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?

Environmental warriors on a religious crusade?

While I am committed to environmental issues and believe that all of us must be good stewards of God's world, like many others, I am often surprised by the religious zealousness of some environmental activists. Critique of the almost apocalyptic language of the environmental movement has recently come from some surprising sources.

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald this week (12-13 July 2008) Michael Duffy penned these words:

The rhetoric surrounding global warming is drawing increasingly on notions of religion and war. As has been often noted, environmentalism in its more extreme forms is deeply appealing to those of us with a need to believe in something, but who have decided that science has killed off Christianity.

(Bob) Brown with his apocalyptic talk of cataclysm, exemplifies this. Ross Garnaut’s use of the term “diabolical” when presenting his report pressed the same button. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse certainly get a good gallop in the report, with predictions of war (geopolitical instability), famine (collapse of agricultural productivity), pestilence (dengue fever) and death (all the above, plus heat-related fatalities).

ABC TV’s political editor Chris Uhlmann, picked up on the religious element in the carbon crusade…… “One of the things that strikes me most strongly about this debate is its theological nature – and that’s essentially that we have sinned against the environment, that we are now being punished and the only way we can escape that punishment is to wear a hair shirt for the rest of our lives”

I pray that Brown, Duffy, Uhlmann and others can join the dots between human selfishness, greed, exploitation, pride, power, environmental decay, sin and rebellion against God, and perhaps read Genesis and Revelation with eyes opened by the Spirit of God. My hope is that in the midst of these difficult times when the environment is under threat, and we face significant challenges from global warming, that they might realise that science does not control the world and that God is not dead!

Just and true are your ways,
O King of the nations!
Who will not fear, O Lord, And glorify your name?
For you alone are holy. All nations will come
And worship you,
For your righteous acts have
Been revealed.
(Revelation 15:3-4)

Above: Port Stephens (NSW) at dawn yesterday where I'm holidaying

Truth & the Internet 2

In the latest edition of Case magazine I explore the topic ‘Truth and the Internet’. Does the Internet change the way we learn and acquire knowledge? Does it pose a threat to truth? What are the implications for how we engage with and use the Internet for God’s purposes?

Above: Could they have had any idea of what was to come? U.S. Army Photo, number 163-12-62

In a previous post on this blog (here) I commented on the challenge of discerning the difference between truth and falsehood and the special problem that children have on the Internet (e.g. the challenge of a tree dwelling octopus!). And in an earlier post (here) I discussed the impact of new communication technology and the benefits and opportunities of the Internet for communication, learning and evangelism.

I’m a keen user of the Internet and appreciate that it is a useful tool that has great benefits for learning and communication. But I also know that it also poses threats to God’s truth and to the very definitions of truth and knowledge that shape our worldviews. In my Case article, I suggested that there are a few things that are critical if Christians are to make the Internet our servant, not our master:

• We need to rely on God’s word and give it first priority as the source of knowledge and truth about our God and his eternal plan for his people.
• We need to understand the interpretive communities (virtual and real) that we negotiate each day. We need to enter and participate in virtual communities with the same respect, purposes, enthusiasm and preparation with which we enter any physical community.
• We need to test the validity, accuracy and truth of anything we find on the Internet.
  

a) Avoiding being shaped by the Internet

There is a danger that in embracing the Internet we may be shaped by it. The postmodern thinker lives in a world of openness, doubt and uncertainty. The Internet as a platform for information exchange is a tool that sits comfortably with relativistic and postmodern thought. Meta-narratives like the Christian gospel can so easily be dismissed as just one telling of humanity’s story, just one possible truth amongst many, or perhaps even just one story amongst many stories.

It seems obvious that a key priority to avoid being shaped into the world’s mould is for the Christian to continually place a priority on God’s word. We should use the Internet both to strengthen our faith and to share it, but we need to do so with a healthy understanding of the varied epistemologies that we will encounter. Don Carson (in The Gagging of God) rightly suggests, that in a world dominated by radical hermeneutics and deconstruction, it will take diligence to fight against the tendency to accept that all interpretations of texts are equally valid.

The Christian needs to rely on God’s word as the ultimate test of what is right and true. Christians are people who “guard [their way]” according to God’s word, “storing up” God’s word in their hearts, “meditating on” and “delighting in” his statutes (Psalm 119:9-16).

b) Take care in, and show respect for, the Cyber communities we enter

Just as we must take care with the networks of people we join in the physical world, we must take care with the cyber communities we enter. The insight that interpretive communities and status hierarchies shape the understandings and beliefs of the individual is not a new one. Jesus himself asked the religious elite of his day, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44).

We need to understand the interpretive communities we visit, and engage in them with full understanding of the foundations on which they share their experiences and insights. Just as Christians share common beliefs based on their reading of God’s word and their understanding of it developed in interpretive communities (e.g. families, churches, Bible study groups etc), so too non-Christian networks and groups share common understandings gained as part of interpretive communities. The atheist, the Rotarian and the sceptic all share common views of the world within their communities. What is different is that Christians claim a shared understanding of the Living God and our confidence in this comes from the truth we see in God’s word. The Bible claims that God is the foundation and author of all truth and that this is focused on the person of Jesus who claimed, “I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:1). This truth stands above and shapes all other ‘truth’.

c) Test the validity, accuracy and truth of anything you find on the Internet

While the Internet can be useful for communicating truth, readers need to be able to assess information to judge if it is true. I continue to be amazed just as much by the inaccuracy of Internet, as I am by its comprehensiveness. Even an Oxford Press published book by a leading international scholar is to be questioned. How much more carefully should we read with discernment the words of an unknown person, representing an unknown organization, with unknown qualifications? As Howard Rheingold has pointed out, "the responsibility for determining the accuracy of texts shifted from the publisher to the reader when the functions of libraries shifted to search engines". This is not inherently bad; in fact, I see much that is good about this shift. Both children and adults need to ask themselves more questions of the content they encounter:

Who wrote this piece? What is the author's claim to expertise and knowledge in this area? From where does the writer derive his or her sources and how well regarded are such sources? What is the purpose of the writing? What are the underlying assumptions, ideology, values and worldview of the writer? How do the claims of this text match the claims of others?

Summing up

The Internet offers new possibilities and also threats. John Stackhouse points out in his excellent book “Humble Apologetics” - “If we are going to defend and commend our faith, we must do it in a new mode: with a different voice and in a different posture. Our apologetics must be humble.” This is a great challenge to me personally; both as a reader or lurker in numerous virtual communities of which I am part, or as I seek to invite others into one of my own virtual communities, such as the readership of this blog.

Above: Just one more connection! US Army photograph

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.

The problem of increasingly absent parents

Nicole at '168 Hours' blogged a few days ago concerning the pressure on ‘Tween’ girls today. She made reference to a review in the Sydney Morning Herald of a book written by Maggie Hamilton – What’s happening to our girls. She made special mention of the fact that by the time girls are close to becoming teenagers both parents are working, female role models are less available (because they see their mothers less) and so some girls turn increasingly to peers.

“While this gives tween girls more freedom, many end up spending a significant amount of time on their own….As parents are frequently not around, girls turn to their peers for support. This gives young girls a lot of power over each other's lives.”

The same can be said in relation to ‘tween’ boys and fathers. There is good research evidence to suggest that there is a relationship between the time mothers and fathers spend with their children and their children' well-being. I’ve written a number of previous posts about families and time with children, including reduced time being spent by parents with their children (here), the reduction of time spent sharing meals (here), and the role of fathers (here). I also wrote in Case magazine last year concerning research concerning the impact of fathers on their children’s lives (available here).

Nicole’s post has prompted me to revisit the topic to comment a couple of things.

1. There are qualitative differences in the time fathers spend with their children

While fathers are spending slightly more time with their children than they used to, they still spend much less time than mothers, and there appear to be qualitative differences in the time spent with them. As you’d expect fathers spend less than half the hours in direct care of children under the age of 14 years. But they spend less time in all major areas of involvement:

• Engagement – i.e. direct interactions with their children and joint activities.
• Accessibility – i.e. being available for possible interaction in the house or even by phone.
• Responsibility – i.e. being responsible for childcare and the resources their children need.

A study by Goldman (2005) found that when asked who they would turn to for emotional support, 23% of boys with low self-esteem said they would go to their fathers, while 44% said they would turn to their mothers. In the case of high self esteem boys, 61% would turn to fathers and 76% to their mothers. When 11 to 16 year olds were asked who they would turn to if trying to make decisions about what to do with their lives after the age of 16 years, 10% said they would turn to their fathers and 33% indicated they would talk to their mothers. The rest largely turned to peers.

What studies like the above show is that more mothers than fathers engage in experiences with their children, and particularly with their sons, that promote physical and emotional intimacy. These data also suggest that if mothers are less available for boys in the teenage years will, that this could have adverse effects, particularly when coupled with low father involvement.

2. Growing up without a father makes a big difference

Research also consistently shows that children growing up without their fathers face more difficulties and are at higher risk of low school achievement, higher unemployment after school, earlier childbearing and delinquency. Boys growing up without fathers also seem especially prone to exhibit problems as varied as gender-identity, psychosocial adjustment, and aggressiveness. Girls are also affected by father-absence, although the effects on girls may be less enduring, dramatic, and consistent than the effects on boys. The absence of mothers (increasingly), as Maggie Hamilton writes, increases the risk of problems for girls as well.

3. Fathers help boys with peer relationships

Fathers play an important role in their children's socialization and including having potential influence on their children's relationships with peers (this applies to girls and boys). Professor Ross Parke at the University of California (Riverside) has spent many years exploring mother-father differences in styles of interaction. A particular interest has been in the lessons that are learned in the family that, in turn, influence children's adaptation to peers. He has identified several sets of mediating processes that bridge the gap between the family and peer group:

• Helping with emotional regulation and support concerning social relationships.
• Instructing, tutoring and modelling how to interact with peers.
• Managing their children's peer relationships through some level of control of peer contacts.

Research also suggests that fathers are important players in the development of a child’s emotional regulation and control. For both resident and nonresident fathers, active and varied involvement in their children's lives, rather than just the amount of contact and time, appears to be important. In the teenage years, strong and close relationships with resident biological fathers or stepfathers are associated with better educational, behavioral, and emotional outcomes. High involvement and closeness, appears to reduce delinquent behavior and increases emotional stability.

Research evidence continues to show what the Bible has always taught, families matter! Mothers and fathers play different but complementary roles in nurturing, teaching and guiding their children.

Other useful resources

Fatherhood Institute
Family Action Centre (Newcastle University)

Other people's children

Like all Australians I was shocked and saddened by the news that 18-month-old twins were found dead last week, weighing less than 4 kilograms. It appears they had probably been dead for over a week when found by an 11 year old sibling. The mother commented to police "I don't think I fed them enough". The likely cause of the twins' death was malnutrition. However, both parents have been charged with murder. Neighbours have been stunned. Their comments have included "We're shocked", “the kids were neglected”, “I wish I’d said more” etc.

A second case of alleged child neglect emerged this week with children as young as five found living in "unhygienic" conditions in the heart of Canberra. Three boys and a girl were taken away after being found home alone at a house littered with rubbish, dog bones and discarded toys, just a few kilometres from Australia’s Parliament. Their 35-year-old mother remains in police custody after yesterday being charged with four counts of neglecting a child and a charge of threatening to kill a person.


I could go on citing more examples, but it’s too depressing. As usual, we’ve had the same responses from the popular media blaming the Department of Community services for not acting sooner, asking when the government was going to do more, and interviewing family members and neighbours. Once again, some had little to say, some blamed others, a few expressed regret for not doing more when they noticed the obvious neglect.

It seems to me that we need to stop blaming everyone else for these terrible cases and begin to question how each of us look out for others in our communities. Yes, we also should rightly question the role that extended families play in supporting family members, but what do WE do? Do we accept some responsibility for other people’s children? Do we even know our neighbours? Could we recognise a case of neglect? Would we do anything if we did?

One of my colleagues from the United States, Professor of Early Childhood Education Lilian Katz, offered this comment some years ago on the community’s responsibility towards other people’s children:

"Each of us must come to care about everyone else's children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people's children. After all, when one of our children needs life-saving surgery, someone else's child will perform it. If one of our children is harmed by violence, someone else's child will be responsible for the violent act. The good life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people's children."

The Greek philosopher Socrates some 400 years before Christ was born also saw the need to value children:

Could I climb to the highest place in Athens, I would lift my voice and proclaim, "Fellow citizens, why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth and take so little care of your children to whom one day you must relinquish it all."

Parents have special responsibility for their own children, as do other family members, and there is a place for government and charitable agencies to support families at risk. But we all collectively share some responsibility in any community for the children of others, including strangers. While I’m not sure what Lilian Katz meant by the ‘good life’, the Bible points us ultimately to our relationship with God through Christ as the ultimate good. The good news of Christ leads to the ultimate good, being part of the Kingdom of God (Matthew 9:35). We should want this for our children and for other people’s children. As Katz points out, ultimately, the lives of our children and other people’s children in any community are interwined.

Jesus showed how precious children are and how important their future should be to us. He rebuked the disciples when they complained about parents who were bringing their children to him:

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." (Matthew 19:14)

Christ raised the status of children by this statement; revealing their worthiness. They are not mere ‘objects’ of pride for the parent, nor simply a resource to be utilized by the family; they are potential heirs of the kingdom of heaven!

How do we show that we value children?

We start by showing that we love our own children, by caring for them and nurturing them physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our families should demonstrate to others biblical patterns for family life. Our priority should be to see our children come to faith in Christ and to grow in their understanding of God and their desire to serve him all the days of their lives.


We will demonstrate it within the church in the way that we treat other people’s children; by caring for them and supporting parents to raise them to come to faith in Christ. We will treat children as potential heirs of the Kingdom of God and demonstrate this in the way that the church teaches, supports and loves them.

We will show it in the way we show concern for our neighbours children. We will hopefully notice cases of neglect and abuse and do something about it. Perhaps this will involve offering support of some type to the children themselves, particularly those who go to school with your own children, or who simply live in your street. It might involve reaching out to parents who need help. And in extreme cases, it might require you to speak to a government agency to suggest they intervene.

The wonders of space: Seeing the creator in images of the universe

Praise the Name of the LORD

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his hosts!

Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!

Let them praise the name of the LORD!
For he commanded and they were created.
And he established them forever and ever;
he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away.

(Psalm 148:1-6)

I grew up as a child during the great US and Russian space race of the 1950s and 1960s. Like most young boys I was fascinated by it. I collected cards, cut out every clipping I could find in the papers, read everything I could find on space. There was no TV at first but by the early 1960s black and white TV brought space travel even more to life. Like almost everyone who had a TV I watched the first moon landing live on July 20th 1969. I was not a Christian but I still marvelled at the vastness and mystery of space and the human achievement.

For a young boy this was the age of cracker nights, home made cracker guns, serious skyrockets, and the challenge of contests to see who could blast a tin the highest using a tuppenny bunger. My fascination with space exploration had two dimensions. The technology achievement of blasting men into space in tiny capsules atop giant rockets seemed unbelievable. And the images of earth viewed from space for the first time and those of the relatively inconsequential moon that were viewed on cinema screens and black and white televisions sets were amazing.

In the intervening years since the US Apollo program ended, space exploration and travel has seemed much more boring (notwithstanding the great work of astronomers and the achievements of the Hubble Telescope etc). But the Mars probe has rekindled my interest and the images have inspired me in new ways.

Image above: Mars North Polar Cap in summer [Image courtesy of Malin Space Science] Systems)

Residents at the university college I lead (New College, UNSW) were fortunate to have Dr Fred Watson as our guest at our end of session dinner recently. Dr Watson is Astronomer in Charge of the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Coonabarabran, where his main scientific interest is gathering information on very large numbers of stars and galaxies. He is the author of "Stargazer - the life and times of the telescope", and is a regular broadcaster on ABC radio. His new book "Why is Uranus upside down?" is based on listener questions, and was published in October 2007.

His address included a fascinating visual presentation of images primarily from Mars (it has obvious currency). His focus was the significance of the most recent Mars landing by NASA. The images he shared and thousands of others are available on the NASA website.

The landing on Mars by the NASA probe is another significant human achievement. The Mars Phoenix lander touched down in the far north of the Red Planet, after a 680 million-km (423 million-mile) journey from Earth. The probe is equipped with a robotic arm to dig for water-ice thought to be buried beneath the surface. It has already begun examining the site for evidence of the building blocks of life. There have been many attempts to explore Mars dating back to the 1970s, but the greatest successes have come in recent years. We now have three functioning pieces of equipment on the surface of Mars beaming signals back to Earth: the Spirit rover, the Opportunity rover, and the most recent is the Phoenix lander.

Dr Watson painted a vivid picture of the universe in all its majesty and wonder. He spoke of stars being formed and time spans of billions of years. The little boy in me was again captivated by the technology that sent the little landing vehicle to this distant planet and the wonder and enormity of space. The images of the Red planet captured my imagination. But while Dr Watson kept talking of the vastness of the Universe, the billions of years he believed that it had taken for the planet as we view it to be formed, I kept thinking of the creator who was responsible for all that we were viewing and the vastness that was still hidden from even the most powerful of telescopes. As amazing as the Mars landing is, in cosmic terms, it is barely a trip to the other side if the street, and the best of our images of the universe, collected by our most powerful telescopes, are little more than a view of the next set of hills.

As a Christian I believe that God has revealed himself through his word, that his plan for humanity is described in detail in the Bible and that this is revealed perfectly in the sending of his son Jesus Christ to die for us. But I also believe, as most of the great scientists did in the 17th Century, that God's creation also points to him and that science and religion don't have to be seen as in conflict. I'm grateful to astronomers who help me to understand the complexities of a universe that I believe God created. Their discoveries lead me to marvel at God and his work, not to doubt his existence. The latest edition of Case (a quarterly magazine that I Edit for CASE) has an interesting piece by Larissa Johnson titled "Redeeming Natural Theology" that argues that science and religion can co-exist and that science can be a useful apologetic.

As Dr Watson spoke, I kept wanting to shout Praise God! It is little wonder that astronomers marvel at the stars in the heavens and spend their lives seeking the secrets of the universe. I too marvel at it, for it declares the Glory of God.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hand

Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard
(Psalm 19:1-3)

Above Image: The cliff in this image from Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam) is informally named Cape St Vincent. Scientists suggest that the rocks at Victoria Crater once represented a large dune field, not unlike the Sahara desert on Earth, and that this dune field migrated with an ancient wind flowing from the north to the south across the region.

Image above: Image of Victoria Crater showing Rover Opportunity's tracks as viewed from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft (26.6.07).

Image above: The image above is inside Newton Basin on Mars and shows numerous narrow channels run from the top down to the floor. Many scientists hypothesize that liquid groundwater can sometimes surface on Mars, erode gullies and channels, and pool at the bottom before freezing and evaporating [Photo Credit: Malin Space Science Systems, MGS, JPL, NASA]