My climate change

I spent most of my teenage years convinced that Ecclesiastes had the truest vision of life. Vanity…nothing changes…nothing makes any difference...just accept it, let God be God and don’t expect too much. University in the 80s schooled me in the secular equivalent, literary modernism, and it all came to mind again last weekend reading an article on Leonard Woolf which brought back this quote.
Strangely enough, the hard evidence on climate change has convinced me that is not the Christian way, it's not the gospel way.
Human beings actually have made a difference to the world itself for the worst, it seems. But a difference can also be made for the better. Big things do change. Take smoking; I never imagined it would fall from favour, even in face of the health issues. But smokers are now unwelcome even in Irish pubs! Likewise, sexual discrimination and abuse: how wonderful that it is now taken seriously, the reverse of what I would have imagined happening in a post-Christian world. I’m also of the view that we really could seriously reduce extreme poverty by pursuing the Millennium Development Goals (but I acknowledge that some of my Christian economist friends aren’t with me on this). And I'm convinced that these are all good things, worth doing.
Over the twenty years since I first came to university, I’ve changed from a pessimistic fatalist about human capacity to a cagey optimist. I've gone from this U2 lyric to this speech. Wonder what changes the next twenty (dv) will bring, and will U2 be around to provide the soundtrack?!
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Who cares?

One of the hats I wear is Anglicare Council member. I'm thrilled about the upcoming conference we are organising on human need and a Christian philosophy of care—a joint effort between a number of organisations. The Anglicare Council has been thinking through the Christian rationale for care (feedback welcome when it goes online at the Anglicare site) and I've done some interesting reading around it.

I'm convinced that one under-examined reason for Christians being involved in care is so that others don't do it instead! This seemingly bizarre line of thought runs thus:

• people are naturally attracted to those who care for them;


• if those who care for them hold a particular worldview, that worldview is more likely to be accepted by the care recipient;


• it is hard to challenge a worldview that someone has accepted because of the care shown to them by its adherents;


• therefore, Christians should be involved in care so that many will be more readily disposed to accepting the Christian message and not be drawn to accept other worldviews instead.

Now before people jump up and down crying “Manipulation! Coercion! Entrapment!”, let me emphasise that there is no obligation on a care recipient to accept the Christian worldview (Christians care for all comers). Rather, I'm just stating the bald reality that doing good deeds for someone predisposes them to accept your worldview.

The 4th century pagan emperor Julian saw what was up: he ordered his leaders to found hospitals, charities and welfare services, because the Christians were doing it and attracting everyone to their ‘atheism’ (i.e. denial of the pantheon of gods)! More on this here .

Os Guinness writes here that “historians view the Christian practice of caring as a prime reason why an obscure, marginal movement on the fringe of the Roman Empire rose to dislodge classical paganism and became the dominant faith of Western civilization and the world's first universal religion” (p.125).

When you care for people they are likely to care about what you believe and say.

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Christ's coffin

Director of the film, Titanic, James Cameron, claims to have found the bone boxes (ossuaries) of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and other members of Jesus' family. When I first saw the news story I scoffed. Which is kind of strange for someone in my position: why wasn't it the most interesting piece of news I've heard in ages? I guess there are a few reasons I was underwhelmed:

1. The words came out of James Cameron's mouth, and he isn't someone I generally refer to for my NT history.
2. There have been a number of stories like this in recent times (Dan Brown's being the biggest of course), so I'm probably a little theory-weary.
3. The ossuaries were empty, so it would seem that they have no possible bearing on the discussion of the resurrection of Jesus nor anything remotely relevant to Christian faith (except, perhaps, adding some historical data to what we know from the New Testament).
4. I do expect evidence of the Passion events to keep being found, but I expect it to match Gospel accounts, such is my confidence in their historicity.

But suppose for a moment this IS the ossuary of Jesus of Nazareth. Suppose it could somehow be demonstrated that Jesus' bones were in here, that the body decayed and returned to dust like everyone's does.

That would be news. Unwelcome, lifechanging news. Such is the historical seriousness of Christian faith.
I'll get our NT scholars onto a more detailed look at the story.


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Pearson on Rudd

In columns in The Australian, Christopher Pearson has been challenging the authenticity of ALP leader, Kevin Rudd’s Christianity. Pearson claims Rudd equivocates on religion—sometimes Anglican, sometimes Catholic, sometimes privately religious, othertimes suggesting a greater role for the church in state life. Whether or not he has a point, some of Pearson’s poor arguments against Rudd have reinforced for me the importance of sophisticated Christian intellectual engagement in social debate. Pearson just won’t allow for any subtlety of argument.
For example, Pearson suggests that Rudd’s vote in support of legalising the RU486 abortifacient drug was an anti-Christian act. Taking the drug might be anti-Christian and sinful, if one views human life as beginning at conception (as I do), but surely being involved in a political process about its availability is not.
Pearson also suggests, bizarrely, that the Bible contains five passages condemning abortion: one in Galatians and four in Revelations [sic], he says. Galatians 1:15 raises God’s foreknowledge of a human being before birth, but does not contribute anything to the argument about abortion. It is part of the Bible’s overall maximal attitude to human life (the basis of my own view on abortion). I am still struggling to identify the Revelation references: Chapter 12, perhaps, with the child-devouring dragon? But surely Pearson understands this is apocalyptic imagery, not a lesson in ethics? Or does he mean the condemnation of murderers in Rev 22:15? But that pre-empts the argument.
One wonders if Pearson is a Bible reader or merely a Bible wielder, scoring blows for political purposes. I’d love to see the ALP revisit its position on a range of bioethical issues, but Pearson has hardly provided the impetus for it.
In a follow-up column last weekend, Pearson aimed to foil Rudd’s efforts to win back the Catholic vote to Labor. There has been a drift in the other direction over the past decade, and many commentators have noted that Howard’s cabinet looks like a DLP collective! Pearson emphasises the theological distinctives of Roman Catholic and Protestant faiths (a refreshing admission of difference when many paper over such distinctions) and proclaims that Rudd can’t have it both ways. I can’t remember the last time I heard that a politician’s views on transubstantiation might ruin his chances of election. But I do love the fact that it is bringing theology to the fore in our national debates.

Tim Johnson has expanded on my thoughts nicely here

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Percy's Cosmos

Let me return to the blogworld for 2007 by sharing a couple of quotes I'm enjoying today. Doing some extraneous reading to avoid writing, I'm flicking through Walker Percy's very funny and poignant mock-selfhelp book, Lost in the Cosmos. Percy is a Catholic humanist 2oth Century novelist, and wry wrestling with the inexplicable God and His absurd world mark all of his fiction. This book is a form of philosophical therapy, a selfhelp quiz asking the reader to carry out a series of thought experiments in order to explore his or her view of the Self. Its parallel in the world of movies would be I (heart) Huckabees. Percy's self-analysis is sharp, in the sense that it cut through even the thickest self-deception.

The book ends with what Percy sees as the choice for moderns (it was written in 1983): accept the preposterous doctrines of Christianity, or the more preposterous doctrines of scientism. Ask yourself, he suggests, whether you would rather be in 'Church' or in 'Nature' when an extraterrestial message comes in from the Great Beyond, "Do you read me? Come back".

Anyway, my two quotes for the day are:

"Two gods in the Cosmos is one too many."
"Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide?"



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Secrets included

Where did I get the idea that God knows my ‘inner life’—what I’m thinking, my emotions that remain unexpressed, my lusts and temptations, my dreams. After all, it is counter-intuitive. I’d started to think that maybe I’d gleaned it from Romantic literature and the mystics rather than the Scriptures. But then I opened Matthew 6. Three times, Jesus recommends private religious activity—giving to the needy, praying, fasting—each time contrasting the reward received by displaying these activities before others with the ‘secret reward’ that God grants when these deeds are done for His eyes only.

“And your Father who sees in secret will reward you”, Jesus repeats after each instruction.

Without words such as these (and there are plenty more in Scripture, now that I’m thinking of it), there would be no basis for morality beyond public laws. None of my thoughts, feelings, inclinations, prayers, would matter in the slightest. But because of these words of Jesus, I am beholden to God for all that I am, inside and out.

It is an idea that supports the hope that in the end, true justice will be done by God, since God knows all, secrets included.

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Proximate words

There is great wisdom in some Buddhist scriptures, but nothing that can reliably be traced back to the Buddha himself. This is the conclusion of Edward Conze, the translator and compiler of the Penguin selection of scriptures. In his introduction, he makes it clear that there is no "original gospel" (his words) in Buddhism. "All attempts to find it are based on mere surmise," he explains. The major reason for this is that many of the traditional texts were written down between 100-400 A.D. (Conze doesn't use C.E.), that is, 600-900 years after the Buddha's life. That is not to say that the words of the Buddha have not been preserved, just that at the moment we have no reliable way of finding them.

Christianity has its traditional texts, too, but it is much easier to identify the source of the traditions—the writings of the followers of Jesus, in particular the four 'biographies' (gospels) written within 70 years of Jesus' life on earth. There's potential for slippage there, too, but the proximity of Jesus' life to its earliest written records helps us to understand why Christians can hold the New Testament in such high regard as a genuine source of knowledge about their leader.

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