Eternity - February 2016 - Issue 66

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66

Number 66, FEBRUARY 2016 ISSN 1837-8447

Brought to you by the Bible Society

How’s your quiet time?

Beyond Wimbledon Margaret Court serves others

China’s need for Sunday schools

Do we worship the

same God?

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NEWS

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FEBRUARY 2016

Meeting the boats

News page 2-3 In Depth 5-8 Opinion 15, 17-20 Bible Society 16

Obadiah Slope GOOD DIAGNOSIS: Obadiah caught the first night of “The Events,” a play touring Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide until July. The mass murderer character based on Norway’s lone wolf terrorist, Anders Breivik, says at a low point, “I am sick, dead, lost and alone.”

“Spot on,” thought Obadiah, “the sinners prayer would help here.”

MOLDOVIAN COFFEE + ETERNITY: Moldova will get the gospel via the story of “Eternity man” Arthur Stace in a new cafe. The cafe is part of the Bethesda Centre operated

by Christian Mission International according to New Life, an online newspaper. The Eternity copperplate script on the cups will point Moldovan coffee drinkers to the story of Stace who was saved from a life of drunkeness, and later spent 37 years pointing people to Christ by chalking “Eternity” on the pavements of Sydney (and ventured to Melbourne).

If Stace’s first attempts at chalking had worked, this paper might have been called “Obey God”. But he found that the message “Eternity” “made them think”.

NAOMI JONES A few days after the New Year, Katrin was patrolling the beach on Lesvos – looking out to the horizon for boats. But on this particular night, she and her fellow volunteers didn’t expect any. Heavy rain and gale-force winds lashed the beach, while flashes of lightning in the distance kept exposing the white caps of the rough seas stretching out before them.

The winds eased a little and the volunteers caught a glimpse of a familiar light on the horizon – the flashlight of an iPhone. Another light appeared, faint at first, but gradually getting more intense.

They flashed the headlights of their car in the direction of the boat.

The tiny lights flashed back and more lights appeared. Amidst the wind and rain, the little cluster of lights appeared to move slowly but steadily towards the beach. But then it started to drift further and further south until they lost all visual and the boat disappeared beyond the horizon. A search boat was sent to look for them, but it was tossed around by the waves and couldn’t spot them.

Katrin felt sick. How many people did I just watch being washed away?

The next night, a similar scene.

Three boats had left Turkey in the days before, carrying 99 asylum seekers. It was soon reported that at least 34 bodies had been washed up on the coast of Turkey.

A porn tsunami JOHN SANDEMAN

Boatloads of refugees arrive in Lesvos, off the coast of Greece.

Australian Katrin Collison spent December and January meeting boats of asylum seekers on Lesvos Island in Greece. Katrin grew up in Kenya, the daughter of missionaries, and had planned a year off work to travel. This included a week on Lesvos in November, with a friend whose father was born on the island. They took over 100kg of donated goods to give to refugees, and Katrin ultimately felt drawn to return for a longer stint.

With over two million refugees in Turkey from Syria’s civil war, many pay people smugglers thousands of dollars for the risky crossing to Lesvos and other islands in the Mediterranean. In 2015, over 500,000 asylum seekers arrived on Lesvos alone.

“People smugglers are just so cruel,” says Katrin. “People arrive saturated on boats that are nothing more than an inflatable dinghy, wearing dangerously poor life vests they have usually paid a lot of

money for.”

The smugglers disconnect their boat from the refugees’ dinghy when they are close to the maritime border to avoid the coastguard, forcing them to continue alone without direction.

Most of the refugees cannot swim.

One 15-year-old Syrian boy told Katrin how he had been thrown into the water after the smuggler had stabbed the boat with a knife.

He had lost his phone, leaving him with no way to contact his father who he had left behind.

The stories are endless. Katrin recalls a woman who had just seen her husband killed and children taken by his family, and her relative with two small children had seen his wife killed only a week earlier.

They had no choice but to leave.

Katrin says, “I had absolutely no idea about the sheer magnitude of it all until I saw it firsthand. It becomes so much more personal when you are involved in it. It’s two months that I won’t ever forget.”

Evidence that porn is transforming the lives of children and young people will be presented at a conference this month.

“Pornography and harms to children and young people” is being held this week, Tuesday, Feb 9, at the University of New South Wales.

Coralie Alison, Director for Operations at Collective Shout provides some disturbing statistics.

An analysis of the most popular porn scenes revealed that 88 per cent of them contained physical aggression (including gagging and choking) and that this aggression was overwhelmingly directed towards women. Seven out of ten adolescents say that they have accidentally been exposed to porn online. More than 60 per cent of girls and more than 90 per cent of boys have seen online porn. Porn is now the default sex educator for most young people. “It is likely that most young people will have been exposed to pornography before they have even had their first kiss.

The impact of pornography on young people’s relationships makes it a key violence prevention issue,” Alison told Eternity.

The symposium is the fruit of a number of organisations coming together to fight against child exposure to porn, and is being hosted by Collective Shout. pornharmskids.org.au

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More info at: smbc.com.au/events

NEWS

FEBRUARY 2016

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Call to help Aboriginal church leaders thrive ANNE LIM The Anglican Bishop of the Northern Territory is calling for up to 50 mature Christians to move to Arnhem Land to disciple up-andcoming Aboriginal church leaders on a long-term basis.

Dr Greg Anderson, a former CMS missionary to the NT who returned to Darwin as bishop a year ago, sees the need for “an ongoing, possibly permanent partnership” between mature Christians and Aboriginal churches in Arnhem Land.

“We have local, ordained leaders but some of them are old, well past ‘whitefella’ retirement age, and there’s a younger generation we’re looking for to come up behind them and there are some signs of those people coming forward, but those people need [cultural] scaffolding.

“I’m looking for people who will stand alongside them to mentor them. We need people who won’t dominate, who will be prepared to listen to what Aboriginal people are saying, who won’t go in imagining that what is a solution where they come from will be a solution in Arnhem Land, who are prepared to empower Aboriginal church leaders to find their own solutions.”

Dr Anderson raised the issue at CMS NSW Summer School in Katoomba in January. He told Eternity some of the 50 men and women he has called for would be based in each of the Aboriginal parishes, while others would be roving among them.

As well as traditional crosscultural missionaries, he is also looking for people to serve in a new CMS category “intentional mission workers,” who take secular jobs in places like Arnhem Land, perhaps as a teacher, a nurse, a council worker, electrician or mechanic.

“People like that could then stand alongside Aboriginal church leaders,” he says.

“It’s better to have long-term interface because short-termers aren’t going to learn the language.”

Dr Anderson recognises that his call for a long-term partnership between the mainstream and Aboriginal church flies in the face of the principles of Aboriginal self-determination brought in under the Whitlam government in the 1970s. But he believes autonomy is not a realistic goal in Arnhem Land because of the loss of capacity in Aboriginal communities since the beginning of the self-determination era, with low employment rates and high rates of interaction with the

Greg Anderson, Bishop of Northern Territory criminal justice system.

“There is such a degree of marginalisation, such a degree of disempowerment, that to just keep pleading for self-determination doesn’t provide the capacity for self-determination, so the whole thing can just spiral down.”

Just as Christians live as exiles in this world, indigenous minorities in the developed world live as exiles in a “fourth world”.

“They’re exiled from the mainstream world and as communications increase they have more exposure to the wider world but that doesn’t provide them with an entry point to the wider world.”

Dr Anderson, who can speak several Aboriginal languages, says the broad cultural gulf between the Western and Aboriginal worldviews derives from language.

“Very few white people have learned Aboriginal languages enough to engage strongly with Aboriginal worldviews and concepts. That means Aboriginal people have always had to do all of the movement towards English and towards the Western, mainstream worldview and conceptual framework,” he says.

“I find myself wondering if people down south think Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land speak English and maybe they speak their own traditional language as a hobby on the side. No, they speak their own vernacular language and they speak some English.”

People in three of the Arnhem Land parishes speak Kriol, which has a full Bible, but the other three parishes have only between seven and ten books of the Bible in their own languages.

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In brief WHAT WE SING: The top songs sung in churches tend to be those composed or rewritten in the last few years. The top three are 1) 10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord): Jonas Myrin, Matt Redman 2) This I Believe (The Creed): Ben Fielding, Matt Crocker 3) How Great is our God: Chris Tomlin, Ed Cash, Jesse Reeves For the top ten, see biblesociety. org.au/news/our-top-ten-songssung-in-church CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS: The Australian Christian Lobby believes that getting ready for the same sex marriage plebiscite is a big challenge for 2016. “We’ve got to build the biggest army we’ve ever seen to really persuade our fellow Australians that marriage between a man and a woman is worth preserving,” ACL’s Lyle Shelton told Eternity.

FORTY DAYS: Stories of Indigenous Australians are the focus of the annual 40 Days of Prayer and Fasting that will run from February 10 to March 20 this year.

40daysofprayer.com.au BIBLES FOR REFUGEES: A special order of thousands of Arabic Bibles with English text alongside will be available free from Bible Society for refugees from Syria. Bible Society is working with welfare agencies to distribute the Bibles.

IN THE RED HEART: Will Graham, grandson of Billy Graham, will be preaching the gospel in Alice Springs on May 20 to 22.

FEBRUARY 2016

E FEBC AUSTRALIA SPONSORED PAGE 4

Christ by radio: brings hope and changes lives FEBC Australia is part of a global mission that operates in the world of unseen things: radio waves, the changing of hearts and minds, the power of prayer.

Radio has a unique ability to impact individuals, communities and whole societies. Depending on what is needed FEBC transmissions are received by everything from a wind-up solar power radio to the latest in WiFi and mobile technology.

FEBC started by broadcasting to Communist China in 1948 and is focused on locating people who are the hardest-to-reach. FEBC reaches them and many more!

Hard-to-reach might mean oppressed or persecuted or cut off by language. Hard-to-reach people may be poor, living in very remote places, illiterate, physically disabled, hit by natural disasters, homeless or in exile.

It’s not easy to reach these people through traditional mission or church-planting. But FEBC reaches these people – and disciples, pastors and teaches them – through radio.

Radio reaches millions February 13 each year is World Radio Day, a UN acknowledgement of the centrality of radio to the way we live. Find out more at www.worldradioday.org If the UN can see the value of radio, we see it all the more with evidence of people connected, lives transformed by Christ and churches established.

Radio brings joy to listeners, like these women and girls in rural Bangladesh How many people are we talking about? We measure our reach by the number of responses we receive – in the millions each year.

Ultimately, we will know when we are with God. He knows every one of our listeners by name.

Prayer reaches God FEBC works in more than 50 countries across 130 languages.

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information to more than 4,000 Australians (via email, post, website). There is no limit to the number of people who can be part of our praying army. No age restrictions either.

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Prayer and radio are very similar – you can’t see where they go or how they work, but you can see the evidence of their power!

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by God’s spirit and God’s people, to reach the hardest-to-reach. The world has changed enormously since FEBC Australia began in 1965 but our core mission has not changed a bit. And your value in this work is as critical as ever.

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FEBC’s local partner, RMB, uses radio in Bangla/Bengali to build community in rural areas, provide Christian teaching, promote education and good health and to help people see their value within God’s creation. You can be part of that by praying and supporting FEBC Australia.

For many, what they hear through FEBC is revolutionary, especially for women and girls who are often overlooked. A number of listeners have been baptised in the past year, willing to risk isolation in villages where Christianity is opposed.

A listener from the region said, “I heard the program along with my father, mother and two friends.

I liked the content about the value of women. By listening to your program my mother’s eyes were full of tears.”

Contact FEBC Australia Facebook - FEBC Australia Twitter - @febcaus Email – office@febc.org.au Website – www.febc.org.au Phone - 1300 720 017

FEBRUARY 2016

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IN DEPTH More exciting than winning Wimbledon

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+ John Harris farewells his Aboriginal brother – Page 7

Margaret Court: From winning tennis matches at Wimbledon to pastoring Victory Life Centre in Perth.

TESS HOLGATE Margaret Court is taller than I expected, though it dawns on me that as a champion tennis player, I should not be surprised. We meet at the church she pastors, Perth Victory Life Centre. It’s in an old converted warehouse, and as she shows me around, I see that between the prayer centre, the healing centre, the community services warehouse and the church itself, Victory Life owns almost every building in their cul-de-sac.

This year, they celebrated their 20th anniversary.

She has a kind smile and I soon discover she is passionate about the spiritual gifts of the Lord, because she won’t let me finish the interview and leave the room without praying for me, and giving me a lesson in speaking the heavenly language. She is confident in her convictions, but it wasn’t always like that for the tennis legend.

As a child growing up in Albury, in regional NSW, Margaret lived across the road from 24 grass tennis courts and would often escape there from her alcoholic father. Her family had very little, and though she had an interest in tennis, had she not lived across the road from those courts, she says it’s possible she would never have played.

Her first racquet was a fence paling, and then she was given a big old wooden racquet from a family friend, which cemented her love for the game.

“I used to go across and hit on

a wall, and I was very fortunate there was a coach and his wife there that had no children, [and they] took a great interest in me,” says Margaret.

The tennis centre in Albury was very strong, and with the help of the coach and his wife, by the age of 13 Margaret was winning tournaments. Some of the all-time great players would come through Albury to play exhibition matches and someone watching Margaret hit a few balls suggested to her that she could be the first Australian woman to win Wimbledon.

“

I always knew from a little girl my tennis was a gift from God.

“So somehow that goal dropped into my heart,” says Margaret. “I wanted to be the first Australian woman to win Wimbledon.”

Margaret would go on to win Wimbledon three times, first in 1963, then again in 1965 and in 1970.

The following year, in 1971, she gave her heart to Christ.

She grew up in a Catholic home, and attended mass weekly, and says,“I always knew from a little girl my tennis was a gift from God, because I always felt there was something there that was bigger

than me, or there was a strength, or there was just a knowing. And I knew he was there. I used to pray in my own way. But I always sort of thanked him that I was well, I thanked him that he protected me.

“But I remember going [to church] in France and they were speaking in Latin and French, and I didn’t understand a word they were saying. And I remember going ‘God, where are you? I really want to know you. It can’t be up the front there in the building, it has to be more real than this.’”

Later that year Margaret travelled to America and stayed with some good friends. Margaret says that her friend kept going off to meetings and always returned with religious books that she’d try to pass along. Margaret threw out every single book except one about accepting Jesus.

When she returned to Australia she met an old friend who had previously been having marriage problems. But something was different, and upon enquiring as to the reason for the change, her friend confessed, “I went along to a meeting and gave my heart to Christ.”

Margaret said, “That’s interesting, I just read a book on that.” Margaret joined her friend at some of the meetings that were in the Catholic charismatic renewal, and listened and came to realise they had something that she didn’t.

“I remember one night I went to a meeting with them before I went back on the tennis circuit and, I don’t know, it was like something lifted me up out of my seat and I

went up the front, gave my heart to Christ, and the power of God hit me. I started speaking in the heavenly language and I had a real encounter.

“And then I went back on the tennis circuit,” says Margaret.

When she was back on the circuit, she says that even the press could tell the difference and asked her what had happened to her.

“It was so interesting because they’d look at me, and many of them had become my friends and I remember sharing with them and saying, ‘If you want what I’ve got, you can have it, you know?’

“Someone gave me Romans 10:910 on a piece of paper and I led so many people to Christ through that. I didn’t know the Bible, I didn’t own a Bible, coming from the background I had.”

In order to work on her tennis, Margaret had left home at 15 and moved to Melbourne to train with former tennis champion Frank Sedgman.

“I won my first Australian [Championship] in Milton when I was 17. All of a sudden I was a national hero overnight. I wasn’t seeded, but I beat the number one in the world in the quarterfinals and went on to win. I won the Australian [Championship] the next year and then went overseas as the number one Australian player.”

That was 1960. For the next 15 years, Margaret would travel the tennis circuit on and off.

She achieved her first goal in 1963, being the first Australian woman to win Wimbledon. In

1965, after winning Wimbledon for a second time, she retired and returned to Australia, “because we used to have to travel 10 months of the year, and there was no money in it. It was amateur days, so you’d be away overseas a long time, and I loved my nation and I’d get homesick.”

Returning to Australia, she decided to relocate from Melbourne to Perth. As Margaret tells it, “I decided to retire, never to play tennis again.”

She met and married her husband, Barry Court in 1967, and then suggested to him that they go back overseas for one year and see the life she used to live on the tennis circuit.

One year turned into seven or eight years, and Margaret pursued her goal of winning all four grand slams in the one year, which she achieved in 1970.

In 1971 she fell pregnant with their first child, and everybody expected her to finish up her tennis career. Margaret had other plans.

“I didn’t feel I was finished yet, [I thought] I’m going to be the first mum to be number one in the world. I probably had one of my best years after that. I won 23 out of 24 tournaments that year and got back and won three out of the four grand slams that year too.”

Back in Australia, having finished her tennis career, Margaret wanted to grow in the things of God, but she got tangled up in wrong teaching and was simultaneously diagnosed with insomnia, depression and a torn continued page 6

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IN DEPTH

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Journos vs the church

FEBRUARY 2016

Wimbledon

from page 5 heart valve. She says, “I didn’t want much to do with Christianity any its actions, but also makes an more because I became a mess in unsettling extension of the number my life.” of victims to include himself: At that time, someone from “I actually really loved going to Full Gospel Businessmen (an church as a kid. I really thought organisation devoted to bringing that one day I’d go back and I was the gospel to businessmen) holding on to that. They took that approached her and invited her to from me.” go to a talk on faith.

I’m sure the scriptwriters didn’t She declined the invitation mean to place those who were until she heard that the speaker outraged by the deceit of church was going to be a man called leaders on equal footing with the Fred Price, under whose ministry children abused.

Margaret’s husband had been MARK HADLEY reviews Spotlight However in a few lines Ruffalo’s healed of ulcers, so she consented character makes all of us victims, to go and listen. At the lecture, Some films are so powerful, they’re Spotlight is out in Australian cinemas from January 28. and provides a ready justification Price talked about how faith comes hard to recommend to others to for anyone who chooses to reject by hearing, and this really struck watch – The Pianist, Sleepers and God. Yet the truth is Ruffalo’s Margaret.

What emerges is a film not so The film’s implication is that even The Passion of the Christ claim to potential Christianity is as “I knew there was a way out of much about the molestation of people remained silent not because spring to mind. But there are unrealised as the action those who what I was in, but I didn’t know children – Spotlight actually steers they were unaware but because others that are both disturbing and clear of delving into the lurid knew of the abuse told themselves how. How powerful the scriptures they didn’t want to risk becoming engaging, often because of what they would one day take. are that you could renew your details – but the failure of God’s a social pariah. However their selfthey reveal about the human heart. representatives to heed his call It’s easy to hide behind what mind to the word of God. preservation ended up shielding Spotlight is just such a film. we might have done if things had “I went to the Faith Bible to care for those least capable of the abusers and perpetuating their Michael Keaton stars as been different. However finding Training Centre in 1982-83 and protecting themselves. crimes.

Walter “Robby” Robinson, the fault with the church and rejecting just sitting under the word of Undoubtedly those church Some in Spotlight take this Boston Globe editor who led a God is as rational as suffering food God – faith comes by hearing – leaders who failed to live up to as an opportunity to point the 2001 investigation into Fr. John poisoning and refusing to eat. and it was probably the middle their calling will have to give an finger at God, the god of justice.

Geoghan. A Roman Catholic No one can accuse the Father of the second year I knew I was account to their maker on the last However Christian viewers will see priest, Geoghan had numerous of taking sin lightly; he promises healed. I was healed of depression, day, but will they be the only ones? their Father in heaven can also be accusations of sex abuse levelled to deliver unflinching, eternal insomnia; so it changed my life, the During their investigation the numbered among its casualties. against him, yet was moved from judgment on those who refuse to word of God. Spotlight team comes across One bishop cautions a mother parish to parish each time the repent. Neither can they suggest he “I just know what it did in a victims’ advocate called Phil against reporting her son’s abuse problems were reported. lacks mercy; he sent his own son to my life, and it’ll do the same for Saviano. by hiding behind the “body of As fellow reporters Michael suffer at our hands so that literally anyone who wants to sit under the He assures them, “If it takes a Christ” – “Now Sheila, you know Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and any sinner might be spared. word of God, grow and hear,” says village to raise a child, it takes a what good work the church Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) Spotlight is a sober warning of Margaret. village to abuse them.” does in the community …” As a pull at the threads of his story, the power of the truth. However Margaret started Margaret The deeper they dig, the consequence it’s God’s name that they begin to realise the Boston we should be wary of sitting in Court Ministries in 1991, helping more police officers, lawyers, is maligned when other characters Archdiocese had full knowledge judgment on those who have people overcome the everyday administrators, family members, express their loss of faith in his of not only Geoghan’s crimes but their sins revealed. The light that things they suffer from. She started and even other reporters they servants. those of a further 86 priests who exposes them can too easily expose Victory Life Centre five years later uncover who were aware of the Mark Ruffalo’s character had been abusing the innocent. us as well. in 1996. problem but failed to do anything. rightly denounces the church for “I think the wonderful thing is that in our community services, you see a young mum come in [who] was on drugs, with a baby, and you see us helping her from there. She finishes up going to our Bible school and today she’s a policewoman in the country.

“You just count those people who are disappointed or discouraged BEN MCEACHEN reviews Risen or they’ve been sick or they’ve been hurt or they’re broken and you see An unofficial sequel to The Passion of the Christ those ships restored again. I think arrives at cinemas this month. While Mel Gibson’s that’s what it’s all about. phenomenally successful Passion fixated upon what “And you see these people come led to Jesus’ death, Risen presents what happened next. through and their lives change and Not from the expected point of view, though. Told as to me that’s more exciting than a crime thriller, Risen follows a Roman commander winning Wimbledon, because [the charged with proving Jesus’ resurrection is a hoax. people] thought they didn’t matter Starring Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love) and and now they know in themselves Harry Potter’s Tom Felton, Risen has a provocative that they’re somebody and that perspective that its creators hope will spark they’re valuable and precious, that investigation. That’s right: this major, mainstream God loves them. To me that’s the release is not out to ignite mockery of Jesus’ claims. But most wonderful thing.” it also isn’t a Christian-backed movie that wants to just I comment to Margaret that preach to the choir. it sounds like she’s echoing the Instead, like the Apostle Paul did only decades Apostle Paul in Philippians 3, after Jesus’ crucifixion (Acts 17:22-31), Risen invites when he says, everyone to seriously consider what the evidence for “But whatever were gains to me Jesus proves. Delivering it through the eyes of skeptical I now consider loss for the sake of sleuth Clavius (Fiennes) has the added potential of Christ. What is more, I consider stopping Risen from being another heavy-handed everything a loss because of the “Jesus movie”. Audience members who share Clavius’ surpassing worth of knowing doubts might actually want to watch him try to destroy Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose the Jesus movement. sake I have lost all things ...

Risen producer Rich Peluso was Forgetting what is behind and initially drawn to its “well-crafted” straining toward what is ahead, I script. “But more importantly was press on toward the goal to win the that it unabashedly told the story Love God, Love Neighbour, Love Enemy? Who is our neighbour and prize for which God has called me between the crucifixion into the heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Phil how can we love them? Across the street, across the church, and across the world what does it full-on resurrection ... [and] 3:7-8, 13-14) look like for us to tell an alternative story and find unity in love? all the way to the ascension,” “That’s my scripture!” she says.

Peluso told the Christian “God gave me that scripture when In the midst of a world embedded in a story of division, greed, and hate, we’ll come together at Broadcasting Network.

I first went to Bible school. I look SURRENDER:16 to tell the alternative story of the way of love, the way of Christ. Would you join us?

“No one really ever back at that [Wimbledon] now and tackles that.” think, ‘Did I ever do it? Did I ever True. The crucial really play down there?’” fact of Jesus being She has a kind of gospel raised from the dead forgetfulness about her, one that is an amazing story, considers all she achieved in tennis barely told on screen. as past.

And for bringing it to She’s looking to the future, audiences worldwide, counting her “past as done, that CONFERENCE MARCH BELGRAVE HEIGHTS, MELB Risen boldly calls I may grow in the knowledge of To find out more and register visit: www.surrender.org.au for more than our Christ and press on towards the Risen: In cinemas from February 18 indifference. prize of the higher calling.”

The big picture

Sleuth tackles resurrection

Really?

18-20 2016

IN DEPTH

FEBRUARY 2016

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Murabuda, my elder brother

John Harris farewells the last of the mission men JOHN HARRIS

Photo published with permission from family

An era has ended with the passing of a great Aboriginal leader and lifelong Christian, Murabuda Wurramarrba, who died on Groote Eylandt on November 19, 2015.

Strong-willed until the very end, he had refused what was, to him, the indignity of kidney dialysis. He would have turned 82 in January.

I mourn his passing. He was my Aboriginal brother and with him dies a little of my own past. But I know he is in the care of our God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he loved and tried to serve all his life, both as a Christian and as a traditional Aboriginal man.

Murabuda’s family, the Wurramarrba clan, brought me back to Groote Eylandt to conduct his funeral. A traditional Christian burial was merged with Aboriginal forms of grieving accompanied by didjeridoo playing and and the ancient rhythms of clapping sticks.

Murabuda’s father, “Old Charlie” Galiawa has become a Groote Eylandt legend. Born in 1890, he had seen and known the Macassans, the fishermentraders who came annually to the North Australian coasts for hundreds of years before the European discovery of Australia.

In 1921, Old Charlie was one of those remarkable Groote Eylandt men who welcomed the first Christian missionaries. He helped to establish the CMS (Church Missionary Society) Mission at Emerald River, the historic place the Groote Eylandters now call “Old Mission”. Old Charlie brought his family to live beside the mission, one of the first Christian families. There at the Emerald River Mission, his son, Murabuda, was born in 1934.

Murabuda was a little 6-year-old boy when I was born, one of the lively children in the tiny Emerald River Mission school. As soon as my mother was able to resume teaching the children, I was cared for by Dijidi Wurragwagwa, Old Charlie’s young wife. Every day Dijidi took me to Old Charlie’s camp. There he called me his son and gave me my Aboriginal name.

Thus Murabuda became my elder brother.

When Old Charlie died in 1978, Murabuda became the head of

Murabuda making spears in the men’s shed in Groote Eylandt. his Wurramarrba clan and one of the senior elders of Groote Eylandt. He was powerful but gentle, a traditional man with a burning passion for assisting his people to cope in a complex world without losing their pride in their Aboriginality, without losing their identity in the land God had given them, the land to which they belonged and in which their identity had its roots.

As a modern leader he was single-handedly responsible for much that is good in his community. He was always willing to accommodate modern changes as long as Aboriginal people’s dignity was respected, as long as they always had an equal place at the negotiating table. When the Gemco mining company (a BHP subsidiary) came to exploit Groote Eylandt’s manganese deposits, Murabuda was always the one they could look to for advice and honest negotiation.

Murabuda believed in direct action. When the young people of Groote Eylandt became addicted to the deadly poison of petrol-sniffing, Murabuda single-handedly broke the fatal cycle, taking the boys away to survive on an isolated island by fishing and hunting.

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In his own old age he helped found Groote Eylandt’s version of a men’s shed where he was still making spears and art until only a few weeks before his death.

A strong father figure who led by example, Murabuda raised his children to be like him. An exceptional Groote Eylandt family, they have followed his example of personal integrity and public service. Murabuda’s eldest son Tony Wurramarrba is chairman of the Groote Eylandt Land Council.

Tony accompanied GovernorGeneral Dame Quentin Bryce on an overseas tour of Indigenous communities including Native Canadians. He was recently awarded the Order of Australia.

Murabuda never lost the Christian faith of his childhood at the mission. He read the Bible and applied its teachings to his life.

The sad reality, however, is that the institutional church did not always understand Murabuda.

Murabuda and several other strong, talented and dedicated young Groote Eylandt men reached young manhood in the 1950s. The church should have nurtured them, encouraged their leadership potential and ordained them as church leaders.

Insightful missionaries proposed that they be trained and ordained.

The conservative wider church, however, placed impossible hurdles in their way, insisting on at least seven years of absence from their communities in order to complete high school and theological degrees in Sydney and undertake urban parish experience prior to ordination. So nothing happened.

Then, unfortunately, in the 1950s and ’60s throughout the Northern Territory, Christian Missions accepted government funding to become agents of community development and social change. Christian missions became managers of Aboriginal communities. Mission priorities changed.

It was not that missions departed from the gospel – they did not, but this new and complex responsibility as community managers dissipated the mission energies and clouded their message. The new role changed mission focus and inevitably gave the wrong impression.

But, as Murabuda himself once said to me, “An Aboriginal man can be a Christian without becoming like a white man. We know what Jesus taught and what

things in our culture Jesus would ask us to change. But the Bible does not tell us that Christians must live like white people. Is white culture really the way Jesus asks us to live? I don’t look at white culture and see Jesus there.

Aboriginal Christians can make their own choices.”

If Murabuda and the other strong young Christian men of Groote Eylandt had been encouraged in the 1950s and ’60s to nurture and lead a distinctively Aboriginal church, true to the gospel but true also to the way God calls Aboriginal people to live, Groote Eylandt would be a different place today. Instead, his generation found ways to serve outside of the church. An opportunity was lost.

The challenges now are great. A small band of faithful Christians, led mostly by dedicated women, tries to maintain a Christian witness in a community wounded by addiction, violence and the death of too many young people.

Murabuda’s funeral was like a parable of the man himself.

Bible readings were in English, Anindilyakwa and Wubuy. We all knew Murabuda was with God and I preached on John 3:16 and the promise of eternal life.

Murabuda’s body was carried in the back of a 4-wheel drive vehicle from the church to the cemetery. As the priest, I walked in front of the vehicle. In front of me, ceremony men walked with clapping sticks and didjeridoo, playing the same didjeridoo which they had played at Gallipoli at the Anzac centenary. Walking through the smoke from the fires lit all along the dusty road, it took us an hour to reach the graveside.

There the coffin passed through the hands of every man before it was received into the hands of six men standing down in the grave itself. Sprinkling earth onto the coffin, I spoke the timeless words in two languages, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.”

At that moment, Murabuda’s son, Tony Wurramarrba, reached out and dropped his Order of Australia onto his father’s coffin.

“He was the better man,” he said.

“He taught me all I know and he deserves it more than I do.”

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CHARITY FEATURE

FEBRUARY 2016

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It only takes one person to rewrite a story KALEY PAYNE At eight years old, Richmond was scampering up moving trucks to steal bananas for his family. Food was precious and he risked a lot to get it. He and his family lived in Naguru, one of Uganda’s largest slums. Life was desperate.

Richmond’s father had been murdered in front of his mother.

He says his mother never recovered. “In some ways, I had lost both my mother and father in one day,” he said.

From that day, Richmond’s life changed. His mother could not work – most days she was bedridden. “There was nothing coming in,” he says. They moved to the slum, into one room with a tin roof that didn’t keep out the rain.

It didn’t take long for him and his five siblings to drop out of school. They spent their time on the street, where Richmond says they were exposed to the horrors of the slum. “There was violence and child abuse, drunkenness and sickness,” said Richmond.

Soon, his mother told them there was no more money for food.

“Life became extremely difficult.

We learned how to find food from gardens or rubbish. Some days were harder than others. Some days, there was no food to find.”

Richmond’s mother, in desperation and tears, shared her family’s plight with a friend. who told her about a local church programme that could help.

“She found Compassion,” says

Richmond Wandera visits his home village in Uganda.

Richmond. A Compassion worker visited Richmond’s family in their slum home, took their details and asked them to pray.

“We weren’t a church-going family. We didn’t understand prayer. But it kept hope alive for us.

The worker told us that if someone decided to sponsor us, they would let us know. And so we waited, and hoped, for rescue to come.”

Three months later, the same Compassion worker visited again.

Richmond had been sponsored.

“I cannot find the words to describe the dancing that filled our home at that news. A 15-year-old girl called Heather had decided to help. It felt like the days of desperation were over.”

On Richmond’s first day as a Compassion-sponsored child,

he arrived at the local church to receive his mosquito net and a letter from his sponsor.

The mosquito net was to help protect him from malaria, a disease intensely feared in the slums. “When the rains come, parents hold tight to their children,” says Richmond. “The rains bring disease.”

But it was his sponsor’s letters that Richmond counts as some of his most treasured possessions, even today at 34. Richmond’s sponsor, Heather, wrote to him three times a year.

“I had thought of myself as hopeless; like no one cared to know my name. But her letters made me feel like I was worth something.

They are one of the most precious things I have in my life.”

Richmond was able to go back to school. His family received supplementary food and Richmond could be a child again.

“You can’t be a child on the street. You have to survive, you have to fight. You have to think beyond your years. There is no time to play. But now, I had the chance to play again; a chance for other people to take care of me. That was when healing began.”

Richmond found Jesus through the Compassion programme. He made weekly visits to the local church as part of the programme and the local pastor – Pastor Peter – became his mentor. “He was the father I never had,” says Richmond.

One day in June 1996, Pastor Peter was telling the children about Joseph.

“I was sitting in the front row, and Pastor Peter was standing beside me, looking out at the children behind. He rested his hand on my shoulder as he spoke about how Joseph went through difficulties but God used that difficulty to position him as a leader. He said Jesus was the greater Joseph, and that we need Jesus. I realised that God helped Joseph and that I needed Jesus. I was one of the first to put up my hand to receive Jesus that day. I was 14 years old.”

Richmond thrived at school and had a gift for leadership.

After high school, he was part of Compassion’s leadership development programme, which gave him the opportunity to study

at university. He chose accounting and graduated with honours at the top of his class.

Richmond didn’t forget the faith he found at that local church with Pastor Peter. He became a leader at the same church where he gave his life to Christ. It was there that he developed a passion for equipping other pastors struggling in ministry through lack of theological training. He too wanted to receive Bible training, and he received a scholarship – again through Compassion – to study at a Bible college in the US. When Richmond returned to Uganda after his studies, he started the Pastors Discipleship Network. Today, the network has over 4000 pastors across East Africa, a ministry spilling out of Uganda to impact South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Kenya.

“I’m so excited to see the transformation that is happening in the lives of thousands because of the opportunities the Lord has given me,” he says.

Richmond says it’s hard to believe that he was that child on the street, stealing bananas.

“I know that as a child, desperate and forgotten on the street, all this would not have been possible, except for one 15-year-old girl who set my life in motion. She prayed for me. She loved me.”

Through Heather, God rewrote Richmond’s story. And now, he rewrites the story of others through Richmond.

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15

OPINION

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+

Flickr/Philips Communications

Natasha Moore on our desire for dragons Greg Clarke on building empires

Reboot your quiet time Steve Kryger wrestles with giving time to God each day Imagine a nutritionist who doesn’t eat vegetables. Or a personal trainer who doesn’t exercise.

It’s difficult to imagine, isn’t it?

These activities are so central to what these professionals know to be “life to the full” that it would be quite a shock if they didn’t actually do them.

Now, imagine a Christian who doesn’t spend regular time with the Lord.

It’s a scenario that should be just as shocking, but may in fact be very easy to imagine because it is

the common experience of many Christians in Australia today.

Never before have we had such universal access to the Bible – paper, audio, phone, tablet, computer, television, even on your watch! And yet according to the Bible Society, only 2 out of 10 Australians are engaging with God’s word on a daily basis. This isn’t 2 out of 10 Australians. This is 20 per cent of Australian Christians!

It’s a staggering statistic that highlights an awkward contradiction that many Christians

know far too well: We believe that time with the Lord is important, but we don’t spend time with the Lord. I confess that this too often describes me. And the more I speak with my brothers and sisters, the more I realise that I am far from alone.

In a recent survey of 300 Christians, I invited people to rank from 1-10 the extent to which they agree with the statement: “It is important for Christians to spend regular time alone with God.” The ranking of 10 corresponded with

“strongly agree”, and the average response was 9.5. No surprises there.

In the next question I asked people to reflect on the current state of their devotional life on a scale of 1-10. 10 corresponded with “extremely satisfied”, and the average satisfaction ranking was 5.6. Many Christians are far from satisfied with the quality of their devotional life – is this you too?

I’ve been growing increasingly restless as I reflect on the chasm between what I know in my heart is

important, and what I actually do. I don’t want to settle. I don’t want to give up. I want to know God better.

And while my goal isn’t to wake at 5am every morning for a 2-hour devotional, I know that there’s a lot of room to grow to prioritise this relationship in deed and not just word. And, as famous prayer warrior, A.W. Tozer, a preacher hungry for the Lord, once put it: “The man who would truly know God must give time to him.”

In God’s kindness, I’ve been continued page 18

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FEBRUARY 2016

BIBLE @ WORK

Sunday school children enjoy learning from the Pictorial Bible Stories which are approved Scripture materials.

Why China needs Sunday school

CYNTHIA OH The church in China has grown rapidly since the 1970s and some experts have suggested that China could become the world’s largest Christian country in the next 15 years. So the possibility that China’s church could ever be empty seems remote; impossible, even.

Yet two Sunday school teachers, Li Ning and Xie Jian, are worried about just that. They serve in Endian (Grace) Church in Jiulong District, situated in western Chongqing in southwest China.

According to a 2012 report by the BBC, more than a quarter of China’s population will be over 65 years old in 30 years’ time.

According to Li, out of the 600 members in Endian Church, about 70 per cent are 65 years and above.

At the weekly prayer meeting she helps to lead, she is surrounded

by active septuagenarians and octogenarians. This isn’t unusual across the church in China. The majority of China’s Christians live in rural areas, which is also where the majority of China’s elderly reside. “We are, on one hand, encouraged by the faith and fervency of our elderly believers and their commitment to the church, yet, on the other hand, we wonder where the next generation would come from. There might not be anyone coming to church in a few decades’ time! This is the challenge we face now,” shared Li, 41, an agriculture entrepreneur who has a 15-year-old son.

Both Li and Xie are investing their time in nurturing the young in their church.

“Children are not just the future of the church, they are also the future of the family and the nation,” Li said.

“In the past, due to a lack of resources, the church mentality towards children’s ministry is like that of a childcare service. The main purpose is to let the adults focus during the service and keep the children occupied. We just provide them with some biscuits and drinks, that’s all,” said Xie. “But now, church leaders are seeing the importance of educating and bringing up our young with Christian values and morals.

“Since our church has moved into the new building and there is a room allocated for the children, we have implemented a more systematic way of conducting children’s ministry.”

Endian Church used to meet in a rented room in a teahouse for ten years before moving to a building of their own four years ago. Today, they have about 20 children in their Sunday school class with

ages ranging from 2 to 12. Xie, 40, who is father of a ten-year-old boy, takes up the dual role of a musician and assistant teacher while Li is in charge of conducting the lessons.

Li believes that children have their own spheres of influence where they can shine for Jesus.

“By God’s grace, my son, who is his class vice-chairman, has influenced his classmates positively. According to his teacher, there is better class discipline compared to other classes. I believe that Christians should know their place in society and make an impact wherever they are. And we should start educating them from young.”

With the support of Bible Society, Endian Church has recently received Sunday school materials for students as well as teachers’ manuals. The series of Sunday school materials, published

by the China Christian Council/ TSPM is known as “Good Fruits” and caters to various age groups.

“We are thankful for the support of Bible Society and look forward to using the materials in our children’s ministry. Now with the new material, it will be easier for us to prepare more engaging lessons for the children.”

United Bible Societies’ Programme Manager Ng Hwee Hong said, “We believe that we should engage our young with the word of God. One way is through having a good children’s ministry.

It is our prayer that with a stronger focus on children’s ministry, we might be able to pass on our faith and values to them.” + You can support the next Christian generation in China by helping us plant 180 new Sunday schools in China. Donate at biblesociety.org.au/chinaep

OPINION

FEBRUARY 2016

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Do Muslims worship the same God?

Professor Larycia Hawkins of Wheaton College, Chicago, caused a stir late last year by donning a hijab for Lent and claiming that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Here, two Christian theologians tackle the question of whether or not they do, indeed, worship the same God.

A cautious MaryLB/istock

Yes JOHN STACKHOUSE

So the first thing I’d say is that I’m scratching my head over Wheaton’s decision [to suspend Hawkins].

Had Professor Hawkins claimed that Islam and Christianity were religions whose differences were trivial, she would clearly be at odds with Wheaton’s statement of faith.

Had she claimed that Islamic and Christian understandings of God were basically the same, she would clearly be at odds with Wheaton’s statement of faith. Had she claimed that since Muslims worship the same God as Christians, they have no need of the gospel, or the Bible, or the work of Jesus Christ, she would clearly be at odds with Wheaton’s statement of faith.

What she did say, however, was none of the above. Instead, she claimed that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. I frankly don’t know what she meant by that.

She cannot have meant that all those who claim to be Muslim and all those who claim to be Christian worship the same God, for the scriptures of both religions make it clear that there are those among the community of the faithful who do not in fact devote themselves to God: pretenders, wolves in sheep’s clothing, and purveyors of alternative religions. And surely Professor Hawkins knows that.

She cannot have meant that there is no important theological

difference between Islamic and Christian views of God. Indeed, she very likely knows that there are significant differences among Islamic believers and also among Christian believers when it comes to theology (that is, the doctrine of God). And I’m not meaning heresy here so much as differences that would be recognised as areas of legitimate disagreement within whatever community sees itself to be orthodoxy. So the very significant differences within Islamic theology or within Christian theology would make it preposterous to claim that all Islamic theology agrees with all Christian theology.

What she could have meant, and what makes sense in the context of her long-time affiliation with Wheaton College, is that she believes that the same God is the object of much and normative Islamic piety as is the target of much and normative Christian piety. When pious Muslims pray, they are addressing the One True God, and that God is, simply, God. As for the theological issue at stake, I suggest that the New Testament’s valorisation of Old Testament saints indicates clearly that yes, one can worship the One True God and not (yet) acknowledge Jesus as Lord.

Now a few qualifiers.

First, not just any sort of worship of any sort of Supreme Being can count. One is in contact with the One True God only by the prevenient grace of God connecting one with God via the Holy Spirit. Preferring to worship just any god won’t do, as the Old Testament takes pains to make clear.

Second, one might have a troubled understanding of God and still truly connect with God. If we are willing to grant that lots of Christians have distorted understandings of God and yet are genuine believers, then I am willing to affirm that people in other monotheistic traditions have distorted understandings of God and yet might be genuine believers. I believe that to be true about Old Testament saints, as Hebrews 11 affirms. Why not believe it about other people who, in the gift of God, have realised that there is only One True God and want to worship God even through the murky theological concepts currently available to them in their culture and spiritual experience? Missionaries have long reported encountering such people, particularly among Muslims, who worship God albeit with the deficiencies typical of their culture and subsequently gladly embrace the gospel as better revelation

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about the God they are already loving. Much like Saul on the road to Damascus, these people undergo tremendous change – that’s why it’s called conversion, rather than merely a theological correction – but they do not drop one deity for another.

Third, and following on from these two points, some understandings of the Supreme Being are so wrong, so wicked, that they simply direct worship wildly off target. Such clearly would be the case of the worship of the Canaanite god Moloch, or any other wicked, bloodthirsty deity elsewhere in the world. Such an abominable view of God cannot possibly accommodate, let alone facilitate, worship of the One True God. In sum, if you like that kind of deity, you’re not going to like the One True God. There has to be some identity between the two understandings of God such that the former is a cloudy and partial and adulterated but genuine understanding of God that the gospel at once extends, fulfils, and corrects. If instead the gospel simply has to supplant the former understanding, as in the case of horrible views of the divine, I find it impossible to conceive of worshippers of that horrible god connecting in any important way with the One True God. Instead,

people raised in such religious traditions would have to develop deep misgivings about that god such that they do not worship it and instead long for the Great Alternative, however vague their notion of That might be. And that longing is the prevenient grace of the Holy Spirit drawing people away from error and toward The Truth.

If we insist, as many are insisting in this furore, that God must be understood in terms of the Trinity, with a focus especially on Jesus, or else one really doesn’t know God, I respectfully want to ask such Bible believers what they make of Abraham (who is held up as a paradigm of faith in the New Testament) and the list of Old Testament saints (who are held up as paradigms of faith to Christians in Hebrews 11), precisely none of whom can be seriously understood as holding trinitarian views.

Finally, however, let me make clear that if someone indefinitely and steadfastly refuses to worship Jesus, I cannot see how he or she can hope for salvation. I am simply affirming that there are many people who currently worship the true God while on their way to properly understanding and embracing Jesus as Lord.

We ought to be careful not to despise all other people’s theologies as simply wrong and condemn their piety as aimed at a completely different deity just because it doesn’t include even wonderful and crucial ideas such as the Trinity or the deity of Jesus. We must be careful especially when their theology looks so much like ours – and like that of our Old Testament forebears.

And in this particular controversy, let’s insist that Christian solidarity with our Muslim neighbours is a good idea because they are our neighbours, regardless of what we think of their piety or their theology. As American (and Canadian) Muslims feel ostracised, or even endangered, by nativists claiming to be acting in the name of the Christian God, let us evangelicals truly act in the name of the Christian God and love these neighbours as we love ourselves.

John Stackhouse is an awardwinning scholar and public commentator, and Professor of Religious Studies at Crandall University in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.

Mark Durie says NO. Page 18

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OPINION

18

A definite

No MARK DURIE

Quiet time from page 15 spending much more time with God in recent months, and I have pursued a new devotional habit that has continued uninterrupted for 79 days (and hopefully still going by the time this goes to print!).

To some, this won’t sound like a long time at all. And you’re right!

But for many years I have been so inconsistent with my time with the Lord that even this short pattern of daily devotions has been cause for celebration.

If you can relate to this frustration and desire to grow, I’d like to share with you – not as an expert but as a brother – some of the things that have helped me.

1. Accountability was useful in getting me started. I kicked off this new habit after sharing with my friend Gavin how frustrated I was with the frequency and quality of my devotional times. That lunchtime we committed to read the Bible and pray every day for a week and to encourage each other

the “same God” thesis must be motivated by enmity, not reason.”

There are problems with this reasoning. One is the premise.

Wheaton has not itself stated that it objects to the “same God” thesis on the basis of Muslims’ beliefs about the Trinity and the incarnation. However Volf appears to impute this thinking to all Christians who do not accept his “same God” thesis.

Another is the leap from pointing out a supposed inconsistency in the reasoning of other Christians to making a severe value judgment about their motives.

In fact the best and strongest reason for rejecting the “same God” thesis is not Muslims’ disbelief in the Trinity or the incarnation.

It is that the Qur’an projects a different understanding of God from the Bible. As Denny Burk of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville put it “our books are very different”.

The theological differences involved are subtler and more fundamental than ticking or not ticking the Trinity box.

Eminent Orthodox Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod observed that the Christian doctrine of the incarnation was grounded upon the fundamentally biblical – and thoroughly Jewish – concept of the indwelling of God’s Shekinah presence with his people.

Christian beliefs about the Trinity and the incarnation developed out of Jewish incarnational theologies.

Unlike the Old Testament, the Qur’an completely lacks a theology of the presence of God. Although the Arabic term sakīnah – borrowed from Hebrew shekinah – appears six times in the Qur’an, it has been repurposed to mean “tranquility”, and the concept of the personal presence of God is not comprehended by Quranic theology. It is not just that Islam rejects the incarnation of Jesus: in complete contrast to Judaism its scripture offers no basis for an incarnational theology.

Judaism differs from Islam in its organic relationship to Christianity in two key respects.

First, Christians and Jews

share scripture. Judaism bases its understanding of God on what was the Bible of Jesus, the “Old Testament”. This is not the case with Islam. Muslims do not base their theology on any part of the Bible. Indeed mainstream Islam rejects the authority of the Bible, for reasons clearly stated in the Qur’an.

Second, Jesus was a practising Jew, and so were his disciples, so it would be absurd to state that the God of the faith Jesus practised is different from the Christian God. This same observation does not apply to Islam. Muhammad was never a practising Jew nor a practising Christian, and,

according to Muslim tradition, the large majority of his companions came to Islam out of paganism.

This has deeply influenced the Qur’an and its understanding of God. It is disappointing that Volf attributes fear-based enmity and loveless bigotry to Wheaton’s leaders. He implies that Christians who disagree with his “same God” thesis must want to fight Muslims.

Such rhetoric incites hatred and contempt over a theological difference of opinion.

The question of whether the God of the Qur’an is the same as the God of the Bible is an important and complex one. Christians do need to consider carefully to what extent the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an are the same or different. This has far-reaching implications. However it is not helpful to paint those who disagree with one position or another as haters.

It is a false step, in the name of love, to demand assent to the “same God” thesis. Christians are commanded to love others whether they worship the same God or not.

Our common human condition should be enough to motivate solidarity with others. After all, Jesus never said to only “love those who believe in the same God”.

Mark Durie is a theologian, Anglican pastor, writer and research fellow of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Other Faiths at Melbourne School of Theology, Australia.

to keep going. That accountability got the ball rolling.

2. I locked in a regular time and place. I discovered that if I need to “decide” each day when I will spend time with the Lord, I probably won’t spend time with the Lord.

Too easily I drift towards the path of least resistance, and therefore if it’s not scheduled, it doesn’t happen. So my earliest decision was to pick a time and stick to it – no excuses. I decided on an evening timeslot, and now my routine is to open the Bible each night as soon as I get into bed.

If I have the time and energy to read or watch Netflix afterwards I will, but I want to give God the best of my energy (or what I have left once the kids have gone to bed!), not the scraps of my attention when my eyelids are struggling to remain open. If I know I will get home late, I’ll try to make time earlier in the day. But I won’t (God willing) end the day without time with God. 3. I clarified the purpose of this time. I’ve powered through many a Bible reading plan, but this approach has one big trap – the

temptation to judge the quality of my time with God simply by the number of chapters read.

Reading God’s word is great, but just reading it isn’t the end game.

George Mueller, a man whose prayers achieved the care of more than 3000 orphans, put me in the right direction: “The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was ... how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished ...” As I’ve read the Bible each evening, I’ve considered “how does this make my soul happy in the Lord?”

4. I set the bar low. Since November, my goal has been to read a Psalm an evening. This has been the perfect place to rebuild this time because of the devotional nature of the Psalms. In the past when I’ve attempted to revive my time with God, I’ve often started in Genesis, continued into Exodus, and got bogged down in Leviticus where I run out of steam. A Psalm a day has been life-giving.

5. I have benefited from (trying to) follow a regular pattern. I say “trying” because I haven’t always followed the same pattern, but each night I read a Psalm and write down in my journal one verse that stands out and “makes my soul glad”. I might also write down a prayer, or something I’m thankful for, or a prayer of confession, or one of Jonathan Edwards’ 70 resolutions.

6. I’ve been spurred on by the example of others. When I meet with other Christians I’ve started to ask them, “How do you spend your time with the Lord?”

This question has been an unexpected blessing – often sparking rich, mutually beneficial conversations where we have confessed our weaknesses, shared what the Lord has been teaching us, and asked for his help.

Along the way, I’ve been delighted by two unexpected outcomes.

1. I’ve discovered that desire has followed discipline. I’m not excited to admit it, but I often don’t want to read the Bible. And

desire is a powerful force. Earlier this year John Piper made a blunt assessment of why we don’t read the Bible. He said: “The reason we don’t read the Bible is because we don’t want to read the Bible.”

If I wanted to read the Bible and spend time with the Lord, I would.

But too often I don’t want to and I don’t. And yet, I can say that as I have persevered, the desire has been slowly growing. And as I pray that it continues, I’m also glad I didn’t wait for desire to get started.

2. I’ve been thrilled that my wife and I are now doing this together.

She has her own pattern (she’s benefiting from Paul Tripp’s great devotional New Morning Mercies) and to share this time together has been a wonderful outcome for which I’m particularly thankful to God. While there are many challenges and priorities competing for our time – make time for God. You won’t regret it. Later this year I’ll be launching a new resource to encourage Christians in their time with God, sign up here: www.mytimewithgod.com

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The recent suspension of Larycia Hawkins by Wheaton College is a symptom of a fault line among evangelicals about Islam. The question of whether the God of the Qur’an is the same as the God of the Bible is an important and complex one, but it is unhelpful to politicise inquiry into it by insisting that anyone who disagrees with one position or another is a bigot.

The decision led to protests on the Wheaton campus. Miroslav Volf, Professor of Theology at Yale, published an article in The Washington Post criticising Wheaton. Volf suggests that Wheaton is motivated by hatred towards Muslims, dressed up in dogma. He argues that: “Those who claim that Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God base this upon Muslims’ denial of the Trinity and the incarnation.

However Jews deny the Trinity and the incarnation, and Christians down the ages have not claimed that Jews worship a different God. Therefore those who do not accept

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OPINION

FEBRUARY 2016

19

The desire for dragons: fantasy, fiction and faith

Tim Costello on why hospitality is not just for Christmas

Natasha Moore on why fantasy isn’t just escapism

Flickr / Don Stewart

Really there are two kinds of people in the world: those who, like J.R.R. Tolkien as a child, “desire dragons with a profound desire”; and those who shout, with Tolkien’s friend and fellow Inkling Hugo Dyson, “Oh God, not another elf!”

The two sides look at one another with mutual incomprehension and pity. The lovers of dragons, elves, magic, and titanic clashes between good and evil can’t get enough of this stuff; the self-proclaimed realists, pragmatists, cannot see what all the fuss is about. They find it, frankly, a little embarrassing that these imaginary worlds and creatures can exert such a pull over grown men and women.

This divide has been increasingly apparent in our culture ever since the publication of The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s brought fantasy back into the main current of Western literature, in a big way.

Philip Toynbee diagnosed its success at the time as a blip – in 1961, writing for The Observer, he expressed relief that the book’s popularity had passed its peak: There was a time when the Hobbit fantasies of Professor Tolkien were being taken very seriously indeed by a great many distinguished literary figures. Mr Auden is even reported to have claimed that these books were as good as War and Peace … I had a sense that one side or the other must be mad, for it seemed to me that these books were dull, illwritten, whimsical and childish.

And for me this had a reassuring outcome, for most of his more ardent supporters were soon beginning to sell out their shares in Professor Tolkien, and today those books have passed into a merciful oblivion.

When Tolkien came out on top of the Waterstones Books of the Century poll in 1997, Germaine Greer offered a groan and a facepalm on behalf of fantasy sceptics (literary snobs?) everywhere: … it has been my nightmare that Tolkien would turn out to be the most influential writer of the twentieth century. The bad dream has materialised … The books that come in Tolkien’s train are more or less what you would expect; flight from reality is their dominating characteristic.

Tolkien, as essentially the father of the modern fantasy novel, became very used to responding to the charge of escapism. “I do not accept the tone of scorn and pity with which ‘escape’ is now so often used,” he wrote. “Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics

Tolkien and C.S. Lewis both insisted that a love of other worlds is not something to be ashamed of. than jailers and prison-walls?”

The valence of “escape”, after all, depends very much on what you’re trying to escape from, and to. The evasion of reality deplored by Greer surely does represent a cheap and unfruitful way for writers to ply their craft.

But Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and many of their fellow Inklings – a group of Oxford Christians who met regularly to talk about literature and life, and read aloud drafts of their writings – insisted that a love of other worlds is not something to be ashamed of or suppressed; that fairy tales are not just for children; that profound truth about the world we really do live in can be found in these kinds of stories.

Lewis, the creator of Narnia, famously wrote that, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” All of our desires – even the ostensible desire for dragons – correspond, he suggests, to something that exists.

To many of their critics, the Inklings’ fondness for the fantastic was of a piece with their adherence to the old orthodoxies of Christian faith. Of course they liked dragons and dwarves and such; they genuinely believed in the supernatural, in a whole reality beyond the material. No doubt (runs this logic) their fancy for mythology paved the way for their similarly naive religious faith; no wonder they could so casually and continually blur the lines between fact and fiction.

Yet the categories don’t shake out anything like that neatly.

Plenty of Christians I know find themselves unmoved by Harry

Potter or Peter Jackson; and Game of Thrones fanatics don’t seem like a particularly religious bunch.

In fact, if we look more closely, C.S. Lewis himself offers as fine a counter-example to the equation of faith with fantasy as any.

In his autobiography-of-sorts, Surprised by Joy, Lewis describes the double life he lived before his conversion as an adult to Christianity: “to care for almost nothing but the gods and heroes, the garden of the Hesperides, Launcelot and the Grail, and to believe in nothing but atoms and evolution and military service.”

His staunch atheism was chipped away, not by the desire to believe in something akin to the fantasy worlds he loved, but by a kind of intellectual checkmate he long resisted and only grudgingly, in the end, gave in to: “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted God was God, and knelt and prayed; perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

And yet, as Lewis became acclimatised to his new-old faith, he came to discover in it the richness and beauty that up until then had existed for him only in the hallowed worlds of myth and fantasy, the intense and elusive longing he called “joy”. He came to see Christianity as a kind of “true myth” – the good-versus-evil story, of which all the others that exercise such a strong hold over our imaginations are echoes and intuitions.

This is why Tolkien objected so strenuously to the label “escapist”. He and Lewis and the other Inklings thought that the world was, in a very real sense, enchanted; not with dragons or leprechauns, but with a deep,

E

divine love and a promise of untold glory. As Philip and Carol Zaleski write in The Fellowship, their recent biography of the Inklings: A story that ends happily is, some believe, necessarily a sop to wishful thinking, a refusal to grow up. … Tolkien turns this charge on its head, arguing that our deepest wishes, revealed by fairy stories and reawakened whenever we permit ourselves to enter with “literary belief” into a secondary world, are not compensatory fantasies but glimpses of an absolute reality. When Sam Gamgee cries out, “O great glory and splendor! And all my wishes have come true!” we are not in the realm of escapism, but of the Gospel, in all its strangeness and beauty.

For readers of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings, this can go either way. American literary scholar Holly Ordway has written about her own discovery of God via Tolkien in her book Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms; in the opposite corner, the journalist Laura Miller has charted her sense of betrayal and disillusionment on having the Christian themes of the Narnia Chronicles “sprung” on her in The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia. Both types of response, perhaps, illustrate Lewis’ dictum that a good atheist can’t be too careful what she reads.

Loving dragons and believing in God are not at all the same thing, but it’s undeniable that for some people, the route to what they came to consider the real transcendent has passed through the land of Faërie.

Natasha Moore is a research fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity. publicchristianity.org

The word “hospitality” today is often used to mean professional catering. But of course it generally refers to the welcoming of strangers and the sharing of food and comforts.

In Scripture and in Christian tradition, hospitality is a powerful injunction. Old and New Testaments abound with mentions of hospitality, from the Midian priest who takes in Moses (Gen 2), to the Samaritan woman who invites Jesus to stay with her community (Jn 4).

Often hospitality produces encounters that transform relationships, or subvert the structures of injustice. By accepting the hospitality of Samaritans, Jesus breaks down the barriers of tribalism, gender, exclusivity and status. When Paul is taken in by the Apostles (Acts 9), he is not just a stranger but someone who has been a persecuting enemy of the followers of Jesus.

For many Australians, Christmas is the prime season of hospitality, the time of generosity and sharing. Because our Christmas falls in summer, and for many an extended break from business as usual, the season of sharing may extend for some time.

Recently in a media interview I was asked if sharing was a universal value or culturally specific. Reflecting, I thought of the community in Uganda where I have been blessed to spend time this summer. Sharing is universal, but it looks different in different times and places. In poor societies people have limited ability to donate money, but they have a strong emphasis on social solidarity, mutual support, and a culture of sharing.

Sharing enriches everyone, both those who give and those who receive. Hospitality, though, is not an unequal relationship of a donor to a beneficiary. It is in fact the erasing of that distinction, a voluntary act of putting ourselves and others in the common light of God’s presence, regardless of earthly status.

The gospels make it clear that with the coming of Jesus, the coming of the kingdom has begun. Through all the gospel narratives we see kingdom events taking place through hospitality experiences – the wedding at Cana, the woman at the well, through to Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet and the last supper.

The fulfilment of God’s purpose and the building of the kingdom is described as a banquet, a feast at which there is room for everyone at the table. Paul enjoins us to “share with the Lord’s people who are in need, practice hospitality”.

(Rom 12:13) Hospitality should be thought of not just as a duty but as a joy, a chance to live fully and love without limits.

As February marks the beginning of “business as usual”, back to work and back to school, let’s remember that hospitality is for all seasons, and not just for Christmas.

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OPINION

20

FEBRUARY 2016

Greg Clarke on when ambition pleases God Ambition has a chequered reputation. As Donald Trump gallops confidently towards the American presidency, it would seem that relentless ambition is something many people admire.

Trump famously wrote in his book, How to Get Rich, “Show me someone without an ego, and I’ll show you a loser.” The people who get followed, who make a difference, seem to be the ones who have healthy (or bloated) ambitions deriving from a very robust sense of their own importance.

And while Trump has

discordantly trumpeted his faith, it can be hard to match furious ambition with Christlikeness.

It is a struggle to follow a leader who denied himself to the point of sacrificial death, while at the same time clambering up the ladder of success crushing the fingers of the people on the rungs beneath you.

We are rightly suspicious of leaders who claim to be in it “to serve” while everything they do suggests they are in it to be served.

Ambition bites the nails of success, sang U2. The hunger for triumph, acknowledgement and achievement can be a painful, destructive one. Anxiety over one’s status and value seems to go handin-hand with ambition.

So is it an ungodly thing to really go for it? When the Bible says that the meek will inherit the earth, is it saying that in order to receive the reward of rulership one must be humble, unambitious and behindthe-scenes? Is there any room for ambition in the Christian life?

Yes, but if you are willing radically to revisit its definition.

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with

your hands,” writes Paul to the Thessalonians. Why? “Because you have been taught by God to love each other.” What lame, misnamed kind of ambition is that? Paul sees that being a Christian changes the locus of your value, where you get your identity. You can be an ambitious Christian as a local plumber, pastry chef or professional pencil sharpener – if you are doing it out of love for others.

To make it even clearer, Paul writes to the Philippians: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.”

Loser! This teaching comes in the famous passage where we are to emulate Christ, who although in nature God made himself a humble servant. The biggest loser?

Or has he modelled true Christian ambition? Obviously, we believe the latter is true.

The New Testament is certainly laying down a challenge to those of us who would be empire-builders, asking us to redirect powerfully our energies from what makes us feel big to what makes others feel big. That’s a noble, but tough, command. But the Bible gives room

for ambitious people to do just that: to channel their drive into building up others.

Ambition is a part of your created personality. Some people simply have more of it than others, and personality seems to be pretty hard-wired. When the Apostle Paul was converted, he doesn’t appear to have changed personality (as far as we can tell). Before conversion, he was a zealous persecutor of Christians; after conversion, he was a zealous Christian. Before conversion, he was a fanatical scholar of Jewish law; after conversion, he was a fanatical scholar of Jesus’ grace.

Paul’s personality is just, well, Paul. His actions and understanding changed dramatically, but he was still Paul.

If you are ambitious, it is probably just you. The challenge is to direct that ambition towards things that matter beyond just you.

New Testament ambition all relates to whether you are pleasing God (2 Cor 5:9). And you please

God by loving others. Rather than being about your own get-up-andgo, aspiring to fulfil your dreams and be your best self, the Bible’s view of healthy ambition is that you want with all your heart and strength to be worthy of God, bringing joy to him by valuing others higher than yourself, and sharing in his work in the world to hurry in his kingdom of peace and love.

The opposite of ambition, according to the New Testament, is not laziness or passivity or being one of Trump’s losers. It is indifference to God’s ways.

We are to make our ambition to please God, striving humbly (not an oxymoron, but an unnatural pairing of words, nevertheless) to be worthy of his grace. Godly ambition, not selfish ambition.

If God’s pleasure is your measure of success, you can be as ambitious as you like in 2016. But check yourself.

Greg Clarke is CEO of Bible Society Australia.

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Who wants to rule the world, and should they?

US Presidential hopeful, Donald Trump: “Show me someone without an ego, and I’ll show you a loser.”