Eternity - July 2016 - Issue 71

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Number 71, July 2016 ISSN 1837-8447

Brought to you by the Bible Society

Where are the Christian Christian male missionaries role models? good or evil?

Image courtesy of: Brock Corfe / Wests Tigers

New Religious League

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NEWS

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JULY 2016

The last journey of the “Bullet in the Bible”

Obadiah Slope

News 2-3 In Depth 5-7,9 Bible Society 12

JOHN HARRIS WORDS FAIL: Obadiah can’t help thinking that radical(ised) Christians are the sort we want.

VAPOURWARE: Three million fans joined the “Christian prayer centre” on Facebook, paying $US9 to $US35 for the centre to pray for them. Problem was the Prayer Centre was a scam according to the Washington State AttorneyGeneral, Christianity Today reports. The scam netted $US7m.

Real, not virtual, prayer is free.

THAT CAKE AGAIN: The most challenging answer to “should you bake a cake for a gay wedding?”

Obadiah has read is from Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today.

Acknowledging that in the US life might be tougher for conservative Christians now that gay weddings are legal, he added “let us recall the great injustice of Jesus’ day: the oppression of Roman occupation, and the common demand by occupation forces for help with carrying their loads. Jesus suggested we should look beyond the symbolic condoning of injustice (helping a soldier) to a deeper ethic.

Jesus told his disciples – to put it in today’s terms – that when asked to bake a cake for a gay wedding, we might offer to bake two. (Matt 5:41)”

The Australian Army is about to take back to France, to the terrible battlegrounds of Fromelles and Pozières, the New Testament carried by Lieutenant Elvas Jenkins in WWI. The little book had saved his life at Gallipoli, a life which Elvas was to lose at Pozières where he was the first ANZAC to die on the Western Front.

Brought back home to Australia from the Gallipoli commemoration in 2015, Elvas Jenkins’ little French New Testament, with its shrapnel bullet still lodged in it, is held in its own protective box, made from precious Lone Pine Timber.

At Gallipoli, Elvas’s New Testament was closed and backto-front in his pocket when the bullet struck him over his heart and pierced his Bible. Now, it lies open at 1 Timothy, Chapter 6, where we discovered that the bullet had pierced verse 12. Still visible just above the bullet are the words: Combats le bon combat de la foi, saisis la vie éternelle…

Fight the good fight of faith, seize eternal life...

That verse aptly describes the life of Elvas Jenkins, whose life you can read more about at Bible Society’s commemorative website theirsacrifice.com.

Surviving Gallipoli thanks to the Bible in his pocket, Elvas went on

Opinion 11, 13-16

Quotable

Natasha Moore Bible Society’s Dr John Harris handing the Bullet Bible to Major Glenn Crosland to France.

The Battle of Pozières was to be engaged on 23rd July 1916.

Four days before the fighting commenced, Elvas and his men were sent in to determine the precise position of the German lines and establish a forward attacking position ahead of the forthcoming battle. They suddenly found themselves in extreme danger from German sniper fire. They all escaped but Elvas was shot many times and severely wounded. He died the next day.

The commemoration of the centenary of the battle will take place at Pozières on 23rd July this year. Australian Army

representatives will take Elvas’s “Bible with the Bullet” with them, retracing Elvas’s last journey.

In taking responsibility for its safe travel to Pozières, Major Glenn Crosland said, It is a privilege to receive this iconic Bible again. As the Bible of the very first brave young Australian to give his life on the Western Front, it is a very appropriate symbol of all those Australians who made the ultimate sacrifice there.

At Pozières, on 23rd July, the words just above the bullet will be read. Combats le bon combat de la foi - fight the good fight of faith.

Read more at theirsacrifice.com

Page 11 “Does religion poison everything? The missionary enterprise off ers a joyful and decisive no.”

Greg Clarke

Page 16 “Reading should help you come, perhaps kicking and screaming, to the realisation that you don’t know everything.”

The Digital Bible Library, which supplies scriptures for online use, now contains 1000 Unique Languages

Europe

113

North America

45

Latin America

Africa

349

Asia

296

347 Complete Bibles 404 New Testaments 784

Australasia

283

Portions 49

6300 languages to go JOHN SANDEMAN

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Delegates from 150 Bible Societies have agreed that the Bible translation task, with only 563 languages with full Bibles out of some 6887 languages spoken, must remain our top priority. The Bible Societies’ stats make the priority plain: 1334 languages have a New Testament, leaving 280 million with only a portion of Scripture in their language and 497 million with none.

The delegates were meeting as the World Assembly of the United Bible Societies, a once-every-six-years event, held this time in Philadelphia.

“The point that has stuck with me since World Assembly is that we are actually in the finishing straight of ensuring some access to the Bible for every person on the planet in our lifetime,” Richard Grellman, Chair of Bible Society Australia (BSA) who was one of two Australian delegates, told Eternity.

“That’s exciting! We are so privileged to be the generation that is seeing the Word reach the corners of the earth.”

The delegates adopted a radical approach to digital challenges, pleading that, from now on, every project must be considered for a digital outcome first, rather than traditional print. This is a big step for majority world Bible Societies with a traditional print revenue base.

That move excited Greg Clarke BSA’s CEO,

the other Australian delegate.

“I came away from World Assembly hopeful that as a movement we can adapt to the needs of our time. In particular, we are starting to respond enthusiastically to the mission imperative of digital communication. We will reach so many more people so much faster and with greater engagement, if we embrace digital in the ways we have been talking about. Already, over 1000 Bible texts exist in our Digital Bible Library, which any publisher can access, but we are just at the beginning of working out how to do digital Bible engagement well. A great time to be alive and a Bible lover!”

A couple of new priorities emerged at the meeting. The Bible Societies agreed to reach out to younger church movements, moving beyond traditional denominational support bases. Looking around a grey-haired conference room Australia’s delegates could also see the wisdom of another initiative – seeking to grow a new generation of leaders.

A faithful group of leaders have stuck with the task of “getting the Word out” – this stick-to-it attitude is admirable yet it is time to grow the next generation of leaders.

In the meantime, the main priority is being put into effect: In 2015 United Bible Societies assisted in the completion of Scriptures in 50 languages spoken by nearly 160 million people.

NEWS

JULY 2016

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Muslim refugees are open to the Good News in their own language ANNE LIM In a refugee camp in northern France, a Pashtun man from Pakistan was happy to hear the good news of Jesus in an audiovisual presentation in his own language.

It was an evangelistic audiovisual presentation by Global Recordings Network (GRN) giving an overview of the Bible story from creation to Christ and how to become a follower of Jesus.

“He sat there holding the player while I showed him the pictures,” recalls Graydon Colville, international director of GRN, who recently visited France to see the work GRN is doing in the refugee camps.

“He sat there for 30 or 40 minutes and watched this whole presentation. He’s a Muslim but very interested in the Christian message.”

Colville was visiting the camp with GRN’s local director, Daniel, who has assembled a team of people to work with Muslims and Christians in refugee camps.

Colville says he found great openness to the gospel among Muslim refugees who have taken refuge in the two camps in northern France.

“We spoke with Kurds, Iranians and others and there was a lot of openness but there was also a lot of

Sharing the story of Jesus in refugee camps. tension because not everybody is open,” he says.

“There was one Iranianbackground believer who had been killed in one of the camps some months ago by people who were not happy with what he had done, so even those who are Christians or have become Christians have to be fairly circumspect.”

Daniel also found tremendous openness in a refugee centre in northern Greece.

Kurdish people of Muslim background came to him in their dozens saying: “Give us a Bible, give us a cross, tell us how to become followers of Jesus, we don’t want to have anything else to do with Islam.”

“He acknowledged that there were probably many different agendas and motivations, but it still demonstrates an openness and, as the opportunity for God’s Word to be shared is taken, who knows what God will do with it? There certainly seems to be evidence of people becoming followers of Jesus,” said Colville.

Daniel is encouraging other Christian organisations working in the camps to take advantage of the openness to Christian faith by doing gospel ministry.

“Daniel is trying to resource others and he’s tapping into networks there,” Colville says.

“We met with the guy in northern France, who was the

In brief

coordinator of the equivalent of the Evangelical Alliance, who is now coordinating ministry to the refugee camps on behalf of a network of churches and organisations, so our guys are tapping into that.

“Despite the fear and anxiety and the social problems that are generated by the refugees being in northern France, the very small evangelical wing of the church there also recognises there’s a huge opportunity to reach people who otherwise wouldn’t be reached and they are trying to do what they can.”

Colville repeats the comment made that, despite the evil that is being done, ISIS might yet prove to be one of the greatest gifts to evangelical Christian ministry across the world simply because of the disillusion with Islam it is causing in some Muslim communities.

“So it is on the one hand generating more fanaticism, on the other hand generating a great deal of questioning and potentially openness to other messages,” he says.

“For a lot of people who grow up in a religious environment, having no religion is hardly seen as an option. If they’re going to ditch Islam they’re looking around for options and that’s a great opportunity for the gospel.”

BAPTIST SINNERS REPENT: The conservative Southern Baptists, the US’s second largest denomination have voted to “call our brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the display of the Confederate battle flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our African-American brothers and sisters.” The split that formed the Southern Baptists Convention in 1845 was over whether slaveholders could be missionaries.

“The SBC of 1845, and for many years after, was in open sin against a holy God, and against those who bear his image,” says Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore.

WORTH FIGHTING FOR: Freedom for Faith is a Christian legal think tank that exists to see religious freedom protected and promised in Australia. FfF will hold conferences in Sydney on August 12 and in Melbourne on September 23. freedomforfaith.org.au HEALTHY: Developing a healthy, biblically based approach to mission in a world that is changing rapidly is what Eddie Arthur of Global Connections UK spends his time thinking about. He is the keynote speaker at Leading for Impact, the Missions Interlink National Conference, July 1021 at Macquarie University. missionsinterlink.org.au HOTSPOTS: Countries where Christians are most persecuted according to Open Doors: 1. North Korea, 2. Iraq, 3. Eritrea, 4. Afghanistan, 5. Syria, 6. Pakistan, 7. Somalia, 8.

Sudan, 9. Iran, 10. Libya

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JULY 2016

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Sisters for life and health Imagine giving birth in a setting where there is no doctor, no nurse and no sterile medical facilities whatsoever.

It can even happen in Australia, as experienced by Hollie Boniface from the outer suburbs of Melbourne, when she gave birth in a car on her way to hospital. Even though this happened here and Hollie’s story has a happy ending, she now knows this isn’t the case in many of the world’s poorest countries. “In many countries, women give birth on a dirt floor in their home, without medical assistance and where cutting the umbilical cord with an unclean implement can lead to deadly infection,” she explains.

Motivated by her experience, Hollie connected her church, St Mark’s Anglican in Emerald, Victoria, to Vision Sisters, a new World Vision Australia initiative.

Vision Sisters encourages women to do something practical to save the lives of newborns and their mothers in places like Uganda, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Churches like St Mark’s have seen women come together to fundraise and pack simple birthing kits, containing soap, gloves, gauze, a plastic sheet for a clean surface, a sterile scalpel blade to cut the umbilical cord and a string to tie the cord. Each $10 raised provides two clean birthing kits and helps World Vision train community health workers, who distribute the kits as part of their maternal and

“

Most Australian mothers can’t leave their families and travel to the world’s poorest countries, but getting together and packing clean birthing kits is something that women of all ages can do to help.”

Holly Boniface (above) and other women are helping to save the lives of their sisters and their babies through Vision Sisters. newborn health services.

Mariska Meldrum, founder of Vision Sisters and mum of three, says the several thousand Australian women who have packed clean birthing kits for their sisters overseas were often

motivated by the realisation that they would have faced grave risks without access to adequate medical facilities. “Vision Sisters know we are blessed to give birth in Australia – and we want to put our faith into action and do

something practical to help our sisters and their babies survive childbirth too,” says Meldrum.

“Most Australian mothers can’t leave their families and travel to the world’s poorest countries, but getting together and packing clean birthing kits is something that women of all ages can do to help.”

Meldrum says that churches report that this program reaches out to women beyond their church building: “As a church, it’s a great opportunity to invite women in your networks to join you in doing something that’s so hands-on

These six simple items can help save a baby’s life It’s an incredible feeling.Touching each item as you pack it.

Knowing the tiny scalpel could stop a healthy newborn dying unnecessarily of infection.Thinking about the mother who will deliver on the plastic sheet. Giving thanks for the health facilities we have in Australia.

Join Vision Sisters – Australian women rolling up our sleeves to do something practical to support our sisters in need. Help us train community health workers and distribute 60,000 clean birthing kits.

You can lead a group in fundraising and packing clean birthing kits.

Bring women in your local community together to do something practical to help save the lives of our sisters and their babies.

Vision Sisters. Uniting for our sisters in need – it’s what we do.

Register at worldvision.com.au/visionsisters or call 13 32 40

and demonstrates what we as Christians stand for.” Vision Sisters is relatable to women everywhere, and helps women do something practical about a key need in the developing world.

Vision Sisters also raises funds to assist World Vision to train thousands of community health workers to provide pre-natal and post-natal care to mothers and their newborns. “Not only do the birthing kits help to reduce infection,” explains Meldrum, “they open up a conversation on the other risks in childbirth as well.

This means more families are learning about the ways they can reduce these risks, which at one clinic in Uganda has resulted in an incredible 80 per cent attendance at the clinic for the birth. This is saving the lives of mothers and babies.”

Vision Sisters operates with a strong belief that this ministry is God-centred. Says Meldrum, “We believe that God knit each and every one of these babies together in their mother’s womb, and that he has a plan for their lives. If we as Christian women in Australia can come alongside our sisters in some of the world’s poorest countries and help stop them and their babies dying from preventable causes, then we believe that’s what God’s calling us to do.”

To explore how women in your church and your community can get involved go to worldvision.com. au/visionsisters or call 13 32 40.

JULY 2016

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IN DEPTH

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Parramatta Eels captain Tim Mannah says getting his relationship “right with God” has always had a positive effect on the field.

They don’t pray to win KALEY PAYNE

It was a first in National Rugby League (NRL) history. On Easter Monday, players from opposing teams – the victorious Wests Tigers and the defeated Parramatta Eels – huddled together for prayer just after the final whistle blew.

It may have been the first time

it’s happened, but for Wests Tigers forward Josh Aloiai, who debuted this year, it felt natural.

“We’re playing for a bigger purpose … We know the real reason we’re here is for Jesus, so the first thing we do when the final whistle blows is to give thanks.”

Since Easter Monday, there’s been an explosion of public prayer

after matches across the NRL. Players grab other players and pray together in the middle of the field.

Tim Mannah, who captains the Parramatta Eels, says he’s a huge fan of the post-game prayers.

“It sends a pretty strong message that we’re not shy about our faith and also that, in the end, regardless of what team we’re playing for

and what result we get, we’re all brothers in Christ, with the same passion in life. We’re driven by the same thing.”

That “thing” is Jesus. And there’s a growing cohort of players across the NRL praying and reading the Bible together to glorify him on and off the field.

A weekly prayer meeting on

Thursday nights is attended regularly by about 20 players from around Sydney’s NRL clubs, including players from the Sydney Roosters, Cronulla Sharks, Wests Tigers and Parramatta Eels. Jarryd Hayne too, who left the NRL at the peak of his career, drops in when he’s in town. continued page 6

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Michael Bird on the 7 things Christians need to know about the Bible

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IN DEPTH

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JULY 2016

Pray

Brock Corfe, Wests Tigers

from page 5 Mannah says he believes Christian players in the NRL have been “breaking stereotypes” over the last few years which, in turn, has made younger players more comfortable to be open about their beliefs.

“We’re really trying to encourage guys in the league to talk about their faith and not be quiet about it.”

Mannah feels he has always been able to be open about his faith, following in the footsteps of players like Jason Stevens, who retired from the Cronulla Sharks in 2005 after an illustrious football career.

“Stevens broke the ice and was a Christian who was pretty vocal before anyone else was willing to speak about it,” says Mannah. And while he says there have probably always been Christians in the NRL, “now we’re more united and willing to speak about faith publicly.”

Kevin Naiqama debuted in the NRL in 2010 and cemented a spot as a regular first-grader at the end of 2015. He says Christian footy players like Tim Mannah and Jarryd Haynes have been crucial for him in the development of his own faith.

“Seeing Tim’s Christian walk has always encouraged me. I wanted to be like that. He always has joy, even when he’s injured. And he’s a really humble person,” said Naiqama.

The Wests Tigers also brought in a chaplain for the first time this season. Brenden Brown, a Hillsong pastor from Sydney’s inner west, took up the inaugural position and is learning on the job what it means

Prayer huddles like this one are becoming a regular feature at the end of matches across the NRL. to walk with the players in the ups and downs of the footy season.

“Athletes are normal, everyday people. But they are in the spotlight and everybody wants something from them: the sponsors, the fans, the club,” Brown tells Eternity.

“But as the chaplain, I don’t want anything from them. I’m not there to ask them a favour or take anything. I’m only there to support

them.”

A group of Wests Tigers players, including Naiqama and Josh Aloiai, have started a WhatsApp group (an instant messaging service) to share encouragements, scriptures and prayers with other team members.

“It’s just a bunch of guys hanging out online,” says Brown.

“Some guys have their great weeks and some have down weeks

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through injury or something else, so it’s just building another support network to build them up.”

Across Sydney in the Parramatta Eels camp, chaplain George Dansey is an old hand at supporting his players. He’s been at the club for five years, and is well known across the NRL, assisting in building groups of Christian players who get together, regardless of the

jersey they wear, to pray and read the Bible. He says he has seen a big change in the confidence of players to talk about their faith in the league, and believes it has helped break down stereotypes of Christians as “soft”.

“It’s a new normal to be a Christian player,” he says.

“There has been a misconception of Christians being soft … or maybe not playing as hard as the others. But Jesus was as ruthless as anybody, in terms of driving what he was for and what he wasn’t for.

If you’re called to play football, you’re called to give 100 per cent.

Jesus has given them the talent to be the best they can be, and they’ll be that.”

Mannah says getting his relationship “right with God” off the field has always had positive implications for his performance on the field.

“It’s not just in sport, either. I think when your life’s not with God, regardless of what field you work in, getting it right always makes life better. I don’t think it means that things work out perfectly: it doesn’t mean you don’t get injured, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a tough day. It just means you have a better perspective on it and your response is a lot clearer.”

It’s mid-season in the NRL and the end-of-game prayers are still happening and have become a regular feature for some players.

“These guys put their bodies on the line every week,” says Brown.

“But the thing that I’ve loved is that they don’t pray to win. They play to win, but they pray to trust that God will protect them and that Jesus would somehow be seen in their lives.”

IN DEPTH

JULY 2016

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Seven things I wish Christians knew about the Bible MICHAEL F. BIRD

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directly from the Bible. The Bible was written for its own world and not directly to ours. That does not mean that it cannot address our own context and concerns, of course it does, but we have to remember that our reading of the Bible is mediated by 2000 years of history, and shaped by our own language, culture, history and identity. Being a 30-yearold, white, middle-class, female, Pentecostal, living in New Zealand will inevitably shape the way you read the Bible and you should not assume the normativity of your own reading experience. We must acknowledge the socio-cultural distance between the biblical world and our world and that our reading of the Bible is partly a product of our own environment. That will teach us that we cannot just jump from ancient text to modern time without first engaging the chasm that exists between the two.

Therefore, a good interpreter will need a basic grasp of the biblical world, pay attention to the history of interpretation, cultivate global conversation partners and be selfcritical of what we assume about the Bible.

We should focus on taking the Bible seriously, not necessarily literally.

Debates about taking the Bible literally or metaphorically are often missing the point. For instance, Genesis 1 is not a moment-bymoment commentary on how God made the world, nor narrating the story in such a way that the main purpose is to refute Darwinism.

Genesis 1 is primarily about worldview, adopting a Godcentred view of reality, affirming that however the world was made it owes its existence to God and admiring the artistry of God as seen in the splendour of creation.

This does not mean that Genesis 1 is merely “myth” in the sense of fairy tales, but it sets forth in a literary masterpiece the truth that God is the Creator and there is no Other. This is a competing narrative to other ancient-neareastern accounts about creation, and in practice it means that you don’t worship the stars, you worship the God who made the

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stars. In many places in the Bible the main point is not literal but literary, and reading the Bible in light of its genres and context is the best way to take it seriously.

If interpreting the Bible was easy, we wouldn’t need teachers.

Protestants believe in the clarity of Scripture. However, even Protestant confessions like the Westminster Confession and London Baptist Confession state that the clarity of Scripture only applies to the things “necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation.” Everything else is not necessarily “plain in themselves” nor “clear unto all” (WCF 1.7/LBC 1.7). In other words, the Bible is clear about the gospel, how to get right with God, but after that it can get a bit sticky. So we need teachers, we need metaphorical Phillips to run beside us in our chariot and to explain the Scripture to us. First, we should always be prepared to consult tradition.

Now tradition often gets a bad name, but tradition is simply what the church has learned from reading Scripture. I like to say that tradition is a tool for reading Scripture, a tool we be wise to use.

We engage in recklessness if we venerate tradition as infallible and yet we are foolish if we ignore what tradition has to teach us. Second, we need to look to those who inhabit the offices of pastors and teachers, and listen to them in their learning of Scripture, languages, doctrine and history. While you may think that your soul has the competence and liberty to interpret the Bible as the Spirit leads you, as a professional scholar let me tell you something: some souls are more competent than others, and listening to some teachers will give the Holy Spirit more to work with in guiding you into the truth!

The purpose of Scripture is knowledge and hope.

God is a revealing god. God makes himself known through creation, through history, in the words of the prophets, through the preaching of the gospel, most definitively in the incarnation of the Jesus the Logos and also by the inspiration of human authors

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Scripture is a word from God to be heeded and obeyed even if it means going against culture .” to write books that convey the divine message in the medium of human language. The purpose of revelation is that we might know God and know him as our Saviour.

The purpose of that knowledge is to create faith in the sense of assent and trust towards God, but more properly to give us an assurance that God is for us and with us – in other words, hope. This is what St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope” (Rom 15:4). Scripture, then, should not be reduced to a list of rules, nor a box full of ancient stories, nor even a map for the future. God speaks to us in Scripture so that we would know the God of creation and redemption, and by knowing God, we would have hope amidst the trials of human life.

Scripture is normative not negotiable.

Theological debates within both evangelicalism and conservative Catholicism have focused not so much on whether the Bible is true, but how the Bible is true. The challenge has been how best to articulate Scripture’s truthfulness amidst on-going conversations about science and religion, biblical criticism and pre-modern interpretation, postmodern reading strategies, and the role of the Bible in the public square. Among conservative groups one’s stance on this subject is often treated as a life and death matter and as a result terms like “inerrancy” or “infallibility” become tribal colours which identify a person in relation to particular

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condesign

The Bible did not fall out of the sky, bound in leather, written in English.

The Bible is not a single book, but more of a complex library, written over some 1500 years, in the languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. There were real human processes behind its composition and canonisation which God used to give the Bible to us. First, the composition of many of these texts was a process rather than a single event. For instance, while Moses is recognised as the originator of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), it is very unlikely that he recorded his own death (Deut 34) and there are several references to what cities were called in the days of the patriarchs and how they are still called similarly “to this very day”, indicating a perspective from a later time (e.g., Gen 26:33; Deut 3:14-15). Similarly, the ending of the Gospel of John includes an affirmation of the Beloved Disciple’s testimony with the words “we know his testimony is true” (Jn 21:24) indicative of an epilogue added by those who edited the Beloved Disciple’s testimony. That some Old Testament texts were edited or updated by a prophet’s followers is something debated in relation to Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel, but there is no prima facie case against this. To this end I rather like John Webster’s description of inspiration as including the “sanctification” of all human processes involved in the formation of Scripture.

Second, on canonisation, if you didn’t notice, the Bible does not tell us which books should be in the Bible! So who decided that the Gospel of Matthew and Paul’s Letter to the Romans were to be included, while the Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocalypse of Peter were left out? No, it wasn’t Constantine, but neither did a sherry of bishops in the second century go on an Indiana Jones type of adventure with their inspiration-o-meter looking for Christian books to add to their growing collection of authoritative texts. The basic criteria was books that contained the words of Jesus and the apostolic message about Jesus, and a consensus began to emerge by the late second century based upon the four gospels, Acts, Paul’s thirteen letters plus Hebrews, 1 John, and 1 Peter, with the other books in our NT eventually finding consensus, but over a much longer period. To be sure, the church did not invent the Bible, the church itself is a creation of the Word of God, but the church was tasked with putting the divine word into its canonical location.

The Bible is for our time but not about our time.

The Bible is for us, but not about us. This can create problems when we assume that the Bible professes the perspectives of our age or intends to speak directly to our context. If we assume that the Bible supports Marxist economics or laissez-faire capitalism, the right to carry arms or non-nuclear proliferation, gender fluidity or home schooling, then we are either reading stuff into the Bible (which is bad) or maybe trying to reason from the Bible (which is okay), but either way we are not taking stuff

perspectives and postures related to the Bible. However, I want to suggest that conservative shibboleths are not or should not be the primary marker for what constitutes an “orthodox” or “high” view of Scripture. The main point of contention between the orthodox and progressives is not over nomenclature (inerrancy vs. infallibility) or even symbolic theologians (Ratzinger vs. Rahner), but over the more fundamental question as to whether or not Scripture is normative or negotiable. Is Scripture a word from God to be heeded and obeyed even if it means going against culture (normative) or is Scripture a human word about God to be selectively utilised insofar as it enables us to speak a transcendent word to our native context (negotiable)?

Christ is the foundation of our faith and the centre of the Christian Bible.

The Bible is the enduring Word of God. But it is not the foundation of our faith. Rather, Jesus is the foundation of our faith, as St. Paul says: “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:11). Because of that foundation, we should build up from it by reading the Bible as a Christ-centred book that finds its highest testimony and interpretive centre in him. In fact, this is precisely how the early church interpreted Israel’s Scriptures. Just look at how they read and preached about Psalms 2, 16, 110 and 118, or even Isaiah 53, or Deuteronomy 32.

These texts, in their various ways, are about Jesus. This is something that Jesus himself taught to the two strangers on the road to Emmaus: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).

If you want to understand the Bible you need to understand Jesus. And if you want to understand Jesus you need to understand the Bible.

Michael Bird lectures in theology at Ridley College, Melbourne.

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Editor’s letter Proof that Eternity does not follow a line set by its editor can be found on this page.

Call me a fundamentalist but I have never had any trouble believing that Moses could have written the first five books of the Bible, even if Deuteronomy ends with his death. Michael Bird, takes a different view in this piece.

The reason to run it is that it is important for Christians to have a well thought out and robust view of the authority of the Bible. If you happen to disagree with Michael, or me, make sure you have thought it out. And then give thanks.

John Sandeman

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THE BIG PICTURE

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JULY 2016

Going back for more of the same BEN MCEACHEN The all-female remake of Ghostbusters, the latest dose of Star Trek and another version of Tarzan.

This month, cinemas are again loaded with specific characters or storylines we’ve seen before.

Films frequently must be part of a franchise, either as a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot or novel adaptation. Many of us lament such repetition. We complain that movie-makers have no new ideas.

Box office results, though, suggest we are creatures of a habit we may strongly deny.

The highest earners during the past few decades indicate an undeniable pattern. We, the moviegoers, keep going back for more of the same. According to a helpful assessment presented in March by pop-culture site Den of Geek, about one quarter of Top 10 movies in the past 20 years have been original.

As in, written for the screen. For one Avatar, there’s umpteen Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Jurassic Park or Fast and Furious instalments.

One of the best examples of the franchise effect is the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” (those unceasing movies about superheroes, derived from Marvel comic-books). We routinely return to movies about Captain America or other Avengers because they have become familiar, comfortable, known quantities. Pretty much, a safe bet for mainstream audiences.

The all-female Ghostbusters cast. The movie is in Australian cinemas this month.

This preference for movies we already know is nothing new. As online commentators Film School Rejects observe, The Keystone Cops or Rin Tin Tin had more than ten movies each before the Silent Era ended in 1931. From the Marx Brothers to Charlie Chan and Blondie, Hollywood’s Golden Years were laden with repeated characters or proven commodities.

Although we might argue otherwise, we bring franchises

upon ourselves. This love-hate transaction is similar to how we can deny the stubborn sins in our lives, yet continue to commit them.

Why? Because, like franchises, we operate as if the easiest path is the one through what we know. Even as we protest that we actually want to go another way. But our cinematic addiction to franchises also points to the positive value of habits or routine. Going back for more of the same isn’t, by definition, a terrible

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thing. Have you seen the Toy Story franchise? How great are all three?

They reward repeated behaviour and, to some degree, offer a tiny reflection of the bigger call God makes for us to remember him.

Constantly.

The book of Deuteronomy is an excellent example of God knowing what humans are like and providing a remedy to the sinful ways we forget we are not God. Rather than give his people

instructions for life and just hope they are able to follow them, God repeatedly – yes, repeatedly – reminds them to remember who he is, what he’s done and will do. This call to habitual or routine dedication to God isn’t brainwashing or a lazy ritual. It’s the forging of a pattern of human bonding to God, because God knows we need to always remind ourselves that the better path is to cling to him. Constantly.

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IN DEPTH

JULY 2016

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Where are the godly role models for our men?

STEVEN KRYGER If you are an Australian man aged 15-44 years, you are more likely (by far) to die from suicide than any other cause says mental health support organisation Beyond Blue.

It’s a concerning statistic – as is the fact that 80 per cent of all suicides in Australia are committed by men, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Men are also twice as likely to have a substance-abuse disorder, and will be the absent parent in 81 per cent of homes where children live in single-parent households.

This is an unsettling picture of Australian men – a portrait of disconnection and despair that is true not of all men, but certainly for many more men than most of us would be aware. And as we turn to the church, the concern continues in a less dramatic but nonetheless noticeable way.

For a start, men are less likely to own a Bible, and less likely to be at church on a Sunday. The National Church Life Survey (NCLS) discovered, “In every denomination, in every age grouping, women outnumber men.” In broader church life, many leaders would report a noticeable gender imbalance when it comes not only to church attendance, but also involvement in Bible studies, participation in serving roles, the discipleship of children, and even the practices of daily Bible reading and prayer. Of course, this isn’t to say that men aren’t doing these

things - but generally speaking, women are over-represented.

There are many possible reasons for this imbalance, but I would like to offer one of my own – a distinct lack of role models for younger Christian men.

At last year’s BASECAMP men’s conference, the highlight for many was the interview with Joe Mullins. Escaping death three times during World War II, Joe is now 94 years old and still serving the Lord Jesus with great enthusiasm. Where many men have slowed down and now

spend their days cruising and caravanning, Joe is a tremendous example of what it looks like to keep your spiritual fervour.

His example was a huge encouragement to younger men to see what it looks like to keep running hard: “It was good to hear stories of real men persevering in their Christian lives. We all benefited from the short testimony of Joe Mullins – the 95-year-old man. It was good to hear that there is no silver bullet for persevering in the Christian life but simply living in hope, reading God’s Word and obeying him.”

Younger

94-year-old Joe Mullins with the helmet that protected him in WWII.

Christian men need role models like Joe Mullins. Christian biographer Eric Metaxas made this observation in his book 7 Men: “I’ve come to the conclusion that, in our culture, we’ve skimped on providing role models – for young people especially – and I’m convinced that this is tremendously important. We learn by observing the lives of others, whether the people around us, or figures we observe in the media, or figures we read about. We need to see the lives of real human beings lived out in ways that help us figure out how to live out our own lives.”

Role models are a gift from God to teach us how to persevere in suffering, what a lifelong marriage commitment looks like, how to make wise decisions, how to repent of sin and every other facet of living a holy life.

And yet, living role models (as opposed to those from history) are surprisingly hard to find. This year I’ve searched far and wide for other men like Joe Mullins to share their testimony at BASECAMP. What’s required isn’t an incredible story from the front lines of Burma – it’s a story of joyful service and faithfulness, of men who haven’t taken their foot of the pedal when they reach “retirement age”.

I have asked many pastors and ministers to suggest some names.

I have been far from overwhelmed with men to follow up. Most ministers struggled to think of a single man. Let me be clear – I am in no way suggesting that we

conclude that godly older men simply don’t exist. But if you are a Christian man, let me ask you the question – whose life do you observe and think “I want to be like him when I’m 70?” How many men come to mind?

I fear that in writing this I will appear harsh and condemning – this certainly wasn’t my objective.

As a younger Christian man, my desire was to share what many of my peers have observed, and end with two exhortations for older Christian men: 1. Keep running hard. There are many challenges as you get older – not least of all the pain of our broken bodies that are “wasting away”. Even so, please keep living with a sense of urgency – please live every moment in the knowledge that Jesus is coming back soon! Please don’t “retire, cruise on your 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells”! Please run, don’t crawl, across the finish line.

2. Get alongside us. I know I am speaking for many younger Christian men when I say “We want you in our lives!” Your many years are a gift from God – not only to you, but to us as well! We want your wisdom, your encouragement, your example, your prayer. Will you run this race with us?

And whether you are younger or older, I’d love to see you at BASECAMP next month – join men of all ages and denominations to hear from God and renew your strength.

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CHARITY FEATURE

JULY 2016

A safe child is a thriving child ANNE LIM

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Mandygodbehear

A young couple from a church in the western suburbs of Brisbane recently found themselves faced with a wonderful challenge.

They had begun opening their home to local at-risk children and were attracting between 15 and 20 non-Christian children from dysfunctional families, who came to them, and subsequently to church, simply because they felt valued.

That’s when church leaders for the couple realised they needed some tools including training, to ensure they continued to provide a safe environment where children felt respected and well looked after.

Some of their needs were as practical as how to make cooking with a child safe, while another was ensuring the children could be transported in a way that made them and the volunteers feel safe.

Their church subscribed to ChildSafe, a national Harm Prevention Charity, that gave them tools to build a culture of safety and ensure their home and church continue to be places where children can thrive and grow.

One key product of ChildSafe, a non-profit organisation established in 2007 by Scripture Union, is Safety Management Online (SMO).

SMO includes a training tool

ChildSafe gives churches the tools to build a culture of safety for children. used by about 80 organisations, including churches, schools, and camps, representing well over 65,000 children across the country.

“It’s basically a risk-management programme that has database capability and with that it aligns itself to each state in terms of its child safety requirements,” says Sam Albrecht, Northern

Regional Relationship Manager for ChildSafe.

Recently, in response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, ChildSafe has made its basic training more widely accessible via an online learning training package developed in conjunction with e3Learing, a

subsidiary of Open Universities Australia.

“So SMO is our internal software database system that our users subscribe to, whereas this online learning is for anybody who has an interest in child safety. They can then pay a nominal fee to do our basic child safety training. By doing that they become competent in codes of practice, what abuse looks like, how to conduct themselves around children,” Albrecht explains.

He says a number of denominations in Redcliffe in Queensland, including Uniting, Baptist, and a group called Children’s Ministry Network, used ChildSafe training to start an annual child safety training event, not just for their own congregations but for Religious Instruction teachers and other groups in the community.

“Because it’s church based, they share the gospel as part of that but it is also open to anybody who wants to have child-safety training,” he says.

“That’s indicative of the fact that people are realising this crosses any denominational boundaries and the idea is to raise awareness and change the culture of child safety.”

Albrecht says that from a Christian perspective “our motivation is that we simply

want to see the kingdom of God established wherever and however that happens to be, so if we can lend the values of the gospel to seeing organisations change their culture, that’s a win as far as we’re concerned.”

While ChildSafe is doing everything it can to support groups to meet their jurisdictional requirements on child safety, “our aim is to make places safer for children to thrive,” Albrecht says.

“It’s easy to look at things like the royal commission and the new laws that are coming in place as a response to that and changing community values, but for us there is a deeper sense of wellbeing that we want for children who are being ministered to through child safety practices. They can come into an environment where they know they are safe, where they feel safe.”

Albrecht joined ChildSafe last year from a legal career, out of a personal passion to make sure that children are safe.

“I’ve got a 10 and a 12-year-old and I understand the value of making sure that when I drop them off at youth group, they are going to be looked after and looked after well. That’s where the rubber meets the road.

“When you have kids looked after well, they work well and they can thrive.”

Each month Eternity will highlight a charity from a group that is bringing you this special page.

www.compassion.com.au

OPERATION SAFE HAVENS Can you help evacuate Christians in danger?

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JULY 2016

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11

OPINION

Three cheers for

missionaries

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Michael Jensen’s special invitation Greg Clarke on going deeper

Irene Gleeson, the “Aussie grandmother” who before she died in 2013 educated and fed over 30,000 orphans in Uganda.

Natasha Moore wants to set the record straight

Over at the Centre for Public Christianity, we’ve been doing a lot of research lately into some of the worst bits of Christian history.

The Spanish Inquisition. Sectarian violence. Early-modern witch hunts, and torture techniques I didn’t know existed (see: “squassation”). The casualness with which Crusaders massacred peoples not remotely connected with their war aims.

The end result of such disheartening research will, I hope, be worth it: CPX’s next documentary, For the Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined (due out in mid-2017), will deal candidly with the skeletons in

Christianity’s closet – but also tell widely-forgotten stories about the ways it’s transformed the world, dramatically, for the better.

The suspicion that “religion poisons everything” (as Christopher Hitchens put it) has been gaining traction in the Western world – in exactly those countries whose cherished traditions of equality, human rights, care for the vulnerable and (yes) empirical science have roots deep within the Christian worldview.

As Christians, there’s plenty for us to be ashamed of, and to grieve over. But it’s important to get our history straight too: to figure out which things truly are even worse than we imagined, and

which are much more the legacy of Victorian stereotypes or fictional reimaginings of the past.

Nowhere can this distinction be more starkly drawn than in the way we think about colonial missionaries. One of the people we’ve spoken to for the documentary is Robert Woodberry, a sociologist whose research has been making serious waves in his secular field over the last few years.

Woodberry’s research tracks the long-term impact of missionaries on countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania, and (contrary to anybody’s expectations and everybody’s caricatures) unearths a remarkably robust link between the presence of Christian

missions during the colonial period and the health of nations today.

“Missionaries have profoundly shaped the world in all kinds of outcomes,” Woodberry explained in an interview with CPX at Baylor University, where he’s currently heading up a project to construct a massive dataset of missionary activity.

“They introduced lots of new crops, they introduced the idea that everyone should be able to read – particularly Protestant missionaries – that everyone should have access to texts. They introduced printing all around the world, or where [it] existed already, they turned it into mass printing. continued page 13

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JULY 2016

BIBLE @ WORK

There are brothers in Christ on the inside South African prisons are crowded and have horrible reputations. But God can work anywhere, as Sfiso (inset) is learning through a Bible programme you can help support.

KALEY PAYNE “When you look at these people, they look so normal and so ordinary. But they are the people who’ve caused others a tremendous amount of pain and grief. They are someone else’s nightmare,” Pastor Willy Dengler tells me as we drive towards the Johannesburg Correction Centre, the city prison in South Africa known as “Sun City”. It’s my first prison visit and I’m nervous. But for Pastor Willy, he’s lost count of how many times he has been “inside”.

I’m in South Africa with Bible Society, on a visit to see Pastor Willy’s ministry inside the country’s crowded prisons. Bible Society is partnering in Pastor Willy’s work to run a discipleship course within the prison walls of more than 200 prisons across South Africa. The course teaches prisoners the love of God and offers them a Bible in their own language upon completion.

Pastor Willy offers a number of tips for my first prison visit.

“Don’t make eye contact with the inmates.” “Be aware at all times

that you’re standing with one of us or are near a guard.” “Don’t make any promises: you can’t contact their parents, you can’t give them your phone number.”

“But really, going in for the first time I would just take a deep breath and say ‘Thank you Lord’ for the opportunity. It’s not the place that I’d like to spend another day … but we do have family inside.

You should feel at home, after a few minutes.”

At home in a prison? I certainly hoped not. As only one of two women in a group of about six heading into the prisons’ mediumsecurity section, with thousands of male prisoners cloaked in bright orange jumpsuits, I felt about as far away from home as I’ve ever been and about as inconspicuous as a spotlight.

But Pastor Willy was right – I did find brothers on the inside.

In the middle of Sun City’s “Medium B”, on a quad of dirt, encased in concrete and wire, I met William. I was told by guards not to ask what the inmates were imprisoned for and, on my first day, I didn’t want to know.

William is one of the leaders of the Christian group who meet in Medium B. He facilitates groups who go through the discipleship course together, runs Bible studies and helps arrange a weekly church service in the prison yard. He has a good relationship with the guards, some of whom have done the discipleship course too.

He tells me Psalm 27:10 is a verse of comfort for him. “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.”

“It helps me a lot because it’s about him. It’s not about them [his family]. I trust the Lord more than my friends and my family. I trust him.”

On my second prison visit, to Modderbee, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, I meet Sfiso. He’s lost one of his legs, and jumps around on a crutch under his left arm. On the day I meet him, he’s leading a worship group and he is filled with joy. And yet, he tells me he’s just over a year into a 20-year sentence for hijacking.

“I’m here because I’m a sinner.

But Christ changed my life. I take Christ here at prison. When

they sentenced me, my life was miserable. But someone took me to the prison church and we opened the Scriptures to Jeremiah 1:4-5, where it says, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.’ It made me realise that it’s not a mistake that I’m here on earth.”

For those like William and Sfiso who have lost everything, even their freedom, learning from the Bible is a great source of refuge. And thousands of South African inmates have that same opportunity, through Pastor Willy’s discipleship courses.

Over 8500 inmates enrolled in the discipleship course in 2015 and over 6000 completed the course either by correspondence or facilitator-run courses like the kind William runs on the inside.

You can help bring the Bible’s light to some of South Africa’s darkest places.

+ For more information go to biblesociety.org.au/ gtwo2016

You can help us Get The Word Out to South Africa in 2016!

Each year, Bible Society focuses on a particular country or region.

In 2016, it’s South Africa: a nation struggling with the effects of inequality, more than two decades after the end of apartheid.

Get The Word Out to South Africa has two Bible-based projects helping children get a better head-start, and a life-changing programme that takes God’s word into South African prisons.

There are all sorts of things you, your church or your small group could do to help Get The Word Out to South Africa.

Bible Society has videos, posters and a booklet to help you fundraise. Download them for free at biblesociety.org.au/gtwo2016 (If you’d like hardcopies please email bibles@ biblesociety.org.au to check for availability)

OPINION

JULY 2016

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Why read the Old Testament?

readers, either Edom or Israel.

Perhaps he might speculate as to what the grapes themselves symbolise, for example. His allegorising is, sadly, often fanciful.

But clearly the allegorical way of reading the Old Testament isn’t going to work for us. So how do we read the Old Testament as New Testament Christians?

First, we do have to remember that the books of the Old Testament are part of a great history of the people of Israel. There are some key signposts along the way that make everything cohere. There are the promises to Abraham in Genesis 12; there’s the rescue of Israel by God through Moses and the giving to them of the law; there’s the kingship of David and the building of the temple in Jerusalem; and finally, there’s the exile of the people of Israel to Babylon.

We understand them best when we understand that we are not in the middle of that history – we are living after Christ, of course, and after the coming of the Holy Spirit.

However much things might be the same, they are also crucially different for us. What might be a word to the Israel of the 6thcentury BC will not be a word for us in exactly the same way.

Secondly, to read the Old Testament properly as Christians we do need to recognise that Christ is the key. The history and the promises and the commands of the Old Testament have to do with Jesus. As Paul says of Jesus in 2 Corinthians 1:20: “For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’.”

What does this mean?

Sometimes it means quite directly that the promises and prophecies in the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The servant in Isaiah 53? Check. But not every passage has a promise in it. Before Origen and his fabulous allegories get to work, ask: How does this passage prefigure Christ? Many of the Psalms, for example, come to us in King David’s voice. Jesus is the King in the line of David. It helps to imagine Jesus as the speaker of many of the Psalms.

But, thirdly: while these first two steps are essential, they do not exhaust the Old Testament in its usefulness for Christians today. We know this because we can see how Paul (for one) uses the Old Testament sometimes to speak of Christian ethics, rather than to show how Christ was foreshadowed.

The great example of this comes from 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul uses the Exodus story as a warning to Christians. He writes, “These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.”

The judgment of the people of Israel was a story with a moral for us today. We too “journey” from Egypt to the Promised Land, although our exodus takes place in time not in space. But we too may fall under the temptation that the Israelites fell under, and we should be warned about it.

In the words of blogger Dr William Varner, “While not all Old Testament promises are directed individually to us, the New Testament is quite clear that they are for us.”

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

This is a suggestive answer to the question: Is Christianity good or bad for the world? If the gospel is true – re-connecting people to the One who is the source of true life and the ground of ultimate reality – then it makes sense that the things that the gospel motivates people to do would conduce to human flourishing, well beyond the borders of the Christian community.

The interaction of cultures has always been fraught with the possibility of missteps and lasting harm. Missionaries were at the forefront of fighting cultural customs like foot binding in China, and the practice of sati (where an elite man’s wife was expected to burn herself alive on his funeral pyre) in parts of India.

They worked hard to raise the age for consummation of marriage in India to 12, to stop female genital mutilation, to provide women with education – all efforts that were seen as imperialistic and deeply offensive within those cultures.

Yet on all these issues, the modern secular Westerner would side with the missionaries – as would most or many citizens of those countries today. The complexities of balancing cultural respect and integrity with the idea of universal human rights have not been resolved in the post-colonial era.

Many of these missionaries were utterly remarkable people, who worked humbly and courageously for the gospel and for the good of the people they moved halfway round the world to make their neighbours. It’s a difficult and very mixed history, but to the question “Does religion poison everything?”, the missionary enterprise – according to the data – offers a joyful and decisive “no”.

Dr Natasha Moore is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity. She has a PhD in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and writes regularly for the media on the intersection of faith and culture.

Michael Jensen’s useful way to read the Old Testament At the theological college where I grew up (my father was the principal) the students would have an annual revue.

You know the sort of thing: sketches gently ribbing their teachers, a couple of guys with guitars strumming through a tuneless ditty, even an attempt at stand-up comedy here or there.

One of the sketches has stayed with me since I saw it when I was about 14 years old. It was a pretend preaching class. The trainee preacher was given a verse from the Old Testament, and had been asked to prepare a sermon on it.

The verse was Obadiah 1:5b.

Can’t recall it? I’ll quote it for you: “If grape pickers came to you, would they not leave a few grapes?”

Hmm ... Think about it …

Much hilarity ensued as the poor trainee preacher struggled to make sense of this verse and to turn it into an intelligible and useful sermon. Who are the grape pickers, for us today? What are the grapes?

After all, Paul tells us in 2 Tim 3:16 that “All Scripture is Godbreathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

Paul means in this verse the Old Testament in particular. And notice, he is telling us that the Old Testament does more for us than simply point us to Christ – although it certainly does do that.

It is more than simply context for us. It is a book from which we learn the shape of the Christian life.

So, as Christians, we are committed to listening to Obadiah 1:5b, whatever it says! We cannot simply say it has no relevance to us.

We need to read it as the Word of God which speaks to us today.

But then there’s the problem that

Missionaries

from page 11 They introduced newspapers, they introduced modern Western healthcare, they introduced all kinds of things … and then that has had both economic and political outcomes.

“So, for example, you can explain about 14 per cent of the variation in current GDP – economic development – based on the historical prevalence of Protestant missionaries. You can explain about half the variation in current political democracy based on the historical prevalence of Protestant missionaries. I mean, these effects are huge, they’re quite huge.”

(When asked about the distinction he makes between Catholic and Protestant missionaries, Woodberry notes the more stringent state control that Catholic missions were often subject to, as well as the Protestant emphasis on universal education so that everyone could read the

The Prince of Egypt: the Old Testament is back in fashion on the big screen. the skit I watched made pretty clear: what the heck does this verse about grapes and grapepickers have to do with us in the 21st century?

How is this possibly God’s Word for us today? What would you make of it if you had that as your quiet-time text for the morning?

This problem is especially acute for Gentile believers as we come to the Old Testament. The promises and stipulations of the Old Testament are not directed at us in the first instance. We realise that we are reading what is essentially someone else’s text about someone else’s history. We aren’t Jews. We’ve been invited in to look over the shoulders of the people of Israel at the history of their God and his people. The New Testament provides a lens through which we can do this. But still: we are included in the Old Testament only by special invitation.

So: how do we read the Old Testament as Holy Scripture, useful for teaching? One of the greatest early Christian theologians, Origen of Alexandria (d. 254), gave himself to this question wholeheartedly.

Origen is one of the most fascinating characters of the church period we call “the Patristic Era”. Origen was a determined and intense believer. And he was especially determined to listen to the whole Bible as Christian Scripture. He dedicated himself to philology, and to commentating on the Bible. He also worked out a way of interpreting the Old Testament

so it made sense for Christians.

As he wrote: “We who belong to the Church accept Moses, and with good reason. We read his works because we think that he was a prophet and that God revealed himself to him. We believe that he described the mysteries to come, but with symbols and in figures and allegories, whereas before we ourselves began to teach men about the mysteries, they had already taken place, at the time appointed for them.”

This was his method of “allegorical” interpretation. What does that mean? Allegory is defined as “the representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.”

Origen’s method was to read the texts of the Old Testament in an allegorical way, acknowledging that the texts had a primary, historical sense, but that his spiritual reading would allow for those texts to have relevance for the present day – and non-Jewish – reader.

So, our ancient grape pickers?

Origen would helpfully say “look at the context”: the verse is about God’s judgment on the people of Edom, Israel’s near-neighbours.

Even thieves or grape pickers would leave something behind, but the judgment of God is more devastatingly complete than that.

But Origen might then be inquiring as to the moral and spiritual meaning of this verse, since we are not, as Christian

Bible for themselves. He explains that where Catholic missionaries competed with Protestants, they too became heavily involved in education – and have tended to persevere in it around the world long after many Protestant educators handed the reins over to state authorities.)

Woodberry himself was taken aback by how strong these results were – and his work faced significant resistance from within a field that has tended to downplay or dismiss the contribution of missionaries as negligible or just plain pernicious. After an uphill battle, however, his research on the global effect of missions has won a record-breaking eight prestigious awards in sociology and political science.

Of course, Woodberry doesn’t deny that some missionaries were racist; that some missionaries did terrible things; that some were certainly complicit in the immeasurable damage done by colonial authorities. But as he

points out, if this were at all the norm, we would expect the places missionaries went to be worse off overall than places they didn’t go.

What the data shows is quite the opposite.

What’s particularly interesting in all this is that the positive impact missionaries can be shown to have had is not necessarily linked to their success in converting indigenous peoples to Christianity.

This was, of course, a large part of their motivation for doing things like educating local populations, including women and the poor (so that everybody could read the Bible for themselves); for campaigning for the abolition of slavery (partly because slave-owners wouldn’t allow missionaries to work with their slaves); for introducing mass printing or newspapers (to get the word out).

But their impact on the health of nations today is not restricted to places where local people embraced the Christian faith in significant numbers.

“

Jesus is the King in the line of David. It helps to imagine Jesus as the speaker of many of the Psalms.”

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In my last column I talked about my father as my first hero. I have been thinking about him a lot and about heroes.

It’s natural to admire those who excel but too many of those rated as heroes today are merely famous, and often not even particularly noble. It takes some maturity to realise that glamour is not greatness and that prominence is not always eminence.

Tina Turner was strangely prophetic when she sang: “We don’t need another hero … looking for

something we can rely on, there’s gotta be something better out there.

Love and compassion, their day is coming, all else is castles built in the air.” I agree. We don’t need another hero; we need a saviour.

Certainly there are true heroes throughout history who can inspire us but we usually only define those people as heroes when their great challenges have passed and nothing is demanded of us.

Our federal treasurer Scott Morrison, in his maiden speech to parliament, named anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce as one of his heroes. But I wonder if he had been a parliamentarian in Wilberforce’s time, would Mr Morrison have opposed his hero, using the same reasoning as he has done recently to justify slashing Australian aid?

I’d like to think as a Christian politician Scott would have supported the abolition of slavery but then again the treasury was bankrupt and the slave trade was making a lot of money.

Mark Twain said we often admire and envy those we call heroes for great qualities we ourselves lack. He said if everybody was satisfied with

himself, there would be no need for heroes.

What’s the difference between a hero and a saviour? A saviour does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He redeems the human flaws that cannot be redressed in any other way.

Poverty, global warming, racial tension, wars, and conflict all grab the heart of God, whose compassion has always been focused on the poor, the oppressed and the alienated.

But our most profound problem is alienation from God. The way out of global chaos begins with us being restored to God and to the community we call the kingdom.

You can’t have a personal relationship with a hero. But our saviour enters by a private door into each individual’s heart and mind.

He knows the big questions on our hearts and opens our lives to startling and enduring dimensions.

As the worship song says: “Nothing you can do could make him love you more. And nothing that you’ve done could make him close the door.”

You can’t get that from a mere hero.

Letters Safe Schools is an insult

The ‘evil’ Martin Luther

The opinion piece by Wendy Francis (Monday, 6 June) alerted parents to the Safe Schools program’s objectionable features. My first objection to Safe Schools is that this program is in fact an insult to our fine public schools! I want to remind any parent of all the efforts of our schools in developing their effective policies to counter bullying, with each state using a different name for its welfare and anti-bullying plan.

Public schools had been implementing such plans for 20 years or more before the Safe Schools program arrived on the scene. As well, trained school counsellors have played a vital role. They have classroom teaching experience as well as a psychology qualification and work with students and also with their families. So they are in a position to help pupils with a wide variety of needs and could refer pupils where necessary to more specialised support including those concerned about gender issues. So in talking with other parents let’s speak up for our public schools and the great work they do in pupil welfare.

Stephen Howes, Bathurst, NSW

Luther’s anti-Semitism is not just “inexcusable”. It was utterly evil, in his desire to have synagogues destroyed, the possessions of Jews confiscated, etc. He sowed some of the worst seeds of anti-Semitism in Germany and his words and writings about the Jews were quoted by the Nazis when they destroyed synagogues and stole Jewish possessions.

Calvin for all his learning stands under less condemnation but his strong support for the execution of Servetus in Geneva still blackens his name as far as I am concerned.

Indeed, many of the leading churchmen – Roman Catholic and Protestant – approved of the execution of Servetus and “heretics” generally. (Read Luther’s views on Copernicus!) Sir Thomas More encouraged the hunting down of William Tyndale who was eventually caught and executed.

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, for all the beauty of his Book of Common Prayer (which I still use), had two simple Bible Christians sentenced in his court to death by burning.

In 2017 I think we should be

celebrating instead the gentle, moderate, eirenic, tolerant churchmen and women – the Mennonites, “Seekers”, liberal Protestants such as Juan de Valdes, Socinian and then Unitarian Christians such as King John Sigismund who approved the quite tolerant 1568 Edict of Torda, the Quakers or Society of Friends, and all those who have followed in a Christ-like way since then, and the victims of the Thirty Years War and other conflicts that followed a “Reformation” that brought bane as well as blessing.

(The Rev. Dr) J.R. Bunyan Campbelltown, NSW

Tim Costello on humanity’s real problem

What marriage is and is not The government believes it can create a legal, man-made “open marriage” between any two people for the purpose of including samesex couples. This marriage will be based on autonomy and consent.

The majority of married couples in Australia don’t identify their marriage as an open marriage.

However, the government is demanding that Australians accept diversity, and this includes minority groups such as couples with

JULY 2016

Meanwhile in Australia...

They said not to build your house on the sand... They never mentioned the swimming pool. children in a legal open marriage.

Once civil marriage is identified as an open marriage, then Australians can accept same-sex couples with children from sexual relationships outside marriage or artificial insemination.

The law cannot treat equally a true, traditional marriage to be the same as a man-made open marriage between any two people.

Australians wouldn’t accept our government exchanging our gold for Bitcoin or monopoly money.

Christians cannot pretend that sexual activities are the same as a sexual union (“one flesh”– sexual intercourse – mind-body-soul) to be called marriage.

Our children are more intelligent and can smell a rat. They will recognise this government’s manmade open marriage between any two people will be meaningless and pointless to them. Government policies and regulations should strengthen families, not tear them apart.

According to Prof. Patrick Paterson’s research, an intact family consisting of children living with both biological married parents are the best, stable social environment for nurturing and maturing children to adulthood.

Janine Adam

Thank you From time to time Eternity receives fan mail, and we appreciate the encouraging words readers send us.

This includes notes from churches asking if they can contribute to the cost of the paper. “Please do!” is our response. Last year we ran a special appeal using a 4-page wraparound, and it proved what a poor predicter I am because it did four times better than I thought it would. So here’s a heads up: we are doing it again next month. Please help us get the word out and serve the churches of Australia. By then of course I probably will have found out I predicted the election result wrong too.

John Sandeman

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OPINION

JULY 2016

15

E

Religious freedom is a basic right

This is an edited version of submissions to the Queensland Parliament Human Rights Inquiry last month by Mark Fowler Chair of CLEAR International Australia Ltd, an organisation uniting Christian lawyers’ societies in Australia. The submissions support the right to religious freedom.

In 1983 then Acting High Court Chief Justice Mason and Justice Brennan stated “Freedom of religion, the paradigm freedom of conscience, is of the essence of a free society.”

The right of individuals to formulate and articulate their beliefs, to act upon their consciences and to associate with fellow believers is a fundamental hallmark of a just, open and egalitarian society. In many respects religious freedom is the ultimate test of a society’s willingness to recognise the liberty

klausHausmann

Mark Fowler on how to protect our freedom Religious freedom has been the source of the freedom to dissent. of the individual. I say this because, history, both within the West and within non-Western societies, has demonstrated that religiously burdened convictions have the potential to challenge the state like no other claim on human life.

Looking only to history of the West, from the fifth century bishops mediating on behalf of their cities with the invading barbarians after the fall of the Roman empire, to Archbishop Stephen Langton’s role in drafting the Magna Carta, to William Wilberforce’s tireless efforts resulting in the abolition of slavery in English law, it is the access to and sense of obligation to an “other-worldly” narrative sourced outside of any secular

account that has for so much of history, been the incubator for freedom’s dissent against the abuse of power.

Religious freedom in Australia Submissions to past human rights charter inquiries both in Australia and New Zealand, and I would say the current inquiry, attest to a high level of concern over such charters amongst religious institutions. This is curious.

As Professor Michael McConnell has argued, the very idea of individual freedom and its protection in modern liberal democracies owes its origin to the defence of religion against encroachments by the state. What does it tell us about the proposed

reforms that religious people, with such a long and deep heritage of defending the freedoms of others, carry these concerns? Professor Patrick Parkinson in his review of submissions to the 2009 Brennan Inquiry into a Commonwealth Human Rights Charter found that one concern was a perception of a progressive watering down of the religious freedom protection under international human rights law over time. That protection is found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966 (ICCPR), which Australia has ratified and whose provisions extend to Queensland. Article 18(3) of the convention provides: Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.

The faulty Victorian model It is argued that the Victorian Charter of Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic) effectively weakens this guarantee of religious freedom by allowing that religious freedom may be subject to “reasonable” limitations, thus derogating from the standard of “necessary” limitations found in Article 18(3) of the ICCPR. The Victorian Charter also omits the rights of parents to ensure the religious and moral education of their children.

To adopt a model such as that implemented in the Victorian Charter may amount to an effective withdrawal of the human rights of individuals or corporate entities.

This is an unacceptable proposition for any Charter that purports to protect human rights.

Finding a balance The balancing of religious freedom rights against other rights will be a necessary task of any proposed charter. Importantly, the recently released Australian Law Reform Commission’s (ALRC) Freedoms Inquiry Report, linked a finding of no significant encroachment upon religious freedom to the ongoing presence of exemptions granted to religious bodies in the context of commonwealth laws.

However, as acknowledged by the ALRC, it has been argued that an exemption regime is not an appropriate vehicle to recognise religious freedom rights, to the extent it infers that religious freedom is not a valid right, but merely an exemption to another valid right.

The ALRC thus put forward for consideration the model of a “general limitations” clause, citing the work of Professors Nicholas Aroney and Patrick Parkinson.

Such a clause holds that the right to religious freedom is not unlawful, but for the presence of an “exemption”. It is an equally valid and subsisting right that must be balanced against other rights.

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OPINION

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JULY 2016

Deep reading in a time of tweeting Greg Clarke meditates on the digital revolution

Pezibear

I’m not a Luddite, but I’m not a technophile either. Technology brings us great privileges and opportunities, but with it great risks and losses, too. One of those losses is serious reading. Despite a plethora of blogs, journals and big, fat books, deep reading is tough in the age of the tweet.

But I would argue that Christians – indeed, all humanity – are called by our very nature to be deep readers. Our highly developed brains and contingent imaginations are hungry for input, and we aren’t long satisfied with the tidbits of social media.

Sure, we can nibble on Facebook endlessly, but the reading that makes a difference in people’s lives tends to be the deeper stuff.

Whether that reading is online or in physical book or magazine form

may not matter (although many people seem to have reached the conclusion that deep reading is best done in analog). What matters is having a long disengagement from the world of the senses and real engagement with the world of the imagination.

Deep reading does something to you. Everyone says so: the books people claim had the most impact on their lives tend to be the ones they studied extensively in high school. To Kill A Mockingbird.

Pride and Prejudice. Lord of the Flies. Insert your own school texts.

Why have these books stuck with people? Presumably, because they are often the only time that we have really engaged in deep reading. We had to; there were exams.

Reading well should make you more empathic. We’re not all naturally empathic, but reading should help most of us to put ourselves in others shoes. It should crack open some of our prejudices and enable us to be “more” than ourselves. Reading should turn us into citizens and neighbours, because we escape our own small visions of life.

Reading should help you come, perhaps kicking and screaming, to the realisation that you don’t know everything. In fact, you don’t know a lot about a lot of things. Some of the most arrogant people I’ve

“It is a humbling advantage to sit at the feet of an author and learn.” met are those who haven’t had the privilege of this discovery through reading. It is a huge and humbling advantage to sit at the feet of an author and learn and experience something new.

Reading requires choices. You can’t read everything, nothing like it. And you have limited time. You really do have to choose between TV, YouTube and reading. Or sport and reading. Or sleep and reading. If reading is important, it has to be a priority activity for you.

Otherwise, you simply won’t have time to do it.

So we need to think of reading with more care, treat it as more

precious. It feeds our brains, and so deserves arguably even more attention than what feeds our bodies. It changes us, so we need to realise that we are taking that risk whenever we open the cover (or click on the link). Let’s take risks that are worth it.

Thankfully, what I am saying here is not an elitist claim that only bookish smarty-pants can be truly human! This is not about doing postgraduate study before you can claim to be a deep thinker. The key is diving in, immersing yourself in what you are reading, allowing it to roll around in your brain until things start to click. Slowing down

to process things properly in our mind, soul and imagination. In a sense, what I’m talking about is proper meditation on the word.

We need deep reading more than ever. It gives us the opportunity to understand the increasingly diverse people we now call neighbours.

It stops us from coming to rash judgments on the basis of a Facebook post or YouTube video.

And it provides the all-important sense that there is something more to life than what we see.

We are at the very beginning of understanding how digital technology changes the way we read and think. And we haven’t even begun to properly research how digital habits affect our engagement with Scripture. But that’s what we need to do, because that is what’s happening in the world right now.

Whatever the changes that come, the need to read deeply won’t change. Our unique, God-given capacity for inward meditation is like a muscle that needs exercising, lest it becomes flabby and useless.

Like all exercise, deep reading is a mixture of pleasure and strenuous effort, but without it we are poor versions of ourselves, earthbound blobs when we should be soaring spiritual specimens.

Greg Clarke is CEO of Bible Society Australia.

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