Olympic ‘Last Supper’ depiction with a French Twist

/ MurrayCampbell

I do enjoy French quirkiness and the absurd. It is often playful and sometimes provocative. And sometimes it is attention-seeking and puerile.

I loved much of the innovation and freshness that the French gave the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The interplay between art and athletes, and the sitz im leben of the city instead of stadium was pretty cool.

During the Opening Ceremony, there were many highlights, and of course, there was controversy. There was the mass reenactment of Marie Antoinette’s beheading with geysers of blood reaching the skies. If blood lust didn’t do it for you, another scene was depicted, and unsurprisingly it was most controversial, consciously so. although as myopic and unoriginal as a school kid’s impression of Monet’s water lilies. 

I’m still unsure how Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper relates to the Olympics. Let’s leave aside that the painting is Italian, not French. The French do however enjoy the question and leave us without the answer.   In this Olympic staged drama, the French have, as artists previously mimed, revised this Biblical scene where Jesus teaches his disciples over the Passover meal, on the night before his crucifixion. The French Jesus isn’t a male. Of course, let’s turn Jesus into an obese woman with a halo hovering over her head. The disciples can’t be men either. No, let’s have men in drag and a child and a splash of androgyny. 

More than a few people are angered by or upset by this depiction of Jesus and his disciples. I don’t like it either. Mocking Jesus is kinda stupid and unoriginal. It’s a pale copy of the original setting where the crowds, Pharisees, and soldiers mocked Jesus every step to and on the cross.

Bear with me, but this reminded of the sermon that I’ve prepped for church tomorrow. W e are looking at that most famous and intriguing saying of Jesus,

“the truth will set us free” 

Without giving too much away ,there is a line in my notes where I explore contemporary understandings of freedom and at one point, already with the French in mind, I say this,

‘When it comes to art, in painting, music and film, it does is pushes into the absurd or obscene, because freedom requires difference, new and fresh.”

The French have just provided a classic example! In this sense, the artistic directors for the Opening Ceremony are doing little more than conforming to the overdone narrative that is now basic to university education, social commentary and Parliamentary halls. 

France is famous for revolutionary undertones; it’s part of the kindergarten curriculum: how to protest and exhibit violence 101.  For example, French Protestant Christians were nearly wiped out in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Christianity has been a tiny minority ever since. In a way, Christianity is an easy target for the French (and yes, for Aussies too). Although, if the organisers had thought for more than a French moment, they’d have realised that more many African and Asian and South American Olympians, Jesus isn’t a parody or obtuse figure of derision; he is worthy of more honour and glory than all Olympic gold combined. Maybe they aren’t so concerned about social and international tolerance!

If the French were really daring, they would imagine an Islamic scene and the prophet Mohammed But of course, we know how that would quickly turn into real bloodshed  (by the way, I think that would be a really dumb idea for all kinds of reasons: not least, because it’s not a way to love our Muslim friends).

So why depict Jesus and his disciples in feminine and trans robes? Is it a call to equality or sexual expression? Is the city of love trying to deconstruct the patriarchy? Like many things French, who knows! One thing on display however is this return to paganism that is popping up in Western cultures. The Olympic Games have their origins in paganism and as recent Olympic Games have intimated, we are returning to these superstitious waters.

This dramatic display turns the Last Supper into a hyper-sexualised trans orgy with Greek mythological overtones (hence Bacchus the smurf turning up).

I suspect this is not the intention, but there is in this boorish parody of The Last Supper, something that at least opens a question to what Jesus was showing that night.

The revolution planned by God before all eternity and carried out by his Son involved the shedding of blood, as the Passover meal vividly showed.  The bloodshed didn’t involve chopping off the heads of his enemies, but dying in their place for their salvation.

If we are looking for the absurd and obscene, the beautiful and original, the cross of Jesus Christ to which the Last Supper prepares, is as French as it gets. It is the efficacious symbol for the peoples of the world.  Not for the glory of sport, but where God’s good news draws people from everywhere corner in freedom and truth and love and grace. And yes, this will include people whom we find unlikable and uncomfortable or just different from us.  That’s true originality: the cross speaks volumes about the foolishness of freedom searching without God and of staggering Divine love for these very people. As those who don’t fit gaze upon the crucified and risen Christ, there is not an emptiness or sterile religion, but a holy and loving God who forgives and frees. Stick that in your baguette and enjoy it!

Update Jul 29.

Olympic organisers have apologised. They confirm that the scene was depicting the Last Supper, infused with Greek paganism (Bacchus the blue smurf). It was a conscience artistic and moral judgment to sexualise and trans the Last Supper and with pagan elements added into the mix.

The apology sounds like the unrepentant juvenile caught stealing on CC TV, but I can afford to accept the apology.

One wonders what the closing ceremony will include!

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/28/paris-olympics-organisers-apologise-to-christians-for-last-supper-parody

https://www.yahoo.com/news/paris-olympics-producers-confirm-last-173957068.html?

Beware of local cults

/ MurrayCampbell

This year I’ve received 2 phone calls at the church office this year from young women reaching out to local churches and offering to help us engage with young people and help them navigate life and follow God. I suspect there have been more, but we didn’t answer the phone.

On both occasions, the callers were young women who were incredibly polite and gracious. Straight away, their smoothness raised questions in my mind and their offer to look after or help out the young people at church was certainly strange. Their spiel very quickly turned to Bible study groups that they offer which will apparently save a generation from all the pitfalls of today’s society. 

Maybe I’m suspicious by nature, but something didn’t sound right, so I asked what organisation they represent. Their tone changed immediately and became nervous and defensive. It’s like they were reading off a script and didn’t know how to handle the question. On both occasions, the callers weren’t keen to share the name of their organisation. Alarm! In addition, I asked them for a website that provides information about who they are and what they’re about. After trying to avoid an answer, one of the women gave me a website (which turned out to contain zero information). Another alarm was triggered.

It was fairly clear that they were representing a religious cult or sect of some sort; the only question was, which one. Eventually, they gave me their name, Zion Christian Mission Centre’. I hadn’t come across that name before, so I asked the Elders at my church and the pieces came together. The ‘Zion Christian Mission Centre’ or ‘Zion Church’ is a front name for the Korean cult, ‘Shincheonji Church of Jesus’. 

I knew about this group because they have been targeting university students across the country for several years. In particular, they are effective at taking vulnerable international students who are wanting to learn about Christianity. Christian university groups have given specific warnings about this cult.

 Trying to extract students from the ‘Shincheonji Church of Jesus’, is no easy task. Sadly, they are also manipulating people in the general community and targeting churches as well. One friend of mine has watched someone they know swallowed up by the Zion Church, like seeing a friend swept away by a flood and not wanting to be rescued. It’s really sad and dangerous.

The Herald Sun published today an article warning about Shincheonji Church of Jesus and how they’re weaving their way onto the Australian Catholic University campuses. Well done HS. 

The ABC published an exposé back in 2021 which is worth reading.

Another AI attempt to depict a cult. Instead, think t-shirts and jeans in a lounge room

There is no point mucking around with this; cults are dangerous. Cults have existed across cultures and societies since ancient times, and despite the bad rap they receive, cults are alive and active today. I ask AI to give me an image of a ‘cult’. The first showed a ‘colt’ outside a barn. On the outside a cult may appear friendly and furry, but inside they are quite something else!

Some cults, because of their success and size, are no longer considered such, and we find they are recategorised and morph from cult to ‘sect’ or even a Christian denomination, even though they are not such. It’s part of the difficulty of defining such things.

Cults (and much like religion) latch onto human vulnerabilities and hopes. They offer community. They promise hope, security, or that thing which are affections are wanting to be met. We shouldn’t be surprised by such groups. Jesus warns that errant and self-seeking groups will come about to confuse and steal and destroy people’s lives.

On the surface, they may appear Christian-like and caring.  Who doesn’t want to find a caring community? And studying the Bible is a great thing to do. How can we discern between a cult and a genuine Christian Church?

Cults share these 3 ingredients:

Heterodox teaching + controlling behaviour + false promises

Their teaching doesn’t reflect the Bible doctrine (which is affirmed and articulated in historic Christian creeds and confessions), but they add to or subtract from orthodoxy. For example, they might deny the full and eternal Divinity of Jesus Christ. They often have a leader who gives prophetic words that contradict Biblical teaching about God or heaven/hell or spirituality. 

In the case of the ‘Zion Church’, it started with a man in South Korea named Lee Man-hee. He claims to be a last-day prophet and even Messiah-like figure. Apparently, the book of Revelation is written in code and only a special prophet like Lee Man-hee is able to discern its meaning. To be saved and have heaven you must be a member of Shincheonji Church of Jesus and abide by the teachings of Lee Man-hee. 

Second, despite the warmth and acceptance you receive at first, the more engaged you become, the deeper the tentacles of control become. Do they recommend you leave home and join a shared house with their members? Do they urge you to cut ties with your family? Do they claim to be the only true church?

Third, they offer false promises. Like a tongue that’s been sliding in gallons of castor oil, cult are slippery and we offer your promises and deals that they are unable to deliver and is not theirs to make.

Of course, a religious group (even a Church) might have one or more of these elements but when all three are present, the language of ‘cult’ is not amiss. While cults in the West traditionally take on a Christian favour, they do exist in other cultural and religious settings. 

Cults are like gangs; once you’re hooked into the mob it is very difficult to separate yourself. They are secretive, controlling, and legalistic. There are hidden truths that tantalise and can only be revealed as you commit more of yourself and ascend the leadership structure.  Soon enough, you find that more of life becomes controlled by the group leader, and rather than hearing a grace-filled message (which is the Christian Gospel), it is a spirituality of laws and rigorous requirements that determine spiritual health and success. 

Over the years I’ve dealt with people from all kinds of places, and so I have experience in asking questions and discerning real from fake. When I took those phone calls, I might have smelled a rat in the first 30 seconds (or wolf), but I couldn’t name which one straight away. Even then, sometimes a fraud is sophisticated and convincing and sway pastors. We can all be taken in by a good story.

Beware of ‘Zion Christian Mission Centre’ and whatever other names they might go by.  Here is some advice:

Should you receive a random message or call, or walk up at uni or knock on the front door by a stranger, ask questions. 

  • What is the name of your organisation?
  • Tell me your website and socials so I can look for myself.
  • Don’t agree to anything on the spot.
  • Don’t hand over personal details.
  • When unsure, ask a mature friend to see what they think.
  • If you’re part of a church or Christian group on campus, go to one of the leaders and ask for them for wisdom.

Warnings:

  • If a so-called Christian group is unable to or reluctant to provide basic information about their name, website, what they believe.
  • They offer to meet with you 1-1 to read the Bible intensely and with high commitment.
  • They misdirect when you question them and what they teach. 
  • They use guilt to control you and draw you in further.
  • They distance themselves from mainstream churches, thinking they alone are right and true
  • Does their teaching contradict key Christian beliefs and practices?
  • Do they require a ‘special leader’ to rightly interpret the Bible?

Finally, if you do find yourself entangled in a cult, there is hope and there is a way to be freed. Don’t feel shame, ask for help.

Horoscopes are on the news!

/ MurrayCampbell

Since when does superstition qualify as news?

Look no further, astrology is coming to a news channel near you. Channel 7 has announced that their nightly news will have a new and regular segment on the stars to inform viewers on what Sagittarius and Capricorn are up to today. 

Laugh not; the producers are quite serious. 

It’s been reported, 

“Channel 7 has defended a new daily astrology segment to be introduced as part of its evening news bulletin.

The network has confirmed it will be bringing in the new segment featuring an astrology report from Natasha Weber, also known as ‘Astro Tash’.

Ms Weber’s new segment will be about 20 seconds and will be aired after the weather forecast.  

New Director of News and Current Affairs Anthony De Ceglie said it was part of “exploring new ideas and concepts”

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com

Channel 7s entertainment reporter, Peter Ford, explains that the decision is motivated by shrinking audiences on commercial television,

“the EPs of the news services in Melbourne and Sydney are under a lot more pressure than in Perth, because the competition is much, much tighter. So this is a response to that.”

He also admits that Natasha Weber is a real believer in horoscopes, 

“She’s deadset serious about it all.”

What a juxtaposition, following the daily meteorological report will be a report on the stars. It’s science versus superstition. Horoscopes now equals journalism!

This shift is less surprising than we might think. Sure, it feels like desperation, but I reckon the Seven News boss Anthony De Ceglie knows something, and that is, belief in alternate spiritualities is on the rise in Australia. 

In one sense, this isn’t new, but it has been suppressed by the weight of hubristic rationalism and the ride taken by the new atheists.

When we remove God from the picture,  we must find an alternative to create meaning and fill life. The new atheists put up an effort for 20 years, but their ‘godless’ alternative leans either toward a moral and spiritual vacuum or a gladiatorial arena where power wins and the weak are trodden. A world without God is brittle; no wonder issues of identity and self worth are paralysing a young generation.

The Gospel Coalition have reported how in the United States, astrology and horoscopes are finding popularity primarily among millennials. It’s not sceptical Generation X or the latter-day baby boomers, but teenagers and young 20-somethings who are grasping for meaning and hope.

Why is this the case? Hard-core materialism doesn’t work. Millennials are smart enough to see through that crusty materials don’t satisfy and they have been sufficiently indoctrinated to assume organised religions, especially Christianity, can’t be trusted. So where we do go? Like swings and roundabouts, let’s revisit pagan Europe and source wisdom from the gods of Greece and Babylon. Let’s turn our gaze again to the stars as though they offer droplets of guidance and words of hope.

For all the talk about science, human beings are a suspicious lot. For all our reasoning and cognitive faculties, our society is replacing empiricism with emotion,  and truth with neo-paganism. Part of the reason is the emptiness offered by secular humanism and the new atheism. Another reason is a biblical one: God has wired us for eternity.

‘He has also set eternity in the human heart’ (Ecclesiastes 3:11) 

We are made to worship. At our core, human beings are worshippers, seeking Divine purpose and design. 

Don’t misunderstand, the Bible isn’t anti-science. Far from it; it is the biblical worldview that can gave rise to much modern science and intellectual growth. I’m simply affirming the BIble’s thesis, that the default setting in our heads and hearts knows there is a God and spiritual realities that govern and interact, subject and even save. 

For example, the former juggernaut of the new atheists, Ayaan Hirsi Ali,  is now a professing Christian and follower of Jesus! She speaks of her mental agony and former belief that ‘she can do all things by self’ but with ‘humility’, she has experienced a ‘spiritual awakening…my life has changed, it’s been transformed’.

Ali has found that the alternative to crippling unbelief isn’t to believe in anything and everything but to grasp a concrete hope in a real God.

It seems that Channel 7 news will be following the weather by reporting a very human imprint on celestial gaze. But it’s not news and it’s certainly not journalism. It’s old fashion suspicion and gaslighting. 

Will I fall in love?

Should I buy that house?

How can I find meaning?

 Does life have real purpose?

Don’t worship the stars. Worship the God who made the stars.

Psalm 8 puts it like this, 

“Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory
    in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants
    you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?”

Last year at church, a woman was baptised after becoming a Christian. For many years she immersed herself in alternate spiritualities, what we often call ‘new age’. While her attention didn’t lay with horoscopes, she tapped into almost everything else. This is some of what she had to say, 

“My New Age practices were strengthening as I became focused on positivity and not allowing negative energy to flow into my life. I’m not going to lie, it was exhausting. Having routines and rituals, having crystals, stones, special essential oils, cleansing spaces, clearing your mind and meditating. The New Age practises which are supposed to be to clear your mind so you can just ‘be’ involved doing the exact opposite. They involve work, concentration, work and more work on your part and if you get it wrong, you’re the one to blame.”

Then she read the Bible and in those words, she met Jesus and like an exploding star, she found peace, for God had found her. She continued,

“After becoming a Christian it’s been amazing to see how God has opened my eyes to so many things. From that moment onwards my life was different. God had given me new eyes. Everything I once saw in the New Age and believed to be good I realised had come from darkness. I also had a sudden awareness of my sin, things I had done and how I had fallen from God. 

Since becoming a Christian I wake every day with a sense of peace. Peace about why we are here on earth, our purpose, which of course is to glorify God. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t thank God for sending Jesus to die for my sins. For those of you who see me here, I often hide in the back, primarily because even now, 3 years on I still get so emotional and teary singing in church about God’s grace and the grace he has shown in saving me. I often think people must look and think ‘who is that crazy girl crying at the back’. 

Since becoming a Christian, going to church and attending growth groups here at Mentone I have been blown away by the impact God has had in my life. The first and biggest change is the sense of peace I have in my heart. Whilst there are the obvious happy and sad events that take place in life… put those aside and I now live in a place of contentment. There is absolutely nothing anyone could give me or take away from me to take that. No money, no person, no material object can bring me and more joy or peace. I already have all the peace I need inside me from Jesus. He is my peace.”

Don’t listen to the horoscope, listen to Jesus. 

Christopher Watkin speaks on creating a healthy society

/ MurrayCampbell

On July 25th at Mentone Baptist Church, Dr Christopher Watkin will be addressing one of the key social issues facing Australia in the 2020s:

‘How can we build a healthy society in a fractured age?’

Australia is wrestling with important issues surrounding religious and social freedoms and responsibilities. Dr Watkin will help us navigate a way forward.

In 2021, Chris addressed political and community leaders in Parliament House, Canberra, outlining a positive vision for civil society. It’s a great opportunity for Melbournians to engage with ideas that can shape tomorrow.


Dr Christopher Watkin is the ARC Future Fellow at Monash University. He is the author of the award-winning book, ‘Biblical Critical Theory’ and numerous other volumes including, ‘Difficult Atheism’.

Reserve your tickets today:

https://events.humanitix.com/building-a-healthy-society-in-s-fractured-age

Brian Cox is angry at the Bible

/ MurrayCampbell

“The Future Is Real. The Past Is All Made Up.” (Logan Roy)

“Let God be true, and every human being a liar.” (The Apostle Paul,  Romans 3:4)

Brian Cox is a brilliant actor, but I suspect he needs some direction when it comes to understanding the Bible. He is angry at the Bible. Cox is raging against the Bible. In a recent interview, he let loose his fury as though gathering up Logan Roy, Agamemnon, and Ward Abbott into a single character, and creating a whirlwind of resentment. 

To say Brian Cox is not a fan of the Bible is an understatement. 

“The Bible is one of the worst books ever, for me, from my point of view. Because it starts with the idea that out of Adam’s rib, this woman was created, and [people will] believe it cause they’re stupid enough.”

“They’re not dealing with who we are. We’re dealing with, ‘Oh if God says this and God does that,’ and you go, ‘Well what is God?’ We’ve created that idea of God, and we’ve created it as a control issue, and it’s also a patriarchal issue.”

“We have to honor [women], and we have to give them their place and we’re resistant to that because it’s Adam and Eve. I mean, the propaganda goes right way back.”

It’s hard to argue against this cogent line of thought. Stupid people! Yes. all these Bible-believing people are idiotic, intellectual shrimps. What on earth was Augustine ever thinking? It’s all become clear, Aquinas, Isaac Watts, Medal, Faraday, and Calvin aren’t intellectual giants from the past, but shrivelling stupids whose ideas should be ditched.  Let’s also add C.S Lewis to the rolls of stupids, and J.S Bach, Wilberforce and more. When I think of the Bible, my mind naturally turns to all those dull-witted Christians in my church with a PhD and even who dare lecture students in our universities: science, law, and philosophy. What about those poor sick people in our cities who are attended to by medical doctors, who give the impression of medical expertise but are secretly carrying a Bible app on their phone?! 

Brian Cox, obviously you have a gripe against the Bible, and against God, but calling people stupid on account of their positive view of the Bible is akin to claiming Shakespeare is a third-rate literary hack.

Leaving aside Cox’s erudite assault on Bible-believing men and women, in his performative speech act, the Scottish actor failed to mention several salient points. Or rather, perhaps he is unaware he is plagiarising the words of another. 

Let me explain,.

First up, Brian Cox wants to blame the Bible for certain views about men and women, in particular where women are viewed as lesser than men.   To be sure, there have been some pretty horrific attitudes toward women in history,  including by many of the characters Cox has played over the years. Agamemnon is hardly a model for positive masculinity! While he is letting loose on the Bible, perhaps Cox would like to share what he thinks about how women are treated in Islamic countries or the Hindi practice of Sati? 

No sensible person (Christian or not) denies that women haven’t always been given the respect and dignity deserved, even under the guise of Christianity. It is also undeniable that the very notion of female equality and worth is deeply rooted in the Bible, and yes, from its earliest pages in Genesis chs.1 and 2. The very notion of gender equality comes from the Biblical idea of the image dei. 

The great egalitarian project is a direct product of the Bible’s anthological vision. As the Apostle Paul wrote almost 2000 years ago, 

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

It is this thoroughly Judeo-Christian notion, exemplified in the life of Jesus, that shocked the Roman world and with time, transformed attitudes toward women, the young, the elderly and the most marginalised in society. Historian Tom Holland, explains

‘Christianity gave women a dignity that no previous sexual dispensation had offered’

Instead of men using their ‘power’ to subject women and use them for sexual gratification, Christianity taught that sex should be reserved for marriage and that a husband is to follow Christ’s example and lay down his life for his wife. Christianity drew boundaries which began to dismantle mysogeny, 

“over the course of the first centuries of Christianity, this understanding of sex eats like a kind of acid through the understanding that the Romans previously had of how sex operates. And over the course of Christian history, the church imposes on believing Christians this sense that being a powerful male does not license you to have multiple wives and concubines. You have to focus on one.”

Sexual restraint was an anti-roman view of the world,  and it’s one Tom Holland notes is alive today and whose pushback is anonymously Christian, 

But it turns out, as we see now in America, that this idea that free love is a great thing, have sex any way you want, actually turns out to be better for men than for women, because essentially, it’s licences for men to sexually harass their social inferiors. And that’s what the Harvey Weinstein Me Too thing is all about. And, and, in a way, the perfect illustration of this paradox, a kind of moral Mobius Strip, is that when women go on their marches to protest against sexual harassment, many of them will wear red robes and white bonnets.

This is the uniform that they’ve taken from The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel by Margaret Atwood, which then became a TV series: a dystopian satire set in a future America that’s become basically fundamentalist Christian. And it’s drawing on the model of Puritan New England. But what is it that these women are demanding? They’re demanding that men become Puritan.”

So Brian Cox is irritated by the Bible even though it is the Bible that gave birth to the glory and value of womanhood.

The irony of Cox’s confessions continues. As I listened to Brian Cox’s rage against the Bible, it’s hard not to notice that he is being incredibly biblical. He’s playing a character from inside the pages of the Scriptures. Even his unbelief is a product of the Bible. Whether it’s Pharaoh or Herod, Cox’s words conform to the pattern of Biblical unbelief. As in the case of Pharaoh, Pharaonic hubris and obstinacy against the God who speaks did little except reinforce what God had spoken. 

Cox is also angry about the role religion plays in global violence and unrest. Preach it, Brian! As a Christian, I also find it distressing. Indeed, take a look at the Bible and we’ll find more than a few verses that express God’s anger at human conflict. For a moment, let’s play along Cox’s script and close the Bible for good, as though that were actually possible. Let’s now imagine how peace-loving and egalitarian our world would be…or should tell someone tell him about all those atheistic peace-loving regimes who created utopia for their people: Lenin, Stalin Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot.  And let’s not forget that bastian of Freedom, North Korea.

Brian, you may well believe everything you have said about the Bible, and if you want to be consistent, then you really ought to reject the very ideas and values that originate in the Bible. I suspect you are not keen to return to the days of ancient Rome or the times of the Trojan War and validate the Agamemnon’s, the Paris’, and Andrew Tate’s of the world?

Religion is problematic and so is its removal. And this is where, Brian Cox, you have greatly misunderstood the Bible.

One of the brilliant things about the Bible is how it does not fit neatly inside any single culture or time. The Bible confronts and comforts, the words on the page astonish and shake, they subvert and heal.

Regardless of how we feel about the Bible, this book is the most extraordinary volume ever written and the work that has had greater influence upon our world today than any other. We might respond with anger, but we cannot ignore it.

I guess I could write a version of the Bible that conforms with every idea and attitude I want validated. It might possible to write a story of the world where I get to define righteousness and truth. But then the Bible would lose its independence, authority, and power. It would turn into one of Logan Roy’s lackeys, rather than the words of a loving Father appealing for reconciliation and offering grace.

The God of the Bible couldn’t be further from the vindictive, spiteful, and manipulative Logan Roy and power abusive Agamemnon. To be sure, the God of the Bible believes in big T truth and a big R righteousness. Do we really want to live in a world without ultimate truth and justice? Accompanying these epistemological and moral necessities is the Bible’s central theme: grace. 

I’m preaching this Sunday on a portion of the Bible from the book of Hebrews and there in chapter 9 we come across the idea of inheritance. Receiving the father’s inheritance is not performative or about power, aka Succession, but grace. We might suffer siblings from rivalry, and plot the Father’s downfall as though God’s name is Logan Roy. But the God of grace longs to extend grace and offer as a gift, an inheritance that will never spoil fade or disappoint. 

You see, the Bible is about Jesus. Act 1 of the Bible is preparing for and pointing to the coming of God’s only Son.  Act 2 reveals the Son. The Bible is about Jesus, and he gets to tell us what God is like.

You may not like the Bible, but at least understand the Bible’s message and how many of our greatest needs, hopes and values, depend upon the promise of these very Scriptures. 

A suburb called Mentone

/ MurrayCampbell

The Age has tonight published a little write-up about my suburb, Mentone. 

I don’t know the author, Sofia Dedes, but let me say,  ‘hi neighbour’!

Sofia notes the eclectic nature of Mentone. There is little to resemble its namesake found along the French Riviera, other than a splash of seawater along the edge. 

Melbourne is famed for sport, food, coffee and street art. Mentone’s reputation doesn’t quite include any of these. Mentone doesn’t represent cool or vintage, ostentatious wealth or extreme poverty. Mentone isn’t the most multiethnic part of Melbourne, although this is slowly changing. The streets don’t boast stunning architecture or botanical gardens. And yet to thousands of people, this is home, and a great home it is.

I have lived and worked in the area for 19 years now, and my wife and I have raised our 3 children here, and life here counts as a blessing. From kindergarten in Acacia Avenue to Mentone Primary School, from Little Athletics at Dolamore Oval, to playing cricket at almost every ground in the area, we sometimes feel as much part of the local environment.

 

Sofia correctly alludes to the huge gaping divide that appears like a seismic crack – the Nepean Hwy. I’m accustomed to traversing the barrier almost every day, along with a tangle of busy roads that crisscross Mentone, including Warrigal Rd and Lower Dandenong Rd. Together they chop the suburb into quarters, like a charcoal chicken readied for lunch.  

Yes, there is the beach (which we seldom visit) and a forgettable train station. Sofia  Dedes is right, Mentone is a suburb with potential, but with few to cast a vision for what can be. 

Our streets witness happiness and sadness, success and tragedy. It is a place of fond memories and nightmares.

Some things have changed. Mentone is no longer an affordable suburb, although where in Melbourne is today? The price reached the ‘magical’ median price of $1 million some years ago and has steadily moved northward since. Moving into the area requires money, and this sadly squeezes out many. And yet like our multi-sided suburban sprawl, local schools are growing if not booming, as is the traffic!

Mentone’s future includes a younger population with money to invest, an unused cavity in the middle of the shopping strip, and a beach where pollution sometimes conquers the waters. 

Is there more? Sofia Dedes have offered the rest of Melbourne an impression of Mentone, but something was missing in her picture.

If anyone is interested to gaze into the future and see what Mentone could become, there is a little ‘secret’ in our community. Okay, it’s not exactly a secret but it is often overlooked as people walk by and cars drive along Warrigal Rd each day. The building, like the area, is eclectic. There is a red brick hall attached to what can only be described as a retro-styled ‘I want to be funky and never will be’ auditorium. The yellow and orange stained glass windows are the same vintage as John Lennon’s coloured sunglasses, but without the cool factor. 

Inside these forgettable buildings is something quite special. So ordinary, but also quite remarkable. Meeting regularly is a growing community of men, women, and children, from all kinds of backgrounds. There are doctors and lawyers, factory workers and students, teachers and architects. More exciting than this, the people come from all quarters of the earth, from China and Colombia, Uganda and Ukraine, India, England and more. 

It’s not little old Mrs Smith with her pet cat playing the organ to empty pews, but a place that regularly creates more noise than the Mentone Tigers winning a home game.

This community is Mentone Baptist Church: plain, ordinary and spectacular. The message that forms and brings together such diversity is an ancient one, and one that continues to give hope and meaning to people across the suburbs and streets of Melbourne. We can’t agree on which footy team to support, but we agree on life’s biggest questions.

At Mentone Baptist Church the people may have little in common, and yet in Jesus, we have everything together. That’s one of the exciting fruits of Christianity. Church is a visual display of what can be, where encountering the living God changes lives with the kind of generosity and gentleness, love and selflessness, that every community desperately needs. As our Church sign famously ascribes, ‘Jesus Saves’ and ‘Christ our Hope’.

When all is said and done, we are made for more than material security. Mentone offers schools, beautiful homes, sporting clubs,  and a 2-minute drive to one of Melbourne’s best coffee roasters (albeit in Cheltenham), but these good things don’t satisfy the soul. They don’t last forever and they can’t take away the burdens and guilts that we all carry.

Many residents of Mentone have tried religion. Many others are convinced there’s no point looking. Others again are enjoying the demands and opportunities afforded us to live in our ordinary yet affable suburb. And yet, the nagging sensation, is there God and what he is like?’ remains. 

Something is going on in that awkward-looking church building along Warrigal Rd: a belief that a dead man is now alive and he is God and has the power and love to forgive and reconcile. I get it, it sounds kinda weird if not old school; it’s certainly different to the slogans splashed on the billboards along Nepean Hwy. After 2000 years of history there remains nothing like this ancient message of Jesus. In our suburb divided by roads, the good news of Jesus is bringing together people from all manner of life, and I think that says something pretty special.

As Jesus once said to a friend who was grieving

 “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Next time you’re driving past the ‘church with the sign’, pull over and visit us one Sunday. We’d love to see you. 

“I’m a cultural Christian”, says Richard Dawkins

/ MurrayCampbell

“When you give up Christian faith, you pull the rug out from under your right to Christian morality as well. This is anything but obvious: you have to keep driving this point home, English idiots to the contrary.” (Nietzsche)

Richard Dawkins is now a self professing, “cultural Christian”.

Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous atheist of my lifetime. He is a noted scientist, author of the best-selling book, The God Delusion, and fanboy for many an ardent God nonbeliever. For more than 20 years, Richard Dawkins has provided millions with reason not to believe, and with an ammunition dump of rhetorical flares for dismissing theism, and especially Christianity.

“You know I love hymns and Christmas Carols. I feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense”.

The new atheism, like earlier thought movements and ones yet to come, arrived on the scene, peaked, and is now crumbling. There will be devotees who will hold onto splintered rocks as they come hurtling down. Dawkins, however, seems to have jumped.

Okay, ‘jumped’ is an overstatement, but Dawkins’ version of atheism seems to have changed tack, and in a positive way (or at least in this interview). He has left behind the stinging attacks and is gently embracing the world that Christianity has provided.

To some, Dawkins must have suffered a brain aneurysm. 

Aaron Bastoni tweeted,

“Bizarre from Dawkins, who wrote a book called ‘The God Delusion’ claiming religion was a deeply malevolent, dividing force in the world. 

Now he’s calling himself a ‘cultural Christian’? Find it odd to use religion to extend your secular political points.”

In comes Tom Holland, the super historian to the scene of the crime. 

“Not really, because secularism & Dawkins’ own brand of evangelical atheism are both expressions of a specifically Christian culture – as Dawkins himself, sitting on the branch he’s been sawing through and gazing nervously at the ground far below, seems to have begun to realise.”

Holland is spot on. My initial response was this,

“Richard Dawkins wants to keep the fruit of Christianity while rejecting the beliefs of Christianity. 

Of course that’s not logical or desirable. Nonetheless, is Richard Dawkins moving away from his past rhetoric and a priori assumptions?”

The fruit of Christianity, the ethics and architecture, the music and its role in shaping political theory and the marketplace, all have an origin story in the Bible and especially in the God-Man Jesus Christ. The fruit comes from somewhere and that somewhere is more audacious and stunning than 21st Century observers realise.

The claim of Christianity is that there is a God behind all the fruit we taste and eat and enjoy. He is not an error or grumpy old jack-in-the-box who loves to surprise us with horrible things. 

Dawkins admits that the social good has an origins story and it is integrally tied to the Christian faith, although he is still unwilling to believe in the Divine.

“There is a difference between being a believing Christian and a cultural Christian”.

Yes,  there is one who enjoys the fruit and gives thanks to the giver, and those who eat and have their fill while not giving thanks to the provider.

Dawkin’s admission is an intellectually and morally honest one. Read Holland’s, ‘Dominion’; or Glen Scrivener’s ‘The Air We Breathe’.  For those who wish to press more eagerly into the bedrock that gives our culture form and substance, read Dr Christopher Watkin’s masterpiece, ‘Biblical Critical Theory’. 

The beautiful and the good, the necessary and the true, haven’t altogether disappeared from our culture. And while these depend upon a God of such quality, excising God has not yet fully removed them from the scene. Chris Watkin notes, 

“religious and theological ideas have not been threshed away from society, nor have they been abandoned in a general disenchantment. They have merely migrated within society, moving away from God and attaching themselves to other ideas and institutions (primarily the nation state) where their influence is still profound. “

Watkin develops what he calls, the ‘migration thesis’, 

“For the migration thesis, secular late modernity relates to Christianity neither as an antithesis nor as a carbon copy but as a parody: “The city is a poor imitation of heavenly community; the modern state, a deformed version of the ecclesia; the market, a distortion of consummation; modern entertainment, a caricature of joy; schooling, a misrepresentation of true formation; liberalism, a crass simulacrum of freedom; and the sovereignty we accord to the self, a parody of God himself.

What all these instances of migration share is a desire to appropriate the goods and benefits of God while ignoring and excluding God himself, a move I have elsewhere called “imitative atheism.””

In other words, Richard Dawkins is admiring and eating the fruit of Christianity. He is happily tasting the sweetness and embracing the aromas and feeling the textures of the fruit, but he still denies the reality of the living tree from which the fruit has grown. The tree is no more dead or invisible than is the fruit we eat.

If you are looking for a ‘right now’ example of where both the root and the fruit of Christianity have been severed, look no further than Matthew Parris and his Easter edict in The Times. In ‘We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying’, Parris says the unspeakable, euthanasia should not be limited to those with terminal and imminent death, but open to all who are a ‘burden’ on society. 

“Let’s acknowledge and confront the strongest argument against assisted dying. As (objectors say) the practice spreads, social and cultural pressure will grow on the terminally ill to hasten their own deaths so as “not to be a burden” on others or themselves.I believe this will indeed come to pass. And I would welcome it.”

The elderly, the mentally unwell, the sick, and the poor, should all have death presented to them as a viable option, to stop their lives from being a burden to others.

“Often not for the final years of these extended retirements, often characterised by immobility, ill-health and dementia: and typically wildly expensive, cornering resources to fund our health and social care sectors. This imbalance helps explain governments’ desperate reliance on immigration — to the rage of electorates who won’t face the fundamental question: how are our economies going to pay for the ruinously expensive overhang that dare not speak its name: old age and infirmity?”

Parris is willing to throw away both the fruit and the tree. What remains? It’s every man for themselves. It is self-interest and self-preservation. He isn’t utilising the more carefully constructed argument of how euthanasia is an act of love for the sufferer. No, he preaches that those who weigh down society with cost and time and energy, are a problem to him and his own flourishing.

For all the double-speak about equality and human rights, the logical endpoint of secular humanism is mass selective death: death of the vulnerable, the aged and infirmed, for the sake of the fit and strong. 

Australia’s Peter Singer has been singing this tune for decades, following his mate Nietzsche. He has been lauded in the halls of our ABC and presented as a voice to listen to. Universities pine for opportunities to hear him espouse his liberation to death sequence of ethics. And now, voices like Matthew Harris are deemed important enough to have their vision of death published in the United Kingdom’s most famed newspaper. 

The irony of the timing. Easter has been and gone, but the reality of the Easter event remains constant and ever relevant. 

God hates death and so should we. His Son endured death on our behalf. The resurrection of Jesus says that every human life has value. Death is a great enemy. How different is the Apostolic testimony to Matthew Parris. Which resonates more? You are a burden, so die! Or the words of the Apostle Paul,

“I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.  When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

 “Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?

 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”. (1 Corinthians 15:50-57)

Going back to Dr Dawkins, perhaps we have entered a ‘watch this space’ moment. 

We can only eat the fruit of Christianity for so long before the season runs out. Then, we will either go hungry and starve, or we will repent and return to the source and cry out to God for food to eat and enjoy.

Is Christianity ‘plummeting’ around Australia?

/ MurrayCampbell

Yesterday at church we enjoyed our biggest Good Friday service yet. That’s not a message for boasting, but rather one of thankfulness. Other churches are reporting similarly.

Over this Easter weekend, our friends at The Age newspaper decided on taking a different angle. They want readers to feel a disenchantment over Christianity and the merit of alternative faiths.

One of Australia’s worst-kept secrets is how nominal Christianity is declining. Naturally. Even the Bible speaks of the inevitable slow death of empty religion. The story is not new so why is it a feature story over the Easter weekend?

Society is at pains to honour and respect the sacred days of various world religions. Football Clubs produce special messages. Politicians offer the now obligatory salutations, often accompanied by a visit to the local Temple or Mosque, with a news camera or six! I’m knocking not them, but simply observing. We ought to respect our neighbours (even when we disagree with them) and be thankful for the religious toleration that still exists in our country.

The Age has chosen to commemorate Christianity’s most ‘holy’ days with 2 articles speaking of the rise of world religions in Australia and of Christianity ‘plummeting’.

“Meanwhile, Christianity has plummeted by more than 26 per cent during the same period, and once grand houses of worship are battling a mass exodus and shrinking congregations.”

Whether this is designed to be a kick in the gut or they naively thought that this is a suitable way for the newspaper to celebrate Easter, I can’t help but see a parallel with the first Easter. Of course, the two are dissimilar in very big ways, but nonetheless, the jab in the side is noticeable.

Don’t get me wrong, sociological studies exploring the beliefs of Australians is an interesting and important task, and worthy of media reporting. I am simply noting that the data is not new, the research isn’t recent. I have engaged in conferences and conversations about the waves and currents of religion in Australia for many years. The timing for The Age’s expose is ironic to say the least. Like a Pharisaical jibe at Jesus as he hung on the cross, it’s open season for slamming Christianity.

In our reading at church yesterday,

“they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.”

And this,

“Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

Like a gambling addict, these sceptics were far too quick to claim Jesus had failed. Two days later, the earth erupted when Jesus physically rose from the dead. The world has never been the same. And even if Western nations like Australia convince ourselves that Christianity is on the way out, Christianity worldwide has never been bigger. Praise God! It is we who are missing out.

Unlike Jesus, Christians sometimes react to social movements with the angry rant of an American President or the rage of the latest mob blocking traffic in the city. Christians respond to negativity with hateful words need to be called out.

Like Jesus, Christians can respond to critics with kindness and grace. He didn’t retaliate. He didn’t hate on them. He absorbed the wrath of God in their place.

The Age expose includes this observation about the chessboard of Australian religious affiliation,

“Andrew Singleton, associate professor of sociology and social research at Deakin University, says the growth of religious minorities is tied to migration trends in Australia.”

I am a big supporter of migration. Our nation is largely built on the blood and sweat of millions of migrants. Come along to Mentone Baptist one day and you see the nations represented in just one small Church; it’s fantastic.

This is one major difference between Christianity and world religions. Christianity grows by conversion. Yes, I know ‘conversion’ is an ugly word in Victoria, even an illegal one, but if Jesus and the Apostles preached for conversion, so do we.

Conversion isn’t our society’s great sin; it is the great moment of liberation: God in Christ brings forgiveness. He justifies and reconciles. The Good news of Easter isn’t religions offer of enlightenment to those who work hard enough and who acquire sufficient levels of holiness, far from it. The good news of Easter is a gift; God’s loving gift of redemption. Jesus isn’t about merit, he is mercy.

We are seeing a plethora of reports tabled by Government and legislations produced, designed to further limit religious freedom. Hardline secularism opposes healthy pluralism, which values freedom to preach and persuade and engage. Christianity grows via conversion and conversion is about reasoning and persuading and people coming to believe the gospel for themselves. How different is the approach of authoritarian secularists who create laws to force-convert what Christians may and may not teach and practice. It is as though they googled Emperor Domitian or Communist China’s Sinicization program and concluded, that’s what we need here.

Of course, such opposition to the Christian faith is doing little more than reinforcing the Bible’s anthropology and the significance of the cross. Those who mock the cross are not undoing Christianity but simply exposing the human condition and thus our desperate need for divine mercy.

Unfortunately,  I don’t think Australia has yet reached peak secularism; the reigns of power are rarely loosened without struggle. We are however beginning to see cracks appear and falling through these holes are real people whose lives have been promised much by life without God, and the results are often catastrophic: Not peace, but narcissism. Not freedom but bondage to self-realisation.

The one fact that The Age hasn’t explored is why and how classical evangelical churches are growing. I’m not referring to the super cool tribe who have the resources to stage a concert every Sunday, but churches who believe, open and teach the Bible, who preach about Christ crucified, who love to sing and praise God, and who are actively loving and serving the other.

It is important to differentiate between churches that hold to orthodox Christian beliefs, and those who don’t. I suspect the major fault line between churches that decline and those that grow is this one. Yes, there are other factors, changing demographics and sociological phenomena, and individual preferences that play into service styles. But there are too many ordinary churches where music is possible and the preaching okay, but who experience a work of God and more people becoming Christians.

Whereas, the churches that face most decline are those that move away from classical Christianity. Churches that embrace each latest iteration of sexology, who erase the Bible’s tricky bits, who explain away the resurrection, who argue against the penal aspect of the atonement, these are churches who race their congregations off a precipice and into a spiritual grave.

As Tom Holland famously quipped, 

“I see no point in bishops or preachers or Christian evangelists just recycling the kind of stuff you can get from any kind of soft left liberal because everyone is giving that…if they’ve got views on original sin I would be very interested to hear that”.”

So thank you to The Age for interesting and poorly timed articles. And next time, dig a little deeper and you’ll notice the stronger currents that are at work in Christianity around Australia today. 

Cate Blanchett, Easter is for you

/ MurrayCampbell

I appreciate that the title may sound a little presumptuous, but hear me out.

Cate Blanchett is one of the world’s finest actors…and she hails from Melbourne!

The first movie I recall watching that starred Cate Blanchett was Elizabeth. My wife and I were living in London at the time, the very city where Queen Elizabeth 1 had lived, reigned and died. I already loved historical movies, but watching the film while immersed in Elizabeth’s city brought about a visceral connection. It’s a great movie.

As we enjoyed Elizabeth, Susan commented, ‘Murray, I went to school with Cate.’

I looked at Susan, and with my eyes pressed for more information. 

Susan, typically downplaying such things, added only a few words,

“We weren’t friends. Cate was a few years ahead of me.” 

That was it. That’s all Susan said. I suspect there was a little more to it, after all, Susan had clear memories of Cate being at the same school with her. But today I learnt something new about Cate Blanchett, albeit from the newspaper and it’s about those school years.

At the age of 10, Cate’s father suffered a heart attack and died. To lose a parent at any age is difficult, but at such a young age, one can only imagine the pain, grief, and disorientation created by such a sudden loss. 

Speaking with a journalist while filming a new movie near her old suburban home and school, Cate reflected on how her Dad’s death caused her to turn away from both Church and God.

 “As a child I wanted a religion. I wanted the strong hand of God to put a hand on my childish shoulders to say, ‘Your father is with me. He’s having fun. You’ll see him in 60 years. 

“But that didn’t happen. And so as a ten-year-old I fled from the church and moved down to the river and spent my childhood propelled into nature”. 

“If I’d stayed inside the Methodist church I’d have a lot of bad guitar playing, but instead I rode my bike, thinking I was Nancy Drew, down by the Yarra River. I remember that as profoundly as I remember the hymns”. 

She was asked whether she left religion because it didn’t give her what she wanted,

“It was not so much about what I wanted…more what I was hoping for. Also, I was ten. 

“But religion contains a sense of hope and also a sense of community. And, in a way, that desire for something greater than myself never left me”. 

First of all, I agree with Blanchett’s fears of bad guitar playing. As a former classical musician, many a time have I cringed and groaned at the sounds wafting over a congregation. But fear not, it is also possible to find excellent guitar playing in churches today.

Music aside, I am reminded of something Timothy Keller wrote years ago as he borrowed from C.S Lewis,

“Horrendous, inexplicable suffering, though it cannot disprove God, is nonetheless a problem for the believer in the Bible. However, it is perhaps an even greater problem for nonbelievers. C. S. Lewis described how he had originally rejected the idea of God because of the cruelty of life. Then he came to realize that evil was even more problematic for his new atheism. In the end, he realized that suffering provided a better argument for God’s existence than one against it…

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of “just” and “unjust”?… What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?… Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too— for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies…. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple.”

Let’s take as an example,  John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. Imagine doesn’t articulate the highest intellectual efforts to sustain unbelief in God but it does represent popular sentiment. Indeed, Imagine has become something of an international anthem in recent years. For a moment, let’s play out the song’s logic of imagining a world without God, without religion, and without heaven and hell:

Imagine there is no ultimate meaning or goal toward which our lives are headed.

Imagine there is no overarching design and no inherent significance. 

Imagine if our lives were reduced to the potluck outcome of billions of years of impersonal atoms and molecules running around hitting and missing, making and destroying.

Imagine a world where the reality of conscience and moral choice has no grounding in a purpose beyond that of group survival in the evolutionary race to the top.

Imagine human affections are ultimately an illusion, a cruel joke orchestrated by the impersonal rules of physics.

Imagine all the people living for today, for tomorrow is the end.

This view offers no consolation to a gravely ill person. Nothing to help grieving families who have just witnessed a loved one being ripped from their lives.

It offers no hope to someone who is a victim of injustice, for there is no judgment and vindication to come.

In fact, the song collapses in on its own irrationality, like a sandcastle overrun by the incoming tide.  Lennon imagines ‘living life in peace’, and there being no “greed or hunger”. We affirm this sentiment but peace requires a common purpose between people and demands reason and design in the world beyond us. A universe without God does not allow for the idea of universal peace.

As Cate Blanchett shares her personal testimony from God to nonGod, she admits, 

“desire for something greater than myself never left me”.

It is as though a Divinely given conscience keeps poking and prodding at us despite our cognitive and emotional rescripting of life. 

None of us comprehend all of the events we experience or see in this life. To have that kind of knowledge is to be omniscient, and not the brightest or most prophetic have the kind of understanding. But Easter reminds us that there is One who has gone before us and for us. Hope is not defined by my ability to create or sustain it, but by trusting the one who can gift it. Even faith, fragile and compounded by tragic loss, is given assurance through the Easter event.

As a father, I appreciate the limited capacity of my children to grasp concepts both significant and small. It’s not that a child is necessarily wrong, but like adults, our beliefs and commitments are trialled and formed by many kinds of circumstances, inquiries and tests. This is one reason why the message of Easter is so compelling and continues to offer consolation. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ took place inside history and is thus subject to our scrutiny, but it also punches through time and into eternity and therefore offer timeless hope and assurance.

Last Sunday I preached on Hebrews 5:1-10. The text provides one of the wonderful explanations of why and how Jesus today serves as our faithful representative before God in heaven. There is a tangible and sustainable connection point between our world and heaven, between humanity and God; the God Man Jesus Christ. 

The text explains, 

“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him”.

Never think the cross was easy for Jesus. We should never conclude that suffering didn’t impact Jesus. He is utter love and light and goodness. He did not deserve to suffer even a scratch. And yet he committed himself to his father’s will to endure the greatest evil ever perpetrated. 

No story ends before it begins. No movie is shown at the cinema before it is first written, shot, and produced. In the moment by moment, God is valuing the world and each person who lives. More than that, God didn’t press fast forward to the end of the story, but his Son pressed in every moment and every day, for it is through his suffering and atoning death that God brings about forgiveness and life. Not only does Easter declare an ultimate hope over tragedy but Easter proves that we have an empathetic High Priest in Jesus. 

Cate Blanchett’s impulse as a 10-year-old is relatable for many, and so is her constant companion who reminds her that there must be something more, something better.  Several members of my church have suffered loss in recent months, the death of a parent or child. Death is horrible. Death is, to quote the Bible, the last enemy.

Easter is for the unbeliever, it is for the doubter and for the lifelong transgressor. Easter is for those who know death and suffering.  This confidence lies outside ourselves in the only one who can claim to outdo death. As these beautiful words from Hebrews 4 tell us, 

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” 

England’s Ban should lead to rethink in Australia

/ MurrayCampbell

As an Aussie, I’m bound to knock and mock the English, but just occasionally we should pay attention. During the same week as England banned puberty blockers on minors, the NSW Government introduced legislation to ban ‘conversion practices’. The irony isn’t lost.

England’s National Health Service (NHS) has banned prescribing puberty blockers for children and teenagers. A report states, 

“We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of [puberty blockers] to make the treatment routinely available at this time.” 

This report came about a pressure mounts from past patients at the Tavistock Clinic. Most notable is the High Court Case of Bell vs Tavistock.

In 2020, Keira Bell won a landmark High Court ruling against Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, for its dangerous treatment of children who have gender dysphoria. Ms Bell was prescribed puberty blockers at age 16. As an adult Ms Bell sued Tavistock, alleging that young people do not have sufficient awareness to make an informed decision to undergo invasive treatments that will have long-term effects on their physical and mental state. Three judges ruled in her favour

Notice the clear language quoted by the The Times,

“under-18s in gender clinics need “far better mental health services to help them to reconcile themselves to their (sex) — not life-changing physical interventions that might alleviate short-term distress at the price of long-term trauma”.

Tavistock Clinic has since been shut down, and this week the NHS announced that such treatment for children suffering from gender dysphoria is banned. England is following other European countries who’ve recognised the same dangers. This is but the latest red flag signalling a fundamental problem with the way our society views gender and sex and the way we care for the vulnerable. 

Evidence is mounting; the real and dangerous conversion therapy involves pumping children with hormones and chemicals that stall or prevent puberty, alter the physical appearance, that may bring about infertility and often lead to the surgical removal of healthy body parts.  While England and Europe begin to move away from these experimental treatments, Australia is doubling down. 

Enter NSW.  The NSW Government this week released its conversion therapy Bill. The NSW proposal is not as extreme as the Victorian Laws that were introduced in 2021, but they prove that there is both political pressure and capital by submitting to groups of gender theory activists. No one disputes that among a few marginal religious groups, there were some weird and harmful practices. These practices do not have their origins in the Bible but were influenced by secular education taught to psychiatry students in the 1960s. Origins aside, Victorians were led to believe that there was a major and evil problem going on in Churches around Victoria, but when reports were published and evidence presented,  it was clear that almost no one knew of let alone practised these so-called therapies. The real target was mainstream and normal religious activities such as talking and praying. 

What is going on is that the latest self-appointed preachers representing ‘expressive individualism’ have a clear agenda to destroy what it is to be male and what it is to be female, and therefore what it is to be human. Hence, in part, when the Victorian laws were being debated, groups behind the legislation and some of the most vocal proponents, targeted Christian churches, and in effect created laws to prohibit 2000 years of orthodox and classical Christian teaching and practice about gender and human sexuality.  Remember, that it is illegal in Victoria to discuss with an individual the Bible’s presentation of gender and sex, lest the individual is somewhere influenced.

Abigail Shear (who is not a Christian), has highlighted the sociological phenomenon that is fuelling the extraordinary rapid rise of gender dysphoria in Western societies. In her book, Irreversible Damage, she shows that before the 2010s, the number of people with gender dysphoria was incredibly small. The percentage amounted to roughly 0.01% and that group consisted almost entirely of boys. Today, transgenderism has become commonplace, with somewhere between 4-10% of children now identifying with the opposite gender (or identifying with one of the now 70 possible gender identities that apparently exist), and girls, in particular, are being affected by this. Shier notes,

“Between 2016 and 2017, a number of gender surgeries for natal females in the U.S. quadrupled with biological women suddenly accounting for, as we have seen, 70% of all gender surgeries. In 2018, the UK reported 4400% rise over the previous decade in teenage girls seeking gender treatment. In Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the UK, clinicians and gender therapists began reporting a sudden and dramatic shift in the demographics of those presenting with gender dysphoria from predominantly school-aged boys to predominantly adolescent girls.”

This new trend has become trendy. A uni student shared with me how they feel socially lesser and out of touch because they are not experimenting with their sexuality and identity. That is not to say gender incongruence isn’t a real and very difficult thing for some individuals, but there is more going on.

At the time of the ‘conversion practices’ debate, clinics in Melbourne saw a drastic rise in the number of children undergoing the very kinds of treatment that took place at Tavistock.  Instead of reasoned debate and reasonable laws, the Victorian Government under then Premier Daniel Andrews shouted down concerns as belonging to bigots of the worst kind,

“Cruel and bigoted practices that seek to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity will soon be stamped out across Victoria, thanks to new laws introduced to Parliament today.    

The Bill denounces such practices as deceptive and harmful, reinforces that the ideology behind these practices is flawed and wrong.”

Here lies a major obstacle in Australia. We are not permitted to have the necessary conversations and inquiries to examine what is going on in the clinics and what kinds of long-term impact treatments are having on our children.  Last year,  a senior staff psychiatrist was stood down in Queensland after raising concerns about ‘best practice’ for caring with gender dysphoric children. 

In Victoria, anyone challenging the new orthodoxy faces threats of re-education programs and even criminal charges. Even reluctance can be deemed ‘suppression’ and see children taken from the home. Any conversation or prayer with an individual about these issues can result in allegations and a visit to court. 

Progressive activists and politicians have effectively stifled conversation and today the law is a live weapon that’s held over anyone who dares present an alternative. Instead of caution, it’s full steam ahead in Victoria, with school programs designed to encourage children to question their bodies and doubt their biology. We’re yet not witnessing the end of this tragic chapter; in the meantime, real people and children are being used. 

What cost are we willing to pay before we end this horrific abuse of vulnerable children? There have been recent attempts made in both the Victorian and South Australian Parliaments to open an inquiry into the medical treatment of children suffering from gender incongruence; both were blocked.  Shouldn’t England’s decision at the very least validate a real and thorough investigation into the process, practices, and ethics behind what is going on?

In the meantime, The Victorian Premier has backed a public ‘performance’ coming to a Melbourne theatre where a female actor will ingest a cocktail of tranquillisers to fall unconscious and is then sexually assaulted by fellow performers, live on stage. Yes, this a criminal act, but because it’s a performance somehow it is morally acceptable.

May I suggest, that when it comes to sexual ethics, we have a problem.

It’s another reason why I am so convinced by the person and promises of Jesus. He doesn’t manipulate or abuse. He can love without affirming. He can empathise and help. He doesn’t diminish the individual, but came ’to seek and save the lost’. 

This week I have the privilege to explore these amazing words from the book of Hebrews. When we fail to understand each other whether deliberately or ignorance, even parents or friends or teachers or Governments, there is one who does get us, 

 “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need”. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

The NSW Parliament adopted the conversion practices legislation on March 22