Couldn't Help Noticing

A Matter of Time

What is the root of all sin?

Traditional answers include idolatry, pride, selfishness and greed. These answers are very similar to each other as the differences may be more semantics than anything else. I recently found an answer which puts a slightly different spin on the answer to the above question.

Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar writes in A Theology of History (36-37):

What tells us more than anything else that Jesus' mode of time is indeed real is the fact that he does not anticipate the will of the Father. He does not do that precise thing which we try to do when we sin, which is to break out of time, within which are contained God's dispositions for us, in order to arrogate to ourselves a sort of eternity, to ‘take the long view’ and ‘make sure of things.’ ... God intended man to have all good, but in his, God?s, time; and therefore all disobedience, all sin, consists essentially of breaking out of time. ... Hence the importance of patience in the New Testament, which becomes the basic constituent of Christianity, more central even than humility; the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end, not to transcend one?s own limitations, not to force the issues by playing the hero or the titan, but to practice the virtue that lies beyond heroism, the meekness of the lamb which is led. [emphasis added]

God does intend to give us all good things—in his time. Unfortunately when we try to bring that time into the present, we demonstrate greatly our mistrust of God's goodness and timing.

Church motto

I'm currently reading An Enigmatic Life: David Broughton Knox—Father of Contemporary Sydney Anglicanism, a new biography of the man who was Principal of Moore College from 1959–1985 by Marcia Cameron. (For those interested, Matthias Media is also about to release the third volume of DBK's Selected Works.)

Broughton Knox's father, David Knox, was the minister in the Parish of Mill Hill. And I couldn't help noticing this comment in relation to his church in the early 1900's:

Morning and evening services had excellent attendances, there was regular open-air work and a Sunday school. It was a time of spiritual growth. David Knox's rather unusual motto for the parish was ‘A living dog is better than a dead lion’ (Ecclesiastes 9:4).

Now there's a motto you don't very often see these days out the front of the parish on church signs!

I don’t

Australia doesn't seem to be very interested in marriage. Channel Ten seemed all fired up about its new reality TV series, Yasmin's Getting Married, which documented a 29-year-old recruitment manager's quest to find a groom in nine weeks. Then, at its debut, the show's ratings were so low, the network decided to can it, leaving the bride-to-be jilted well before she even reached the altar.

Perhaps the figures indicate a growing cynicism over relationships and the possibility of attaining marital bliss. How many in the audience at home thought privately that Yasmin's Getting Married would soon be followed by Yasmin's Getting a Divorce? People split up all the time; look at Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, Paul McCartney and Heather Mills.

So the most surprising thing about www.i-dont.com.au is that there aren't more sites like it. Advertising itself as “Australia's divorce directory” and emblazoned with a logo of a cupid that's been shot in the back, the site's ‘About Us’ section proclaims,

The i-dont.com.au directory service makes it easier for all Australians to access information and services that can help them with all the different aspects of their relationship breakdown. This is a genuine community service to all parties involved.

What kind of ‘help’ are we talking about?

Well, amongst the articles on federal legislation, family law, shared parenting, and working out your finances and new living arrangements, you can also find yourself some decent short-term accommodation, buy i-dont.com.au merchandise (T-shirts and caps!) and join their online dating service to find yourself a new partner. (You can even participate in their polls and let them know your preferred method of meeting “new friends”.)

To be fair, there is a small (with great emphasis on the word ‘small’) amount of material about staying together and trying to make it work. And it's nice that there are articles on how to help your kids adjust, and what the government is doing to ensure equal visitation rights for fathers. But the overwhelming bulk of the content caters for couples who have already decided to separate and are working through the details of how to get through the proceedings as quickly and as easily as possible. There is very little acknowledgement of the pain and upheaval that broken relationships can cause, and almost nothing about how the victims of broken relationships can deal with the aftermath.

The negative effects of divorce—particularly on children—have been documented repeatedly. If the people behind i-dont.com.au were really seeking to provide “a genuine community service”, they would be promoting marriage counsellors, not divorce lawyers, and relationship advice, not financial tips.

Beware that bandwagon

I love a bandwagon as much as the next man. There's a certain satisfaction to be gained from jumping on board the happy caravan as it passes by, to the cheers and back-slapping of your new fellow passengers. And as you join in shouting to the onlookers that they should jump on board too, there's a delicious feeling of belonging to the righteous brotherhood of the truly aware.

The trouble with bandwagons, of course, is that their gaudy and attractive colours can mask the fact that those on board don?t really know where they are going, or why they really got on board in the first place. Usually all it takes is a few memorable slogans, some authoritative sounding stats, a human interest story, and enough people repeating all of the above and nodding in approval, and most people are happy to jump on board.

Christians are by no means immune. In fact, I've noticed in recent years that we are quite susceptible to various social policy bandwagons that become popular in the mainstream media. We want to be engaged with political and social issues, and bring a Christian perspective to bear. We want to be seen to care. And so we clamber aboard, but not always before checking the facts and thinking through the implications as carefully as we should.

A recent case in point is the “Evangelical Climate Initiative” (ECI), a statement issued by a large group of (mostly American) evangelicals calling for action on global warming. The statement states that according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global temperatures are rising and that human activity is causing “most of the warming”, that the consequences of global warming will be catastrophic and will hit the poor hardest, that Christians are obligated to speak out on behalf of these poor who will be most affected, and that the urgent and immediate need is for all levels of society to take drastic action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

All of which sounds straightforwardly obvious and true, and who could fail to jump on board? Answer: another bunch of (mostly American) evangelicals calling themselves the “Interfaith Stewardship Alliance” (ISA) who have issued a detailed response to the ECI, calling into question or refuting most of their key assumptions, statements and suggested actions.

It turns out, for example, that the oft-quoted IPCC statements about the extent of global warming and the contribution of human activity are taken from the executive summary of the IPCC report, which was written by government negotiators not the scientists themselves. In the report itself, the scientists are far more cautious about the data and the conclusions that can be drawn.

The ISA response goes on to argue (rather convincingly) that whatever the extent of global warming, and whatever consequences actually do end up occurring, implementing the Kyoto protocol will make almost no measurable dent in the problem, and that any drastic action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions would hurt the world's poor far more than the likely effects of climate change.

It's a bandwagon-wrecking response, if the ISA's information and arguments are sound. I would like to do some further reading and investigating before making up my mind, but at least one lesson is clear. Evangelicals: beware passing bandwagons.

Tony Blair gets it wrong

Earlier this month, on August 1, British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed a body known as the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, and put to them an interesting argument about Muslim terrorism. He suggested that if only we could win the war against extremist Muslims at the level of values, all would be well in the world—although reading what he actually said, you could be forgiven for thinking he only means the bits of the Western world that agree with him. You can find an edited version of what he said here.

There are many problems with what he said.

Leaving aside the observation that the “World Affairs Council” sounds like something put together by Dr No in an old James Bond movie, we might ask other questions. What values is Mr Blair talking about? Wouldn't some in the Middle East argue back that one value they were fairly keen on was justice? And that some in the West had rather failed to recognize this key Islamic value?

Not only so, but it is patently clear that in many cases, Western values have indeed been thoroughly inculcated into numbers of the people who later became Muslim extremists.

You would have thought that Tony Blair, of all people, was aware of this. A “Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London on 7th July 2005”, was published in May 2006 by the British House of Commons. You can download the full report here.

This report looked into the motivation of the four young suicide bombers responsible for these attacks. Three of the young men were British citizens. They were born to Pakistani immigrants, educated in secular UK schools, and received government and family support (The fourth was an immigrant from Jamaica who had converted to Islam). These extremists knew what they were supposed to believe, and found that it was wanting. They observed Western values. They learned Western values. They imbibed these values—one of the bombers even worked for a British welfare agency at one time. Then they rejected them.

But Tony Blair's views on the values war can be discounted further. The root problem is far more than just a brain deficiency in that essential nutrient, wishy-washy Western secularism—a bit like not getting enough cod-liver oil in your diet. The reason extremist Muslims carry out a London or a Bali bombing is theological. Their god reveals his power in force, destruction and warfare.

Now the Christian God reveals his power in judgement too, that's true. But it is a judgement that lands with full force on his only son, Jesus Christ. In this way, the greatest demonstration of God's power is a propitiatory sacrifice of life that leads not to more death, but to eternal life for all who put their trust in the Lord Jesus. The only person terrorised by Jesus' death was Satan.

If the true battle is theological, then the debate we need to have is a debate about the nature of God. One obvious way of doing this is face-to-face, sending individual Christians who were prepared to speak about God's love into Muslim countries.

I doubt, however, that government support of Christian missionaries, operating through evangelistic aid agencies in the Middle East, is likely to happen in the near future. So there's one good reason for Christians to support mission to Muslims by praying, giving and going. This is one that the government is not going to do for us.