baptist Convention could spell eternal doom for hundreds of thousands of people was the principle compelling motivation.

The ongoing miracle

Whenever a normally secularist newspaper talks about miracles, I figure it's worth trying to point out something about God's hand at work in the world. This (unpublished) was one such attempt:

Dear editor,

Elly Spark refers to the forecast rain and says “It seems like a miracle” (‘Dry, Dry, Dry and then the horizon glistens’, SMH June 8). It is a miracle, Ms Spark. Christians haven't stopped praying for this, and we understand that every moment of creation's sustaining is a miracle of the providence of God.

Yours etc...

Death comes unexpectedly

Lately I've been thinking about death. Specifically, about the way that the world thinks about death.

Tradition and folklore have passed down to us the image of the Grim Reaper—a man (or a skeleton) in a black hooded robe who carries a scythe and pops up unexpectedly at dinner parties à lá Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, “reaping” human mortality like grain (have a look at these cartoons).

Playing around with this idea, in the Discworld series, Terry Pratchett's Death is a Death who is a seven-foot skeleton in a black cowled robe who also carries a scythe. (Once Death decided to go on holiday; he was replaced by a combine harvester.) Death likes curry, is fascinated by humans, rides a horse named Binky and talks like this. Despite the nasty things that are said about him, Death is not cruel; he's just “terribly, terribly good at his job”. There is even a suggestion that he is “on our side”. (See here for more information about the Discworld Death.)

It is natural, then, that Neil Gaiman, in his epic comic series, The Sandman, should take the personification of Death one step further. His Death is a pretty young-looking woman who dresses like a Goth, with a silver ankh around her neck (and sometimes with a top hat on her head), who keeps goldfish (Slim and Wandsworth), loves hot dogs and quoting Mary Poppins. Death is the second-oldest of the Endless siblings. She loves all people and comes to greet them when they die. She also speaks to them when they're born but of course they don't remember. Once every hundred years, Death must take human form and walk the earth for a day to “better understand those to whom she will be the final visitor”. (See here for more information about The Sandman's Death.)

The world likes to humanise death. Death, they say, is nothing to be afraid of. Death is a natural part of life. Would you be scared of meeting death if you knew that the one who comes to take your life actually quite likes you? Wouldn't death be alright if a cute Gothic chick who dresses like a rock star came to escort you into the next realm?

But death, for all its “natural-ness”, is profoundly unnatural and wrong. Even though we know that 100% of all people will die someday, death is still shocking, unexpected and sad.

Unlike the world, the Bible says that death is not our friend. It doesn't look like us, it doesn't act like us, it doesn't like the things that we like and it certainly doesn't love us. It is our enemy. It is our enemy because it is an enemy of God (1 Corinthians 15:26).

One day our enemy will be defeated:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”

(1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

How do you think about death?