Couldn't Help Noticing

Using God’s name

(From Ivor Lowcock, one of our Briefing readers in Stanwell Park, Australia.)

How far has our nation departed from its Christian heritage? A long way if we consider this comment by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki on the Adam Spencer ABC Sydney breakfast radio program on Friday 8 June 2007. Dr Karl told a story in which the pilot of a plane was faced with a difficult landing situation:

I was actually in a plane—a small plane coming from insland NSW—and they invited me up into the cockpit before 9/11, and they said, “Look, it's a bit gusty”—comma—“we might have to drop one wing”. And I didn't know what that meant. And so we were coming in, and then suddenly, we were sort of—a little bit of gusting coming in to land at Mascot—and then suddenly this gust of wind happened and one of the pilots said, “Jesus swearword Christ” ... (Sleek Geek Radio—Shorter Days and Radioactive Ciggies)

Apparently swearwords still need to be cut or edited on the ABC. Yet they don't have a problem with blaspheming the name of the Son of God.

Perhaps we Christians need to protest more often when we hear blasphemy. But at the same time we should keep in mind Peter Jensen's comment in a recent address that we need do so in a gentle manner so that we don't add to the original offence. While I would not recommend the Islamic faith to anyone, I feel we could adopt a little of their acute awareness of any criticism of their ‘god’ so we do not become desensitized.

Progressive or reactionary?

(From John Brownie, one of our Briefing readers in Kouvola, Finland.)

Are you a progressive or a reactionary? You have to be one or the other, says Mona Chollet. In the May 2007 English edition of Le Monde diplomatique she wrote an article entitled ‘France's women lose ground’ with the subtitle ‘Abortion and employment rights at risk’ (subscription required to view the full article). She writes from a left-of-centre feminist perspective which seems to divide society simplistically into the “forces of reaction” and the “[forces] of progress”—as if you have to subscribe to the entirety of the ‘progressive’ agenda to avoid being labelled a reactionary.

The main thrust of the article concerns the erosion of abortion rights in France. It assumes abortion is all about a woman's control of her own body:

As Gelly [a doctor and activist for women's rights] said: ‘Women who seek to justify their decision to have an abortion have internalised the fact that it is more acceptable to invoke the welfare of a non-existent child than that of the woman who already exists’. The wave of feminism may have weakened this priority but it was unable to reverse it.

In other words, ‘progress’ is moving away from the traditional view of looking after the welfare of the child to looking at the welfare of the woman (and treating the child as non-existent).

This same attitude towards abortion is evident when Chollet quotes Gisèle Halimi (a lawyer strongly involved in getting abortion legalized in France in 1972): “Europe's abolition of the death penalty was a step forward for civilisation; we should also guarantee abortion rights, which are fundamental to women's freedom”. That is, while capital punishment is wrong (and therefore progress is served by abolishing it), the killing of an unborn child is not wrong but a fundamental part of women's freedom (and therefore progress is served by upholding a woman's right to abort).

But what about guilt and abortion? Chollet doesn't sweep the idea under the carpet but dismisses it in a rather interesting way:

Women also suffer because of the ideological pressure on them and the hostility they experience. Gelly emphasised that although women experience post-natal depression, a condition with well-defined medical characteristics, ‘no one has ever identified any clinical condition of “post-abortion depression”. We systematically overestimate the physical and mental consequences of termination. ’

Chollet is saying that unless there is a clinical condition, it doesn't exist. Therefore post-abortion depression is not as a result of the abortion. If a woman is depressed after having had an abortion, it must be due to the “aura of guilt that surrounds abortion”. Remove the guilt (and the “ideological pressure”), and all is okay.

So am I a progressive or a reactionary? I think I'm both! Although I agree with some of the ‘progressive’ ideals, I can't go all the way with them. But what bothers me the most is that this whole argument is often reduced to name-calling and false dichotomies: either you're ‘progressive’ and you're with us all the way, or you're a hopeless ‘reactionary’ (a word for which my thesaurus gives the following synonyms: “ultraconservative, conservative, Bourbon, extreme right-winger, Colonel Blimp”). Can't we have a more nuanced view of the issue?

Burning up Mount Sinai

David Jackman spoke on how to teach the book of Exodus at the recent MTS (Ministry Training Strategy) conference in Sydney, repeating talks that he was giving around the country. His talk was superb both in helping us to understand the message of Exodus, and in teaching us a lesson in how to get your message across without shouting. Somehow David made it seem possible that passion and efficiency could go hand in hand, as if his motto in preaching was to ‘talk softly and carry a big stick’.

The big stick was the Bible—in particular, God dealing with his people in the Book of Exodus. But rather than hit us over the head with it, David gently and subtly used it to push us in the right direction so that we would see a gracious and glorious God who, at the same time as he shows mercy, is also a consuming fire.

So get set for a series of CHNs in which I shamelessly download the contents of my brain, referring only to a brilliant set of notes from David Jackman that nearly set my keyboard on fire (I was typing so fast but even then my attempts failed to keep up!).

And speaking of fire, one off the first things that David pointed out was how God meets Moses at Mount Horeb (also Mount Sinai) in Exodus 3, and appears to him in a burning bush. Here, for the first time in the Bible, the concept of ‘holiness’ is explicitly introduced. In response to the holiness of God, Moses must change his behaviour: “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exod 3:5).

So far, so good. Well, it's not really that good in terms of Moses' retirement plan, because Moses' removal of his sandals is the least of the rather enormous behavioural changes that this 80-year-old man is going to have to make to the nursing home routine. But that's a story for another day.

In the meantime, notice the subsidiary promise that God makes to Moses, which is part of a bigger and better promise that you really need to read in your own time. It's a promise that really directs the entire flow of the story right up to Exodus 19: God says, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain” (Exod 3:12).

So we are expecting a return to this holy mountain later in the story. Sure enough, it happens: God does what he promises. Only this time, it is not one man but an entire race of people that stand there. And it is not just a burning bush; the whole flopping mountain is on fire!

Now that's a terrifying and fairly graphic picture of the true meaning of holiness. Our God is a consuming fire, burning up all that doesn’t conform to his own holy and righteous character. And at the moment he was meeting Israel at Mount Sinai, God (unlike David Jackman) did not choose this moment for classic British understatement.

Incidentally (and this is me, not David Jackman speaking now), how fascinating is it that neither bush nor mountain were burnt up. You, together with 10,000 other tourists on any given day, could go and stand on Mount Sinai right now (assuming you can work out which mountain it is amongst the several possibilities). We may well be burned and incinerated because of our sin, for “man shall not see me and live” (Exod 33:20). Even to touch the mountain of God's presence meant death (Exod 19:12, Heb 12:20). But both bush and mountain were safe. Why? Surely there is something fundamentally good and right about God’s creation that even human sinfulness can’t destroy (Gen 1:31).

I am not for a moment suggesting that this is the main thought behind the unconsumed bush and mountain of Exodus. But it fits well with the character of a gentle and gracious Creator: he wouldn’t go around blowing up everything he touches.

Bury stillborn in backyard, couple told

This story from The Australian newspaper leaves me gasping with horror. In it, a couple is told by the doctors at a hospital in the Northern Territory that their baby, stillborn at 17 weeks, can be taken home and buried in the backyard. They are then handed the stilborn child in a kidney dish and left to their own devices.

What a humiliating and traumatizing way to treat the death of a child! But the legislation in the Northern Territory doesn't even allow the issuing of a birth certificate or a death certificate since, at this stage of gestation, the baby is viewed in law as nothing more than a bunch of cells that the mother's body rejected. Not only do the parents experience the sorrow of death, but the refusal by those who ought to care for both parents and child to acknowledge that anything serious has even happened.

God will certainly judge us for the way we treat his little ones.

Answered prayer

I had some really lovely and wonderful answers to prayer at church recently.

I prayed for Gary's preaching of the word of God, and Gary turned round and preached an absolute blinder of a sermon on ... prayer. It was on one prayer in particular—Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:14-19. What a marvellous model of what we should, can and must pray for!

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Eph 3:14-19)

It is both a privilege and a delight to pray, and one of the reasons we pray is because we can! Gary reminded us that, contrary to popular belief, not everyone can pray: only those who have access into the Heavenly Father's throne room through the shed blood of Jesus Christ our Lord can enjoy this privilege.