Sight Magazine

Hi Everyone. It's been a good experience having a blog. I am now writing for Sight Magazine, so expect there to be much less here. See if you can find any articles there! www.sightmagazine.com.au

Trading away our Sundays

Amazingly, you might think, our region does not yet have general Sunday trading. But with the competition going on between Woolworths and Coles the big chains have applied for extended hours and Sunday opening. Here is my take on it.

Before I comment on the proposed expansion of Sunday trading to the big supermarket chains, I must admit a conflict of interest. I work on Sundays. Indeed often the church’s comments on this topic have been more about maintaining our own monopoly over the day than reasoned debate. Those days are long past.

Of course having the big supermarket chains opening on Sunday won’t precipitate the end of the world – but it will be another small step that slowly and subtly changes the values of our society to reflect the fact that the holy dollar is the god we bow to; that every other value we have submits to the ‘right to shop’ where-ever and when-ever we want to.

Our town has already felt the effects of a seven day working week; the pressure it puts on families, the deterioration it has had on community and sporting groups. While it is hard to imagine any other way to run the crush, do we have to further devalue community and family for some inane appeal to shopping convenience?

The big stores are only thinking profits; it is their legal mandate to maximise shareholder returns. This will affect small business, workers, family and community.

Let’s not assume this is inevitable and progress. Western Australia firmly rejected extended general and Sunday trading in a 2005 referendum. People from the West celebrate that their state and cities still have a family/community atmosphere on weekends. It took society a long time to come to the 5-day working week and was seen as progress at the time; treating every day as the same is regress not progress.

Before we blithely accept General Sunday trading as inevitable and progress let’s consider what we are trading away for Sunday trading.

For a sermon on the topic of the Sabbath go to burdekinuc.podbean.com/2011/02/28/sabbath-blessing-or-burden

Bin Laden Dead

Is anyone else unnerved by the jubilation of Bin Laden's death?

While I'm happy to congratulate the US on seeking to find and capture the ring leader of al-Qaeda, to bring him to justice, and that inevitably such a mission would lead to casualties, I'm uncomfortable with the level of jubilation shown by various world leaders and average people on the streets. I'm with the vatican, I hope we would never celebrate the death of any person.

Could the US have celebrated the capture of Bin Laden, but been disappointed that he died in the cross fire? Shouldn't we lament that things should have to come to this - even if Bin Laden brought it all on himself.

I think US and world celebrations can only be bad for hopes of ending the East/West division. While we celebrate they protest and beatify. The size of our smiles helps grow the resolve of their resistance and hopes for revenge. From what I know Bin Laden was someone who had lost a sense of right and wrong when killing innocent people was justified for his cause. Yet we tread a dangerous path when we pat ourselves on the back for killing what now turns out to be an unarmed man. It seems this story has a lot more unraveling to do, and I feel our self-congratulatory spirit will only come back to bite us.

For a sermon that addresses this topic before it happened 'Do not murder' go to burdekinuc.podbean.com/2011/03/14/you-shall-not-murder/

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!