Couldn't Help Noticing

Something obvious about fatherhood

Speaking as a father, the main point made in a report in The Sydney Morning Herald's article ‘Dads find ways to work around long hours’, seems pretty obvious:

Richard Fletcher, of the University of Newcastle's Family Action Centre, said the five-year Engaging Fathers Project he ran showed that “if you think just fixing working hours will mean fathers will be involved in their children's lives, you are mistaken. Fathers first need to perceive their involvement as important to their children's development and wellbeing.”

You can work a 38-hour week and still not spend much time with your kids. Instead, perhaps you'll play a round of golf or two on the weekends or spend most of your free time doing house renovations. Indeed, you can work longer hours and do the same. It all comes down to what spare time you have and what your priorites are, doesn't it? If your kids are a high priority (higher than your golf swing), then there are few men who work such long hours that they aren't able to spend a good amount of time with their kids.

For more on why children should be such a high priority, see Tony Payne's brilliant book Fatherhood.

Tom Cruise is fair game

Another letter of mine bites the editorial dustbin over at The Sydney Morning Herald. In an opinion piece, Miranda Devine argued that Tom Cruise was being treated unfairly because of his loop-the-loop religious beliefs. Anyway, here's what I sent:

Dear editor,

Tom Cruise is no more weird or worthy of attention than any other Hollywood denizen. Despite his treatment of our Nic, he may even turn out to be a nice guy. But to claim that he is not a fair target because he happens to be religious is too much (‘Mugged in print by bigots in righteous masks’, SMH Jan 31).

Any religion—especially nutty ones like Scientology—should be fair game for close scrutiny and even satire. I believe that a man rose from the dead, and one of my great delights in life is when people try to prove that this belief is stupid. If the attempt fails, I've won a convert. If it succeeds, I can go looking for truth elsewhere. Working to debunk religions helps everyone—debunkers and the debunked.

Yours sincerely,

The Rev Gordon Cheng

The Lord relents

I read this Bible passage with my daughter Matilda last night:

But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. (Exod 32:11-14)

The idea that God would ‘relent’ (which essentially means to ‘repent’, just the way a sinner would repent of sin) is extraordinary, especially when the apparent cause of that repentance is the prayer of Moses.

The basis of God's repentance cannot be the reminder of God's promises, since these could be fulfilled just as adequately through Moses (even if he is a descendant of Levi—see Exod 2:1). That is what God had planned to do (“Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.” [Exod 32:10]). So we have to conclude that the basis of God's repentance is his concern for his reputation amongst the Egyptians (see also Exod 7:5; 17; Exod 8:10, 22; 14:4, 18 and compare Exod 8:19 and Exod 9:16).

Did our Lord have this passage from Exodus 32 in mind in Gethsemane? Consider Mark 14:36: And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Both the example of Moses and the example of Jesus should drive us to prayer in the face of impending disaster. If the answer is ‘yes’, disaster has been averted. If the answer is ‘no’, we know that the disaster is the Lord's will, and that, in the very depths of despair, he is with us still just as he was with his Son on the cross.