The Power of Story

One good story covers over a multitude of statistics.

Dave the Donkey Book Review

Dave the Donkey

"Dave the Donkey" was short listed with my Car Park Parable books for the 2010 CALEB award for faith inspired writing in the Children’s section. I have personally corresponded with Dave’s author, Andrew McDonough, who is a South Australian also trying to get good Australian content out there in an American saturated market. He has given me some great insight into the publishing industry; don’t let that fool you though – I’m not afraid to tell you what’s wrong with this book. Unfortunately – there’s nothing wrong with it.

Dave the Donkey is an excellent retelling of the events around Easter from the donkey’s perspective. But it’s not a narration of the events – it takes the form of a picture book where less words are more. Where the irony, contrasts and juxtapositions in the last week of Jesus’ life are left to speak for themselves, and told with such simplicity that they are compelling even for a child.

As with all of the Lost Sheep books the pictures are bright, the humour is funny [and Australian], there is information on the back page about how to use the story, and there are little surprises to find on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th readings.

Although the Lost Sheep books are aimed at children, like all good stories they are ageless. I have personally used this story in schools, nursing homes and worship with no kids present – it always brings a smile and that pause, when you know something is taking root is a person’s heart.

Great to add to anyone in Ministry’s Easter repertoire [and you can download a project-able version from the lost sheep website] it is also a great book for a child to own to help them ponder this imponderable event.

Skype not against the law?

The recent revelations about 'Kate' who was unknowingly filmed during consensual sex and broadcast on the internet has opened a whole hornet's nest of issues for the Australian Military. The treatment of women in the whole of our society is again under-consideration. Unfortunately we men continue to see women as simply 'meat' for our pleasure - it is a reality across all our society - look at our advertising, bill-boards, porn, magazines.

I want to come to it from the position of privacy. As a minister I have to follow a whole heap of privacy rules in my congregation that have a compliance cost. Even though we are supposed to be a united body, intimate community of believers - I am not allowed to pass on a phone number to someone else in the church without their permission. Now, that might actually be a reasonable idea - but how can someone who has filmed someone else having sex, without their permission, and then broadcast it over the internet - have not broken any laws!!!!

If I can got to jail for giving a phone number to another member of a church fellowship, how can this not be illegal? Is this catch up? The internet moves too fast for the law. Is it just the law being an ass - or is it the stupidity of our modern society where we have rules that strain out the gnats, but swallow the camels? Privacy rules, and blue card rules, that burden the local, community, volunteer groups, while not doing that much to actually solve the problems?

Yes this is a rant, but I need a place to let out the steam! Having mentioned the 'QLD' Blue Card system - is this the best way to combat pedophillia? A huge bureaucracy that makes anyone wanting to help with kids have to go through a rigmarole that only tells us about people who've already been caught? Surely we could spend the money more pointedly. Confronting education programs across all schools. Preventative Programs. Has anyone does any studies of the effectiveness of the Blue Card.

OK, I'm over it, but the 'Kate's' of this world are not. Poor kate.

Best Thing I've read on Scripture

I read this book last year and was inspired. It is the best book I have read on Scripture. It goes beyond the typical discussions of Inerrancy, liberal/literal and takes a literary approach to scripture because, well scripture is literature - it is largely story! It especially 'clicks' with me as I consider myself a story-teller.

The Book - 'CS Lewis on Scripture' by Michael Christensen, 1980 Hodder & Stoughton. [still available at Amazon]. Lewis himself never wrote a systematic understanding of Scripture. This is Christensen's pulling together of Lewis' approach to scripture from all the sources he could muster.

Lewis was comfortable with myth having significant meaning, indeed being the closest way to understand in concrete ways what can otherwise only be expressed abstractly. Myth can be truer than history or fact, able to put us in touch with reality in more intimate ways than knowing or facts ever could. Thus while he was OK with Adam and Eve being 'myth' he was passionate about the deep truth revealed in the myth!

Lewis was also uncomfortable with the tendency of others to dismiss as unhistorical any text which reported miracles. He said the historical truth or otherwise of a text was not to be pre-judged on the assumption that miracles can not happen. That would be to make a mistake, for there is no philosophical grounds to make such an assumption. Miracles by definition are such because they can not happen!

He was scathing of those who were supposedly biblical literary critics posturing that it was obvious they had never read or studied any literature at all given their conclusions.

The appendix on 'The rational Romantic' is worth the price of the book alone and it's discussion of the idea Sehnsucht.

Lewis frees us from literal and liberal interpretations of scripture, freeing us from doctrinal determination of how we approach and understand scripture - of putting God, and the bible in a box. Rather scripture was literature; to be read, experienced and taken [not naively] at face value as God's word to us.

If you can find this book, do yourself a favour and read it!

No life without sacrifice

There is a deep truth that is older than the bible, a truth that was true before the bible was written, a truth the bible was written to reveal. A truth that was there at the beginning of time that actually shapes life and existence. It's a truth that can help us understand and navigate life if we grasp it's deep significance. This is the truth...

There is no life without sacrifice.

It's a truth the modern world has almost forgotten, a truth the modern world tries to cover over with red-tape and OH&S thinking that we can get through life without cost - but it's still there, hiding in the pages of history.

We see this truth at work in parents - who must give for their children. Who must sacrifice to bring up the next generation. Husbands and wives must 'give up' so much of themselves to create a marriage and if they don't do this, the do not create a marriage; the two can not become one of the two never sacrifice.

We see this truth so simply in nature where for one animal to live, another must give their life. Our own Sunday Roast cannot happen until the chicken dies. Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.

Perhaps it is only in war where we acknowledge this truth - where we honour the sacrifice of our soldiers. Otherwise we want to live in the delusion that we can get through life with our lives!

All ancient religions were based on this deep truth. They all understood, there is no life without sacrifice. If this is a deep truth, then it reveals an even deeper truth...

There is no eternal life without a perfect sacrifice.

This cosmic truth [no live without sacrifice], stitched into the fabric of reality from the very beginning - was preparing us for the one who would reveal the even greater truth on a wooden cross on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

We can live in denial of this truth and think we can save ourselves, that we can get through life without sacrifice - we can't. Until we acknowledge this truth, and submit to it and the one who is this truth, we will always be fighting against the very fabric of reality.

If this reality is true, what is your sacrifice?

Catching the Faith

Despite the growing popularity of Christian schools and the long-term reality of Religious Instruction in the state education systems, we are still facing a decline in those that profess faith in the West, especially among the younger generation.

Why is it that much of our faith-based education seems to have the effect of inoculating, rather than inculcating the faith?

Could it be that our methodology is all backwards? Much of our faith-based education is what you would call indoctrination. It is based on the assumption that our children are already Christians, and we need to school them in the essentials of the faith. Often this schooling can be very moralistic, trying to ‘house-train’ good little Christian boys and girls.

This is in direct contrast to the way Jesus taught the crowd. Jesus’ teaching method to those 'outside' the faith was story-telling, particularly parables; riddles of the Kingdom. Jesus didn’t bother to explain these riddles, but allowed to sit in the air and perch in people’s hearts when the time was right. [to be bait, waiting to hook the fish!] These riddles didn’t inoculate the hearer, as the mysteries were kept hidden, but now and then one would take root and bear fruit in someone’s life.

If you examine the parables of the Sower in Matthew's gospel [chap 13:1-52], and the discussion during and after it, you see that the gospel in a treasure not to be thrown to swine, but protected in the oyster shell of the parable. Everyone is up to a different stage [road, rock, weeds, good soil], and when the time is right, the seed can take root. If you plant it too early, it will spoil.

I content that we need to rediscover the Master teacher’s method for proclaiming the kingdom. I know it sounds risky; our Western minds want to explain, dissect, and ensure children understand. But when you dissect something that is alive, you have a tendency to kill it. What is more alive than the word of God. I know this sounds like a risky method, but how could it be less successful than what we have now - indeed, isn't it about following Jesus?

Our task isn't to produce moral people, but noble people. Our job isn't about external compulsion, but internal transformation.

Troubled Times

Cyclones, floods, fires, mudslides, snowstorms, earthquakes. It’s been a confronting beginning to 2011 – and that’s not including the human induced tragedies. We can quite legitimately be asking, ‘Where is God in all this?’ Or is this what the Bible speaks about as the ‘birth pains’ – the signs that God is closer than we think?

Are these natural disasters an unusual confluence of events that will settle down, or is this the new normal? Is a hurting globe adjusting to human pollution, like a dog scratching at its fleas, or are we just experiencing what has always been and will always be?

Whatever is going on, such fearsome and frightening events put things in perspective. They put us in our place. They remind us how puny, how powerless and how pointless out lives really are. At the end of the day awards and achievements mean nothing. We are reminded that it is relationships that count. It is relationships that carry us through. It is relationships that we cling to.

The most important of these is a relationship with the Creator of it all. This is the relationship that can last forever, and can ensure our other relationships last beyond this mortal coil.

What else can we do in these tragic times but cry out to God for answers, for meaning – but also for comfort and solace. What have you done about your eternal relationship?