A review of Children's Bible Apps

The purpose of this post is to look at a few new children's Bible apps but before doing so let me mention a few things about children's Bibles generally.

Children's Bibles in Traditional Book Form

There are many Children's Bibles available for use with children aged from 1 to 12 years in traditional book format. I have used many examples with my own children (a while ago now!), my grandchildren and other people's children at Sunday school. I have found many of the Lion Bibles useful, including 'My Very First Bible' (1-4 years), 'The Lion First Bible' (5-8 years) and the 'Day-By-Day Bible' (9-12 years). All are well illustrated and offer a sampling of Old and New Testament Scripture that seek to present the overall biblical story of God and his plan for the salvation of his people through Christ. They use shortened descriptions that are faithful to the texts on which they are based. I have also used The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones that offers a more literary and creative narrative approach to the Bible, but always seeking to reinforce key Scriptural themes. As well, I have also used The Beginner's Bible that is also excellent and is designed for children aged 2-3 years.  My daughter has written an excellent post on children's Bibles and resources on her blog 168 Hours (here), which offers additional information.

The way I judge the quality of any children's Bible is straightforward:

Does the selection of stories and Bible content offer a consistent and accurate narrative that teaches children about God, our relationship to him, and his plan of salvation in Christ and what this means for their lives?
Is it written in appropriate language that communicates the message of Scripture?
Does it adequately communicate the important themes of Scripture story by story, or section by section and avoid selectivity that distorts?
Is it illustrated well and in a way that is engaging and helpful for children in communicating the above?
Do they help parents to introduce the message of the Bible to their children and for older children; does it help to develop habits of daily Bible reading and study?

Some early attempts at Children's Bible apps

As yet, there have been relatively few attempts to turn children's Bible stories into apps for iPad, iPhone or Android devices. Some of the early examples are a little mixed in quality and generally leave me wondering why they would bother. I have to confess, that I struggle to see how app versions offer many more possibilities than book versions. Having said this, some adults and children will want to use them, and there certainly appears to be a market for them. App versions of children's Bibles should be able to satisfy all of the above criteria that I use to judge quality as well as two more:

Does the various app features increase engagement with the biblical story or distract from it?
Is the app easy to use for children and parents?

Pretty much all of the early attempts to turn the Bible into apps fail in one way or another. Some fail on many fronts.

'Children's Bible' by Barcelona Media presents the Bible in comic format with a new story each week. You can download a free comic and then purchase additional copies. Some children will enjoy the comic format but they offer little more than traditional story forms, and while suitable for independent reading for children aged 6-10 are bigger on style and format than attention to content.

Christful Apps has also produced a number of apps that present separate Bible stories in varied formats, including 'Baby Jesus'  'Jonah', 'Easter Story'  'The Beginning - Let There be Light' and 'Adam and Eve'. I sampled the 'Easter Story' from the Christful collection and was a little disappointed. My primary concerns were that the language of translation was at times limited and repetitive, and the translation left out elements of the Easter story and in doing so inaccurately presented it (e.g. the sequence of Jesus' appearance to his followers after his resurrection). As well, the app features some limited movement of parts of the generally static images that were basic and in places almost comical (e.g. Jesus' ascension) due to the artificial and one-dimensional nature of the movement.

Apps from Copenhagen Publishing House

The work being done by Copenhagen Publishing House is the best of what I have reviewed so far and I would encourage them to keep improving what they have achieved so far. There seems to have been progress in this publisher's work over their successive efforts and desire to present the Bible faithfully. While I don't think they have succeeded in some of the choices they have made with text, the examples I looked at had many good qualities. I will comment on two separate apps.

'My First Bible Stories' is a collection of favourite Bible stories for children aged 3 and up (probably 5 or 6 years would be the top of the range). The stories are well illustrated and have appropriate well-written texts.  You can download the first story free ('Noah and the Ark') and then you can add the other stories by simply scrolling through camera screen to the other stories. One problem with this is that it makes it much too easy for children to simply download more stories if the owner of the device is logged in to iTunes. The stories include:

Noah and the Ark (FREE DOWNLOAD)
Adam and Eve and the story of The Creation
David and Goliath
Daniel and the Lions
When Jesus Was Born
Stories Jesus Told
Miracles of Jesus
The Story of Easter

The apps have three different recording options, with a delightful 'default' voice reading. As well, the child can read and record their own voice or have their parents or others record the stories.  You can also turn the voice off allowing the stories to be read with the child. I haven't had time to read every story closely but I was a little frustrated when sampling 'Adam and Eve and the story of The Creation' to find a few examples of 'loose' translation. One example is the presentation of Eve to Adam as his 'partner' rather than the biblically more accurate translation of 'helper'. There were other examples where the text in its selectivity of biblical content (as it must be for kids) left out key elements of the story. The most dramatic example is the failure of the text to mention the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden.

The story ends with Adam and Eve being  'happy together':

'[T]hey loved each other and did not have to worry about anything. They had plenty of food and did not have to fear bad things for there was nothing bad. And the best thing was that late in the afternoon as the day cooled God came and they walked with God in the garden. God had now finished creating everything. So, on day seven God did not create anything. Instead God rested and enjoyed everything He had created in six days. God looked at all He had made and said, "It is very good. Everything is just perfect".'

While the developers might argue that they have just presented the creation story to the point at which Eve is made, leaving out the end of the story in the garden, fails to meet my criteria for a good children's Bible. It is hardly a satisfactory end to the story; the entry of sin into the world through Adam and Eve is obviously a key plank in the Bible's story of God's rebellious people.

The app is also a little annoying in that it is hard to navigate back and forward. For example, when you reach the last page it takes you back to the beginning with no ability to move backwards once you leave the last page.

'Toddler Bible - The Carry Along Bible'

This second app from Copenhagen Publishing House has overcome all of my frustrations with navigation that I experienced with the first app. It incorporates a range of additional features, including clear buttons at the front end for the varied options of 'Read to me', 'Read My Self', 'Record' (with 3 buttons for different versions)'. There is also an up front information button, a menu, a clear 'Home' button on every page and a more sophisticated page turn (though the page turn noise annoyed me).

The app also incorporates sound effects throughout, and some level of animation on every page (mainly movement of characters etc).  The text is also a little more faithful to the Scripture but again it leaves out some key bits. For example, the Bible ends with the ascension of Jesus with no mention of his ultimate return and the judgement to come, nor a clear articulation of our responsibility to repent and believe. It is possible to present a short version of the message of the Bible with all key elements of the biblical narrative present. I'd encourage the developers to keep working at this. We need to avoid assuming that children aren't ready for the tough bits. My daughter reported a delightful example of my eldest grandson picking up an error in a children's Bible aged six (here) that shows that kids can understand all elements of the Bible's key message. If children are being well taught about the message of the Bible they will begin to see the inconsistencies for themselves, but some children won't. I'd hope that a good children's Bible would actually reinforce the key elements of God's plan of salvation for the children as well as the parents as they share it with their children.

I'd encourage all developers of children's Bible apps to spend a lot of time thinking about the way biblical content is presented accurately. It actually needs to be given at least equal priority to the useability and attractiveness of the app. While some of the earliest attempts simply present existing children's Bibles to apps, using the most accurate text is a priority.

Other Posts on Children's Bibles

'Nurturing Spirituality in Your Kids' HERE
'Resources for teaching children: Children's Bibles' HERE
Another review of iPhone apps HERE

The 'inappropriateness' of death

There is quite a fight going on in a sleepy little village where I once lived with my family for 13 years. The fight is over the location of a proposed crematorium in Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. The proposal is to modify an old car sales yard and buildings on a major highway, that has a motel and houses on two sides, some shops and restaurants and the local primary school a few hundred metres away. It seems a pretty silly place to put a crematorium, and there are obviously environmental issues with any crematorium, but one reason for the local opposition caught my attention.  The following extract from the Daily Telegraph is one of several references to the problem of children being confronted with death:

"Building it so close to schools was inappropriate and insensitive, Faulconbridge Public School P&C member Barbara van Kessel said. The kindergarten and play area face directly on to the school's purpose-built bus bay, which would be used for funeral processions under the plan."

While I don't like the location for the crematorium for many reasons, confronting children with the idea of death isn't one of them. In fact, I see it as important for children to learn about death as they grow up. No, I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to worry young toddlers about the prospect of death, but I certainly wouldn't want to hide this truth from them as opportunities come up to talk about it. It seems to me that seeing a hearse or driving past a crematorium might be just the right opportunity for children of school age to be able to discuss death with their parents.

There of course many ways for children to become aware of death. Religious celebrations offer one public place where death might be mentioned; Easter being an example, as we speak of Jesus' death and resurrection. We speak of death when we remember military battles, and children's books can address death in various ways (I wrote a post on this as part of my blog 'Literacy, Families & Learning' HERE). The death of a relative, the awareness of disasters around the world, overheard adult conversations or television reports are other sources of information on death.

Interestingly, in many other cultures children are not spared the sight of death in all its most grizzly forms. While I'm not wishing such confrontation on the children of Australia, it might well be that as more parents reject God and place their hope in this life that death becomes the ultimate inconvenient truth. But as a Christian I think I'd want to think a little more seriously about death, teaching my children what the Bible has to say about it and the fact that it teaches that death is the expectation of all living creatures, but that it is not the end for those who turn to Him and place their hope in Christ (Hebrews 10:22-24).   Perhaps as Gordon Cheng wrote in the 'The Briefing' a few years ago, we've gone a bit soft on things like death and hell (HERE).


Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of the Daily Telegraph

Fathers matter!

1. Secular research tells us that fathers matter

I wrote in an article on families in Case 12 (here), that research suggests that families matter, and that within families fathers have a special role. I’ve also written a number of previous posts about families, including how time spent with children matters (here), the negative impact of the reduction of time spent sharing meals (here), and the role of fathers more generally (here). As well, I've written posts on the shared responsibility we have with communities for other people's children (here) and in the church (here). The latter is critical for families where no father is present. Finally, I've written a number of more practical posts about fathers on my other blog 'Literacy, families and learning' (here).

To recap some of my previous arguments; research on families and demographic trends have demonstrated a number of significant changes in families and parental practices in recent decades. I summarised the trends last time under four headings:

• Family structures are changing – e.g. there are less children in families, women are having children later in life, there are more sole parent households, there are more blended families, children stay at home longer (and many more return as adults) etc.
• Employment structures are changing - and they have an impact on families, with more parents working in multiple jobs, more women back in the workforce, many workers working longer hours, more people working from home etc.
• Fathers and mothers have changed roles and levels of engagement as parents - and while there is a trend towards some fathers spending more time caring for children, for others longer working hours have affected family life. As well, the increase in women doing paid work outside the home has led to more children in the critical first five years of life being placed in childcare with mixed impacts.
• Research has highlighted the critical role that fathers have - for example, fathers have a significant impact on their children’s learning and behaviour. The influence on children’s education alone (the quality of which is also correlated with many other behavioural factors) is significant, as a UK centre on fatherhood has outlined.
  

Other research has suggested that the influence of fathers and family structures flows well beyond children’s learning (see for example Qu and Soriano, 2004). I concluded in my Case article that:

Research suggests, that fathers who show affection, give support and yet offer an authoritative parenting style, have a more significant impact on their children, when compared with fathers who adopt a more authoritarian and detached style. Other evidence indicates that who the father is, and what he does in life makes a difference.

In summary, what many research studies show is that fathers have a significant influence on child health and wellbeing, cognitive and emotional development and life outcomes.

2. The Bible tells us that fathers matters too

The importance of families is seen throughout the Bible. The concept of family is central to God’s plan for his creation and its restoration. The Bible teaches that relationships, like creation itself, were affected, disrupted and dislocated by sin in the Garden (the book of Genesis describes what happened). But God sustained his people in families and sought to restore them to their rightful place and adopt them into his own family (see for example Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 1:4-5). God continues to use families in spite of the curse that has been placed on family relationships as a result of sin, and the struggle that ensues between men and women (Gen 3). God’s plan to rescue his people ultimately involves family – his family!

As well, the critical role of fathers is clear within Scripture. The nation of Israel was one family, descended from Abraham. Within the nation that would rise up as a result of God’s promise to Abraham, there would be tribes defined on family lines and ultimately families within the family, all linked through fathers. Fathers are central to families in the Bible. Marriage in turn is seen as necessary to create a nuclear family – a man and woman, committed to each other in a covenant relationship - which seeks to have and raise godly children (Mal 2:14-15).

How the father fulfils his role as a father in families, is less clear and more open to varied styles of parenting. This of course is within the boundaries of God's expectations of godliness and faithfulness to him and the primary responsibility to make the gospel of Christ the centre of our parenting (see my post on 'Shepherding a Child's Heart' here). But there is no doubt that the godly father who exercises authority over his family is a central part of God's work of redemption within families. I've always found that one of the most practical places to look for guidance on how fathers lead their families is the advice God gave to Moses to pass on to the Israelites in the desert before they entered the Promised Land. Having exhorted them to fear God and obey his commandments, and to take care of how they lived (Deut 6:1-3), God gives instructions on how this is to be done within their families.

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house

and on your gates.” (Deut 6:4-9)

God expected the men of Israel to obey his commandments and to love him with all of their being – heart, soul and strength. He also expected them to teach God’s commands and expectations to their children in the ‘everydayness’ of life. To talk about God when they sat together at home, when they walked from place to place, when they were preparing for bed and rest, and when they rose in the morning. They were to speak of God’s ways, to wear the words of God’s law on their foreheads (no I’m not about to suggest we introduce this practice that is still followed by some Orthodox Jews), and write them on the doorposts and entrances to their houses, so that they would not forget them and so that they could teach them even more effectively to their children.

Here is a picture of a father with a right view of God, who trusts, obeys and serves his God and who seeks to teach his children to understand the wisdom of God and to follow him. This is also a picture of an involved father. If we were to translate this biblical picture into contemporary terms, we would see a father who seeks to obey and honour God, who sets a good example for his family, who models what it is to be a child of God. Such a father spends time with his children (indeed will 'waste' time with them), listens to them and shares godly wisdom at meal times, while resting, while together at home, while travelling. This is an engaged father, one who makes time for his family!

3. Practical implications

As Christian fathers there are some fairly obvious implications for us. As a framework for self-assessment, fathers might consider the following:

Godly Leadership - Is my life demonstrating to my wife and my children that it is centred on Christ?
Engagement – Does my life give priority to interactions with my children and do we share joint activities? Is biblical teaching a part of this?
Accessibility – Am I available to talk with, listen to and simply be seen by my children?
Responsibility – Do I share family responsibility for childcare? [I'm not suggesting a specific model for shared parenting here but the evidence suggests that being involved with kids means time spent with them, and some of the above flows from this].

Other resources and links

Apologetics in Family Life (here)
Fatherhood Institute
Family Action Centre (Newcastle University)
'Literacy, families and learning' (here)

Children and Innocence

The following is a guest post from Greg Thiele who attends Petersham Baptist Church and is an Associate of CASE

A (Christian) friend of ours recently told us that for his son’s upcoming eleventh birthday, he is planning to take the boy and some friends to see an M-rated movie. We were surprised, to say the least: it is not so very long ago that we cautiously started allowing our children (ten and eight) to watch selected PG films.

What is wrong, one might ask, with an eleven-year-old (or an eight-year-old, for that matter) watching an M-rated movie? Are my wife and I too conservative? If most parents allow their children to do it, can there be anything wrong with it?

The first part of my answer lies in the guidelines for movie classifications themselves. According to advice from the Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department (here), films classified “M” are “not recommended for persons under 15 years of age”. Certainly, films with a given rating can vary greatly in their content and potential impact: but this rubs both ways. PG films, for instance, which apparently are regarded as innocuous by the great majority of parents (judging by the ages at which many children start watching them) can range from very mild, with perhaps one or two moments that, say, a six-year might find frightening ('The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' is a good example of this), right through to films that are aimed principally at an adult audience and contain commensurately adult themes, and are therefore fundamentally unsuitable for children (this is going back a bit, but 'Drop Dead Fred' is an example of this latter kind that I am familiar with).

One of the concerns with PG films is that the term “Parental Guidance” is probably not clearly understood by some parents. The idea is not that all PG films are OK for children to watch as long as their parents watch along with them, and explain any confronting bits. Rather, it is that parents should exercise good judgement in deciding whether the film is suitable for their children in the first place (if necessary, by watching it first themselves, or at least having a very clear idea of the content). Perhaps “PD” (Parental Discretion) might be a more helpful term. Whatever the ages of their children, this is an area where parents need to exercise considerable care and wisdom.

The main concern is that children might be confronted with images or concepts which they do not have the ability to process or understand; and having a parent sitting alongside them will not necessarily have an ameliorating effect: my wife tells of a shocking image from a film she saw as a young child, in the company of her parents, which has stayed with her all her life. The effects of being exposed to such images might not be immediately apparent.

The tendency for children to be allowed (or even encouraged!) to watch films containing material they might not be mature enough to comprehend or otherwise process constitutes an aspect of the trend in contemporary society for children to be “pushed on” to the next age level in their thinking and habits. This is particularly evident in the case of young girls (so-called “pre-teens”) – a matter about which there has already been considerable debate. As parents of a ten-year-old girl, we experience the resisting of this trend as a constant battle: so often, it seems, children are encouraged to act/think/look in ways which, a couple of generations ago, would have been appropriate for children at least a couple of years older.

What is driving these changes? To suggest that the agenda is purely commercial seems simplistic; yet there is probably some truth in it: the more aware, savvy and (ostensibly) mature a child is, the more sophisticated (and expensive) will be the “toys” they will be in the market for, and the greater will be the gains for those manufacturing and selling (not to mention advertising and marketing) those commodities. Role models in the entertainment industries also probably play a part in encouraging children to look and act older than their age: and the kind of access today’s children have to images of celebrities via computers, DVDs and mobile phones was not yet even in the realm of fantasy when I was growing up 40-odd years ago.

Why, as a society, do we seem to find it difficult to let children be children: to grow up at their own pace, as it were? There is no easy answer. Perhaps it boils down to a question of innocence, and how we are to understand it. The bible does not have a sentimental attitude towards children: they are clearly represented as being implicated in the essential loss of human innocence that occurred at the Fall: “Surely I was sinful at birth”, writes the psalmist, “sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). Yet it is possible to set alongside that truth a sense in which children are innocent – unversed in the ways of the world – and therefore in need of our protection.

Scripture clearly points out that children are a blessing from God, to be welcomed, as Jesus commanded us (Mark 9:36-37). We are to love our children - with compassion and tenderness (1 Thessalonians 2:7, 11,12; Psalm 103:13) - and provide them with the good things of God’s good creation (Luke 11:13).

Part of our duty of love and care towards our children consists in protecting them from influences that have power to harm them: whether from commercial interests that would see children as just another commodity to be exploited; or from societal influences that are less easy to define or understand, but no less dangerous for that.

Photo credit - Google Images

Bill Henson Part 5: When can children decide for themselves?

Some background

Regular readers of this blog know that I've written a number of posts about the photographic art of Bill Henson and the debate about the inappropriateness of using photographs of naked children for artistic purposes. You can follow the threads of the earlier debate and my critique here.

For overseas readers of this blog here is some brief background. Henson was at the centre of a major controversy caused by an art exhibition featuring his photographic work. He is a one of Australia's most famous living artists and has gained widespread international acclaim. However, in May this year the police were called to a gallery where his latest exhibition was to be opened. A number of members of the public had taken exception to images of naked children used for advertising the exhibition and some which were placed on the gallery website. Henson has for many years included photographs of young pubescent children in his work. In his own words he likes to express "..ideas about humanity and vulnerability and our sense of ourselves living inside our bodies and our bodies in space" and has been interested in the transition from childhood to adulthood (amongst other things). The police originally charged him and the gallery owners, but eventually the charges were dropped. However, interest in Henson and his art continues to attract comment and debate.

The latest twist to the controversy

Just when many of us had forgotten about Henson, he has broken his five month long silence with an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald (here). This was followed the day after by extracts from a book concerning the Henson case in the Herald's weekend magazine. The extracts are from a forthcoming book by David Marr, "The Henson Case". It took just hours for the first article and the extracts to cause further concern. In both the article and the extract Henson shared that "he has been invited into schools in his search for models". In his words "I went in there, had a look around at lunchtime, just wandered around while everyone was having their lunch....I saw this boy, and I saw this girl too actually, and I thought they would be great and the principal said, 'Fine, I will give the parents a ring and let you know'. So the ball is always in their court...."

One can only wonder why a school principal would allow an artist into a school to search for children who might be suitable for nude modelling without the consent of parents to be there for this purpose.

Curiously, Marr seems to have shared this detail in his forthcoming book (and in the extract) in an attempt to present Henson as a normal decent bloke who also happens to be a great artist. I have no reason to doubt that both these propositions might be correct. As my previous posts should indicate, I have never accused Henson of having wrong motives, and I have always acknowledged his ability as an artist. What I continue to question is his use of naked children as his subjects and the way that they are presented. The SMH article on Friday suggests that he still doesn't get this. I find it incredible that neither Marr nor Henson can grasp that your average parent would feel quite uncomfortable about someone visiting a school to look for appropriate models. But that's not why I've written this post, I'll leave this part of the debate to others. What I want to comment on is Henson and the child's parents approach to parenting.

The folly of children being able to make such choices

One of the clear themes of the David Marr extract is that parents are closely involved at all stages of Henson's work and that the children themselves make the final decision to pose or not to pose. The reference to visiting schools and the manner in which children were solicited as models also appears to be an attempt to rather naively suggest that parents are involved from the start.

On three occasions Marr uses quotes from Henson and the mother of the young girl referred to as "N" to make the point that it is the child who makes the final choice:

"They gain some strength because it's (i.e. posing for Henson) a big decision to make, and no one can really make it for them." Quote from Henson

"...We have always given our children a voice in our family and as an educator I know the value for kids to take responsibility and learn through authentic life experience. N is accustomed to making decisions, trusting her instincts and she certainly has a pretty good handle on what is right and what is wrong." Quote from the mother of the 12-year old girl "N" featured in naked poses.

"....we were a bit concerned about N's self esteem as she was at the tricky time in her life anticipating the horror of starting high school....this was an extremely stressful time for her. We felt that working with Bill would give her a bit of a boost and help her regain her confidence (and it did). Ultimately it was her decision........." Quote from the mother of the 12-year old girl "N".


The view that a twelve year-old not only can make such decisions, but should, reflects the lie of liberalism that humans and their children should be free, in John Locke’s terms, “…to order their Actions…as they think fit…without asking leave, or depending on the Will of any other Man”. The Fundamental Liberal Principle holds that any restriction on liberty must be justified, freedom to choose is always the default position.

Henson and the mother of N, like many parents immersed in a society that fails to question such ideas, have accepted the argument of philosophers like John Stuart Mill that one basis for endorsing freedom is by developing individuality and cultivating capacities ‘…it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings.’

The good life for the liberal philosopher is one that you freely choose. Such a life is characterised by a person developing his or her unique capacities as part of a plan for their life; this is still the most significant liberal ethic shaping the way some parents raise their children.

What follows from this thinking is that being a good parent is all about helping our children to make good choices themselves. Ultimately, they argue, the child must choose. Which like all ideas has some truth. Of course we want children and adults to be able to make good choices, but we cannot assume that if we allow total freedom to do so, that they will. The folly of applying this to a 12 year-old should be obvious. Yes, good parents encourage their children to make good choices, they help them to think through the rights and wrongs of any choices, as well as the consequences. There are many decisions for which we hope children might take early responsibility: Will I do my homework? Should I lie to my parents about why I was late home from school? Should I disobey my mum? But can, and should, a 12 year-old decide whether she should pose nude or not? I don't think so. Children should be helped to grow in their ability to make good choices in life, but at age 12 years parents need to be wise in deciding in which areas they will give them the freedom to choose.

We live in a society where there is a need to accept that one's choices are made in relation to other people. Our choices have an impact on other people. That's why there is great wisdom in the Bible's teaching that all are under the authority of others (see for example Ephesians 5:15-6:9). First and foremost, we are accountable to God. But we also are accountable and have responsibility to the state. Then we have various relationships with each other, some of which involve authority structures. Children are under the authority of their parents and parents in turn are responsible to teach their children, to take responsibility for them, to love and to care for them, and to help them make right choices. When they are young, or too immature to make the decision in question, then the parents must make the choice for them.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honour your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." (Ephesians 6:1-3)

Of course, this begs the question, what if parents make bad or wrong choices? If this happens, then it is our hope that the law will protect the child, and other children who might be impacted by the family's 'freedom' to choose. The whole 'Henson Case' shows that perhaps our laws need some strengthening.

Loving your neighbour's children

In a recent post on his blog titled How children bless - Part 5, Tim Adeney asked the excellent question:

"How do you feel about other people's children? Do you see them as people worthy of your time, effort, prayers and affection?"

Love your neighbour as yourself

I responded to his post because it's a question dear to my heart, and in the process I began thinking about how I was treated as a child and the impact it had on my life. Tim's question of course was directed to those in the church, and is worth asking within the church alone, but I have always felt that as Christians we are far too ready to place a fence around our concerns for others. While there is good biblical justification for the priority that parents are to give to the care, concern and spiritual growth of their children, we can easily become oblivious to the needs of our neighbours. By neighbours, I mean the broadest sense of the word, the Luke 10 sense, where Jesus challenges the expert in the law ("lawyer" ESV) who had just tried to challenge Jesus himself. You no doubt know how it unfolds; the lawyer asks, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus responds by asking him "what is written in the Law?" The lawyer then quotes from Leviticus 19:8 - we are to "Love your neighbour as yourself." Jesus then responds with the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan and makes it clear for the lawyer that the extent of his love and concern for others should extend beyond his family and fellow Jews even to a stranger (Luke 10:25-37), in fact in other places Jesus extends this even further - "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:43-45).


Some decent men in my life

When I reflect on my first 31 years as a non-believer and atheist, I can identify a number of decent men who took an interest in me; who saw me as their 'neighbour'. These were men who demonstrated in the richest sense of Jesus parable what it is to be a neighbour to other people's children. I'll share how just two of them did it.

There was Paul, the owner of the local slot car track and pinball hall. As a young teenager I would spend up to 25 hours per week at the slot car track - playing pinball machines, racing and repairing slot cars, messing around and hanging over the counter talking to Paul about sport, cars, girls and life in general. Paul had his own wife and two children and his mother-in-law living with him. He was a devoted husband and father even though like most small business owners he worked long hours. He was always quick to give advice - "Don't talk like that!" "Don't you need to go home to do some school work?" "Do your parents know that you're here so late?" "What are you going to do with yourself when you leave school?" "One day I want to be able to tell people that you're an engineer not unemployed."

There was Mr Campbell my 4th grade teacher. I was a grubby and chubby little kid who would try to sit at the back of the room, with the seat out of my hand-me-down pants and a neglected appearance that was brought to the attention of DOCs on at least one occasion. He was the first teacher who recognised some things in me that others had missed. He took an interest in me in and out of the classroom. He would talk with me in the playground when I drifted towards him. He would encourage me inside the classroom, calling on me to answer questions when my hand didn't go up, setting me work that would challenge me, talking patiently with me when I messed up, and looking for ways to challenge me. He gave me several jobs. One of them was to put me in charge of the brand new school aquarium with tropical fish. I'd never seen tropical fish before. I'd seen goldfish and the mullet I caught from the creek, but never fish like this. I was entrusted with the only local source of knowledge "An introduction to caring for tropical fish" and encouraged to take care of them; and I did with great success. Eventually, he gave me my first public speaking opportunity, a talk I delivered on tropical fish to the class. I was now an expert on something.

There were other people (a baseball coach, a cricket coach, a high school geography teacher, the father of one of my closest mates) who also demonstrated that they were concerned for me and that they were interested in my life and my welfare. None of these men were Christians, but each was a decent man and each had a significant impact on my life, second only perhaps to that the only significant Christian influence, my grandfather. While God was to use a variety of Christians later in my life (between the ages 20-31) building on it my Grandfather's godly example, God also used these few decent men in my formative years.

The challenge

For me the challenge as a Christian is this. If God can use a few decent men who didn't know him or his eternal purposes, how much more can God use godly Christian men in the lives of their neighbour's children? Furthermore, how available am I to be used in similar ways? In fact, how can I ensure that I am seeking to be used by God in this way? Am I even conscious that God might use me this way? Of course, I know that God expects me to do more than live alongside people, he wants me to share my faith in Christ with others. But how seriously do I take to heart that I am to love my neighbour as myself? And perish the thought, am I so bound up with caring for my own nuclear family that I have no time or interest in my neighbours (young and old)?

There isn't space to go into much detail, but my personal challenge, and one I hope readers will share, is for each of us to do a quick assessment of the type of neighbour we are to the other families even in our street or apartment block. Of course for this to happen, our lives need to intersect with their lives in some way. How can we make this happen? This will vary depending on our circumstances - whether young or old, married or single, male or female etc. If for example, you have a young family, you have a great opportunity to involve yourself in other people's lives. When my children were growing up my wife and I had wonderful opportunities to be involved with other families. For us there were three areas where we had numerous opportunities outside the church:

• Through school - we got to know parents and children at bus stops, in the playground, at school events and in the community. In one street where we lived our house was an open house for all 43 children in the street (42 of whom were girls!).
• Through sporting teams - my daughters played sport summer and winter in the primary school years and generally I ended up coaching their teams. As a result, I had opportunities to know the team members and their families.
• Through other out-of-school activities like dance classes and music lessons.

I have no idea what influence my wife and I had in these years but I do know that we were enriched by these opportunities, and that we began to develop a concern for these children and their families. With this came opportunities for prayer and for us to share our faith. As well, our own daughters saw us relating to other children, which I'm sure was helpful for them in the formative years of their faith.

A related post

I have written about the importance of communities being concerned about children more generally in a previous post titled "Other people's children"

The benefits of failure

We live in a world where (as the saying goes) "everyone loves a winner, nobody likes a loser". In fact one of the most common words of derision for younger generations is "loser", or as they put it, "you loser!" Media and advertising constantly promote the view that life will be all the richer and rewarding if we can ensure that we're winners - "winners are grinners!" And yet, we know that people also talk about learning from their mistakes. Failed businesses, failed relationships, failed exams and so on, can all lead us to reflect on ideas that didn't work, motivations that sold us short, errors we have made in relationships, priorities that were all wrong and paths we should have avoided. In every instance of failure there is also an opportunity in which to learn.

The work of the 'Review of the National Innovation System' was handed down yesterday - Venturous Australia (this warrants its own post later) - and I don't think the 'f word' (failure!) was anywhere to be seen. More's the pity because I suspect that failure is foundational to innovation, success, wealth, and life's ultimate fulfilment. It's part of the blueprint for an innovative and successful nation, and yet the report doesn't give much consideration to failure, one of life's best teachers.

However, the world's most successful children's authors, J.K. Rowling, seems to understand from experience that failure has benefits. In a graduation address at Harvard University on the 5th June 2008, she had the good sense when speaking to one of the most talented and privileged group of young minds in the world, to speak about the benefits of failure. In choosing to do this she acknowledged that they were a group not "not very well-acquainted with failure". As a school leaver she had just wanted to write novels, and was ready to study English at university. But her parents had other more practical ideas and urged her to pursue a vocational degree. She compromised and agreed to study Modern Languages, but as soon as she was dropped off at University, she transferred to Classics. In her address she went on to share her experience of failure after university and the role that imagination played in this phase of her life.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

Rowling went on to share how failure taught her many things:

• It taught her things about herself - about her strong will, discipline, friends
• She became more secure in her ability to survive
• She learned that life is "difficult and complicated and beyond anyone's control...."

All of this sounds almost biblical. Unlike Venturing Australia, the Bible talks a lot about failure, although its counterpoint to failure is more often restoration, not simply success.

A study of the Bible will reveal that many of the central and best-known figures in the Bible experienced failure in life. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, David, Solomon, Peter and Paul, to name a few. Elijah after taking on four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and four hundred prophets of Asherah at Mount Carmel, and defeating them in a spiritual contest that saw God perform great miracles through him, is just a short while later under a broom tree in deep depression, praying to God that he might die (1 Kings 18-19). David was plucked from being a shepherd boy to defeat Goliath, became a hero to his nation, and eventually king of Israel (1 Samuel 16). The man acknowledged by God as “a man after my own heart” (1 Sam 13:14) went on to fail badly. He succumbed to sin and ended up engaging in lust, deception, adultery and murder (2 Samuel 11). The Apostle Peter boldly declared his loyalty and commitment to Jesus, but failed by denying that he knew him three times within moments of his death. I could go on, but hopefully we all get the point. The Bible has many examples of God’s people failing and yet later being restored and going on to fulfil God’s purpose for their lives. Each failed at some point in their lives, sometimes in spectacular fashion, and often after a triumph. But their failures were not the end of their stories and did not stop them from continuing to serve God. Each of these people not only recovered from their failure, they grew as a result of it. They learned from their failure, confessed sins to God, and were often able to be used in even mightier ways.

While J.K. Rowling did not set out to speak of failure due to sin, nor was she talking of restoration to a relationship with God, there are clear parallels. Life will involve successes, and failures. We learn from both, but in a profound sense, it is failure, or the recognition of one’s frailty and the search for new hope and direction, that has a more significant impact on shaping us and making us better people. The Bible of course points to our need to accept that we can never ‘succeed’ on our own. Life’s most significant goal is to acknowledge God, accept the forgiveness offered through the death of Christ (1 Peter 3:18) and seek to honour and serve him all the days of our lives. And the prize is out of this world (John 3:36)! Far beyond fame, money and success in this life.

I'm glad that J.K. Rowling confronted the graduates at Harvard with the benefits of failure. I wonder how we might factor failure into our thinking a bit more, and in particular, into our teaching and nurturing of our children. I want to ask parents who read this blog five simple questions:

How often do you stress success to your children, and how does this compare in frequency and intensity with discussions of failure?
How often have you shared with your children that you fail at times?
How does the school where your children attend talk about failure?
How much are your goals for your children shaped by a desire for success in worldly terms?
How do you try to help them understand that their 'good' (in Romans 8:28 terms), is just as much about how they cope with and respond to failure rather than just success?

I could go on to frame questions for pastors and teachers in the church and leaders of all kinds. And believe me, I ask myself questions like these regularly. A full understanding of how God uses failure to teach us is important. We tend to focus on spectacular moral failures when we do consider failure, but I think there is great benefit in considering failure more broadly within the context of God's redemptive work in people's lives.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

"For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:35-39).

The text of J.K. Rowling's address can be found here.

Christian writing for children - Part 1

Last Saturday New College hosted the 2008 Faithful Writer Conference. In all, 120 people came to discuss and learn about writing. The event was jointly sponsored by Matthias Media and CASE (which is part of New College). The plenary speaker for the day was Mark Tredinnick a well-known writer, poet, editor and teaching or writing. As well, seminars were run on essay writing, writing for sceptics, editing other people’s work, poetry writing and writing for children. I ran the latter seminar and thought I’d share some of the things I discussed.

Writing for children

The starting point for my seminar was the central proposition that the gospel of Christ is the central narrative to which virtually all other narratives have some relationship – certainly in the Western cultural tradition and literature. The central focus of the Bible is Salvation History; with its central narrative tracing both the history of Judaism and Christianity and God’s redemptive plan for his people. In the beginning God created…and it was good. But sin entered the world, man rebelled against him and so God placed a curse upon his creation that one day would end in judgement. But God always had a plan for such rebellion; a plan of redemption motivated by love. An amazing gift of grace; his own son sent to die and three days later to be raised from the dead to defeat sin and death. A plan that provided a way for his creation to be restored to a relationship with him.

Drawing on the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien I suggested that the central Bible narrative account of God’s redemptive plan and work is the central narrative that gives shape to all other narratives. In every story there is a sense in which there is an echo of the biblical narrative.

J.R.R. Tolkien once said (to C.S. Lewis) that “The Christian story is the greatest story of them all. Because it’s the real story. The historical event that fulfils the tales and shows us what they mean.”

Lewis and Tolkien both saw the gospel narrative as the central or foundational human narrative.

Drawing on this central proposition I suggested in my seminar that for Christians there is much fruitful writing that can point children towards Jesus. I suggested that there are a number of very direct forms of narrative writing for children that are worthy of our time, energy and creativity (I’ve add an extra one in this post that I didn’t share at the seminar):

Type 1 – Stories that directly present the Christian gospel explicitly, often in the form or the retelling of Bible stories suitable for children. Children’s Bibles and collections of Bible stories fall into this category.
Type 2 – Stories that allegorically present the gospel (e.g. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress).
Type 3 – Stories that present or address essential biblical understandings and teaching; where the key elements of the Biblical plan of salvation are woven within the story, or can be seen as explicitly reflecting the key elements of the divine narrative (e.g. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis). While some would see the latter as allegory, Lewis denied this and instead claimed that the narrative came first and the biblical parallels followed.
Type 4 – Moral tales that have direct biblical parallels or that reflect moral principles consistent with the Bible’s teaching (e.g. evil will be punished; sin has consequences; honesty is better than falsehood). Nursery rhymes and many fairy tales fall into this category as do many cautionary tales (of course not all such tales reflect biblical moral insights, but many do).
Type 5 – This is really a variation or extension of the above. Here the links or parallels are at the thematic level rather than in the form of moral teaching. Stories of this kind demonstrate or echo biblical teaching (e.g. salvation narratives, stories of redemption, parallels to biblical narratives or parables). These narratives parallel the gospel narrative without explicit commentary. Such stories can be read at one level as simply a nice tale, but at another level the key themes parallel biblical themes that can be discussed. The following examples demonstrate what I mean.

Example 1 – “Charlotte’s Web”, by E.B. White

This is a well known book written for 6-10 year olds. It is a beautifully written tale about a group of talking farmyard animals, a spider, a rat and a little girl named Fern. While it makes no attempt to teach the gospel narrative, or even disguise it within an allegorical telling, it has themes that parallel key themes within the biblical gospel narrative. At one level, it is the celebration of loyalty, love and friendship. But it is also a salvation narrative. The story of a runt pig rejected by the farmer, sentenced to death but then rescued first by a small girl and later by the work of an intelligent and literate spider. At this thematic level, the narrative points to the power of faith, hope, love, charity, sacrifice and new life.

Example 2 – “Why do you love me?” by Martin Baynton

This is a beautiful little picture book written for 3-6 year olds. It is essentially a dialogue between a dad and his little boy, prompted by the boy’s question, “Do you love me?” This is one of those conversations that only a parent could full appreciate. The little boy asks, “Why do you love me?” “Do you love me because I’m kind?” “..brave?” “..funny”? “…clever”? “…good”? “…naughty?” To each question the Dad says “Yes”. “So why do I try to be good” says the boy. “You tell me,” says his dad. “Because I love you too”, replies the boy. The echoes to the biblical account of God’s grace are evident. Like God whose love towards us is an unconditional act of grace not linked to who we are and what we do, the father loves the boy in spite of who he is and what he does unconditionally. He loves him through the good and the bad. And the boy, in response to the love of the father, loves his father as well and seeks to please him.


Example 3 – “Cowardly Clyde”, by Bill Peet

This is a picture book written for children aged 4-7 years that tells of a brave (foolish?) knight and his trusty (cowardly stead) who set out to solve the problem of an ogre who is devastating the countryside. Clyde is terrified but the knight (Sir Galavant) heads into a dark forest to kill the ogre. They follow the trail of horse bones and find him. Clyde turns and runs, reaching the edge of the forest only to turn and discover that Sir Galavant has gone; the victim of a low branch. He goes back, and in an act of bravery bites the tale of the ogre to divert its attention from Sir Galavant. The ogre pursues him to the edge of the forest only to explode just as he grabs Clyde’s tale and disappear in a puff of smoke as the sun’s rays strike him, “An owl-eyed monster who thrives on darkness and gloom can’t last ten seconds in the bright sunlight, and he knew it….” The parallels are not as strong as the above examples but they are there – good conquers evil; and evil belongs to the darkness and cannot survive the light.

The qualities of good Christian writing for children

My conclusion to this seminar was that there is great merit in Christians seeking to write literature in its many forms for children. I suggested that such writing needs to first meet the basic criteria for good writing – good tales well told; language used well; narratives that work at multiple levels; rich authentic characters; interesting ‘page-turner’ plots. But beyond this they should:

• offer knowledge that is a celebration of God’s world and his purposes;
  
• act as a mirror allowing the reader to reflect on life and their future;
  
• lead us to consider aspects of the human condition (life and death, fear, loneliness, pain, loss, frailty, brokenness etc);
• point to the central redemption narrative of the Bible.

Related Links

'Between Two Worlds' link to this post (here)

'Christian writing for children' - Part 2 (here)

Bill Henson - Part 4

After three Bill Henson blog posts (see here, here and here) I decided that I had subjected myself to enough frustration over this matter and wouldn't re-visit the topic. This was until I was confronted by Elizabeth Farrelly's frustrating essay "Paint them ugly" in the Sydney Morning Herald (12-13 July). I read it while on a much-needed holiday with my wife Carmen. I tried to ignore it. But eventually, I read it and felt compelled to send a letter to the Editor (which wasn't published!). I also decided that I needed to follow up one more time with a post on Henson's art. On the same day I had a fascinating exchange with a dissenting anonymous reader in response to my third Bill Henson post (here) that dealt with the provocative Art Monthly Australia magazine cover of a naked 5 year old girl. My reading of Farrelly, my letter writing to the SMH and my engagement with the anonymous blogger all overlapped. It took all my emotional energy and much of my time across a whole day to read, respond and write my letter, and so I decided I'd leave the blog post till later. Here it is, two weeks later. The Farrelly essay was in effect an attempt to provide a serious comment that would help readers to reflect on childhood and the transition to adulthood, and specifically the way that power is often imbalanced between adults and children. She made some excellent points. But after providing three interesting vignettes on childhood and family life she attempted to take the high moral ground in relation to the Henson affair:

"The Henson affair was resolved by not being resolved. The pictures were returned, no charges laid but viewable by appointment only. For Henson, for his gallerist Ros Oxley and for any artist or gallerist tempted to show any child, ever, the message was Beware! Beware the moral majority, the expectation of niceness in art, the imposition of 'standards' - not of artistry, or craftsmanship, or skill, but of decency. Decency, in art.

Never mind that decency, in all its small-mindedness, is the very anathema of art. Or that art and pornography are virtually opposite cultural forms. Consider for a minute the questions left by the Bill Henson affair about the nature of childhood, of children and of our relationship, as adults, to them."

As one who had objected to Henson I felt I was being unfairly attacked as "small-minded", part of the "moral majority" and so on. Farrelly proceeded to make a number of basic (almost random) points:

• "In Shakespeare's time she (i.e. 15 year old Miley Cyrus - who had been in the news that day) might have been married"
• "We talk as though she's a child being prematurely unnaturally 'sexualised'. "
• "Beware the moral majority"
• "The Oz trial and the Bill Henson affair are Australia's main contribution to obscenity scandal"
  
• The reaction to Henson is based on the "visceral urge to protect innocence"
• "We all want to protect our children.... but how much of our construction of childhood as a fragile walled garden is just that - a construct?"
  

She then moved to a questioning of parents and their motives for wanting to protect their children. She questioned parental motives for protection. She implied that the modern over anxious parent is too concerned with parenting styles, education, nutrition, discipline etc (she has a point here). Children are not perfect she suggested and neither are parents. Where is this going you might ask? It seems that Farrelly was wanting to blame society at large and families in particular for pushing children prematurely into adulthood and never encouraging some young adults to grow up (and of course there is some truth in this). Perhaps her point was badly made and she was trying to say that Henson's work is a commentary on our times.


The frustration with an essay like Farrelly's is that in her endeavour to play to the arts community there is a confusion of liberalism and relativism that leads to a failure on her part to adequately test her own assumptions. On one hand she was acknowledging that childhood and adulthood are different, that childhood innocence should exist, that parents have a role to protect and preserve childhood etc. But at the same time she wanted to promote the relativist argument that childhood is simply a construct anyway; what's all the moral fuss. I haven't the space or the time to do a complete critique of the essay but let me finish with the following quote and one point which I think is telling :

"Hardly surprising, perhaps, that once there (i.e. retreating from the task of parenting), we emit contrary and confusing signals; hyper-parenting, worshipping and yet negotiating. Deciding 18-year-old boys are old enough to die for their country but fifteen-year-old girls are too young even to recognise the power that having curves and pouts suddenly gives them. Turning the family from a hierarchy into a mini-democracy where children, teens and adults have equal status and discipline is no longer imposed but negotiated.

What we do not see, however, is that this perpetual childhood of ours is stolen from our children. Childhood - that particular, magic vision that allows kids to walk under tables, and fly under the radar - relies on being powerless as much as being small; relies on some external, benevolent source of power. We don't see this, because we see all empowerment as good.

So we abrogate. We refuse to exercise proper power over our children, or to recognise that children segue into adulthood by emulating us. We decline to set for them the boundaries or develop in them the skills by which they might securely navigate this process. We build a society obsessed with celebrity, sex and consumption, where advertising ice-cream on the sides of buses evokes oral sex, and then we affect abhorrence at the way our teenagers practise celebrity, sex and consumption.

The costs are high. In indulging our reluctance to play the grown-up, we sacrifice our children on the altar of our own cowardice, shoving them over the top to face an adulthood from which we ourselves shrink."

Stirring words, I wish I'd written some of them. But somehow, Farrelly seems unable to reconcile her own words (with which there is much that I see as true) with her own desire to argue that Henson, gallery owners, art magazine editors and even parents should be free to use images of naked young children beyond critique and accountability. The public, including people of faith and non-faith, professional educators, parents and grandparents, doctors and health workers, social workers, psychologists, police, lawyers, even the Prime Minister of this country, has questioned the wisdom of allowing children as young as 13 years to pose naked for a photographer. Images that are then placed on public display and distributed via the Internet to the world. With one of Farrelly's points I concur - sex has power. Yes there is power that can be exercised through sexuality. Yes, we should "exercise proper power over our children". Yes, we do have a society "obsessed with celebrity, sex and consumption". Yes, young people in the years of puberty may discover their own sexuality and wish to explot it. But given Farrelly's own words, you would hope that she might see a role for others to offer children guidance in this area, beyond simply offering them freedom to choose. That's why some have questioned the use of these images - any civil society, any community, has the right to raise such matters.

The matter of power seems to be of critical importance for Farrelly and so I have three questions about power for her and other apologists for Henson. Who is in control of the power of the 13 year old girl's emerging sexuality that Henson sought to portray? Who was exploiting this emerging sexual power? And whose purposes were most served by its use?

Bill Henson - Part 3

I've written twice previously about the Bill Henson art exhibition that featured photographs of a naked 13 year-old-girl. For overseas readers, this led to much public comment and polarised views on the merits or wrong-doing of his work. Police charges against the artist and gallery followed (Part 1 and Part 2), but recently the charges were droppped. This seems to have encouraged an art magazine to test the boundaries of public acceptability by publishing a photo of a naked 6 year-old on the front cover. The action seems to have been calculated and has sought to promote the view that use of naked photos of children is a legitimate art form.

The picture, taken in 2003 by Melbourne photographer Polixeni Papapetrou of her daughter Olympia appeared on the cover of this month's Art Monthly Australia. The edition also has other photos of naked children. The Age art critic Robert Nelson, reports that "Papapetrou's husband and father of Olympia, now 11, said the family had no regrets and the photograph was a great work of art."

I find it incomprehensible that in a civilised society that there are so many people willing to defend the action of a mother who has photographed her 6 year-old daughter naked in varied unnatural poses and has then shared them with the world. The child's father (an art critic) has supported the publication of the photos in the magazine, and has allowed the girl (now 11 years) to front the media cameras to argue the case for such artistic photos.

While the photos might well be seen by some as art, many see it as a case of child exploitation and perhaps abuse. I am saddened and at the same time outraged by the recent developments and would urge public condemnation and government action to tighten laws in this area.

The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) has pulled together a collection of recent media reports and information without making any comment. These provide further background and viewpoints.