Eternity - March 2019 - Issue 100

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Number 100, March 2019 ISSN 1837-8447

Happy

Brought to you by the Bible Society

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Getting ScoMo wrong

Finding Jesus in Kurdistan

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Religion makes you happier

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NEWS

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Obadiah Slope THEY GOT THE HISTORY RIGHT BUT: A brave Anglican church tells passers-by that it understands forgiveness, as it was founded by a murderous adulterous king.

(Thanks, Martin Johnson.)

Revealed: religion really does make you happier JOHN SANDEMAN It’s official: religious people are happier and more engaged in their community.

“People who are active in religious congregations tend to be happier and more civically engaged than either religiously unaffiliated adults or inactive members of religious groups,” according to a new Pew Research Center report of “analysis of survey data from Australia, the United States and more than two dozen other countries.”

The Pew Research also shows that religious people tend to smoke and drink less but are no more likely to exercise or have a lower rate of obesity.

Drawing on the World Values Survey 2010-2104, for countries outside the US, the Pew report divides the population into three groups: • “actively religious,” made up of people who identify with a religious group and say they attend services at least once a month (sometimes called “actives”); • “inactively religious,” defined as those who claim a religious identity but attend services less often (also called “inactives”); and • “religiously unaffiliated,” people who do not identify with any organised religion (sometimes called “nones”).

Pexels / Hannah Nelson

NOT A TAME LION: It seems the federal parliament knows more about C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories than Obadiah thought. From Question Time in the House of Representatives comes this gem.

“Is the Prime Minister aware that in a candid interview earlier this week the Minister for Defence [Christopher Pyne] was reported to have said, and I quote ‘Malcolm is Aslan to me,’” Labor’s Anthony Albanese asks. “Noting that the pathway to Narnia is through the cabinet – will the Prime Minister finally tell the Australian people, including the Minister for Defence, why his ‘A slan,’ Malcolm Turnbull, is no longer the prime minister of Australia?”

MARCH 2019

“This analysis finds that in the US and many other countries around the world, regular participation in a religious community clearly is linked with higher levels of happiness and civic engagement (specifically, voting in elections and joining community groups or other voluntary organisations),” Pew reports.

“This may suggest that societies with declining levels of religious engagement, like the US, could be at risk for declines in personal and societal wellbeing. But the analysis finds comparatively little evidence that religious affiliation, by itself,

is associated with a greater likelihood of personal happiness or civic involvement.”

In Pew’s table, Australia comes across as a relatively happy country: 45 per cent of people active in religious communities report themselves as “very happy,” with unaffiliated and inactive religious people closely bunched at 33 and 32 per cent respectively.

The United States is less happy overall than Australia, but with 36 per cent of those active in a religious community “very happy,” and their “nones” and religiously inactive tied at 25 per cent.

The happiest “kingdom” of all is Mexico, with 71 per cent of people active in religious communities telling researchers they are very happy; religious but inactive people at 64 per cent, and the unaffiliated at 61 per cent. Perhaps the wrong nation is seeking to build a wall.

There is one stat where Australia’s religiously active people do less well than their fellow citizens. Only 59 per cent of Australians active in religious communities say they are active in a “non-religious organisation,” compared with 61 per cent of both other groups. This is a bit of an outlier result. In most countries, people active in religious communities are more likely to be involved in other community organisations as well.

News 2,3 In Depth 5-8 Eternity Special 9-12 Bible Society 14 Opinion 15-20

Quotable

Richard Shumack “Can Muslims continue to treat the Koran as the word of God if it is tainted by human involvement?”

Page 17

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NEWS

MARCH 2019

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Franklin’s legacy

Colin’s shock confession

JOHN SANDEMAN

Fun-loving, cheeky children’s entertainer Colin Buchanan has confessed that he used to find it hard to get up in front of people and lead the singing at church.

This was back in the 1980s when he and his wife Robyn were studying at Cornerstone Community in Bourke, in the corner country of NSW. The Christian singer-songwriter made the surprising admission to Sydney-based Anglican minister Dominic Steele on his podcast, The Pastor’s Heart.

“I was very self-conscious and one of the guys out at Bourke took me for a walk after church” and encouraged him to be more confident, he said “That was so helpful because I was self-conscious. I’d sort of look at the song, I’d look down at the chords and things I didn’t need to and it’s a great encouragement when you see people involved in leading worship and engaged with what they’re singing. I like to see bass players singing!”

Over the past 25 years, Buchanan has become well known in Christian circles for his Biblebased children’s songs such as Isaiah 53:6, which contains the chorus “Baa baa doo baa baa,” and Ten, Nine, Eight, God is Great.

Steele, who is minister at Village Church in Annandale, NSW, joked that he had to smuggle Buchanan into the studio under a blanket so that the children at a kids’ club

Franklin Graham’s Australian tour last month has left a double legacy.

His meetings drew good crowds.

In Melbourne, about 500 could not get into a packed Hisense Arena.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association team reported: “Franklin Graham had just led more than 400 people packed in front of the Melbourne Arena floor stage in a prayer of salvation.”

In Melbourne, leading churches such as Crossway and CityLife took part, as well as smaller and ethnicbased churches. Franklin’s father Billy never made it to Darwin, but Franklin did, and 85 per cent of the local churches took part.

A second (and, compared with salvation, lesser) legacy for the 2019 tour is the complicated response on the part of churches.

Across Australia, there have been critics from within the traditional Billy Graham Coalition - even as he received more support from Pentecostal networks.

Anglican evangelicals were key to the original Graham tours. But Eternity has noticed the “Trump problem” (Franklin Graham’s support for the US President) among Anglican and Baptists in particular. There is a whiff of inner city disdain for this Graham tour, even among conservatives.

It is clear that Franklin Graham has built a different coalition of Chrsitian supporters to his father.

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Staying in the UCA

ANNE LIM

JOHN SANDEMAN

Much-loved children’s entertainer Colin Buchanan upstairs didn’t mob him.

In the podcast, Buchanan reveals that his biblical approach to writing children’s songs was shaped as a teenager at Hurstville Presbyterian Church, then called St Giles, where he absorbed the importance of handling God’s word carefully for children as much as adults.

“That’s really where I started to shape up so much of what became the sensibility of my approach to children’s ministry,” he says, adding that the main Bible teacher, Ian Murray, gave a strong message that children’s ministry is “no lightweight thing.”

Buchanan started writing songs for St Giles when he was just 17 and had just graduated from playing the ukulele to the guitar. At that stage he had only two songs under his belt, including one for the dry cleaners where he worked.

“Me and a couple of friends were helping to lead the singing, me up the back just very gingerly with my guitar,” he says.

“Discovering your musical gifts in a church is a great blessing.

“Good, strong writing has a pastoral dimension to it, I believe, and songs can really do business with people’s hearts.”

After training as a primary school teacher, he began working at a Christian school, which gave him opportunity to write more songs for kids and teach memory verses. “It was just like, ‘well I’m not gonna be able to remember all these memory verses unless I put them to music.’”

In 1988 Buchanan won a statuette at the Tamworth Country Music Festival and “gave a cassette to a guy in a band … and he said ‘I’d like to produce a record for you’ and that opened the doors to music.”

Evangelicals in the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) are forming a network, including many of UCA’s largest churches. “Catalyst” is led

by Stu Cameron (lead minister at Newlife church, Gold Coast), and views itself as “a national network of evangelical congregations, agencies and leaders.”

“My hope for Catalyst Network is that God uses us as an agent of gospel-saturated, Holy-Spiritfuelled renewal in the Uniting Church, especially through evangelism, church planting and revitalisation, and the equipping and resourcing of missional leaders,” Cameron tells Eternity.

Catalyst has bold aims: “By God’s grace and with confident humility, Catalyst has the faith to envisage that by 2030 the Uniting Church is known across the nation for • conversion growth in and through its congregations, agencies and faith communities; • its flourishing church planting and revitalisation movement; • a healthy pipeline of young leaders from many cultures being effectively developed; • its confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ to transform lives.”

Other congregations involved include Real Life Christian Church (Qld), Parafield Gardens Uniting Church (SA), Hope Valley Church (SA), and Shellharbour Village Uniting Church (NSW).

TRANSFORMING VOCATION WORK & FAITH CONFERENCE

With keynote by faith and work movement leader Mark Greene (UK) 4 - 6 July 2019 - Morling College For more information visit morling.edu.au/events/transforming-vocation

100 YEARS OF BCA Celebrate with us across the country on Sunday 26 May 2019 New South Wales St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney 8.30am, 10.30am & 5pm Guest Speaker – The Revd Neville Naden, Indigenous Ministry Officer

Tasmania St David’s Cathedral, Hobart 2.30pm Guest speaker – The Revd Canon Brian Roberts, Former BCA National Director

Queensland/Nth NSW St Peter’s Cathedral, Armidale 7:30am, 9:30am & 6pm

South Australia/NT To be held in Ceduna. Details to be announced on our website

Victoria St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne 5pm Afternoon Tea followed by Choral Evensong at 6pm

Western Australia St Lawrence’s Anglican Church, Dalkeith 2pm service followed by afternoon tea

Other services will be held in churches across the country on BCA Sunday.

Contact the National Office on 02 9262 5017 or visit our website bushchurchaid.com.au

MARCH 2019

E BARNABAS FUND SPONSORED PAGE 4

New hope for destitute Christian widows in Pakistan Christians in Pakistan face daily discrimination and sometimes violence from the country’s Muslim majority. For Christian widows the situation is doubly difficult as, left without the protection of a husband, they are particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

“We do not even have enough money to live but we have a strong belief in our Lord Jesus Christ that He will provide for us.” – Naila, a Pakistani Christian widow Like thousands of other widows in Pakistan, Naila struggles with little or no income to meet even the most basic needs of her children. She supports her son, daughter and also her widowed mother, whom she lives with.

She works as a maid in a private house, a low-paid and dangerous job in Pakistan where Naila would be vulnerable to mistreatment, exploitation and sexual abuse.

She earns just $1.30 a day – not enough to pay her children’s school fees or for electricity, which has already been cut off twice.

Such is Naila’s misery and shame that she has tried four times to hang herself, but she is now determined to live for the sake of her children. “It is very difficult to meet all the expenses of my family by myself,” she says. “My Lord gives me strength to take care of my family.”

Barnabas Fund is helping Naila and other widows facing the same daily struggle. We are

Balqees, widowed mother of six, lost some of her income because she refused sexual advances at work. She gave 10 cents to her church and had just 20 cents to feed her family, but then God stepped in to provide for her. supporting a locally-run church project providing crucial help to 300 destitute widows.

Barnabas provides practical help and Bible training to widows The widows receive monthly food parcels from Barnabas Fund, costing just $36. We are also planning to meet other needs as they arise, such as health care if there is sickness in the family or rent if they cannot pay it. The project will also help widows recover their possessions if seized

by their landlord in lieu of unpaid rent; these would be basic items like quilts, clothes, chairs and fans which the family need for daily living.

The project teaches widows about their Christian faith and gives them a sound understanding of the Bible. It also gives practical advice on home economics, hygiene and health care to enable them to run their homes well and give their children a good start in life.

Naila told Barnabas, “In our

society no one helps poor people, especially young widows. Rather they pass abusive comments.”

The widow’s mite Balqees is a widow with six children. She used to work as a hospital cleaner, but one day a male nurse asked her to sleep with him. When she refused, he banned her from the maternity ward. In the maternity ward, cleaners would often be given tips by the patients, so this ban had a serious effect on Balqees’ already meagre income.

One day, Balqees had just $0.30. She put $0.10 in the church offering, leaving herself with only $0.20 to survive on. “On that day a man of the Lord was distributing money to all cleaning staff. He gave me money and I bought flour for bread. That day I was very thankful to my Lord for providing money since I was left with no food,” recalls Balqees.

“Whenever I remember this verse, ‘The LORD watches over the sojourners, he upholds the widow and the fatherless …’

(Psalm 146:9 RSV) I feel comfort from our Lord Jesus Christ and I strongly believe that He will help me and provide for me and also take care of my children.”

Mona desperately wants to give her children a better life The Bible also brings great comfort to Mona, who was left to bring up her two infant children alone when her husband died six years ago. She is training as a beautician, a well-paid, respectable and safe profession for women in Pakistan, because she wants to provide a better life for her daughter Saira, now six, and son Dawood, five. But Mona does not get paid because she has no qualifications yet. She hasn’t been able to pay her rent for two months and has health problems, but she draws comfort from her faith and Scripture, especially the Psalms.

“Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.” (Psalm 68:5 RSV)

DESTITUTE AND ABUSED Christian widows in Pakistan working in low-paid, sometimes dangerous, jobs are facing appalling hardship and routinely suffer abuse

Help Barnabas Fund support their basic needs including food and healthcare You can donate online at: barnabasfund.org/widows PO BOX 3527, LOGANHOLME, QLD 4129 (07) 3806 1076 or 1300 365 799 bfaustralia@barnabasfund.org

Barnabas Fund Australia Limited is a Charitable Institution but gifts are not Tax Deductible ABN 70 005 572 485

Naila has to support her mother and her two children. Naila earns $1.30 a day but trusts in Jesus Christ to provide

MARCH 2019

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IN DEPTH

Doing ‘something dangerous’ The birth of Eternity

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Hama tells Naomi Reed about life after Saddam, page 7

John Sandeman at home where Eternity began on the dining table John Sandeman is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Eternity News. He’s also husband to Bronwen, a woman he says “who far eclipses me as a determined Christian worker.” He’s also father to two adult kids – “both a joy” – Hannah and Hilary.

A long-time newsman, John got his start in journalism in the “grim, grey fortress” of Fairfax in Sydney, where he worked for almost three decades.

But when the opportunity to launch a national Christian newspaper presented itself, John grasped it with both hands and

Eternity News was born.

Now, in this 100th edition of Eternity, we present an insight into the man behind Christian news in Australia, in his own words.

I come from a family that was assembled. Four adopted boys, one natural daughter. I’m the youngest and we’re all very different. So I’m half-Japanese, half-American, brought up by British parents and I live in Australia. So I have somewhat of a migrant experience, an adoption experience, growing up in a very conservative, almost

fundamentalist church.

It shaped me to cope with contradictions. I learned to be a person who can accept contradictory thoughts in my head at the same time.

I was an incredibly shy child, the sort of child who found it hard to make friends at school, would go home and just read books. We had a house with a huge garden and I spent lots of time in there, playing with the neighbourhood kids, but never had a big circle of friends at school until I got to high school.

Then things changed somewhat.

I ended up being the sort of

person who was at church on Sunday and during the week might be out in the Vietnam Moratorium march. I had lots of different shapes of life all crashing into each other. I think that made me a person who is always curious, always happy to explore, very secure in my faith but at the same time wanting to engage with all the currents of society.

I think I first really trusted Jesus when I was about 12.

There was a movement called Christian Endeavour encouraging kids to explore their own faith.

That worked for me in the very

comfortable environment of what was then called Burnside Christian Church in Adelaide.

Later on, having to decide “Can I be a Christian even though the world is changing and there’s lots of social causes to be involved in?,” I decided “Yes, faith was worth doing,” and I was baptised.

I studied architecture in Adelaide. I was involved in the EU, the Evangelical Union, which was a really wonderful experience. I was also in a very student political phase, so at the same time when I was in EU, I was continued page 6

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IN DEPTH

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MARCH 2019

The Un-Bible: your favourite Bible verses that are not in the Bible BEN MCEACHEN

Dangerous from page 5 involved in the Australian Union of Students (AUS). And unlike other Christians – most famously people like Tony Abbott and Peter Costello – I was pro-union. I thought unions were good things, not things to be rejected (although I thought there were some very crazy things the students’ unions were doing).

I ended up becoming the editor of National Student, which was the national paper put out by the AUS. That was after I edited On Dit, the Adelaide University [newspaper], succeeding one Nick Xenophon – who become a senator. And there was a young activist on campus at the time called Julia Gillard. So there were lots of people who went on to political careers.

I didn’t. I entered journalism.

My conviction has been that if you’re involved in the media, you shouldn’t be involved [in politics] – at least at the party-political level.

My twin was active politically and in fact, he became a staffer for a cabinet minister, but I stuck to the media.

I ended up working for Fairfax for nigh on three decades. That’s a huge chunk of my life working inside the grim, grey fortress that was Fairfax in Broadway and a couple of other places as it hopped around Sydney.

I started as a writer then I became Art Director for the Sydney papers, looking after the designers.

In fact, I was part of inventing

statement about tidying, which he said in a sermon titled “On Dress” (Wesley was discussing 1 Peter 3:3-4). But Wesley didn’t claim that “cleanliness is next to godliness”

was from the Bible, as many have done ever since. While it seems he was referring to Hebrew wisdom from the 2nd century, Wesley’s positioning of cleanliness beside godliness still suffers from the Pelosi problem: it’s not actually in the Bible.

That Pulp Fiction sorta sermon One of the most memorable unBible Bible quotations comes from Quentin Tarantino’s blistering movie Pulp Fiction (1994).

In a confronting scene, hitman Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) holds a man at gunpoint and proclaims to him Ezekiel 25:17 – “The path of the righteous man is beset on

of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, said to me “You’ve got the ability to do something dangerous.”

And I thought, “Yes, I’m going to do something totally ridiculous.

I’m gonna start a national Christian newspaper.” It’s a bit of a dream I’d had before when I was working on the board of the Anglican newspaper in Sydney – Southern Cross – and I could never convince them to send it national. I thought “Well, I don’t need their permission. I can start my own.”

I could do everything on the paper. I could write, I could design it, I could lay it out and get it ready for print … except sell ads. But along came David Maegraith – a newspaper ad salesman – and we joined together. That made it possible to not only do Eternity, but actually pay for the thing.

It started on my dining table here at my house. It was a home-grown effort. David sourced the ads, I basically did everything else, and we very cheekily distributed it to churches right around Australia.

It was about a year and a half we were working that way and then along comes Bible Society and says “Hey, we’ll actually pay you to do this work,” and it’s been a great friend to Eternity ever since.

It was going to be called Australian Christian and somebody said to me “Well, there used to be a paper by that name …” so I had an afternoon to come up with a different name.

“Eternity” is inspired by two things: Arthur Stace and his years of chalking “Eternity” on the streets, obviously. Also a

great magazine called Eternity published by Christian students in the US. I had to persuade a few people, but it’s grown on us and almost seems an inevitable name.

It was an initial success. The shocking thing about Eternity is that nobody had really done it before! There were people who said “Well, it’s not possible.”

There’d been some attempts, but the secret formula to Eternity is scale. All we did was do what other people have done, but we gave it a target circulation of 100,000 and sent it out to lots of churches.

Eternity can’t claim necessarily to be the best newspaper or website, to have more insight, or have the Holy Spirit more than other Christians. But what we did was treat it like real media – ’cause Christianity deserves, in media terms, to be treated just as seriously as everything else. In fact, because it’s true, it deserves to be treated more seriously.

Eternity is now a web-first product. Like everybody else, we’ve had to learn how to work with the internet. These days quite a bit of a content goes up on the web before it goes into the paper.

The immediacy of the web is really capturing our attention and enables us to be newsier … and we love being newsy.

Compared to other Christian media, Eternity is privileged to be broad. I don’t think God works just in certain churches. If you think that, then maybe Eternity isn’t quite your cup of tea. But if you think God is working across many of the churches in Australia,

then Eternity is for you.

It’s robust enough not to need me. That’s a fantastic indicator of success in journalism, I think.

Every time we do an audience survey, it comes back that Eternity is loved.

People sometimes will be in churches that are going through difficult things and Eternity is able to say “Look! People are becoming Christians. People are growing in Christ. People are going out and founding new churches.”

I mean, there’s so much church planting going on in this country! People are still going overseas to help the spread of the gospel. There’s so much positive stuff going on, and I hope that Eternity’s main impact is this “Look! How wonderful that God is using Aussies.”

One day there’ll be a real eternity, but in the meanwhile, telling the story of what God is doing in this country – and around the world even – is important because it is a part of Christians meeting together. People are doing exciting things like translating the Bible or doing works of mercy in the name of Christ, or evangelising. All those good things! We need to hear about them.

Eternity is very lucky that we can tell people about them, but we don’t invent this news – this news is a reflection of what’s really happening. That’s why I believe Christianity and journalism work so well together. We don’t need PR, God doesn’t need PR, but telling the story of what he is doing is a fantastic privilege.

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miramax.com/movie/pulp-fiction/

A prominent American politician has been quoting a Bible verse not found in the Bible. After US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed leaders of Christian Colleges last month, Slate magazine reported on the “Scripture” that Pelosi likes to refer to.

“To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship.

To ignore those needs is to dishonour the God who made us,” said Pelosi to the Christian leaders.

Although Pelosi has quoted this “verse” about 11 times in US Congress since 2002, she admitted she has been unable to locate exactly where it’s from.

“I can’t find it in the Bible, but I quote it all the time,” Pelosi admitted at the Christian event. “I keep reading and reading the Bible – I know it’s there someplace. It’s supposed to be in Isaiah. I heard a bishop say, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation … ’ ” Pelosi’s “Bible verse that’s not” situation brings to mind a famous scene from classic Australian comedy The Castle, where a lawyer tries to summarise a complicated constitutional matter by saying: “It’s the vibe.”

Pelosi seems to be going with “the vibe” of the Bible rather than quoting directly from it. But she’s not alone. Here are other examples of popular Bible verses not actually found in the Bible: God helps those who help themselves This is Bible Society CEO Greg

all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Powerful, fear-of-God kinda stuff.

Thing is, the real Ezekiel 25:17 in the Bible is much shorter and resembles only the final sentence of Jules’s speech: “I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them.”

Artistic licence, Tarantino?

Hate the sin. Love the sinner A suburban Sydney church recently did an entire sermon series on stuff Jesus did not say, such as the pithy “Hate the sin.

Love the sinner” bumper sticker.

Check out St James Turramurra sermons to listen to more unBible Bible verses, including the confounding “money is the root of all evil” statement.

While you might have assigned that statement to Jesus, he didn’t say it. He did say “You cannot serve both God and money,” as recorded at Matthew 6:24. However, the love of money and evil is combined in 1 Timothy 6:10 – “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

In Pulp Fiction, hitman Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) gets biblical. Kinda.

Clarke’s ‘favourite’ non-Bible verse, although he warns about what it might inspire people to think: “It’s pretty much the opposite of what the Bible teaches, but was common in the ancient Greek tragedies and made famous by Benjamin Franklin.” So, it’s a mash-up between Aesop’s Fables and the American Dream.

Cleanliness is next to godliness John Wesley was an amazing Christian figure in the 18th century who was a founder of the Methodist denomination and encouraged generations of social justice activism. He also popularised this “proverbial”

the idea of newspaper design and later information graphics. I ran those teams for a long, long time, working on designing the papers, hiring, firing – quite a big staff, actually. Exhausting job. Lasted for a long time, though.

Some people thought I was fearsome [as a boss], and some people thought I was lovely. The fearsome bit came about because I was put in charge of a giant department and then they said “You need to get rid of a third of the people.” It was a very early baptism of fire.

That made room to hire a whole new generation of illustrators.

I was very lucky to be able to hire some people who became very significant. Bill Leak was somebody we found. Most of the people whose names you know as cartoonists or illustrators somehow came through the Fairfax art department at that stage.

I got involved in a group called Christians in the Media. I propped the door open at Fairfax for Dominic Steele, who set up that ministry. We had active Bible studies going on – somebody had to be foolish enough to put their name to booking the rooms, and because I was fairly senior, I decided that’s what I would do.

In common with literally thousands of other people, Fairfax decided they didn’t need my services. I ended up with no mortgage and I could pre-pay my second child’s school fees. So there I am, mid-50s, able to have a new beginning. The then Bishop

I can’t find it in the Bible, but I quote it all the time.”

– Nancy Pelosi

IN DEPTH

MARCH 2019

NAOMI REED Hama grew up in the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq in the 1960s. He was the middle child of ten children. This is his story, as told to Naomi Reed.

“Back then, and even now, if you’re born a Muslim, you’re a Muslim, even without praying, or practising anything.

“My father didn’t pray or follow any Islamic practices, but my mother did. She prayed to Allah every day, memorising the prayers in Arabic. I would watch her, knowing she didn’t understand what she was praying. She didn’t speak Arabic (she only spoke Kurdish), but she prayed anyway.

I could understand Arabic. I knew what my mother was saying, and she didn’t. It felt to me like it was an outward behaviour, not coming from the heart. But I was fearful of God. “If I did something wrong, even if no one else saw me, I thought he was watching. And he might punish me.

“Mostly, though, I had questions about peace. There was always a war or a battle happening somewhere in Iraq. It was ‘normal’ for the Kurds. We hadn’t had a day’s peace for hundreds of years.

We didn’t even know what peace was.

“It felt like there was no way out, and no end to the fighting, and no end to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

His army had completely destroyed and mined 4000 of our villages, and 180,000 Kurdish civilians had been mass murdered. Everybody was afraid of him. Even if they got rid of Saddam, he had two violent sons. We felt like nobody could do anything.

“Then, in August 1988, the long war between Iran and Iraq came to an end. At that point, Saddam offered amnesty to all the men in hiding from the Iraqi Army military service. Saddam said our names would be officially cleared.

Along with tens of thousands of other Kurdish men from my city, I reported to the local Iraqi Army registration office.

“It was a trick. Without warning, the officers divided us into groups and sent us off in buses during the night. We had no idea where they were taking us. Before dawn we were off-loaded at an army camp in southern Iraq. We were all back in the army.

“Saddam was very powerful.

He had a million soldiers in Iraq.

There was nowhere to run. Even if we had tried to escape and leave, we wouldn’t have been able to get past the checkpoints.

“In September 1990, Saddam was ready to invade oil-rich Kuwait. My infantry unit was sent south to Hillah. I was worried.

“In the army, you’re meant to wear a chain around your neck, with a metal tag on it. It’s identification for when you die.

Everybody’s name is punched into the metal. But because we were Kurdish, we weren’t issued with ID tags. I didn’t know what to do. If I died without a tag, nobody would know who I was. My mother would never know if I was dead or alive.

She would spend the rest of her life crying. I couldn’t bear that.

“So I escaped. Our troop stopped by a river. They all wanted to swim.

I declined, saying I’d stay with the empty bus. While they were down at the river, I left my rifle, picked up my small bag, and quickly walked to the highway. All I had in my bag was a piece of bread and some dates.

“I managed to catch a bus north to Baghdad. Then after a few days, I got back to my Kurdish hometown. I went into hiding for

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‘I can’t begin to tell you what happened when they started shooting’

How a Kurdish man survived Saddam Hussein’s regime. And what happened next …

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help them. I did English-Kurdish interpreting for them, and became their camp manager. My family returned home, but hundreds of thousands of displaced families remained in the mountains.

“They were too shocked to move, and they had no safe places to return to.

“One day, though, everything changed for me. I was visiting the camp manager of a Christian aid group. He was a Kurdish man. And among his few possessions I was surprised to see a Bible in Arabic.

“I’d heard about Jesus once when I was a child, and ever since then I’d wanted to find out more. I’d even visited a church while I was at university in Mosul, but no one spoke to me. None of my university friends knew anything about Jesus.

“And there in the mountains, the camp manager gave me his Bible. For the first time I had the opportunity to read about Jesus.

“I started with the Gospel of Matthew. I remember reading up to Chapter 6. And in Chapter 6 it says that when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites. Don’t show off on the street corners, or pretend, or use long, complicated words that you don’t understand. Just go to your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who knows what you need. He’ll listen to you.

It all made sense to me! And Jesus said we can ask for forgiveness.

Jesus said don’t do things out of ritual, or because other people are watching you, or telling you to do them. Your Heavenly Father knows what you need. He’s listening to you. You can talk to him. It was quiet and humble … and it felt like everything I was looking for was on those pages, especially what Jesus said about prayer and forgiveness.

“So I sat there in the mountains, surrounded by tents and snow and refugees, and I kept reading. I didn’t understand everything about Jesus’ death and resurrection, but I kept reading.

“

For the first time I had the opportunity to read about Jesus.”

In 1991, Hama fled into the land-mined border zones of Iran and Turkey. seven months. A neighbour and I dug a big hole in our front garden.

It was enough for us to squash into, with a tray of soil over the top …

“In March 1991, Iraq was defeated by Coalition forces in the Gulf War. Immediately, Saddam ordered his tanks and helicopter gunships to take revenge on the Shiite and Kurdish populations of Iraq. Everybody was terrified.

Families were scrambling out of their homes, shouting to their neighbours, ‘Run towards the mountains!’ We could hear the gunfire. There were tanks surrounding the city and bombs going off.

“Everyone was running, heading

north up the mountains, into the prohibited, land-mined border zones of Iran and Turkey.

“I was with my parents and two of my sisters, halfway up the mountain. An army helicopter started shooting into the crowds.

There were thousands of us jammed together, trapped on the steep narrow road up the mountain. The bullets landed on an open truck, immediately in front of me. It was carrying women and children.

“I saw a mother cradling her baby. And then I saw the top of the baby’s head blown off, in the mother’s arms, straight in front of me.

“I can’t begin to tell you what I saw. Hundreds stumbled and fell to their deaths down the ravine. Terrible things happened.

The baby’s face was gone, and the mother was screaming, but the truck kept driving up the mountain. It couldn’t stop. It kept going … I can’t tell you the things I saw. But after a week walking in the rain and snow, we made it to a destroyed town in the mountains.

We were cold and hungry. There were landmines and booby traps everywhere. After three weeks, a small Red Cross team arrived, distributing tents and blankets, and they brought in food. I was the first Kurd who volunteered to

“I remember the first time I joined the foreigners’ prayer meeting. It sounded so different. It wasn’t like Muslim prayers. They didn’t stand up and bow down or repeat the same thing, over and over again. They just spoke from their hearts. It felt new. And there seemed to be peace for the first time.

“After that, I began to pray myself, in my heart and sometimes out loud. I didn’t know any Kurdish followers of Jesus at that time, so I continued to join the foreign group when they met to pray and sing songs of praise in English. I had peace in my heart.

“For the first time, I knew God was listening to me. From then on, everything changed for me.”

This is an edited extract from Naomi Reed’s new book, Finding Faith: – Inspiring Conversion stories from around the World.

(Authentic Media, UK) Available online and in all good bookstores.

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MARCH 2019

John Smith: lessons from my cancer JOHN SMITH

Geelong Advertiser - photographer Karen Dodd

I have been battling cancer for almost 19 years. Eventually that has meant chemical castration and radiation therapy and becoming almost unrecognisable after losing my customary long hair and beard.

But by God’s grace I am still alive, contrary to medical expectations, and determined to keep on doing my best to be useful. Here I want to share some reflections arising out of my struggle with cancer.

I’ve been thinking about the cancer cells themselves and what they are doing to me. As I understand it, virtually all normal cells in our body die and are replaced continuously by another generation, with some changes as we age. But cancer cells don’t have a use-by date; they just keep on dividing. And each new cancer cell produces spawns more cancer cells, and so on. In the end, unless the good Lord grants a miracle – a possibility I do not discount – it’s inevitable that these cells will take me out. And take me to a better place. So growth can be healthy or unhealthy in physical terms.

Economic growth is currently a major focus in Australia. But what kind of growth are we talking about? Can we call it healthy growth if we achieve a surplus but fail to meet the needs of the community, particularly the poor, disadvantaged or marginalised?

There is also an emphasis on growth in many churches today, both large and small. Globally, the Christian faith is now growing at a rate never, or rarely, seen before and faster than any other religion.

But I am concerned. As I watch television and YouTube, I often see leaders of mega-churches whose teaching is quite contrary to the words of Jesus as recorded in the gospels. The question must be asked: what are we growing?

I witnessed a deeply disturbing example of disease within the church five years ago. A group of us, most of whom were Indigenous Christians, had been out in the Australian desert, waiting on the Lord and gathering together simply in the beautiful outback.

We returned to a nearby town for a worship service where some of our group were to take part in preaching, music and sharing stories.

The venue, an old tin shed, was packed with local Aboriginal people. Most were living in poverty on welfare handouts in

John Smith, God’s Squad leader, author, pastor and prophet a community where alcoholism and family violence were rife, as evidenced by the broken arms of some women who attended.

To my horror, a visiting white preacher took over, even pushing aside the very capable Aboriginal leader who was supposed to preach. Just before the offering was collected, he asked an Aboriginal woman to read the Bible passage in which St Paul warns Timothy about the love of money, describing it as the root of all kinds of evil.

But the preacher had added his own words between the lines from the Bible, which contradicted everything that St Paul was saying. Her reading ended with the outrageous “promise” that if their offering was generous, they would find that God had put a large amount of money into their account when they went to the bank on Monday.

Most of these people were uneducated and economically naive, ready to accept the word of a preacher without question. What a betrayal of their trust!

Sadly, this man is not alone in

using inappropriate methods to promote giving for ministry or gaining converts. I watched a wellknown American healer-preacher on TV saying with great cynicism: “You know there are many preachers who say give and expect nothing in return. How dumb thou art, how dumb thou art,” he sang. He seemed unaware that the words he was scorning were spoken by Jesus himself. Others are preaching that if you have faith you will become rich.

Jesus said beware of covetousness – an excessive desire to possess something or someone – calling it the sin of idolatry. He was referring to the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament, which place devotion to the one true God as the highest priority and ban idol worship and covetousness.

When Jesus encountered a rich young ruler who believed he had kept all the commandments since he was a child, he said, “One thing you lack. Sell everything you’ve got, give it to the poor and come follow me.” In contrast, the advice

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of some pastors today would be to work hard, do well, give a tenth or more to the church and be good to people.

I don’t enjoy criticising my fellow preachers and I’m certainly not against healthy church growth.

I know that all of us preachers fall short of being right about everything. We all make mistakes in interpreting the biblical text.

Thankfully God is loving and powerful enough to deal with that.

But I have to ask this: if you build your church on a distortion or contradiction of what Jesus taught, what are you growing? Is it healthy growth or is it a heretical, cancerous growth that will threaten the spiritual life of both church and individual?

A church is also at risk of unhealthy growth if it emphasises the appealing inclusiveness of Jesus but loses sight of the exclusiveness inherent in the call for those who follow Jesus – the call to be committed to the godliness, goodness and integrity the gospel is meant to bring to our lives. While Jesus showed

his compassion and acceptance by rescuing the woman who was about to be stoned for adultery, he also said to her, “Go and sin no more.”

I hear of some churches who rely on secular selection criteria such as education, age and physical attractiveness when making appointments, while neglecting spiritual aspects of the process.

I know a very fine musician who offered to be part of the worship band at a large church. He was turned away because he was overweight and didn’t project the right image. Did this man’s deep longing to use his musical gifts to honour God and lead people to Jesus count for nothing? Elsewhere a musician failed an age limit test: she was over 35!

Throughout history, God has used ordinary people in extraordinary ways to grow his church. They didn’t need impressive qualifications or praise sessions well-crafted for television.

They held prayer meetings where they cried out to God, sometimes through the night, until the Spirit fell. That passion and willingness to follow the promptings of the Spirit, whatever the personal cost, is at the heart of healthy church growth.

A focus on slick marketing, professional performances and trendy church buildings may attract a crowd. But is that necessarily healthy growth?

For the church, as for cancer, the key question is not how fast you are growing but what you are growing.

Whatever the size of your church, is it reflecting Jesus and what he taught? He shed his blood not only for us but also for the church itself, so that it might be like a pure bride, walking morally and ethically in the goodness and integrity of Jesus himself.

I sometimes wonder whether, despite great growth of so-called Christian movements, we may be observing a departure from New Testament faith more dangerous than any since the time of the Reformation, when house cleaning was required because widespread worldliness had undermined the teaching and practices so clearly demanded by Jesus and his apostolic disciples.

Rev. Dr John Smith is an international speaker, author and founder of God’s Squad Christian Motorcycle Club International, Concern Australia and St Martin’s Community Church in Melbourne.

MARCH 2019

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Congratulations to the staff and team at Eternity on your 100th edition. You have blessed the church greatly by keeping us informed, by sharing new perspectives, by modelling constructive debate in tumultuous times and by celebrating the breadth and depth of what it means to live for Christ here in Australia. Thank you.

Tim Costello Chief Advocate, World Vision Australia

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It’s a repeat: what we ran in our first edition

In the footsteps of Mr Eternity

ETERNITY EDITORIAL John Sandeman For 37 years, Arthur Stace, a converted metho drinker and petty crook in and out of jail since 15, wrote the word “Eternity” on the pavements of Sydney. It was his gospel message in one word.

Stace recalled the day he came to Christ: “I went into the meeting for a rock cake and came out with the Rock of Ages.” He got both cake and a saviour at St Barnabas’ Anglican Church, which fed hundreds of hungry men during the depression.

He got his message from the Baptists a few months later. John Ridley, a great evangelist, preaching Ecclesiastes 3:11 at the Burton Street Tabernacle shouted “I wish I could shout ETERNITY through the streets of Sydney.”

Stace told the Daily Telegraph, “He repeated himself and kept shouting ‘ETERNITY, ETERNITY’ and his words were ringing through my brain as I left the church. Suddenly I began crying and I felt a powerful call from the Lord to write ‘ETERNITY.’ I had a piece of chalk in my pocket and I bent down there and wrote it. The funny thing is that before I wrote I could hardly have spelled my own name. I had no schooling and I couldn’t have spelt ‘ETERNITY’ for a hundred quid.

“But it came out smoothly in beautiful copperplate script. I couldn’t understand it and I still can’t.”

Like Mr Eternity, this paper wants to stand for Truth by writing about it. We will use more than one word, but like Stace we want our writing to be Bible-based. Like him we believe that the Bible is entirely reliable, and wholy truthful, and it is worth spending a lifetime to spread its message.

Just like him we are unworthy of the task.

Like Mr Eternity this paper wants to proclaim the central truths of Christianity: the Fatherhood of God the creator, Jesus both God and man who died in our place, and the need for Christians to lead holy lives prompted by the Holy Spirit.

We are sending our paper to the place we believe Christians should be found, the local church.

Like Mr Eternity, Eternity won’t be restricted to one denomination.

This paper will go to churches that ask for it: Baptist, Anglican, Church of Christ, Uniting, Adventist and many more.

We want to tell the stories of ordinary Australians encountering Jesus and how it has changed them.

Good old-fashioned journalism is enough.

There is so much good stuff happening that we will not have to make things up, exaggerate, or use hype to fill our paper.

We will play a straight bat with news, modelling ourselves on Christianity Today, the magazine founded by Billy Graham.

Eternity has five sorts of features: • Testimonies • Missionary News • Extracts from new local books • Social Justice • Culture: TV and movie reviews.

We will miss some good stories, and miss the point on occasion, and make mistakes.

Help us get better with your feedback.

Eternity is published by Australian Christian Pty Ltd which is owned by the publishers John Sandeman and David Maegraith. We are just two Christians with a dream, with no organisation to fund us.

Eternity is currently forming an editorial panel and a board of reference. And yes, we want your letters, and story ideas.

Clean Twitter’s I was toilets 500 year in the save lives old star room

EVERYDAY LIFE Tim Adeney

OBADIAH SLOPE

A caretaker helped save my life.

We were driving to Melbourne from Sydney via an overnight stop with friends in Wagga. Sometime after we crossed into Victoria we stopped at a roadside rest area – because we should every two hours, because we had three children in the car, and because I was tired.

Three minutes into our stop we started talking about the rest area.

There was space to park, there was shade, but also flowers, and a lawn.

There were toilets – clean. And there was a 15-minute walk with a wooden footpath and handrail included.

Here was evidence of good work – a part of creation ordered and redeemed, kept beautiful and made useful.

While we talked the caretaker arrived in his ute. He got out and started tidying around the bins, cutting the edge of the lawn and cleaning the toilets. I walked over to comment and say thank you for the place and his work. He didn’t look up, but replied, “If we make them nice, more people will stop.”

More evidence of good work.

Yes, it was good because he restored one part of creation.

But more than that – it was good because he blessed people and their relationships. Like the hairdresser who helps me get a job, or the mechanic who enables me to visit my parents or the chef who gives me an evening of conversation with friends.

He left just before we did, and I wondered how many sites he was able to look after in a day and how many lives he had saved.

You might have missed John Calvin’s 500th birthday this year, depending on which church you go to, but there’s no denying that the 16thcentury reformer is hot right now.

Facebook fan clubs, blogs and Twitter give this theologian more pixels than most living scholars.

“His theology is the hottest, most explosive thing being discussed right now,” Justin Taylor, 32, a self-described Calvinist and an editorial director at Crossway, a US Christian publisher, told Religion News Service.

“What he taught is extraordinarily influential right now.” And much of the discussion is on the Internet which appears to have far more conservative theology on it than liberal.

This year Time magazine nominated “the New Calvinism” as one of “10 ideas that are changing the world right now.”

Its not just Presbyterians, and other churches traditionally associated with Calvin, who are fans. One of the most famous trendy churches in the US, Mark Driscoll’s church in Seattle, Mars Hill, is proudly Calvinist.

And the huge Southern Baptist denomination, which has ignored Calvin for most of its history, now has 30 per cent of its young, claiming to be fans.

Bono v Nick Cave GREG

CLARKE Irish band U2 are currently knocking the socks off American audiences with their 360º Tour.

Meanwhile, Australia’s gothic prince, Nick Cave, has put out a novel, held a travelling exhibition of his work, and co-written the soundtrack for the forthcoming film based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road.

These men hitting their 50s have helped to redefine rock’n’roll creativity; it’s not just for the kids anymore. In fact, it’s hellishly serious.

Both U2’s Bono and Nick Cave put their creative drive down to losing a parent at a young age. Bono says there’s something questionable about a man who still needs to hear a stadium full of people chanting his name to know he’s OK. Nick Cave describes himself, using biblical language, as “doing the work of his father.”

But both Bono and Cave acknowledge the most significant man in history is not their respective fathers but Jesus of Nazareth.

At the Nick Cave exhibition, currently at the National Library in Canberra, you can view the bust of Jesus that sits on Cave’s piano as he composes, along with a Gospel of John open at chapter 17 with an annotation, reading, “Why is faith essential for eternal life? Why the need to believe?” Everywhere, the importance of Christ (among other things) for his writing is on display.

Cave seems troubled by Christ, not comforted. In fact, it is Christ’s own sense of conflict and turmoil that appeals to Cave most. He sees Jesus as the example par excellence of the human creative spirit set free.

His protests against the restrictions and hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his time are for Cave evidence of Jesus’ higher calling, his capacity to lift his eyes beyond the petty concerns of the mortal realm.

Cave wrote in his foreword to an edition of The Gospel of Mark that Christ was “the victim of humanity’s lack of imagination, was hammered to the cross with the nails of creative vapidity.”

Cave’s Christ is creatively powerful, but not present nor divine. “There’s a man who spoke wonders, though I’ve never met him”, he sings on “Are You The One That I’ve Been Waiting For?” For Cave, Christ’s story is potent

and the Man of Sorrows is the highest expression of the tragedy of existence to whom we might look for inspiration.

In contrast, Bono has never hidden the fact that he is not simply an admirer of Jesus, but a worshipper.

Like Cave, his view of Jesus is hard, rough and earthy: “There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ,” he told the journalist Michka Assayas in the book Bono on Bono.

Bono’s image of Christ moves beyond inspiration to something more morally and personally significant.

Bono told Assayas that he is “holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the cross” and, on Jesus’ life, “No, but seriously, if we only could be a bit more like him, the world would be transformed.”

It’s no secret that U2’s lyrics are Christ soaked, from the early days of teenage devotion to their current album, where Bono sings the song of Mary, the Magnificat, in praise of God and his Son, on the track “Magnificent.”

Both Cave and Bono come to the foot of the cross of Christ, but only one of them looks beyond it.

For Cave, the cross is dejection and sorrow and the victor of Death; for

Bono, it’s the start of something eternal.

In the 2006 U2 single, “Window in the Skies,” Bono sings a line best understood as theology of the cross: The rule has been disproved, the stone it has been moved, The grave is now a groove, all debts are removed.

It’s a lyric that I can imagine Nick Cave liking: the rule is disproved, the nitpickers and hypocritical powermongers lose; something more transcendent, more real, wins.

But the concept of sins forgiven, death’s power broken: that seems distant in Nick Cave’s work. Even “The Mercy Seat,” perhaps his most famous song, is about fear in the face of death, not victory over it.

Nick Cave appears to take the words and deeds of Christ seriously – but more as an artist than a pilgrim. To use Bono’s words for Cave, perhaps he “kills his inspiration and sings about his grief.” For Bono, the words and deeds of Jesus are a “window in the skies,” revealing God. For me, I love both artists, but I’m clinging to the belief that Bono has been swept up in the reality of eternity, and praying that Cave is, too.

Dr Greg Clarke is a director of the Centre for Public Christianity

DAVID MAIGRAITH From the start we wanted to launch with a bang – 100,000 copies a month distributed to 2,000 churches and organisations around Australia. The paper would be free, and supported by sponsors.

My original name for the paper was Australian Christian, but I was happy to hear John’s suggestion for the name Eternity – a tribute to Arthur Stace and his ministry for many years, chalking the word “Eternity” all round Sydney.

I was able to raise $250,000 to get Eternity off the ground and acknowledgement should be made, with grateful thanks, to our foundation sponsors in 2009 who shared our belief that this venture was of God: World Vision, Moore College Sydney, Compassion, and there were others I have forgotten – sorry! The launch of Eternity was a testimony to churches and organisations coming together to support a new paper without denominational ties; it must have been a God thing.

David Maegraith was the cofounder of Eternity.

We would like to thank … all of you!

WILD HIVE TEAM The purpose of Bible Society Australia, which owns and publishes Eternity, is to champion the Bible to share the love of Jesus.

The contribution and partnership of our advertisers, our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, is a pivotal part of the Eternity family. You have made it possible to distribute positive news and stories free to many households throughout Australia and around the world.

We would like to thank you all for journeying with us, for being co-workers in God’s service and standing together on the firm foundation of Jesus. We give great thanks to God for your partnership with us in growing his kingdom.

Thank you to organisations such as Barnabas Fund, CBM, FEBC, Tear Australia and many others which use intentional and innovative ways to proclaim God’s word and to play a part in changing lives. Also, thank you to churches, organisations and institutions such as Sydney Missionary and Bible College, Morling, Ridley and Moore colleges and countless others who partner with us to inspire, inform and disciple people as they explore life with Jesus.

We would like to give a big thank you to the churches, businesses, organisations, educational institutions and others which have Eternity available .We look forward to more years of sharing the good news of Jesus in interesting, informative and life-changing ways.

The Wildive team sells Eternity’s ads online and in print.

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CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY SPONSORED PAGE

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Christian Democrats CDP State Director Craig Hall outside NSW Parliament after the CDP vote defeated the universal abortion legislation and saved church zonings.

God and the power of your vote

I had a conversation recently with a person who was disappointed with a politician and wanted to know why the political party didn’t just remove or “sack” politicians who are, let’s say, underperforming. I replied that once a person gets elected by the people, the political party the person belongs to loses all power to influence the person. Politicians are not paid by the political party, but by the Parliament. Once elected the person becomes effectively employed by the Parliament, but the person is empowered by an unmoveable authority – we the people have voted them in. Once voted in nothing (apart from committing a crime) can remove them except when we the people remove them.

This is the implicit strength which

undergirds our Democracy and freedom. Imagine the chaos if political parties could just remove elected politicians. A party can remove them from a particular office, but the person remains in Parliament. It is one of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of our system that a Prime Minister can be removed as Prime Minister by the party – when Turnbull was removed as Prime Minister he was not removed from Parliament.

He was elected by we the people and he had every right to stay, but he chose to resign whereas Tony Abbott chose to stay.

Yet it is also a strength. If a Prime Minister became a tyrant they can be removed from office by the party. This cannot happen in the USA as they directly elect the President whereas we do not

directly elect the Prime Minister or the Premier of any State.

If political parties were not able to remove politicians from particular offices such as leader of the party, then they may take greater care in choosing who they appoint as leader and the revolving door of musical chairs would end.

God was there in the beginning of our nation, the Constitution preamble states “the people … humbly relying on the blessing of God” yet God seems to barely rate a mention now, even by Christians in how they vote. Unfortunately, the major parties are now secular in their culture and policies and are thus responsible for the erosion of our Christian culture yet major parties still attract the Christian vote.

ADVERTISEMENT

Your vote, the vote of we the people, is so powerful and immovable that it is upheld by the very Constitution of Australia, and the intrinsic power of how we the people vote is the implicit strength which undergirds our Democracy and freedom. Anyone trying to interfere with your vote can spend years in prison. Your vote is your absolute right. Your vote can remove Prime Ministers, remove whole governments, and importantly your vote can preserve our Christian foundations in society by voting for a party which will stand unashamedly for Christ in government. In NSW there were moves to remove the right to plant churches by removing the “place of worship zoning” and this was supported tacitly by both major parties. It was only the deciding

vote of the Christian Democratic Party CDP which preserved the right for church planting. If all Christians and followers of the Bible voted for the CDP, we would have a Christian government – your vote is that powerful and it really is that simple.

On March 23rd we the people of NSW will vote on who we want in government. As you cast your vote, on that ignoble Saturday, it may be said your vote are your pearls, remember what Jesus said about casting your pearls….

Craig Hall is the State Director & National Director, Federal Secretariat of the Christian Democratic Party. He has degree in Economics, M. Arts & M. Research in Christian studies and is completing a PhD.

A message from Paul Green and voting for Christian values

VOTE 1 Paul GREEN

FOR NEW UPPER HOUSE

For the past 8 years, The Christian Democratic Party has held the balance of power in the NSW government Upper House. This has allowed us to keep Christian values in the NSW Parliament.

I encourage you to vote for me, Paul Green, the Christian Democratic Party (CDP) on 23 March 2019 to keep Christian values in NSW Parliament. A vote for Paul Green and the CDP will mean a safe vote, with a party that has been trusted for over 35 years.

Health I believe that all people were created with the same dignity and value.

That’s why I’ll fight to put people at the centre of NSW healthcare: Education It is important to me that our kids get the great education and values they need for a brighter future: • I will fight to protect school scripture (SRE) classes.

Values I’ll fight to preserve our family Christian values so future generations can benefit from the values that have built our country: • I will introduce the Religious Freedoms Act, keeping The Lord’s Prayer in Parliament, oppose Islamic Sharia Law. The CDP has been trusted for over 35 years.

We’ve seen what happens when the major parties get too much power. The CDP will uphold the values that have made Australia the great free nation we enjoy. Vote 1 Paul Green and the CDP on 23 March 2019!

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MARCH 2019

BIBLE @ WORK

Teaching light in Pakistan Unable to attend school due to being in a wheel-chair, Eliza has had literacy classes in her home.

KALEY PAYNE Kiran lives in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) Province in Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, on the border of Afghanistan.

For Australians, this is a place on the ‘do not travel’ list set by the government. For Kiran, this is home.

Northwest Pakistan has had a violent, chaotic history. Kiran says Peshawar, the capital city of KPK, is “fundamentalist” – “the men don’t allow their ladies to go outside without ‘Purdah’ (covering all their skin and concealing their form) and without being accompanied by a male family member.” Christian families, says Kiran, have retained a similar mentality towards women.

It has made Kiran’s new role as a teacher of women’s literacy classes

quite difficult. She says there are many hurdles for women to attend her classes, not the least of which is getting the permission of their husbands, fathers or sons.

Kiran is a teacher of Bible Society literacy classes, organised by her local church. She has always wanted to be a teacher, but was only able to complete high school. While that is a rare accomplishment for a woman in her area – almost 80 per cent of rural Pakistani women are illiterate - she is not qualified to teach in a government school. But recognising her passion, Kiran’s pastor arranged teacher training for her and asked her to run an adult literacy class this year.

“I requested many ladies to join the classes, but many refused due to the hurdle of their men.

I gathered 20 ladies with much

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effort.

“I am thankful to the Lord that my class was very regular [in attendance] and I taught with enthusiasm. I am glad to share that 18 women graduated and are able to read the Bible.”

Bible Society has been supporting church-based literary classes in Christian communities for 30 years. Class materials are based on the Bible, and upon graduation, women get a Bible of their own. In Pakistan this year, it aims to enrol 8000 women in classes across the country but mainly in rural and city slum areas.

“Culturally, mothers are pivotal in Pakistan, responsible for passing on their knowledge to their children,” says Aslam, a Bible Society supervisor of the literacy programme in Pakistan. “The

generational impact of literacy is unstoppable.”

Teaching a woman to read not only provides a stronger financial foundation for herself and her family, but it also enables her to read the Bible for herself.

Eliza has been attending literacy classes organised by her church in the southern Punjab in central Pakistan. She was unable to attend school because of a disability that left her in a wheel-chair. The literacy classes were held in her home, to make it easier for Eliza to attend. When she graduated, Eliza received a New Testament in her native Urdu language.

“I am thankful to the Lord that now I can read my [Bible] … I will read the Bible daily throughout my life. I know that I cannot do any work, but this is enough for me: to read the Bible and learn. I know

gives a Pakistani woman a light no one can ever put out Call 1300 BIBLES (1300 242 537) or visit biblesociety.org.au/spread

that God’s plan for me to learn is to read his word, to make me a good follower of Jesus.”

Back in KPK Province, just this month one of Kiran’s students read the Bible in the church pulpit during their Sunday service. “I was so proud,” she says.

“I have observed a positive change among my students. They speak confidently and behave well.

And I am glad to share that seven of the women joined a Bible study group in my area.”

You can give Pakistani women a light no one can put out. $41 teaches one Pakistani woman to read and opens up Scripture for her family. Visit biblesociety.org. au/spread to donate today.

+ If you would like more details, visit biblesociety.org.au/spread

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Eliza comes to tell Uncle Tom that he is sold, and that she is running away to save her child (page 62, Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

Why we keep disagreeing on the Bible Andrew Judd on reading the hard stories “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” This is what Abraham Lincoln reportedly said on meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Published in 1852, Stowe’s novel might not be solely responsible for the American Civil War, but it certainly roused many Christians in the north to the intolerable suffering of slaves in the south.

The novel is a fascinating study in biblical hermeneutics: the study of interpretation. The characters give voice to the different ways 19th-century Christians understood the Bible on the issue of slavery.

Some are Apologists. These slave owners, politicians and preachers know their Bibles – in Greek and Hebrew! They point to Paul’s instructions on the mutual obligations of slaves and masters to give apostolic support for their economic reliance on involuntary labour. They remind their slaves of how Hagar was commanded to return to her mistress in Genesis 16.

Others are Abolitionists, and they read the Bible quite

differently. These are also the Christians Stowe depicts as most alive to the sympathies of Christ.

One of the most moving moments in the novel is when a mother and her 10-month-old baby are sold to different owners and separated during the night. Uncle Tom, the slave at the centre of the story, expresses his considered opinion that tearing a child from its mother’s breast is not something Jesus would have approved of.

Still others are Ambivalent. (“Cynical” might be more accurate, but it doesn’t start with the letter A.) Though Augustine St Clare of New Orleans becomes one of Uncle Tom’s owners, he sees right through the Apologists’ biblical arguments in defence of slavery.

To him, slavery is justified not by theology but by economics. He explains to his northerner cousin that the plantation owners have money to make, and the clergymen and politicians have planters to please, and so they “warp and bend language and ethics to a degree that shall astonish the world at their ingenuity; they can press nature and the Bible, and nobody knows what else, into the service.”

To the Ambivalents, the Bible means whatever powerful people want it to mean.

It is unsettling to be reminded that Christians once seriously disagreed on something we find so clear today. You’ll hear this 19th-century debate over slavery referenced in contemporary debates on other issues: “Just as we were wrong then, one day we’ll look back and realise we were wrong about …”

This is a powerful rhetorical move, so long as we don’t think too carefully about the underlying

assumption that every time we change our mind on something it’s for the better. I don’t think slavery is a simple parallel for any hermeneutical issue currently facing us. But I do think reading about debates of another generation can help us reflect on our own hermeneutical dilemmas.

At this year’s School of Theology, Culture & Public Engagement, held in Sydney in January by Anglican Deaconess Ministries, a group of us set about trying to think about this phenomenon of disagreement.

I suggested that one of the six reasons why we, like the characters in Stowe’s novel, often disagree on the Bible is genre.

Consider this interaction between Mr Wilson and George, a runaway slave whose master mistreated him. Mr Wilson is sympathetic, but thinks George should return to his master: “George, you’ve got a hard master – in fact, he is – well he conducts himself reprehensibly – I can’t pretend to defend him.

But you know how the angel commanded Hagar to return to her mistress, and submit herself under the hand.”

He’s referring to a sad story in Genesis 16. In a misguided attempt to give God a running start with delivering the many descendants promised in Genesis 12, Abram marries and impregnates his wife’s servant Hagar (at his wife’s suggestion). This, as you will have guessed, is a terrible idea. His childless wife Sarai then complains to Abram that pregnant Hagar is treating her with contempt. Abram, the powerful, irreproachable patriarch (ahem), pursues domestic harmony by telling Sarai she can do whatever she likes to get

back at Hagar. Sarai mistreats Hagar terribly, and Hagar, quite reasonably, runs away. But on the way, Hagar meets the angel of the Lord who says something to her, prompting her return.

Why does Mr Wilson understand the story about Hagar as an instruction to slaves against running away, while other Christians (myself included) find this reading and application bizarre?

As my Old Testament class at Ridley College gets sick of me saying, the three most important things about reading the Old Testament are: genre, genre and genre. Our disagreements over Scripture often begin as disagreements over genre.

What kind of a thing is Genesis 16? Mr Wilson seems to read the story of Hagar in relation to the genre of morality tale. The Bible is taken as a series of spiritual lifehacks: descriptions of holy people doing holy things that we can and should try to replicate at home.

My problem with this is that in Hebrew narrative (the genre I read Genesis 16 in relation to) there are seldom any moral superheroes – just flawed humans caught up in the glorious plans of a patient and powerful God. As my friend Andrea Abeyasekera says, “narrative is not normative!” Just because it happened doesn’t mean we should always go and do likewise.

Biblical narrators often describe horrific events and morally questionable attitudes with little comment; like a gritty modern novel, it’s up to us as readers to read between the lines.

The reason why Hagar returns is crucial to understanding

the implications of the story for us. It’s not because leaving her mistress was a sin. Hagar, having now “seen the One who sees me,” receives from the Lord the vindication and protection that her husband Abram failed to provide. She returns with her own promise of blessing through the line of Ishmael. Whatever we make of this (and it’s certainly morally complex!), it’s clear the narrator is not offering the kind of straightforward spiritual life-hack Mr Wilson seems to expect when he opens his Bible.

Genres are a bit like games. At my local park there are always multiple games going on. Some I recognise: the one with the round ball, the one with the squashed ball, the one with the bat. Other people love playing new games; they sometimes even have a sign explaining what it’s called and where they can learn more about it. While the players all share a common field, and sometimes even a similar-looking ball, it’s clear the various groups are playing by very different rules. And if the park is double-booked this can lead to great confusion, and sometimes angry confrontations.

When we read the Bible we meet other people on the oval who seem to be interested in the same book, but are playing according to the rules of a different genre. They are doing things with that book that are startling to us (perhaps even startling to the author!). Before we assume they are idiots, or are playing in bad faith, it’s worth stopping to ask: what game are you playing?

Andrew Judd is an Associate Lecturer in Old Testament at Ridley College.

Wikimedia / SteinsplitterBot

The Monthly gets ScoMo badly wrong John Sandeman Page 16

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The Monthly gets ScoMo wrong John Sandeman They got the PM’s faith not only wrong, but badly wrong The Monthly magazine, published

by Schwartz Media, Melbournebased property developer Morry Schwartz’s mini-media empire, tries hard to get things right.

Writers published by the mag have told me of rigorous fact-checking and line-by-line subbing.

So it is really disappointing that they get Scott Morrison’s Christianity disastrously wrong.

Some of its errors should have been obvious to the sub-editors.

Writer James Boyce recounts the Azusa Street founding of modern Pentecostalism – describing it as a rejection of “dogma-based religion.” But eight rather chunky paragraphs later, he describes the Australian Christian Churches’ (ACC) “non-negotiable doctrinal statement” to establish some pretty heavyweight beliefs (which we will examine a bit later).

Boyce gives himself wriggle room by saying the ACC doctrinal statement is tighter than usual for Pentecostals – which ignores the fact that the ACC is a member of the world’s largest Pentecostal group, the Assemblies of God. Boyce is quite right to point out that Pentecostals (like the Prime Minister) emphasise personal experience more than Reformed Evangelicals. But then he links it with doctrines held by classical

February 2019 Monthly Christianity. These include • belief in a personal devil, who is a fallen angel; • the second coming of Christ, which could happen at any time; • hell; • believers’ names in the book of life; • spiritual warfare and daily guidance from the Holy Spirit; • the human species being directly created by God. It is a list that many nonPentecostals will respond to with “we believe that stuff, too!”

Take the issue of the devil as a person, not just an evil force.

Many Christians will have vividly encountered this doctrine in the pages of The Screwtape Letters, the epistolary advice of a senior devil to his junior on how to best tempt a young Christian.

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape’s author, was an Anglo-Catholic, a fair distance from Pentecostalism.

Boyce’s take on Pentecostalism is a bit out of date. The view that Christians are plunged into a frenzy of activity by the belief that Jesus could return immediately does describe an old-fashioned Pentecostalism. Stephen Fogarty, head of Alphacrucis, Australia’s best-known Pentecostal college, told Eternity in a recent interview that one major change in Pentecostalism is the absence of the brand of Pentecostalism that says: “Jesus is coming back soon, so we don’t have to worry about improving society.” A good place to test this out is in Pentecostal music. Good examples of what “Christian contemporary music” used to produce are I Wish We’d All Been Ready, Larry Norman’s 1969 hit about the rapture, and Johnny and June Cash’s 1973 release Matthew 24 (Is Knocking at the Door). Apologies to all who I have just given earworms! But

it is striking that I can’t think of a similar Hillsong song with a rapture theme.

Ironically, within the conservative evangelical world, a perceived absence of discussion of Christ’s return has led to this year’s Katoomba Easter Convention being built around the end times.

Boyce concludes that “belief in Satan and the imminent return of Christ also helps explain the Prime Minister’s less than passionate response to the most pressing environmental issue of our time.” While Boyce is right that Pentecostals, taken as a whole, are less active on climate change than, say, progressive Anglicans, there is an emerging (but still smallish) social activism among Australian Pentecostals.

Moreover, Morrison’s handling of a lump of coal in parliament and the Coalition’s partiality for new coal-fired power stations are

also in conflict with the idea that, if Jesus is coming soon, you don’t need long-range plans. Building a new coal-fired power station would take a decade or longer, for example.

Believers of many stripes are conscious of being at war with spiritual forces, fighting temptation and the like, having read Ephesians chapter 6, in which Paul describes the weaponry Christians need to fight in a spiritual war.

In this context, it is odd that practices such as “words of knowledge” and “prophecy” are not featured in The Monthly’s summary of Morrison’s Pentecostalism. These are key differences – at least on the surface – between Pentecostalism and other brands of conservative Christianity.

The February issue of The Monthly also contains a brief profile of Christine Caine, an alumnus of the Hillsong community who has become – as Elle Hardy’s article correctly points out – an established speaker at conferences and mega-churches in the US. The story is largely about Caine’s refusal to talk to The Monthly – although the wisdom of that becomes apparent.

The sting in the article comes when Hardy disparages the modern anti-slavery campaign at the centre of Caine’s A21 group.

“A21 is part of a trend in the US of not-for-profits that claim to target modern slavery – although they almost exclusively focus on ‘rescuing’ women from working in the sex industry, as opposed to forced labour practices.”

Yes, modern slavery does include forced labour by refugees, people living with intellectual disability, and other vulnerable groups, and the exploitation of workers in factories in developing countries.

But perhaps The Monthly could have pointed out to Elle Hardy that for many women, participation in the sex industry has been a “forced labour practice.”

Religious protections are the missing piece

Mark Fowler Why belief needs a legal shield The government’s commitment to a Religious Discrimination Act takes up the centrepiece reform recommendation of the much-awaited Report of the Ruddock Expert Panel on Religious Freedom. As the Prime Minister recognised in announcing the proposal, a Religious Discrimination Act is of monumental significance for the unfolding project that is modern Australian multiculturalism.

Protection of persons against

discrimination on the basis of religious belief is the missing piece in the constellation of Australian equality legislation.

Of the five main equality rights recognised in the international law to which Australia is a signatory – being race, age, disability, sex (including sexual orientation) and religion – only religion fails to receive dedicated protection in Commonwealth law. In its 2017 Periodic Review of Australia, the United Nations Human Rights Committee called upon Australia to address this deficiency. While Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus QC has indicated that the proposal is “worth examining,” Labor is yet to provide its response.

Given the timing, there is a very real prospect that the issue of religious freedom could become an election issue.

At its heart, anti-discrimination law aims to protect an individual’s equality as a human being. This is a notion that we have given much thought to as a nation in more recent times, not only in respect of marriage, but also due to the ascendance of identity politics.

Societies have been grappling with, and defined by, their notions of equality for millennia. Aristotle’s question continues to resonate in our national discussion today: “they admit that justice is a thing and has a relation to persons, and that equals ought to have equality.

But there remains a question: equality or inequality of what?”

That these ancient notions find their modern judicial equivalent within anti-discrimination law is perhaps best illustrated by this statement of the European Court of Human Rights: “A difference in treatment between persons in analogous or relevantly similar positions is discriminatory if it has no objective and reasonable justification, that is if it does not pursue a legitimate aim or if there is not a reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim sought to be realised.”

One of the central premises of human rights law is its ability to protect minorities against democratic majorities. Where the Religious Discrimination Act will have much work to do, then,

is in the space of contest between religious manifestation and majoritarian values. The Religious Discrimination Act necessarily begs the question: how do we define the boundary line of permissible religious manifestation where it conflicts with the rights of others?

All Commonwealth legislation must rely upon a constitutional head to constitute a valid exercise of power.

In the vein of existing Commonwealth anti-discrimination law, the low-hanging fruit is the external affairs power. The relevant international protection is contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The High Court has held that to be valid a statutory enshrinement of an international covenant, an Act must be “reasonably capable of being considered appropriate and adapted to implementing the treaty.” The ICCPR provides that only “necessary” limitations on religious exercise are lawful, pursuant to five permissible grounds: “public safety, order, health or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.”

As is the case with existing antidiscrimination law protections, any religious discrimination law will operate as a shield against detrimental conduct and not a sword. In this way, a Religious Discrimination Act can be seen as a guarantee that our shared public life is not neutered of religious expression.

Enfolding religious belief within the Commonwealth regime protecting equality will ensure that our religious diversity and nuance continues to be welcome within our unfolding national story.

A truly neutral, democratic and pluralistic society will seek to most accurately reflect both the religious and non-religious sentiments within its underlying polity by allowing freedom of conscience within not just belief, but also public action.

As the Ruddock Panel recognised, “religious freedom is precious … it needs to be actively preserved.”

Mark Fowler is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame and a practising lawyer.

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The Koran’s complicated history

examining the Bible, Christian scholars, including Australians, are in the vanguard of this research renaissance.

The results of these efforts are intriguing. It is becoming increasingly clear to the global scholarly community that the traditional story of the Koran’s origins simply cannot be correct.

Let me highlight just a few of the new findings.

Far from being pristine texts, early Korans unquestionably display intentional changes. Some are additions, some are erasures, some are both. Here’s just a few (very clear) examples of variants:

“

The last few decades have seen an extraordinary leap in critical examination of the Koran.”

An example of erasure and overwriting from an ancient Koran manuscript called BnF 328 (held in the French National Library), found in Surah 3:171.

Qur’an Gateway

Another example from the same manuscript, in Surah 4:71.

Qur’an Gateway

very good reasons for treating the books of the Bible as historically reliable.

Of course, Christians are not alone in grounding their faith in the reliability of a sacred text.

Millions of Muslims around world similarly trust that the Koran is historically trustworthy. Indeed, here the claims of Islam are much stronger than those of Christianity.

For Islam, the Koran is a perfectly pristine text. It is a miraculous revelation that, quite literally, was handed down intact from heaven and was recorded authoritatively in texts that display no variations or errors of any kind.

Until very recently, this account largely went unexamined. It was accepted unquestioningly by Muslims and uncritically by most scholars. This is not because these claims had withstood scrutiny.

Instead, its acceptance grew out of a combination of uncritical Muslim piety and academic indifference.

As a result – and in contrast to the Bible – virtually no-one had turned the tools of modern text, source, and historical criticism upon the Koran. For close to 14 centuries, the earliest copies of Islam’s scriptures lay unquestioned and unexamined in libraries throughout the world.

Until now. The last few decades have seen an extraordinary leap in critical examination of the Koran.

For the very first time this ancient text is being scoured for a range of features including: evidence of intentional changes, hints of human source material, as well as clues to where its language and historical references locate it. Unsurprisingly, given their interest in establishing what is Scripture and their skills developed

Qur’an Gateway

The Bible we have in our hands has a history. It didn’t simply drop out of heaven as a complete book (in the King James Version). Instead, it is a collection of writings by various inspired, but very human, authors over literally thousands of years who themselves often drew on other human sources.

We know this because scholars, both believing and unbelieving, have delved very deeply into this history. Particularly over the last hundred years, various geeky techniques (such as source, text, form and literary criticism) have been rigorously turned upon the sacred texts of the Christians to work out just where the various books fit into history.

For some Christians, this sort of research was (and perhaps still is) unsettling. Some saw it as irreverent and unnecessary to prod and poke God’s word in these sorts of ways. Others found it hard to face the idea that their Scriptures were not as pristine as they imagined (for example, that we simply don’t have a perfectly preserved text), or that the four gospel writers drew on other earlier, and lost, sources. It can be disturbing to have one’s simple faith stretched by encountering the rich and complex story of how we ended up with the contemporary Bible.

However, close examination can also be deeply affirming. Asking difficult and new questions of our core beliefs can lead us to find even more evidence that our faith is trustworthy. For me, this is certainly the case with the Bible.

Whatever complexities, all this research has shown that there are

12th-century Koran in Reza Abbasi Museum in Tehran, Iran.

And in Surah 6:44.

To be clear, this manuscript is no anomaly: every single early Koran that has been examined is riddled with these sorts of deliberate modifications. Perhaps there was a pure original text – but if there was, we have no evidence for it.

In another ground-breaking study, religious philosopher Dr Andy Bannister used computer analysis to search the Koran for evidence of oral formulas.

Oral formulas are word patterns typically used in storytelling, such as “once upon a time,” or “and they lived happily ever after.” These provide structure for retelling old stories without remembering every little detail.

Bannister’s original work reveals that massive sections of the Koran display all the hallmarks of being oral performances of pre-existing stories. In his words: “The Koran contains all the features we would expect of a text originally composed livein-performance, in front of an audience. For example, formulaic language – short repeated building blocks of text used again and again – make up about 50 per cent of the Koran. By comparison, Homer’s

Wikimedia / ‫یفنام‬

Richard Shumack on textual complexities

poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, widely agreed by scholars to be composed orally, are just 25 per cent formulaic. In short: the Koran looks exactly like we’d expect an orally composed document from seventh-century Arabia to look.”

Put simply, it seems clear that, whatever its spiritual sources, the Koran relies very heavily on existing human sources.

These findings are so new that they have hardly even begun to enter the popular Muslim imagination. If and when they do, Muslims – like Christians before them – will need to wrestle with how the historical story of their sacred texts shapes their faith.

Can Muslims continue to treat the Koran as the word of God if it is tainted by human involvement?

Is there is any space in Islamic theology for the Koran to be in error? Doubtless for some this will be unsettling.

Uncomfortable or not, however, all religious belief should pursue truth relentlessly. It doesn’t do Muslims or Christians (or anyone else) any favours to enter the public arena while entertaining a falsely imagined moral high ground concerning the historicity of their sacred texts.

Instead, recognising that both the Bible and the Koran have complex textual histories should lead to subtle and humble discussions of the relative merits of their texts.

Richard Shumack is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity and Director of the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology. The Centre for Public Christianity offers a Christian perspective on contemporary life.

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Beyond borders with asylum-seekers

Tim Costello on the faith-fear battle

Flickr / ant

There is no more deeply confusing or divisive current issue for Australian Christians than the debate over asylum-seekers.

In the lead-up to a federal election, border protection is a defining issue. Sadly, this has already led to debates that reveal the best and worst of our Australian character – from compassion and care for others to political opportunism and rabid fear of outsiders.

We need effective policies that protect our borders and national security. But surely there are broader and deeper questions about our attitude to and concern for vulnerable and suffering people.

The federal government claims

Border protection is an issue that has revealed the best and worst of the Australian character. the bill allowing the transfer of asylum-seekers to Australia for appropriate medical treatment leaves the border wide open for people-smugglers. But this is a political game. The legislation applies only to those already on Manus and Nauru who need

urgent medical attention.

Many Christians were involved in the successful campaign to get kids off Nauru. But there is more to be done. Like the Good Samaritan, we have a responsibility to all victims on the road.

Ultimately, for Christians,

this is a battle between fear and faith. The church has, at crucial times in history, been a powerful transformation and change agent.

The commitment to justice has been an essential part of our mission.

So what is our obligation – our

responsibility – to those who are suffering because they were born into poverty and injustice? One of the major gospel themes is Jesus’s concern for outsiders. He said caring for them was caring for Him. Our Australian aid budget has bottomed out and yet there are calls for those funds to be diverted to help those at home facing droughts, floods and fire.

Of course we should help our own, but that does not mean turning a blind eye to those who also need our help outside our borders. It should never be an either/or situation.

Australian aid helps millions of people across the world living in poor communities. Aid saves lives through breaking down the barriers of poverty which prevent people from realising their Godgiven potential and building a better and fairer future. Australian aid is the best expression of who we are.

The debates over asylumseekers and aid present an ethical and spiritual challenge to Christians. Can we stand back from the political debate and consider the Kingdom view that goes beyond matters of border sovereignty? Do we now move forward in fear or faith?

Wanted: Christians in parliament

Lucy Gichuhi on leadership Senator Lucy Gichuhi addressed the staff of Alphacrucis College, saying Christians have a “mandate” to be involved in this nation’s leadership. The Pentecostal college plans to lodge its application for “university college” status this year – the first stage in becoming a full university.

Gichuhi told the story of what happened when she received the News that Senator Bob Day would have to stand down. Gichuhi was second on his ticket, but it was far from clear what would happen next.

“Since the election I had begun to read the Bible – you know how you go to church and the pastor says ‘we are in Isaiah 22’, but I would have trouble finding it – so I had decided I would no longer be a Christian who had no idea what is in the Bible,” she said.

“So I was reading the Bible systematically when I got this call.

I called Bob’s office and there was a lot of confusion.

“I remember Mark [Mark Mudri, a lawyer who was Gichuhi’s mentor] telling me ‘go read Nehemiah.’

I said, ‘What, Jeremiah?’ He said ‘No, Nehemiah.’

“I read it. It did not make sense.

‘It does not apply,’ I said. I did not understand.

“I did not know the law that if a senator resigns he could pick who replaced them. We found out that Bob had already picked his chief of staff to be his successor. I understood that and thought ‘that’s gone.’

“But within two days news started to come that Bob may not have been eligible to stand at the election in the first place. That meant he was not in a position to pick his successor. There would have to be a recount.

“I was watching this, and now I got really scared at the prospect [of replacing Senator Day.] I dug into the Bible. I would wake up at 3am and just read the Bible with an eye to all the possibilities.

“So I was reading my Bible. I continued reading my Bible until

on the day the High Court decided there would be a recount and I would become the next senator, was the day I read the last chapter of the Bible.

“This is how I was catapulted into the Senate without fear, and knowing for sure that I was there to advance the kingdom of God in any manner I could.

“And for that I have applied to every policy and I have fearlessly advanced whatever needs to be done.

“This is a message I would like to give to all Christians in Australia: this country’s Constitution and law are based on Judeo-Christian values. In short, the principle of love of your neighbour. I doesn’t come from anywhere else. It comes from the Bible.

“But our Christian past has been caught up with a secular separation of church and state. My own

opinion is that this is not right.

We cannot separate our law from our Christian basis or separate the leadership of our nation [from Christianity].

I believe we have a God-given mandate.

“My message to the college today as we advance to become a university – this is not a luxury, that is not something to take lightly – this is something to fight for.

“It is a mandate we should grab and not give up. We should not give up the leadership of our country.

“Whether you call it politics or leadership, there is a mission we must accomplish.

“And with a Christian college, with top talent poured into it for years and years, it is time to advance, it is time to inject new energy.”

Lucy Gichuhi is a Liberal Party senator for South Australia.

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OPINION

MARCH 2019

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Is following Jesus possible?

Michael Jensen takes the Sermon on the Mount seriously

wikimedia / Lecen

Is the Sermon on the Mount humanly possible?

In the Russian winter of 1910, one of the greatest novelists the world has ever known, Count Leo Tolstoy, wandered out into the cold night, contracted pneumonia, and died at a railway station, at the age of 82. His death came only a few days after he had determined to give up his aristocratic lifestyle, including vast estates, and live a life he thought was consistent with Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.

After writing his great works Anna Karenina and War and Peace, Tolstoy decided that he was going to follow what he thought were the true teachings of Jesus as contained in the Sermon on the Mount. For Tolstoy, the Gospels were the heart of the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount was at the heart of the Gospels. As one writer said: “Tolstoy boiled down the essence of what he thought Christianity was to obeying the five commands of Christ in Matthew 5:21-48. If people would genuinely fulfil these commandments, then the kingdom of God would be activated on earth.”

Tolstoy was, in particular, attracted to Jesus’ teaching on non-retaliation. He wrote: “It may be affirmed that the constant fulfilment of this rule is difficult, and that not every man will find his happiness in obeying it. It may be said that it is foolish; that, as unbelievers pretend, Jesus was a visionary, an idealist, whose impracticable rules were only followed because of the stupidity of his disciples. But it is impossible not to admit that Jesus did say very clearly and definitely that which he intended to say: namely, that men should not resist evil; and that therefore he who accepts his teaching cannot resist.”

There were communities set up to implement Tolstoy’s teachings, but not one of them succeeded.

One of his disciples later reflected that Tolstoy’s views – which were supposed to build God’s kingdom on earth “alienated him from many friends, brought discord into his family life, strained his relations with his wife, and left him spiritually alone.” That was why Tolstoy died alone at the train station: the truth was, his ideals were not very real, even in his own life: he was fleeing from his wife and family.

And here’s the thing: Here was a man who (he thought) sincerely tried to live according to Jesus’ teachings in these verses, and it destroyed him. It proved to be an impossible idealism. And that ought to make us pause: are Jesus’ teachings simply impossible? Are they completely inhuman and unrealistic? People do retort by

The Sermon on the Mount, Carl Bloch, 1877 saying “well, Tolstoy was mad,” and indeed this is arguable; but why does it take a madman to think that keeping Jesus’ teachings quite literally was in fact a good idea?

The alternative way of approaching the Sermon on the Mount is to see it as a “goad to the gospel.” That is, you see it as Jesus exposing how sinful we are by driving home the real meaning of the law. We’ll despair so much, that we’ll be driven to justification by faith alone. Whew! The Christian life, then, proceeds by forgetting the Sermon on the Mount, and just as well. I’ve heard this preached from evangelical pulpits a couple of times, in fact. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many other interpreters have found this way of reading the teachings of the Lord deeply unsatisfactory, and it is hard not agree with them. It just seems weird not to be taking Jesus’ words more seriously than that.

Or, would it be better to see the Sermon as giving us two standards for living – one for ordinary Christians, and another for the spiritual elite such as monks and nuns? Augustine of Hippo argued for this view. Or, is Jesus outlining an ethics to live by in a particular spiritual context? Surely a king or a president can’t “turn the other cheek”? This was the view put forward by Martin Luther in the 16th century.

Or is Jesus outlining an

emergency ethics for the end times, because he was convinced that the world was about to end? The great missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer taught this way of reading the Sermon at the turn of the 20th century.

The problem with these other views is that we then don’t take Jesus’ words seriously as a way of living. Jesus seems to be offering quite direct and practical wisdom: “turn the other cheek,” for example.

Surely we are supposed to do as he commands, right? At least Tolstoy seems to be taking Jesus at his word.

But if we are to do what Jesus commands … won’t we be cutting off our hands? Won’t we be removing logs from our own eyes?

Won’t we be trying for a perfection that is impossible?

Not if we follow two

observations, which I think are essential to understanding the sermon.

First: Jesus speaks in language that is extreme, in order to make us think again. Jesus is exaggerating for a very important effect – he wants us to “seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.”

That is a key verse for understanding the whole sermon, because what Jesus is trying to do is to get his audience to do exactly that: to seek God’s kingdom. In other words, he is trying to get us to detach from the fallen world and instead long for the world to be as God intends into be – including our own hearts.

Jesus uses language like explosive shells – to blow apart our preconceived notions of what true worship is and make us think again. Could it be that ones who

Michael Jensen joins Megan Dowell Du Toit on an Eternity podcast that proves you can disagree agreeably. https://eternity.news/s/ai6x1

are really blessed are the poor, or the defeated, and the persecuted?

Maybe you should cut your hand off – just maybe. Sin is that serious, and evil is that dangerous. What would happen if you did love and pray for your enemies? What if you committed to complete anonymity in your giving?

Being a disciple of Jesus is unlike anything else. It demands a completely new cast of life, a new perspective, a new heart. We cannot do with anything less than a completely changed attitude.

That’s what Jesus is trying to get us to see.

Second, Jesus recognises that those who are his disciples are not those who are sinless, but those who long for mercy. They are those who long for the kingdom of God and know that that includes them too. They are those who pray for the forgiveness of their sins, and who count themselves poor in spirit. They mourn for their sins, in repentance. It is they who are open to Jesus’ teaching, and ready to receive it. It’s not as if Jesus teaches salvation by good works in a way that is at odds with Paul’s teaching about justification by faith alone.

Jesus does not undermine the grace of God in the Sermon.

Rather, he brings us into it. He makes us want it.

Michael Jensen is the rector of St Mark’s Anglican Church in Darling Point, Sydney, and the author of several books.

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OPINION

20

MARCH 2019 Flickr / Molly

Mustard seeds in the newsroom

Greg Clarke on having a voice Is it too ambitious to think that Christian media could be the ‘fourth estate of the Fourth Estate’?

The term probably owes its use to the dominant Scottish intellectual of the 19th Century, Thomas Carlyle. As well as labelling economics “the dismal science”, Carlyle described the reporter’s gallery in the British Parliament as more important than the three Houses of Parliament together - hence, the Fourth Power or Fourth Estate. In the age of instant global media, his analysis seems to hold.

But the Fourth Estate itself is made up of competing powers.

Open any newspaper, or browse its website, or watch a TV news broadcast or listen to the radio: the media is not a neutral or unified realm. It is highly politicised,

often run by private interests, and shaped by the views of editors and producers. Some media groups have charters that guide their activities (e.g, the ABC and SBS); others seem to operate at the whim of those who hold the purse strings.

So, how can Christian voices be heard, and what role can they (and should they) play in the power struggle of public language?

Eternity has been a living attempt to answer this question for 100 editions. It has played at least four roles: Amalgamation. Since Eternity is owned by the multidenominational and nondenominational Bible Society Australia, it is able to pull together Christian voices that might otherwise only be heard within their own scene. The most common compliment we get at Eternity from Christian readers is that it is heartwarming to hear about what God is doing outside of one’s own particular brand of the faith.

At a time when Australians by and large understand very little about the distinctives of Baptists, Sydney Anglicans, Melbourne Anglicans, the branches of the Uniting Church, or the variety of Pentecostals, Eternity plays a storytelling role across them all, seeking where the evidence of God at work can turn into some seriously good news.

Adjudication. We don’t do a lot of this, because we perceive that we are here to serve the wider church and reach beyond its walls into society at large.

But should we do more? Perhaps our role is to discern, applaud or critique attempts in other media to engage with Christianity. An example is John Sandeman’s piece in this issue on The Monthly’s misunderstanding of Scott Morrison’s faith. We’re not here to make a political comment, but we do want to set the record straight on misuse of Scriptures, misunderstanding of the gospel of Christ, and misinformation about the history, ethics and philosophy of Christianity.

Agitation. Most news outlets are activists in one way or another.

Some are explicit, such as Sky News’s blatant political agenda.

Some are imbued in the journalists themselves: Miranda Devine, David Marr, Phillip Adams, Andrew Bolt—the list is long of writers who have an agenda or two.

And that’s what we love to read. We love strong opinions that compel us to take sides, think harder, react to issues. Eternity wants to give voice to the agitators as well as the peacekeepers. Jesus himself was an amazing combination of both.

Amplification. This year’s Richard Johnson Lecturer, Tim Dixon argues in his “Hidden

Tribes” report that Western societies are not as polarised as the media would have us believe.

It’s just that the voices of the “Exhausted Majority” can’t be heard. They are too quiet. Eternity can amplify Christians across the spectrum, giving them significant presence in discussions.

The main problem is that people don’t get what Christianity is about. They don’t know the core of it, the message (gospel) of Jesus. They have a caricature of Christianity in mind.

That’s partly the fault of us as ineffectual Christian communicators, but also due to not having sufficient media resources to be there in the action.

How do you compete with News Corp, ABC, let alone Youtube and Facebook? Think of Eternity as a mustard seed, looking for sufficient watering and nourishment to get this potentially massive tree growing.

We need Christians in every part of the media, committed to truthtelling as well as kindness, shining a light as well as extending a hand in grace. Heaven forbid that the Christian media become a fortress of believers disconnected from the rest of the scene.

The four estates in the Fourth Estate might just be: the rightleaning conservative media, the left-leaning progressive media, the national or state media, and the Christian media. Could Christian media in Australia (not just Eternity!) grow to have that kind of impact?

In Australia, the Christian media is several harvests and several billion dollars behind the big media ‘farms’, but mustard seeds can grow quickly. It shouldn’t take an eternity to see the branches flourishing and the flowers blooming.

Greg Clarke is CEO of Bible Society Australia.

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