Eternity - August 2014 - Issue 50

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NUMBER 50, AUGUST 2014 ISSN 1837-8447

This is the letter ‘N’ in Arabic as spraypainted on the homes of Christians in Mosul in Iraq.

Many Christians have adopted this symbol on Facebook and other social media to stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters who have fled their homes in fear of the sword.

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AUGUST 2014

NEWS

A life of sacrifice

Obadiah Slope Rip and read: Obadiah doesn’t want to go all Mediawatch on the readers, but he was struck by the story an Eternity staffer recounted recently. She heard several paragraphs of her story being read out on a Christian radio station as an intro to a segment they were doing on the same issue. Word for word.

That’s a bit cheeky, you chaps.

Bible myths: “eve™” brand apples are now on sale in Coles. The “Eve ate an apple” meme is on the shelves but not in the Bible. On the website the advertisers write: “eve™ is sweet but tangy and is loaded with juice and natural sugars”. Well, the apple was God’s creation. It’s no surprise it’s good.

Beastly: Users of the Myki (Melbourne), My Way (Canberra), Opal (Sydney) Smartrider (Perth) and other public transport smart cards have been warned that the police can access records of where you have travelled.

Obadiah will send a small prize to the first reader who can nominate a preacher using this slightly Orwellian development as the mark of the beast.

It’s a swear word: “The Greens block nuclear [energy] for theological reasons,” Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of The Australian. Theology is the new swearword in a lot of recent comment columns. Doing something for theological reasons is code for irrationality. Oddly, to Obadiah’s mind at least, it seems to be used most often by politically conservative commentators.

We stopped the presses to change our cover at the last minute to invite our readers to consider the plight of the Christians of Mosul. In the July Eternity we asked “Does God still care for the Christians of Nineveh?” The ruin of the ancient city is opposite Mosul on the Tigris River in Iraq. Sadly the Christians of Mosul/Nineveh have had to flee, their houses marked with the Arabic letter ‘N’ short for Nasrani which is Arabic for Christian. A special page at biblesociety.org.au/nineveh backgrounds the story, with updates.

God still surprises Naomi Reed Naomi Reed was the winner of the Australian Christian Book of the Year award five years ago with her second book, No Ordinary View. The book tells of the family’s years spent serving in Nepal with the International Nepal Fellowship (INF) and the challenges they faced related to civil war, monsoons, home schooling, and extreme poverty. This month, Eternity asked Naomi about transition from mission in Nepal, to mission in Australia and her latest project, The Zookeeper.

I think the biggest mistake we make in the West, regarding mission, is we think that the people around us are generally okay. There are no bombs going off in Sydney, and the king hasn’t called a state of emergency, and we have access to hot showers and gourmet food and electricity all day long (which is lovely), and therefore, people around us are mostly fine.

No, they’re not, it seems to me. In reality, none of us are fine. Perhaps in the West, we’ve learnt to pretend better. We’ve learnt how to use nice things at the chemist, and our best social behaviour, and have an internet that numbs us. But in Australia, we still cry. We still sit at the doctor’s and hear cancer diagnoses. We still feel a gnawing ache inside us that we’re not good enough and we never will be.

We still fear rejection and pain and the emptiness of not being truly loved.

And in all of that pain and hidden brokenness, we desperately need to hear the good news again, just as much as we ever did. We still need to hear that there is a God who loves us… that he always has and he always will… that he loved us so much that he sent his only son to die for each of us – to carry all of our burdens and pain, and to forgive our wild screaming, and to give us a promise of forever – a place with him, without pain and tears and funerals.

In the eight years that I’ve been back in Australia, I’ve spoken at 350 churches and conventions in Sydney and beyond, and the overwhelming feeling I get is that people are bored.

They tell me that they sit in churches every week, and they hear the same style of 30 minute sermon, in the same medium, and they switch off and think about what they’re having for lunch.

But hang on… the Gospel is not a boring message! Can we not tell it in fresh and beautiful ways? Can we not use our creativity and honesty and vulnerability to speak in fresh ways to this generation about his love and forgiveness? Can we not trust God to work through his story and this pain, in this place, to these people for whom he died and rose again?

For me, after I wrote No Ordinary View, I noticed the boredom around me and I began to pour my creative energy into The Promise, a book of biblical narratives, telling the gospel story through the voices of women in a fresh and accessible way. After that I began performing the monologues at churches and conventions, and even in restaurants. People responded with tears. They told me to keep going, so I did. Then, another opportunity came last year. Scripture Union approached me to write and perform a gospel message for children in the northwest.

So I wrote The Zookeeper, an allegory of the gospel set in a wide open valley, where the animals are known and loved and fed by the Zookeeper. They walk with him and listen to his stories and hear that the one place they can’t play is on the other side of the sparkling river, in the dark forest. Do you think they want to? What will happen if they do? Will the Zookeeper still love them?

Will he have a plan to bring them home?

After I wrote the script, I was buzzing. I formed a team of four, including myself and two other actors and a musician… and together we re-wrote the show and created the music and bought puppets, and went on the road. The response at schools and churches has been brilliant. The children have been sitting enthralled, scared during the dark forest, and overwhelmed by the love of the Zookeeper. Afterwards, teachers and adults have been thankful for the chance to hear the message in a fresh way. I’d love to be able to keep going, to be more available to share in schools and churches. I’d love to write the sequel to The Zookeeper!

But maybe we all need to ask ourselves the question. Have we been overwhelmed by the generous, surprising love of God, today? And how can we share that in fresh, creative ways, with the needy people that God has put in front of us, in the place he has allowed us to be?

Please pray with me.

Love, Naomi. www.naomireed.info

Tim Costello We live in a paradoxical society where on the one hand comfort is promoted as the ultimate goal in life, while on the other we praise people who make sacrifices for the greater good.

Throughout history, people from all walks of life have made sacrifices.

In recent months we commemorated those who gave up their lives on D-Day during World War Two. Our history books are full of accounts of individuals who have made sacrifices for the freedom of others.

From the early Christian martyrs, to those going without food and comforts during the 40 Hour Famine this month, Christians are known for their lives of sacrifice.

But what exactly is sacrifice?

Put simply, sacrifice is the giving up of something that is valued and doing so because of the greater good.

Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice when he laid down his life and paved a way for us to access his life-changing love and forgiveness. And he calls us to do the same.

To die to our selfish wants and desires and live a life that is sacrificial and pleasing to God. In Romans 12:1, the Apostle Paul calls us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice; a way that we can offer “true and proper worship” to our Father. And a living sacrifice is just that.

It is where we live lives for God and the desires He has for us.

Our sacrifice – or the laying down of our life – is outworked not in physical death but in selfless surrender of our wants and needs for the needs of others.

So, why do we live a life that is sacrificial?

Because of Jesus.

We love him – and desire to live a life that is pleasing to him – because he first loved us.

The more we follow this way of life, the more we see how counter-cultural it is. Jesus knew this. He said the road that leads to life is narrow and the gate is small.

Yet true joy is found when we sacrifice our selfish wants and desires and learn to pick up our cross daily; looking at others through the eyes of Jesus.

We were made to worship God. And by living this way we are able to offer a sacrifice that is truly pleasing to him.

A living sacrifice... is where we live lives for God and the desires He has for us.

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AUGUST 2014

NEWS

Need for a heart language

Tragedy of MH17 Kaley Payne

John Sandeman

Image: Hillsong

Having the Bible in their own language makes reading God’s word more effective for Aboriginal people, says Elcho Island elder Maratja Dhamarrandji. Maratja, a Bible translator, reflecting on the use of the Djambarrpuyŋu translation launched in 2009, told Eternity “Some of our people are beginning to enjoy the word. We speak our language - our heart language - all the time. “The Bible is for the heart.

It has to be in the heart language for its transformation [power] to change lives.

“I look forward to the scene described in Revelation of all the peoples worshipping in their own style.”

‘Heart language’ is the term used by bilingual people for the language that describes their deepest feelings. It is usually a person’s language of origin.

Maratja emphasised the importance of bilingual education to preserve culture. “Yolŋu language is part of our culture. It is who God made us, as part of God’s design.” Maratja expressed his disappointment that successive NT governments have increasingly limited the use of heart languages in education in favour of English. Currently Maratja and other translators are working on the Old Testament in Djambarrpuyŋu.

In addition, the “Our Word” computer programme is being used to speed translation into local dialects. Two or three translations of Mark will be published this year by Bible Society.

Blessing and riches different John Sandeman

Brian Houston has never believed in a “prosperity gospel”, he told Eternity at a press conference marking the start of this year’s Hillsong Conference.

The leader of the family of Hillsong Churches that stretch across the globe says “There’s a huge difference between living rich and living blessed” using the Laodicean Church of Revelation 3 as an example of a church that was rich but not receiving God’s blessing.

“The prosperity gospel is… not a term I’ve ever heard used in our church in any context whatsoever,” he says, suggesting the term has been invented by critics.

“There’s really only one gospel: it’s the gospel of Jesus, the gospel of grace.”

“Do I believe God wants to bless his people? 100 per cent. Do I believe he’s come to give us life and give it to us in abundance? 100 per cent. Do I believe

he wants us to just get really, really, really rich and spend all and whatever blessing comes our way on ourselves?

Absolutely not,” Houston told the press conference.

According to Houston, there’s no denying that Hillsong is a blessed church, though he says that’s relates to more than just finances.

“Financially, we’ll always have more vision than resource.” But he says the church, just like individual Christians, have a choice with what to do with the many blessings of God: use it for ourselves, or use it for others.

“Do we spend all that blessing on ourselves and become introspective and introverted with it? Because I think that’s the way to lose the blessing on your life.

“And so, when it comes to personal blessing, I see it the same way. God blesses you to be a blessing… that’s the essence of what we are all about.”

“There is really only one gospel, it’s the gospel of Jesus” Brian Houston at the Hillsong Conference

A western Sydney church is coming to terms with the loss of one of their own, Victor Oreshkin, one of the 298 passengers on MH17.

Victor, aged 29, was a core member of the small Slavic Evangelical Pentecostal Church in Lidcombe, Sydney. He was on his way home from a holiday in Europe visiting family when his plane, a Malaysia Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over Ukraine.

Alex Minchenko, Victor’s pastor from the Slavic church described him as a “quiet, happy person” who was reliable and held a lot of responsibilities in the church.

Victor looked after the church’s PA system, was part of a team organising the church youth group, and volunteered as a Sunday School teacher.

“He was very much involved, and as a person, he was appreciated by everybody,” Alex told Eternity.

Victor’s family had been attending the Slavic Evangelical Pentecostal Church for nearly 50 years, says Alex, who had known Victor from birth.

Victor had been studying a Certificate of Theology part-time with the baptist Morling College in Sydney and was due to start his next subject— Old Testament—this semester.

Principal of Morling College, Ross Clifford, said Victor was known in the faculty for being a “delightful young man”. He had spoken to Victor’s father to pass on the College’s condolences.

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AUGUST 2014

TESTIMONY

In porn’s chains Kaley Payne

The mask Simon was holding up came crashing down.

And it was no longer a secret - to his friends, to his church or to himself - that he needed help.

Is the church losing a generation of men to pornography?

Eternity continues its investigation on the effects of pornography. biblesociety.org. au/lost

struggle with pornography with his new wife, but his main goal was to hide it from everyone, even her.

“It was a part of my life that made me feel like I could never be fully known, or that I could never let anyone know me completely.”

Five years went past, and the extent of Simon’s addiction remained, for the most part, hidden. But he began to be caught out, discovered by his wife. And each time his addiction was exposed, he knew he’d broken his wife’s heart.

“I would promise her, and promise God, that I would fight this, and not do it again. But I was doing it in my own strength, and I couldn’t admit to anyone that I actually didn’t feel like I could fight it. I don’t even think I admitted it to myself, that it was that bad that I couldn’t get my stuff together and work it out on my own.”

Looking back now, Simon recognises God’s handiwork in how his addiction was brought to light. “When we don’t realise how weak we are, God can bring us to a circumstance where we see it abundantly.”

Discovered for the last time, Simon’s wife told him to leave. And, as part of a church community, when your wife kicks you out there’s no more hiding.

The mask Simon was holding up came crashing down. And it was no longer a secret—to his friends, to his church or to himself—that he needed help.

He felt free. “I could meet with people who understood, who could give me hope and who could speak the truth into my life.”

Simon could only find one support group on the other side of Melbourne, and he travelled once a week to meet them. There he found a group of Christian men who gave him

encouragement, truth and most of all, hope. It was also there, he came to realise that God wanted him to get involved in this type of ministry.

“There’s a such a big need, and a lack of support groups in Melbourne for this issue. The church is underresourced too, in knowing how to tackle pornography. There’s a big question about how we can walk alongside guys who get stuck in this, and help them out.”

Simon’s own experience was in a loving church environment, which didn’t “mince words” about the seriousness of his sin, but showed him grace and forgiveness and how to be reconciled with God. But talking to guys who’d experienced the same addiction as him was crucial.

In 2009, three and a half years after Simon’s wife had asked him to leave, she filed for divorce. It was a huge blow for Simon, who cites his pornography addiction as “the iceberg that sank the ship” of their relationship. It devastated him, but he also realised it was time to share his story.

He organised an event for the men from his church to attend, and there he told about his struggle with porn, the pain it caused to him and his wife and the “amazing, redemptive God who brought him out of his deepest pit.” He called this event “The Elephant in the Room”.

Sexual sin like pornography breeds isolation and shame, says Simon. In his addiction he felt like a hypocrite, like he had no integrity. So telling his story served to overcome those feelings, and also to try and jolt others facing a similar battle.

“I don’t know what I would have done, if someone had gotten up in front

of church and said “I’ve been through this journey, so if you’re struggling [with pornography], please come and talk to me.’ We didn’t have anyone do that. But I wanted to be that person, so others in the same situation might have an opportunity to come forward.”

And it worked. Simon started his own group for men looking for help to overcome their pornography addiction.

He calls the group, and the resources he’s developing for churches interested in starting their own support groups, ‘Elephant Room’. With the help of his church, Bundoora Presbyterian in Victoria, which ministers to him as he ministers to others, he leads an anonymous group and provides a safe place for Christian men who understand that there’s something wrong with pornography and are confused and struggling with why they can’t get it out of their lives.

“Freedom from porn, satisfaction in Christ. That’s what the group is on about,” says Simon.

Simon remarried in 2012. He didn’t need to hide his addiction from his new wife; she knows his story and his struggle and now, his passion to help others.

“My testimony is not just a testimony of someone who was addicted to porn and whose marriage fell apart because of it. My testimony is one where I was lost and then I was found. God showed me incredible mercy in not letting me continue down that path. I’m now in a place where I want to proclaim the gospel of mercy and grace and hope and freedom that Christ has for us, and that I’m enjoying.”

If you need help or want to find out more about Simon’s ministry go to: www.facebook.com/elephantroom.info

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One of Simon Camilleri’s biggest regrets is that he never once confessed that he had a problem. He was always discovered, caught out. The extent of his pornography addiction was hidden even to himself.

“But I’ve discovered that God doesn’t allow things to remain hidden,” he says.

Now 36 years old, it’s hard for Simon—or most of us—to remember a time when pornography wasn’t readily available at the click of a button. These days, the average age of a child’s first exposure to pornography is age 11, and falling fast. But for Simon, what started as a teenage, curiosity-driven online search ended up as an addiction that besieged him for most of his 20s.

It was when he left home and started university that Simon’s addiction began to take hold. “I had unmonitored access to the internet and I realised the ocean of pornography that was out there.”

He got swept up in the surf, not appreciating how much it would attract him—or affect him.

“The thing about pornography is there’s no place in which you feel full of it. It’s not like overeating. So, if you have the opportunity, you can look at porn for hours and hours, and there were times I’d do that. I’d hear the birds chirping in the early hours of the morning, and I’d think, ‘Oh my gosh, what have I been doing?’”

In different seasons of Simon’s life, pornography became a place of retreat.

It was where he’d turn to feel better about himself, a place where he would “medicate” any feelings of loneliness, sadness or stress. The problem was, pornography didn’t help decrease Simon’s stress levels; it increased them.

“If you’re a Christian it does especially, because now you’re grappling with this thing you know you shouldn’t be doing, but it keeps sucking you in.”

As Simon struggled with his addiction, he continued to go to church in the suburbs of Melbourne, and even started up a ministry, The Backyard Bard, a Christian theatre company that specialised in biblical storytelling.

His desire to share the gospel was real and strong. And his addiction, compartmentalised from the rest of his life.

But he was also in a long-term relationship and when he was 23, he married. He shared a little of his

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AUGUST 2014

NEWS

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A Bible for the Torres Strait back in their communities.

“This is really just the start of the project,” says Michael Corden. “We now need to get these Bibles into the hands of the people, and to be used.

The Bible looks fantastic and we are thankful to so many who have helped the project in so many ways, and have stayed the course to bring the Bible to its printed stage. It is no longer a Bible that people have heard about.

It is printed, and is available for purchase.”

Bible Society consultant, Steve Etherington who’s also involved in Scripture translation work for Australia’s First Peoples, says, “The published Scriptures will be a huge encouragement to our Indigenous and Torres Strait Island friends who have no access to the extravagant riches of English language Bibles and Christian books that we take for granted in the mainstream churches.”

Every year on July 1st, Torres Strait Islanders observe the “Coming of the Light” which celebrates 150 years since missionaries first took the Scriptures to their lands.

This year they were also celebrating the arrival of the Yumplatok New Testament. “A copy was taken into a men’s prison that day,” says Corden, “where it was the instant highlight of the celebration. Many of the Torres Strait inmates were clamouring to hold the Bible. It was hard to retrieve it.”

Many more among the Torres Strait community will soon have the same pleasure when they hold the Yumplatok

Celebrating a new Indigenous Bible translation, 27 years in the making.

Celebrating the launch is Bishop Saibo Mabo (nephew of Eddie Mabo), Regional Bishop for the Torres Strait, Diocese of North Queensland and Bishop Bill Ray, the Bishop of North Queensland (Anglican) Look on the 50 dollar note and you will see a small church (to the left of David Unaipon, a famous Ngarrindjeri inventor and preacher). It’s the Church at Raukkan, on the lower Murray River in South Australia where David Unaipon’s father James Ngunaitponi and other locals, worked with missionary George Taplin to produce the first published Australian Indigenous scriptures.

Tungarar Jehovald – Extracts from the Holy Scriptures was published in 1864.

You can read a special re-released version at biblesociety.org.au/ngarrindjeri Wycliffe Bible translators are organising a celebration for the 150th anniversary of the Ngarrindjeri Scripture on September 8 at Tabor College Adelaide at 7.30.

Contact: events_australia@wycliffe.org, or call Louise Sherman at the Bible Society office in Adelaide (08) 8292 4888.

Ngkungur ile Godowe enggun winmir, wyirrewarre, ruwe (In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth).

NT for the very first time. Pray that many more copies will be printed so that more Yumplatok speakers will get into God’s word in their own language, and never want to set it down.

You can give to the work of Bible Society as they continue to translate the Bible into the heart language of Australia’s Indigenous people. biblesociety.org.au/rims

The new Yumplatok translation Image: Melora Corden

500 New Testaments in the Yumplatok creole language travelled the great distance to Cairns and Darwin from Sydney last month. The Scriptures took an even longer journey over time, though—painstakingly translated for over 27 years.

When the translation team, coordinated by AuSIL translators, Michael and Charlotte Corden‚ completed their work, the equally careful checking stage began, but on 12th July a special “blessing of the Bible” in Townsville celebrated the finished work.

Bible Society Australia has published 3,000 of the long-awaited New Testaments, compiled together with Old Testament books Genesis, Ruth and Jonah.

Yumplatok is an English-based creole spoken by over 30,000 people in the Torres Strait Islands. It’s one of Australia’s largest Indigenous language groups, and is spoken in parts of northern Cape York, in Islander communities along the Queensland coast down to Brisbane as well as in South Western Coastal Papua.

Yumplatok-speakers have waited a long time to hold God’s written word in their mother tongue. The celebration marked a new era for this language group, and already the word is spreading via Torres Strait media. One person is reported to have said, “Now I don’t need a dictionary when I read the Bible. It’s in my language and it is clear.”

The “blessing” took place during the synod meetings of the Anglican Diocese of North Queensland. Many Torres Strait Islander Anglican priests and elders, as well as other non-Anglican Islanders were at the ceremony, and they will no doubt spread the word

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AUGUST 2014

BOOKS

PMs, bodies and a swindle This year’s finalists for the Christian Book of the Year Award have been announced by SparkLit, an organisation which aims to empower Christian writers, publishers and distributors.

Publisher Bible Society Australia has been shortlisted twice, with Greg Clarke’s Great Bible Swindle, and Roy Williams’ In God They Trust?

Here’s a selection of the finalists: C.S. Lewis and the Body in the Basement

by Kel Richards, Strand Publishing It’s the summer of 1933, and Oxford don C.S. Lewis, better known to his friends as Jack, is on a walking holiday with his brother Warnie and friend Tom Morris. When Jack’s wallet is accidentally destroyed, they visit a bank to replenish their funds – and walk straight into an impossible murder.

A fun, new detective novel by Kel Richards, where the sleuth is C.S. Lewis. A tale with many twists and turns, and with Kel’s unique Aussie humour.

You can read our review online.

Eating Heaven

by Simon Holt, Acorn Press Sitting down at a table to eat is an activity so grounded in the ordinary, so basic to the daily routines of life, we rarely ponder it beyond the simple enquiry, “What’s for dinner?”

However, scratch a little deeper and you discover in eating one of the most meaning-laden activities of our lives, one so immersed in human longing and relationship that it takes on sacred

dimensions.

A trained chef, teacher, social researcher, minister of religion and homemaker, Simon Carey Holt draws on experience and research to explore the role of eating in our search for meaning and community. To do so, he invites us to sit at the tables of daily life – from kitchen tables to backyard barbecues, from cafe tables to the beautifully set tables of Melbourne’s finest restaurants – and consider how our life at these tables interacts with our deepest values and commitments.

You can read our review online.

Great Bible Swindle

by Greg Clarke, Bible Society The Bible is publishing’s success

story. This introductory book is written especially for those who feel that they really should know something about the world’s most influential text but may have been afraid to ask or have been put off by the church or just never got around to it. If your uncle were to ask questions about the Bible, this is the ideal book to give him.

In God They Trust?

by Roy Williams, Bible Society Most of Australia’s leaders since Federation believed in God. Some were serious Christians and very few were indifferent towards religion. In this timely and original book, Roy Williams examines the spiritual life of each of our Prime Ministers from Edmund

Thank you, Australia!

We praise God for your faithful support over the past 60 years.

Since 1954 Australian Churches and Christians have supported 740 Australians serving in Bible translation and support roles in 126 languages, worldwide.

Today almost 180 million people in 1,919 language groups still require Bible translation to begin, but praise God that work is already underway in a further 692 languages for which there is no known Scripture. Workers from the Wycliffe Global Alliance are active in the majority of these programs.

To support Australian members or projects please visit www.wycliffe.org.au.

To celebrate Wycliffe Australia’s 60th Anniversary in your Church or small group please visit www.wycliffe.org. au/60th-anniversary/.

Vision: To see people from every language group living as disciples of Jesus Christ through the power of God’s Word in their Heart Language Member of Wycliffe Global Alliance Member of Bible Agencies Australia Member of Missions Interlink Wycliffe Bible Translators Australia 70 Graham Road Kangaroo Ground 3097 VIC ABN 22 004 705 953 Statistics: www.wycliffe.net

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60th Anniversary

Barton to Julia Gillard. He explores the ways in which – for good and ill – their beliefs (or agnosticism) shaped the history and development of the nation.

Featuring extensive interviews with John Howard and Kevin Rudd, and pulling no punches, In God They Trust? appeals to voters across party lines and excites plenty of debate among believers and non-believers alike.

“Williams is considering statesmanship at its most complex but perhaps deepest source” – Kim Beazley. Read Roy William’s profiles of Tony Abbot and Kevin Rudd in exclusive excerpts online.

See more at: biblesociety.org.au/book-of-theyear-2014

AUGUST 2014

CULTURE

7

How to watch a Christian film Mark Hadley

Numbers may lack the finesse of words, but they’re hard to beat for making a case. The Passion of the Christ cost around $30 million to make. It returned more than $604 million at the box office worldwide and a further $203 million in US rentals alone. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came with a price tag of $180 million, but it sold $739 million worth of tickets. Make no mistake, there is a valuable faith-based film market and Hollywood is keen to capitalise on it.

But for every great success story there is a corresponding failure. Darren Aronofsky’s Noah was supposed to gather in the faithful but its $359 million return on a $125 million investment must have left Paramount wondering what went wrong. Just a few years earlier the indie film Courageous about a team of Christian policemen had received a rare A+ CinemaScore from filmgoers and 17 times its budget in ticket sales. Why couldn’t one of the world’s biggest movie producers get Christians to fall in line? Because they didn’t understand who they were talking to.

Hollywood studios regularly set up meetings with prominent Christians in the hope of engaging their support for faith-based films. But believers are not just interested in having their stories told. Christian viewers look at faith-focused storylines differently to other demographics. For most viewers the goal is escapism; entertainment, pure and simple. But Christians see stories like these as opportunities to affirm what they believe. So they sit in

their cinema seats listening carefully, rather than letting go, and that leaves scriptwriters little margin for error.

It also explains, in part, why faithful people can perversely be the death of a faith-based production.

The last instalment to The Narnia Chronicles franchise illustrates the point. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader got off to a slow start at the box office because Christians were worried about the inconsistencies with the original C.S. Lewis novel. In the end the box office returns were reasonable but the reception lukewarm. The franchise faltered and has spent the last four years in development. Ironically the audience that has most to gain from a production of The Silver Chair put it on hold. But is that because Christians are in danger of forgetting what films are for?

This month sees the release of another tale that hopes to engage Christian audiences, this time from inside the family. Freedom is a movie

by Heritage Films, an Australian-based production house with a faith-based approach to storytelling. Its story opens with four slaves escaping from a Virginian plantation and running for the free North. Cuba Gooding Jr. stars as Samuel, a father and husband determined to fight his way to liberty.

However his mother Adira (Phyliss Bash) is a woman of faith who believes Samuel has to escape from a greater slavery than his chains. As their journey progresses it becomes clear her son is caught up in a very Christian tale. His grandfather came to America on the ship that saw John Newton converted, and the songs they sing, including

Freedom (2014)

Starring: Cuba Gooding Jr, William Sadler In Australian cinemas August 2014

“Amazing Grace”, are Samuel’s link to that heritage. If Samuel learns to sing them for himself he’ll have done more than gained a new song.

Freedom has shortcomings that will undoubtedly concern some. It’s hard to deliver an Atlantic storm without a multi-million dollar sound stage, and a small budget means less time to re-shoot scripting problems. In this case Freedom sometimes struggles to know whether it’s a drama or a musical, and some historical errors have been allowed to creep in presumably to spare the sensibilities of its family audience.

But I think the film still achieves what should be considered its primary goal: it makes us feel differently about a life built on God. Heritage Films operates by the motto, “Movies change people, people change the world.” As Christians we need to remember that change rarely comes through intellectual argument alone. The real value of cinema is how it teaches us to feel about a subject.

The facts of World War Two are readily available at any library, but it takes a film like The Book Thief to bring them home. Likewise Freedom teaches us to respect the very ordinary men and women whose belief in a higher judge led them to do extraordinary things.

You and I may watch faith-based films and wonder at the things left out.

But let’s remember that, in a secular world, faith making it to the big screen is a miracle worth celebrating. This is the question that should be levelled at every faith-based story: does it lead us to feel about God the way we should?

Then that’s enough to be getting on with. A conversation will fill in the rest.

8

AUGUST 2014

BIBLE AT WORK

Zhao, meet Jesus Suzanne Schokman

Image: Forbes Advocate

Ten year old Zhao Yai Han loves it when her grandmother reads her Bible stories, especially the ones about the child Jesus. Grandma Tan Juxiang, 59, was herself raised on Bible stories shared by her mother. No doubt it’s a tradition that will continue within the family, but it’d be even better if little Yai Han and her sister could enjoy Scripture materials made for children.

The pictures and stories in a kid’s Bible really get the message into a child’s mind. Many of us were privileged to have owned children’s Bibles as kids, but the same can’t be said for the majority of children in China’s Christian communities.

Families in rural areas especially struggle just to make ends meet.

This leaves millions of Chinese young without any access to Scripture material in a format they can easily understand.

Social change in modern-day, fastpaced China and the usual pressures of growing up are other factors shaping China’s young—an estimated 239 million of them, aged 15 and below.

Some years ago, the China Daily reported that “two-thirds of the four million criminal cases annually handled by courts involve juvenile suspects.” To stem this tide, churches in China are exploring how they can impart Christian values to the next generation. In many parts of the nation, however, religious programmes for those under 18 are closely monitored, and churches have had to take innovative approaches.

United Bible Societies China Partnership and local churches have prepared Scripture materials and Sunday School programmes which capitalise on things enjoyed by young Chinese. Those under 25, for instance, are avid consumers of comic books, and begin reading them in their teens. The China Partnership has worked with Christian councils in China to produce Bible comics featuring 14 Bible heroes.

These stories and images reveal God’s word to young people in full colour and in ‘live action’. Bible Society Australia aims to help with the distribution of 2,000 free comics and pictorial story Bibles. The story Bible, which brings

Riding on to new horizons

An estimated 239 million people in China are aged fifteen and below.

Bible stories alive through colour and images, is also bilingual. Learning English will be a further asset for the young later in life.

Many churches are also exploring setting up Sunday Schools, while being sensitive to local authorities. The China Partnership needs your support to help set up a planned 165 Sunday School classes. It aims to equip classes with Scripture materials, and to train Sunday School teachers using them.

More than 14,700 children and young people are expected to benefit from these programmes and Bible materials. Reaching them with God’s word while they are young is a gift with lasting impact.

Bible Society CEO, Greg Clarke, has fondly kept the Children’s Living Bible his parents gave him. “My childhood Bible,” he reflects, “reminds me that it’s the work of other people which brings the Bible into a life; in my case, my parents, followed by a string of Sunday school teachers, youth group leaders, preachers and Bible-loving friends.

My first Bible came to me as a gift and that seems to me the most appropriate ways to receive the Scriptures.”

Bible Society invites you to share the gift of God’s word with China’s young.

If you’d like to help shape a generation early in their lives, please call 1300 BIBLES (1300 242 537) or visit biblesociety.org.au/china to donate.

Suzanne Schokman “While I’ll still continue to ride my bike, I will really miss the thrill, camaraderie and community feel of Bike For Bibles that you’ve allowed me to experience with you,” writes Jim Blaxland, bidding farewell to those who’ve ridden with him over 27 ½ years. “Together we’ve had some truly memorable rides throughout Australia, we’ve been challenged, and we’ve had some remarkable achievements on our bikes.”

Challenging others out of their comfort zone is something that’s big with Blaxland, Bike For Bible’s Ride Organiser who’s handed over the reins after seven years full-time with Bible Society, and two decades in a voluntary capacity. He himself set the standard, joining BFB full-time at 63 at an age when many are considering retirement.

He was always encouraging others to ride further, or to give something a go, or to do the distance despite “the ride being a little hillish today.” BFB riders will tell you that’s one of his famous sayings, but they’ll attest that Blaxland stretches others by coming alongside.

‘Jim’s Rules’, as they’ve come to call it, is the strict code that teams followed without complaint on each ride. That included things like “No getting out of your sleeping bag before the morning bell, except for emergencies,” and “Clean the church or school hall before we leave it.”

“I look up to (you) as not just a giant of the road, of the Bible Society and of fundraising, but as a giant of the faith,” writes Bike For Bibles rider David Steele-Smith in an email to Blaxland.

“The thanks should go to you for all the great rides you organised,” writes Con Benikos, another rider. “Without you none of us could have cherished the experiences we’ve had.”

When Bible Society staff were

thanking Blaxland for his many years of leading Bike For Bibles, he just beamed his “It wasn’t anything” smile.

But when presented with a bouquet of native flowers for his wife, it brought a tear to his eye.

“For me riding a bike is an exhilarating experience—the thrill of going downhill, the buzz of a beautiful tailwind pushing you along and all that. But it’s also the great experience of taking in the magnificent scenery, and all of God’s handiwork - and these flowers remind me of that.”

Blaxland has seen a lot of the great Australian outdoors during his tenure.

He’s ridden in 92 BFB rides and has covered 72,324 km on the bike - that’s close to five times around Australia.

Those are impressive figures, but what he’s most thrilled about is how BFB, since inception in 1984, has raised more than $13 million for Bible work worldwide.

“It’s terrific that being on a BFB ride enables people to learn more about our loving God and to be drawn closer to his son, Jesus.”

As he hands over to Bible Society Events Manager Nicky Fennis, Blaxland extends the same invitation he’s always issued—for new people to sign up as BFB riders or crew. Those keen to know more should email nicky.fennis@biblesociety.org.au but perhaps the invitation is best given in Jim-speak: “Bike For Bibles is like a mobile ministry on wheels, with a Christian environment. BFB can do heaps for participants, heaps for other people, the community groups and churches it comes in contact with, and—through fundraising—heaps for those who are beneficiaries of the literacy and Bible distribution programmes.” That’s a lot of ‘heaps’, but you can get away with it when you’re someone who’s done a heap of a lot for so long. Thanks, Bikeman!

MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK Open your hearts and hands to support the Scripture literacy programme as eager participants learn to read and understand the Word of God.

DONATE NOW! biblesociety.org.au/china 1300 BIBLES (1300 242 537)

AUGUST 2014

SPONSORED PAGE

Christian Fellowship Tours

The steps of Paul cruise This holiday, apart from the wonderful sightseeing, really brought the Bible to life. We walked where Jesus walked and taught…and where Paul walked, preached and lived.

We went to incredible places like the Garden Of Gethsemane, and the Great Amphitheatre in Ephesus, we swam in the Dead Sea, and saw the prison where Paul was held in Rome. It absolutely brought the Bible to life!

Instead of just having to imagine what these places were like we were actually there, and they’ve changed so little over time.

On top of all these precious experiences we had a 13 night cruise around the Aegean and Mediterranean seas as we went.

What is remarkably different about this holiday is that you unpack your bags once on the ship, rather than having to unpack and pack up each day as you move from hotel to hotel.

It also adds a fascinating and pleasurable dimension to the whole experience: travelling from country to country on a cruise ship plus seeing the major Christian sites.

What were some of the other highlights? Well, Pergamon, being one of the best preserved sites in Ancient Turkey was exceptional, going to the very island where John wrote the book of Revelation, and walking around the Parthenon and the Acropolis was very special (having had an interest in Ancient History).

I’d read back in school about the ruins of Pompeii and Mt Vesuvius, but to see that all first hand was something.

I also enjoyed the time in Rome after

that seeing things like the Colosseum (the closest I’d been was in the movie Gladiator), and the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Roman Forum and so many other iconic historic attractions.

Seeing all that also gave me a greater understanding of the phenomenal power of Rome at the time of Jesus and Paul.

Another special moment, nothing to do with the Bible, was sailing through the Dardenelles, and recalling the tremendous futility of the landing at Gallipoli. It was very poignant and quite emotional, and I guess any one going in 2015 with the 100th Anniversary and all that would find it even more so.

The other interesting thing is that you got both the history of a place or town by a secular guide who was very knowledgeable, but also our Christian guide told us what happened there from the Bible: it had tremendous spiritual significance. It was the best of both worlds really .

Every day we had devotions and they were very relevant to what we were experiencing as we re-traced Paul’s second missionary trip. And having a Christian tour leader who was also extremely knowledgeable about Paul made such a difference.

This is the trip of a lifetime… and I came back a different person, and with a much greater understanding and appreciation of the Bible.

If you are interested in joining other Australian Christians to learn more about Paul’s life and experience firsthand the places he lived and worked than contact Christian Fellowship Tours to find which of the four holiday options is right for you.

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10

AUGUST 2014

OPINION

The end of music The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth once said: “It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart.”

I have to say that I once shared the opinion of Barth’s angels. My appreciation of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach has been slow to awaken. I remember as a teenage musician seeing his pieces as worthy, but not exciting. They were exact, and exacting – but who wants music to be a technical exercise only?

Where was the freedom, the joy, the heart in his music? The lines of his melodies seemed to wind and twist their way on, and on, and on, without a pause for breath. My clumsy fingers could not ever quite master him. At one school concert, I slammed the piano in disgust at my tangle of errors. Bach wouldn’t forgive me: why should I forgive him?

(As my dad used to say: “last night Michael Jensen played Bach. Bach lost.”) I found the music that grabbed me was played by jazz maestro Miles Davis, or composed by the Russian innovator Stravinsky. This was music with a human heartbeat, rather than the mechanical pulse I heard in Bach.

Or so I thought. My interest in Bach was fired a couple of years ago by a comment from the US theologian David Bentley Hart, who wrote in his masterful book The Beauty of the Infinite that Bach was “the greatest of Christian theologians”. Perhaps I had been missing something vital in the music of JSB, even its very essence. As a theologian myself, I felt compelled to look further into the work of the master.

So, trying to see what Bentley Hart might mean, I purchased for myself a copy of The Well-Tempered Clavier, a book of 48 preludes and fugues. There are two complete cycles of pieces in every major and minor key in the scale.

As I drove myself through a couple of the best known of these pieces, with my lazy technique and half-remembered scales, I found that the pieces were meticulously designed, and intricately patterned – and made beautiful sound.

Michael Jensen

I think I had been taught to expect that music ought to be about something – it should have a theme, or a title.

Whereas, the instrumental music of Bach has no other subject than itself. It doesn’t attempt to portray a landscape, or a storm, in sound. It just is itself.

But there’s more to this than meets the eye: Bach famously signed his pieces Soli Gloria Deo – to God alone be the glory. He was extremely conscious of his vocation as a church musician to serve God and the people of God. The bulk of his work consists of cantatas and chorales to be performed in church settings.

But this sense of the purpose of music was not limited to his church music, which was ostensibly about something, because it had words. Bach once wrote: “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”

That is: even his instrumental music is itself a theological statement. A way of putting this might be to say that his work sings to us of the order in the creation – but also of its redemption from chaos. Bach’s designs test the limits of order. Trying to learn to play the C minor Fugue, I discovered passages of seeming harmonic chaos as the three fugal voices introduce and expand the main theme, before finally drawing to a frantic, whirlwind close.

But of course it is in his choral music that Bach makes his most obvious theological statement. A marvellous new biography by John Eliot Gardiner entitled Bach – Music in the Castle of Heaven (Alfred A Knopf, New York: 2014) offers for us an extensive and appreciative account of Bach’s religious music. Gardiner, an acknowledged Bach expert who has conducted and performed his choral music for many years, argues that the cantatas, which have been unjustly overlooked in the standard analysis of Bach’s work, actually form the heart of his oeuvre.

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

In Bach, words and music form an impressive bond, which reflects his deep devotion to the Bible as a book which can shape a human life and open the human soul to God. The bulk of Bach’s church music was composed after he was appointed as the Cantor of the Thomasschule at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig (we would say “Director of Music at St Thomas’ School and Church”) in 1723. This was to be the post that he held for 27 years, until he died following an eye operation in 1750.

Bach worked furiously in his first few years at Leipzig, composing a cantata every week for some years. A cantata is a piece of several movements sung by a choir backed by a small orchestra.

Usually, Bach’s cantatas involve the set gospel readings for the Lutheran liturgy; but they also incorporated well-known hymns and words that commented on the texts. They were designed to fit in around the liturgy, preparing for and reflecting on the

Johann Sebastian Bach Born: 31 March 1685 Saxe-Eisenach Died: 28 July 1750 Leipzig German composer and musician during the Baroque period. He is believed to have written over 1,120 works and is most known for the Brandenburg concertos.

readings and the sermon. They were an adornment to the word of God, not a distraction from it.

It is thought that he composed more than three hundred cantatas, though more than a hundred have been lost.

How did he find the creative energy to do it? He worked in cramped and noisy conditions, surrounded by students, working with a scratchy pen on expensive paper, handwriting all the parts for his musicians. He had to cope with their idiosyncrasies and limitations (you can imagine him trying to figure out how to hide a lazy baritone, or a wobbly treble), and, as church musicians have always found, with the quirks and complaints of the clergy.

Then he had to rehearse the pieces on a Friday and Saturday, and perform it on Sunday. He then turned around and did it all over again the next week!

Was Bach just a journeyman composer, composing music for his ecclesiastical masters to order, rather

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The end of music [From page 10] than from his own personal conviction?

Written evidence of Bach’s personal convictions is very sketchy. We do know that he purchased and clearly read large and sophisticated Bible commentaries.

He also had in his keeping a deluxe edition of the works of Martin Luther, the great German reformer. As Gardiner says, “Bach’s working library, estimated to have contained at least 112 different theological and homiletical works was less like a typical church musician’s and more what one might expect to find in the church of a respectably sized town,” or indeed, in a pastor’s study. Clearly, he was a committed reader of the Bible and of theology.

And it was more than that, as Gardiner shows through his analysis of the music of the cantatas and the other great works, such as the St Matthew Passion. Bach clearly resonated with Luther’s profound description of the Christian’s experience of life in the midst of suffering and death.

The Christian hope is not given, like a greeting card, as a trite fix to despair.

It is a wrestling of hope from despair.

Bach, orphaned at the age of 12, lost his first wife while he was away travelling and returned to find her long buried. Of his twenty children, only eight survived infancy. In his Christian music, we do not find a denial of the crushing reality of life’s hardships, and its bewilderments. We do not find an avoidance of doubt. Nor is everything simply neatly resolved. But we do also find lines of hope and joy; and we are drawn again and again to the cross of Jesus Christ.

Gardiner writes: “in his hands, music is more than the traditional analogue of hidden reality, more even than an instrument of persuasion or rhetoric; it encapsulates the role of religious experience as he understood it, charting the ups and downs of belief and doubt in essentially human terms and in frequently dramatic ways, and rendering these tensions and quotidian struggles vivid and immediate.”

By all accounts Bach was an ordinary fellow in person, and a bit grumpy. He once got into a mess when he called an inadequate bassoonist “a %&#& of a bassoonist” in a rehearsal – an argument that later on led to Bach attacking the man with a knife in (he claimed) self-defence. His correspondence is filled with complaining about his pay and conditions, just as any of us would. But his musical output clearly comes from somewhere real – a deep sense of the mercy and love of God in Jesus Christ.

Would that the church musicians of today could capture even a fraction of Bach’s inspiration, to the glory of God alone!

Letters

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Love the person hate the crime I have a differing opinion to that expressed by Jim Mobbs (Eternity 49) regarding “Jesus Loves Muslims”, an evangelistic strategy which perplexes him. He uses as an example of what he calls jail evangelism where he states that the message “Jesus loves murderers, and child molesters” would not be used.

Prison chaplaincy and the Kairos prison program does present this exact message.

Of course the crime is not the issue, it’s the people who need reconciliation with God and others.

Also did not Jesus himself offer forgiveness to the woman at the well who was ashamed of her state? He forgave her but did not condone her lifestyle.

May I suggest a fascinating book, In the Land of Blue Burqas, a great read about a Christian lady working amongst people in Afghanistan for five years as enlightening and compelling, where the writer states the critical importance of a God who loves and the power of forgiveness for Muslims ... indeed for us all.

Alison Watts, Haywards Bay NSW

God vs science

Your interview in Eternity with Prof.

Lennox makes his forthcoming lecture tour seem rather unworthy of attention.

He refers to Newton whose idea of God is not trinitarian.

The problem Lennox always has is, if he does not define his idea of God, then there is obviously no conflict with science. As soon as he starts to say that his God suspends or changes natural laws at his pleasure in miracles he destroys any basis for science or mathematics.

Your interview lets him avoid the issues entirely.

Marshall Smither, via email

Naming rights

Thank you for your printed interview with John Lennox (Eternity July).

It was a much needed reminder, not only that science is compatible with the Bible, but that all true science flows from it. Apologies in advance if this sounds like nit-picking, but John L. made an error in one of his responses.

I appreciate it may have just been a slip of the tongue, but unfortunately it represents the tip of a theologically unsound iceberg.

He said: “The original human beings according to Genesis were told to name the animals.” Not so. According to Genesis, the first man – Adam, was told to name the animals.

I’m sure as a scientist and mathematician John won’t mind having this essentially vital detail highlighted.

Stephen Fry, Hoppers Crossing Vic

Too many Davids

You’ve no doubt been pestered by many about this already, but just to be on the safe side – CMS has two David Williams.

I realise this is terribly confusing and my apologies that my parents failed to come up with something more original!

So regrettably, I’m not the author of the otherwise excellent article on page 5 of the July edition.

The other David is Development & Training Secretary for CMS Australia and heads up St Andrew’s Hall, our missionary training college in Melbourne. He was formerly a Crosslinks missionary, serving as Principal of Carlile College in Kenya.

I hope you are well. Keep up the brilliant work you are doing.

David Williams, CMS, Adelaide SA

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When this paper was born on my dining room table I was unsure if we would make it to edition number two. So to have got to number 50 is a cause for wonder. Special thanks are due to David Maegraith who launched it with me and now can be heard on Adelaide’s LifeFM. And to Bible Society Australia who bought the paper when it was still in its teens.

This month we are making a change to how we distribute the paper in country regions.

We have sent out the paper in the largest Australia Print post parcels we are allowed to use, rather than by the large bundles we have used before.

In the face of rising costs we have to save where we can. Sadly this means that some country churches will get less copies than before.

We love to send our paper to the country churches which are often the keenest to get Eternity.

But sending our largest bundles of 40 or 80 copies has been expensive, and is becoming more expensive as more churches sign on to receive Eternity.

Requests for copies of the paper has outstripped our revenue from advertising.

Please give us feedback on this.

Some churches will want to get extra copies. Please email us at eternity@biblesociety.org.au to see what we can do.

Individuals can subscribe to get a copy at home at biblesociety.org.au/geteternity.

John Sandeman

A national newspaper for Australian Christians, Eternity is sent free to any church upon request.

Eternity is published by Bible Society Australia (ACN 148 058 306). Edited by John Sandeman.

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AUGUST 2014

A waste of time or too important to waste?

Greg Clarke social media users are being harnessed for good deeds in the ‘non-virtual’ world. If you have ever been bothered by friends who just have to take photos of every meal they prepare and send them to your Instagram account, take heart. Someone is trying to make a good use of this ‘waste’ of time by minimising the real-world waste of food.

Every time the #mealforameal hashtag is used in a foodie post, Virgin Mobile donates a real meal to someone in need via the excess restaurant food collecting service, OzHarvest - up to 400,000 meals.

Sure, it’s marketing, but it’s doing real good, too (and, no, I’m not getting kickbacks from Virgin for writing this!)

The research done by Virgin Mobile claims that the average Australian smartphone user accesses social media on their device for 14 hours a week. If that average Australian measure was for under-35s I’m sure the figure would be at least doubled. I know teenagers (quite close to me genetically) who would blow that stat out of the water.

This habit is likely to continue, so we need to discipline it and bring social media into the realm of good deeds.

Christians are lagging behind the curve in making social media

Is it timewasting to be on Facebook?

It certainly doesn’t have to be.

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Some people say Facebook is a waste of time. It is certainly a use of time, to the point where some people have to go on Facebook ‘fasts’ to reduce their dependence on its relentless flow of personal tidbits, food photos and game requests. It is now a constant companion to many people, sitting open on their laptops while they watch TV and post comments about the shows they are watching.

But is it time-wasting to be on Facebook? It certainly doesn’t have to be.

In recent years, I’ve observed social media becoming more purposeful, constructive and, in fact, time-saving.

Have you wondered why it is so hard to get through to Telstra or Optus on the telephone? It is because they have moved a lot of their customer service resources onto their Facebook pages, where they will provide near-instant answers to complaints and enquiries that customers post. That’s a great time-saver.

Facebook and similar social media has more potential to communicate information about events, register people to attend, and update them about changes than any other way of doing it. Most news is first communicated now via social media; the demise of the press release has gone unnoticed. And every Australian state now prioritises social media for emergency alerts such as weather events, traffic information and public warnings. For instance, 11 per cent of the entire Tasmanian population is connected to the Tasmanian Police Facebook page.

Increasingly, the trivial obsessions of

useful. We have work to do. We have established some great static pages (The ‘Digital Bible’ Facebook page is one of them, with nearly 10 million people ‘liking’ the daily verses it provides). But we are yet to work out with much success what social media can do to build community, enhance discipleship, promote missions, improve Bible reading, serve the poor, educate the illiterate. Let the

experiments flourish!

Just as the printing press gradually changed Christian lifestyle in the 15th century, social media is quite quickly changing nearly everything about how Christians communicate with each other and the wider world today. We need to embrace it, tend it, shepherd it.

Let’s not waste the opportunity social media provides. That would be worse than wasting time.

Equipping the whole believer to take the whole gospel to the whole world.

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