hebrews 4

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