YVQ: MESSY

A Bridge Stephen Said

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She Wants To Be A Boy Bethany Holden

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Risking It All To Bring Peace Jon Owen

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What’s Normal?

Laura Pintur

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A Place to Call Home Charlene Delos Santos

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How The Other Half Lives Mitchell Salmon

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The Good Aboriginal Bobbie Conlon

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Contributors Stephen Said

Bethany Holden

Stephen is a husband, a dad, and a foundation member of the Melbourne City Football Club. He works in the area of activism and social change as an educator, activist, speaker, writer and community development worker.

He is particularly interested in radical spirituality, incarnational community and the dynamics of personal and social transformation, particularly among the young adult demographic.

Bethany’s professional work is in the adult learning environment. Facilitation, communications, online, face to face, learning design, projects—she’s done it all. One of her favourite things to do is find creative ways to help people of all ages learn new things or better learn old things. Married to Brian, Bethany loves hanging out with baby Ellie and toddler KT, drinking tea, and is making time to learn how to kiteboard.

Jon Owen

Laura Pintur

Jon Owen has been a part of UNOH since 1997. Since then he has been under surveillance by the Federal Police, nearly been cut up with samurai swords, beaten up, strangled, and sent to an immigration detention centre. Jon, his wife Lisa, and their three girls Kshama, Kiera, and Jazmin have shared their lives with people in need and now lives in a housing commission suburb where he gets to see immense beauty, engage with it, and call it for what it is.

Laura is a passionate advocate and speaker against the objectification of women and girls and sexualisation of young people in today’s culture. She confidently exposes the rise of pornography and its ramifications on society. Laura currently travels around Australia speaking to young high school students about the increasingly problematic sexualisation of young people. She has recently appeared on ABC2 TV as a panel guest for the live TV discussion ‘Australians and porn’.

Charlene Delos Santos

Mitchell Salmon

Charlene is married to Michael, and they live in St Albans where they enjoy eating and drinking with people in their community. Charlene has worked in the schools ministry department with SU Victoria for over a decade and is currently the Operations Assistant at Surrender Australia.

Mitchell is the current editor of YVQ, and part of the Youth Vision Vic/Tas team. He is a writer and prolific consumer of popular media, and is fascinated by the ways in which the big stories of our world shape everything we do, which is why his two great passions are the Bible and superhero comic books.

Bobbie Conlon Bobbie is a student studying a Bachelor of Education (Primary), and has been a qualified Youth Worker for 4 years and working with youth in the community for twice that long. She is employed by Bir’a Women’s Healing Ministry that specialises in survivors of abuse.

She is employed as a Community Youth Worker and her focus is on creating a space where young people can come and meet with Jesus safely.

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Youth Vision Vic/Tas is the youth & young adult ministry arm of Churches of Christ in Victoria and Tasmania (CCVT).

The Youth Vision team consists of Kat Deith, Scott Mageean, and Mitchell Salmon.

YVQ logo and design concept A | 1st Floor 582 Heidelberg Rd,

by Matthew Henry Fairfield VIC 3078 (@OakandInk).

P | 03 9488 8800 W | churchesofchrist.org.au/ This edition layout and youthvision illustration by Elise Andrews.

E | yv@churchesofchrist.org.au

Introducing In all my wisdom—what little I have gathered in my short twenty five years on God’s green and blue marble—I can think of no better advice, no more crucial caution, and no more powerful warning than this: Don’t read the comments.

It’s something most of us know, or continue to learn. As the internet continues to take a more and more central role in our modern lives—facilitating communication, education, news, entertainment, and more, all of which we can all be a part of on equal footing—we learn that there are some places on the World Wide Web that just aren’t fun to be, and often those places are at the bottom of something else that we quite enjoyed.

Even offline, we know there are certain topics to be cautious around, because opening that particular can of worms might result in a discussion we just don’t want to have at that moment.

Because everybody has their opinion, and we live in a society that, beautifully and blessedly, allows for the airing of any opinion under the sun. So avoiding the discussion is not really a viable option long term.

So what are we, the people of God, to do when faced with discussions that have real impact on human lives, whose very airing can cause real emotional harm to vulnerable people, and about which we may have firm opinions on ourselves?

This edition of YVQ is about some of the messy questions facing us as individuals and as communities of the people of god, in our modern Australia. We have asked contributors to reflect on the important topics in our world, and to explore not how we can bring answers to these discussions, but how we can be a part of these discussions and bring the light, love, healing, and grace of Jesus.

These discussions are messy. They have no simple answers. They require grace, honesty, and kindness to meet people in hardships and emotional tension. And this edition of YVQ is not an exhaustive summary of every important issue, nor every angle of the issues discussed. This edition of YVQ is a starting point from which we hope that you and the young people you lead can be equipped and encouraged to take part in conversations and sow love, kindness, and humility into spaces where emotions run hot and people get hurt.

So be like Jesus. Take the wisdom of God and speak into complex spaces with a simple message: love God and love one another as you love yourselves (Matthew 22:36-40).

On a side note, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Matthew Henry (Oak & Ink Creative) for the contributions he has made to YVQ over many editions. He has shaped YVQ into the form it currently takes and been a crucial part in how this journal has developed.

With this edition the reins have been handed to Elise Andrews, who we welcome to the journal. We look forward to her contributions to this everevolving publication.

— Mitchell Salmon

YVQ ANNUAL A Christian art journal for young people.

Part of Youth Vision’s aim is to provide creative and prophetic resources for young people and young leaders. And the way we figure it, who can be more creative and prophetic than young people and young leaders themselves?

YVQ | Issue 12 | July 2016

From the Editor

YVQ ANNUAL is a special edition of YVQ that invites artistic submissions from young people across Australia. These pieces can take many different forms, but will be united by a common purpose; to express something of how faith can inspire art and how art can inspire us, challenge the way we see things, and edify faith.

Submissions are open to Australian youth and young adults from the age of 13 to 30 in these categories: Essay, Fiction, Poetry, Photography, and Art & Illustration. The theme of this edition is ‘HOPE’.

For more information about YVQ ANNUAL and submission guidelines, visit our website. churchesofchrist.org.au/ YVQannual

YV Calendar Luke 14 Conference (CBM) September 15-16 Illuminate Camp September 19-23 YVQ Annual Submissions close September 30

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A Bridge Writer Stephen Said

We live our lives in an unprecedented time, in a uniquely complicated place. We face some of the greatest challenges never before experienced by humankind. We experience the commodified sexualisation of the self in the global market that late stage capitalism has created, in which we live our lives in immediately public ways. Globally, we have unprecedented numbers of people on the move, fleeing violence, often as a result of military action Australia’s armed forces have participated in, creating unimaginable waves of human suffering seeking safety and asylum. Closer to home, we have what is being termed a national epidemic of domestic violence. Add to this Australia’s inability to face its racist past, the brutal concomitant effect our current casual racism has upon both Australia’s First Peoples and latest arrivals, and we find a significantly complex multicultural and interconnected environment, one that our God loves deeply and one that we are called to make disciples in.

For the last twenty years, I have been involved in the personal and spiritual formation of Christian people, and the demographic has largely been what churches would describe as ‘young adult’. It is with great sorrow that I find, for many emerging adults, this time of their life is one filled with confusion and sadness. At best, Christian young adults are at a loss as to how to even articulate some of the anger, frustration, and grief they feel regarding what is occurring in and around them, because the communities that have been tasked with the responsibility to nurture their faith have little if anything to say in response to these great challenges. At worst, I find Christian young adults encounter an almost overwhelming experience of shame when they first become aware of their blindness, and they in turn realise that much of their inherited faith, rather than speaking to the issues with courage and compassion, is actually shaped by the broader culture’s racism, egocentric hyper individualism, late stage capitalist over consumption, and violence towards women, and therefore contributes to the problems.

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My sorrow only increases when I meet with youth and young adult pastors in Nicodemus moments when they share their reflections, often for the first time, that perhaps their ministry is actually all about creating disciples of popular culture rather than transformational followers of a radical Christ in an increasingly dystopian world. Their programs are characterised by a fearful individualistic ethnocentrism, placing them at the centre of a faith experience

hell bent on individual growth and empowerment that ironically stunts the compassion and courage needed to transformationally engage the challenges of our day.

Paul scandalously calls us not to “be conformed to the systems, patterns, values, and practices of this world, rather be transformed by the transformation of your minds.” (Romans 12:2, my paraphrase) How does one even begin to understand the systems, patterns, values, and practices of this world when we and our communities of faith, and indeed our theology, are so deeply and unconsciously compromised by them before the task even begins?

One of the most encouraging movements that has occurred in my life is that of missiology transitioning from an awkward and fringe theological discipline in a minority of theological institutes in the 70’s and 80’s to a significant influence affecting most aspects of theological education in the present day. One can hardly attend a Sunday morning church service in an Evangelical church in Australia, or read a recent Christian book without encountering the word ‘missional’.

In one of the most pivotal works, and indeed arguably one of the catalysts for the explosion of missiological thinking in recent times, is David Bosch’s Transforming Mission. He attempts a triple entendre (if that is in fact is possible): the title “Transforming Mission” is designed to communicate three different yet interconnected phenomenon. The first is of course that the activity of mission results in transformation; transformed lives and transformed communities in which missionary endeavours are conducted. However, Bosch’s intent in writing Transforming Mission was in fact to transform the reader’s preconceived and often flawed ideas of mission—the second entendre. The third, and what I consider to be the most significant of movements, is that those who engage in the work of mission are themselves transformed. Indeed, this notion is perhaps most insightfully expressed in the oft quoted words of the Aboriginal activist and educator Lilla Watson: “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

We have traditionally considered mission to be something that happens ‘over there’. Where? It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that it

Where does one begin? Where can we find the tools to see the systems, patterns, values, and practices of this world, often at work in our own lives and in our practice of what we call Christianity, let alone at work in our immediate and wider world? I would strongly suggest that it is again from the school of missiology that we might find a framework that helps us make the transition from a compromised and disengaged people to a people who are deeply shaped by the incarnational boots and all approach of the messiah.

YVQ | Issue 12 | July 2016

doesn’t happen here. When the ‘over there’ missionary is freed from the burden to tell us what they have accomplished with our support, often we find that the person most transformed by the exercise is the missionary themselves. As an outsider and a minority in a strange place, the missionary is uniquely positioned to ‘need’ God and to be transformed by him in ways that are just not possible any other way. Bosch provocatively invites us into this kind of transformation experienced by the rare few, those who abandon the safety and security of church as a place of refuge for an experience of Church, in the words of the noted missiologist Emil Brunner, as an entity that “exists by mission just as fire exists by burning”.

Missiologist Paul Heibert offers a framework known as “critical contextualisation”. It is an approach that requires three interrelated and iterative phases.

“Where does one begin? Where can we find the tools to see the systems, patterns, values, and practices of this world, often at work in our own lives and in our practice of what we call Christianity, let alone at work in our immediate and wider world?”

Firstly, a commitment to 1) suspend judgement. As we begin to become acquainted with our ethnocentrism and the ways in which it powerfully informs our culturally modified version of Christianity, we then 2) examine the biblical material as it relates to the subject at hand. The final step in the process, whilst continuing the first two steps, is to 3) build an interpretive bridge.

One of the most significant examples of Heibert’s framework in action is the book of Acts. For the first time in the history of the fledgling movement, the Spirit falls on Gentiles (Acts 10). The word used to describe the circumcised believers’ response to this phenomenon (v45) is often translated into English as the word, ‘amazed’ or ‘astonished’. However, the root Greek word clearly has strong elements of and indeed could just as appropriately be translated into, the English word ‘confused’.

I don’t think we can understand just how offensive the possibility of the Gospel being open to non-circumcised people was to the original believers.

Their ethnocentrism was such that the thought that God was seeking Gentiles would never have occurred to them. Nor can we fully comprehend the incredible courage it took Peter to state, “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptised in water.” (v47 NIV) What we often miss is the storm that is then unleashed as the Early Church needs to grapple with their ethnocentrism, rooted in their belief that somehow the circumcised Jews were ‘more special’ than the Gentiles whom God seemed eager to pour his Spirit out on.

What follows this event is Heibert’s framework writ large, as the Church struggles to come to terms with this shocking development. We find the community moving between the first of Heibert’s two points, attempting

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to suspend their judgement and searching the Biblical material. It is an ongoing iterative exercise until they strip all of what they initially believed were the entry requirements for new believers until they ‘build their interpretive bridge’, arriving at four guidelines: avoiding idolatry (often not what we think in modern times and indeed worthy of another article), avoiding sexual immorality, avoiding eating flesh from a living animal, and finally remembering the poor and working to ease their suffering. (Acts 15) I cannot stress enough how lengthy, profoundly difficult, and heatedly contentious this process was for the Early Church. However, once they engaged in the task of critical contextualisation, the restraints were removed and we saw an explosion in missiological activity unrivalled in the history of the Church.

This oft-overlooked event in the history of the Church has profound implications for us today. The Australian church is not in a healthy state. All denominations are either in statistical decline or have plateaued. When we honestly dig beneath the surface, any statistics showing an increase can largely if not totally be attributed by transfer growth from other dying congregations, or growth from migrant populations (again, another much longer conversation for another article). Statistics regarding youth and young adult ministries are even more dire.

In such a climate, the default defence is to ‘dig in’, looking to our defences and boundaries, articulating them more clearly and enforcing them more strenuously. Little do we realise that what we might actually be doing is reinforcing our ethnocentric systems, patterns, values, and practices of this world that we have uncritically adopted over time. We continue to fight the USA’s ‘culture wars’ of the 1960s.

What if what we require is a radical engagement and ‘going out to’? I know that for many, particularly those involved in congregational leadership, this can feel like a counter intuitive and risky gamble. But… what if?

I am encouraged that the team at Youth Vision have commissioned a series of articles that will provoke and enable a cohort of youth and young adult leaders to begin to seriously reflect upon the great issues of our day. I am encouraged that they invited me to consider how we can begin to do this. What is most encouraging is that by commissioning a collection of articles that will begin to provoke thought and open up dialogue, they have intuitively hit upon one of our earliest experiences as the Church, described in the book of Acts, that has been succinctly described by Heibert.

A dialogue cannot be initiated unless we take the task of listening seriously. In order to take the task of listening seriously, we need to suspend judgement. We need

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to curb our impulse to respond with what (we think) the Bible has to say and instead listen well. Besides, people are not stupid, we all just know when our conversation partner is simply waiting for us to stop talking so they can start. No one enjoys a conversation with such a person.

As we take the time to listen in a respectful dialogue, then we need to engage in the task of searching the Biblical material. Incidentally, it is because of this kind of disciplined practice a growing movement of Australian Christians has rediscovered long dormant Christian/ Judaic traditions of solidarity and service to the poor, and God’s commitment right from the very beginning to the orphan, the widow, and the alien (or as we would say today, the person seeking asylum).

As we discover for the first time or possibly are confronted with our neglect for Biblical truths hidden in plain sight, we then consider what it means to be the people of God in this time and place, embodying what we have learned and becoming the answer to these challenges of our time. This is the final element in the process, and ironic in a David Bosch kind of way in that we do not ‘build’ an interpretive bridge, we in fact become an interpretive bridge.

If you are a youth or young adult leader, read these articles, then read them again. Continue to think about what you read and then in the spirit of Karl Barth’s ‘Bible in one hand and newspaper in the other’, let the conversation in your head unfold. Don’t stop there. Find other peers and colleagues, and continue. Invite your young people into that same experience. Enlist those in your congregations, often the gentle and quiet ones, to join in on the conversation. Entreat the Spirit that he might help you to suspend judgement and see the world in the way that God does. Go back to the life and teachings of Jesus, the parables he told, the racial and courageous openness and ‘going out’ spirit of the Early Church, and in communion and community seek to become the interpretive bridge that God uses to meet and minister to his broken world.

Come Holy Spirit. ●

Writer Bethany Holden

“This is my best friend, Beth. And she wants to be a boy because they are better.”

I’m Beth. And this was something my best friend in high school would say about me. No, it wasn’t because I was transgender or gender curious. I wasn’t samesex attracted. Despite a dislike of anything specifically ‘girly’ such as hot pink and dresses, and having hairier arms than many teenage girls would be comfortable with, I wasn’t even overly masculine.

I was observant. Like all teenagers I was constantly watching the world. It was a part of evaluating my identity and how I fit in my social circles at home, school, and church.

I observed an inequality. The same inequality again and again, permeating all my circles, all my interests. One specific moment stands out vividly: I turned around in my seat to look at the rest of my Year 12 Physics class and I saw a sea of white shirts in the several rows behind me; boys. Only boys. The only other girls taking the subject were sitting either side of me.

I had started to notice how many male comedians there were. Or, more specifically, how few females. Sport was the same. Women played netball and tennis. Men played tennis, and everything else. The music industry seemed to follow a similar trend. Unless we are talking about a specific type of pop music, males dominate all the genres and all the roles—lead singers, drummers, guitarists, bass players.

So, I figured that girls just weren’t as good as boys. Not as funny. Not as strong. Not as coordinated. Not as successful. Not as good. Who would want to be a girl?

Fast forward a decade and a half. The textbooks that had dominated my life have been replaced by an endless string of picture books about animals and people doing relatable things. A small black dog goes for a walk with five of his friends until a cat scares them away. A child is sent a series of unsuitable animals from the zoo, which are all returned except for the puppy. A caterpillar eats a lot and turns into a butterfly. And all the characters, human and animal, are male.

Wait. That can’t be right. Where are all the girls?

¹ fsu.edu/news/2011/05/06/gender.bias/ ² polygraph.cool/films/

Apart from a smattering of token female characters, the vast majority of the roles, especially main roles, are held by the boys. The few females I can find have background roles or are a mother or caregiver. This is significant because these stories are digested by the subconscious and start to inform young children about how the world is balanced. Or not.

YVQ | Issue 12 | July 2016

She Wants To Be A Boy

The most comprehensive study of children’s books was led by Janice McCabe of Florida State University.

McCabe and her small team examined 5,618 children’s books published from 1900 to 2000 for representations of male, female, and gender-neutral characters. It found that 57% of the books had male central characters, and 31% had female central characters. When the central character is an animal, it is three times more likely to be male than female.¹ Books come to life in movies and films where the story is still the same. An analysis on Polygraph² of film dialogue, the largest of its kind, tallies the number of spoken lines from male and female characters. It examines the scripts of a whopping 2000 films, and while the methodology means that some individual films have minor errors in calculations, the overall results point in the same direction.

Just focussing on Disney and Pixar films, which are marketed to children, 22 out of 30 films have a male majority of dialogue. That’s 73%, or almost three-quarters. It would be fair to assume that the target audience is more or less 50/50 male to female, so there’s a significant discrepancy between the actors and the audience.

Strikingly, there are many movies that, despite having a female lead, have spoken lines which are dominated by males, like Mulan and Beauty and the Beast. Even Frozen, with two female protagonists, has a majority of male dialogue.

The most recent Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, was made by Disney, and it also has more male lines than female lines (72% to 28%). But that’s a huge improvement on the first Star Wars movie released, A New Hope, which has 96% of lines spoken by males.

Finn has the highest amount of spoken lines in the film.

A Stormtrooper who shows empathy for his victims and who ultimately defects from his service, he broadens the

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regular stereotypes for Imperial soldiers specifically, and males generally. Rey has the second highest amount of spoken lines in the film. While she is still the ‘princess waiting to be rescued’, her role is broadened by her competence at navigating a harsh environment and ability to physically and emotionally look after herself. She waits out of loyalty to a family she expects to return, rather than helplessness. Rey’s story arc is arguably the most developed. She is absolutely vital to the story.

So you can imagine what the response was when this character was missing from a huge swathe of merchandise. Boxed sets of figures had Finn, Chewbacca, Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren, an unnamed Stormtrooper and an unnamed TIE fighter pilot—generic characters were included, and not the main character. A Millennium Falcon set has models of the Millennium Falcon, BB-8, Finn, and Chewbacca but no Rey, despite her piloting the Falcon in several scenes. Rey merchandise was available, but as standalones, not in packs with other main characters.³ An eight year old’s handwritten letter to Hasbro regarding the omission of Rey from its Monopoly game became the rallying point for the indignant and the angry.

This follows on from similar merchandising of other movies in the same genre. Black Widow was a significant character in the 2015 movie The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Gamora, was central to the plot in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Both were conspicuously missing from figurine sets and branded clothing.

In the case of The Force Awakens, it was later reported that the toymakers had been instructed to exclude Rey. While the first versions of the products featured Rey prominently, “product vendors were specifically directed to exclude the Rey character from all Star Wars-related merchandise.” 4 It was a strategic marketing decision, based on the assumption that boys don’t want to be given a toy with a female character on it.

Is that true? Possibly. The prevailing zeitgeist continues to be that boys should not play with or wear anything distinctly feminine. No flowers. No love hearts. Minimal pink. No dolls. A friend of mine gave me all her pink modern cloth nappies when her second child was a boy, even though they were physically designed to be unisex and generally unseen. Conversely, while maybe not commonly encouraged, there is no social taboo around girls playing with overtly masculine toys or games.

This might explain some of the anger behind some gamers’ responses to a recent update of the multiplayer

Complaints about having to play black and/or female characters were immediate. Players have accused the developers of forcing them to accept unwanted ‘feminist ideals’. One gamer raged against having “some political movement shoved down [his] throat”. Naturally, responses from female gamers pointed out that they’ve already been playing as men for the past two years.

None of this is new information. It’s not even surprising.

Christendom has a long history of gender roles, where males feature prominently and females, if present at all, are bit roles or supporting acts. Thirty-seven books of the bible are named for males and two are named for females. The Gospels record Jesus telling 34 parables and illustrations, and four involve women.

However, culture is shifting. It’s slow. It’s fraught with debates and arguments and rage over inconsistently priced cupcakes.6 People write articles and blogs and twitter posts, and the internet shakes its fist at the injustice. And while that might seem ineffective, McCabe’s study on the century of children’s books showed that “gender equality is uneven, nonlinear, and tied to patterns of feminist activism and backlash throughout the century.” 7 Historical periods of activism result in changes to representation!

Culture begins at home. I remember being quietly outraged that someone I went to school with would think it was funny for her three year old son to say that his baby sister couldn’t do something because she was a girl. I was angry that she had the chance to be part of breaking down the unhelpful gender gap and didn’t act.

abc.net.au/news/2015-12-28/missing-star-wars-hero-has-fans-asking-wheres-rey/7056480 4 sweatpantsandcoffee.com/rey/ 5 theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/13/videogame-chooses-character-race-gender-rust/ 6 theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/06/the-feminist-cupcake-sale-that-led-us-into-the-darkest-depths-of-gender-inequality 7 gas.sagepub.com/content/25/2/197.abstract 3

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survival game Rust. First released in 2013, it is still in active development and gets updates every week.

Initially, all players played as an identical bald white man. In this update, all players were randomly assigned a race and gender—one that is irrevocably tied to their copy of the game. Because one of the vital game dynamics is not knowing who you can trust in the post-apocalyptic world, Garry Newman, the game’s Lead Developer, commented, “A survivor shouldn’t be able to attack another then come back later with a different gender or race and befriend the same player. They should be recognisable consistently and long-term—so anyone likely to commit a crime would be more likely to wear a balaclava or a face mask.” Like in the real world, where faces are automatically assigned and for life, anyone hiding their face is immediately suspicious. To simulate this, race and gender were chosen for players randomly by the game.5

I was less quietly outraged when the director of a youth camp told two of the Year 12 boys, in front of the whole camp, to stop being such girls when they disappeared and wouldn’t take their getting-thrown-in-the-lake punishment for some misdemeanour. “It’s okay,” the director said. “I can say that because I’m a girl.” I was angry because she perpetuated an insulting gender stereotype, realised her phrasing wasn’t appropriate, but chose to justify it rather than apologise.

Every time anyone of any gender uses gender as an insult, it is still an insult. ‘Like a girl’ is synonymous with weaker, slower, uncoordinated, cowardly, or hysterical behaviour. Conversely, ‘you’re the man’ is synonymous with being a winner or a champion, or succeeding at an endeavour. Even the derogatory title ‘the man’ is a reference to the power and control of corporations and the people who run them. On last year’s International Women’s Day the Sydney Morning Herald reported that there were more men named ‘Peter’ running ASX200 listed companies than women of any name.8

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“Whether it is kindergarten teaching or running a country, how can we expect to get the best result for any organisation if we are only recruiting from half of the population? Biased gender conditioning squashes diversity and the individual is poorer for it. This has a follow on effect for that individual’s relationships, in the home, in the workplace, in the church. Society needs men who are nurturing. Society needs women who are the boss.”

People are watching. After we are consciously aware of how we default to gender stereotypes we can actively re-wire our brains and ideas of social constructs, and enhance our communication, both formal and informal. Our examples in sermons and messages can show women as leaders and decision makers who are respected and competent and successful. Our pastoral conversations can normalise men’s responsibility for parenting and household chores by minimising excessive praise of nominal contributions. We can speak with girls about what they are doing and reading and learning rather than commenting on their clothes and hair and calm behaviour. We can praise our boys for showing empathy and cleaning up after themselves and others. In our house we frequently do some verbal editing to miraculously change the dog or the elephant or the caterpillar into a female character. Whatever you choose, little changes, done consistently, will have lasting impacts. ●

Whether it is kindergarten teaching or running a country, how can we expect to get the best result for any organisation if we are only recruiting from half of the population? Biased gender conditioning squashes diversity and the individual is poorer for it. This has a follow on effect for that individual’s relationships, in the home, in the workplace, in the church. Society needs men who are nurturing. Society needs women who are the boss.

A teenage girl concludes that women aren’t as funny as men. It doesn’t come naturally to her and never takes time to learn the art of using humour to diffuse a tense conversation. The girl misses out, and so do many of the people she comes into contact with over the course of her life.

smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/why-are-there-so-few-female-chiefexecutives-why-are-so-many-ceos-named-peter-20150306-13xamk.html

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Risking it all to bring peace Writer Jon Owen

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Last week we shared Mother’s Day at our small local church. I sat next to a brave young woman who has more courage than most people I have ever met. As a warm up exercise we were asked to think of all the phrases our mums used that we now find slipping out of our mouths.

We laughed as we shared one liners like, “You’ll thank me one day” and “In my day…”. I glanced over at her and asked her quietly if she had one, she blushed and half whispered,“Don’t set him off…”

Our media often over-simplifies portrayals of domestic violence as extremely clear cut, showing scenes where we can see it occurring through open windows or witness it spill out onto the street. It then usually will provide us with a straight forward road map for action. Sadly, reality is never as clear cut.

The muffled sounds of domestic violence coming from behind closed doors are not only sickening, they also possess the ability to make us feel powerless.

I was very fortunate to grow up in a household where there was no fear of violence, which I somehow took for granted. I had friends who, while their family also attended church, were not so fortunate. On a few occasions, I was over playing at their house when their father would come home and summon one of them into a room and begin beating them for a minor infraction. At seven years old I remember feeling so helpless and asking the adults what we should do. Unfortunately, the best advice seemed to be ‘ignore it and pray about it’.

I am so glad we live in a word where it is no longer acceptable to hold the view that this behaviour is somehow okay. Domestic violence is a sin and is never acceptable. Under any circumstance. Full. Stop.

God has a dream for this world (that’s Desmond Tutu’s beautiful phrase for what we call ‘the Kingdom of God’), where there is no discrimination on the basis of gender or nationality, and we are all one in Christ (Gal 3:28). One of the roots of violence is when we cease to encounter others as humans and reduce them to objects that we can manipulate and dominate. ¹ karpmandramatriangle.com

YVQ | Issue 12 | July 2016

CONTENT WARNING: This article explores the topic of domestic violence.

What Kind Of World Does God Want?

Our God is a God who establishes this dream on a foundation of “righteousness and justice” in a place where “mercy and truth go before [him].” (Psalm 89:14 NIV) We who pray the Lord ’s Prayer ask for the provision and strength to work with God to make that dream come “on Earth as it is in Heaven.” (Matt 6:10) This is not the world we currently live in. There is much to do.

How do we remain faithful to that dream in a world that cries out for justice but often demands it in ways that show no mercy and even manufactures truth to suit its own ends?

Demands for justice far too easily turn into revenge and we too easily end up enmeshed in a Karpman Drama Triangle¹ where we seek to rescue the victim by making a victim of the perpetrator and turn from rescuers into perpetrators ourselves. The dream doesn’t happen if in getting there we make it someone else’s nightmare.

So, what are some ways we can we respond as those committed to loving God and neighbour (Mark 12:30-31)?

To this we find that the amazingly simple and terrible complex answer to the problems of a world lost in misdirection, lies, and death is the person of Jesus who is “the way, the truth, and the life”. (John 14:6) Following him isn’t primarily about securing our immigration status in the world to come. It’s also about

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catching a glimpse of the world as God intends it to be and working our guts out make our little patch resemble that glimpse we have been given. It is about taking what we profess with our mouths as we say the Lord’s Prayer—“May your Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven”—and transforming that into action today.

What does the God’s Dream look like?

There are many things that will remain a mystery this side of eternity, but not everything. The Bible does not hide it all from us. My favourite passage, which I regularly read, comes from Isaiah 65:17-25 it paints a vivid picture of what the world to come will look like.

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice for ever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.

No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

They shall not labour in vain or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and their descendants as well.

Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust!

They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

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What a powerful image for anyone wanting to get involved in the front lines of helping the “Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven”.

There is room for so much for us to do; to work for fair wages, adequate housing, health care. This is a picture of dignity and safety, or joy and celebration.

But how? Let me tell you some stories of the journey we have been on.

Stories That Shape Us…

Upon beginning in ministry one of the most powerful stories I heard came from Jim Wallis, the founder of the Sojourners community. He recounted a conversation he had with an inmate of the notorious Sing Sing Prison in New York. The young man was studying theology and was training to become a youth worker when he was released. He told Jim, “the guys from here all come from only about five neighbourhoods. It is like there is an unstoppable train that stops to pick up kids from these neighbourhoods to drop them off here for life.” Jim asked the young man what he was going to do about it. “When I get out, I am going to stand on those train tracks and push as hard as I can to stop that train from going anywhere.”

I loved this story and set my life to joining people like him on the train track. I didn’t know which track just yet, but when I found one I would get on it and push.

About a decade ago my wife Lisa and I felt God calling us to share our lives and the love of Jesus within a community whose postcode regularly comes top 3 in domestic violence statistics for New South Wales.

We weren’t aware of this at the time. However, it wasn’t long before we began to notice a few things. We moved there with our two little daughters into a little townhouse rental in the heart of one of Australia’s largest public housing estates. It soon became Little Girl Central.

There were many imaginary tea parties, mud pie baking sales, and dance concerts. I am eternally grateful this was a good decade before Frozen collided with our world. Still, there are only so many princess parties a person can take.

Amidst all of the joy and squeals we began to notice a deep suspicion of my presence around the house and an uneasy tension anytime I entered the room. I worked hard to make all our guests feel comfortable, but they were reacting to something far beyond who I was. It was my very presence as a male that made them feel unsafe.

I soon found a role working with men who were in and out of jail and were in recovery from alcohol and drug abuse. I would often sit and hear their stories of childhood, growing up in abusive households. One man, on his fiftieth birthday, told me of how he spent most evenings as a child hiding under his bed or the couch if his

dad came home drunk. He told me how helpless he felt as he listened to his mother being beaten up and the deep shame he experienced at not being able to protect her.

He grew up hating his father, and tragically, he also grew up to become an abusive father.² One day I came home fairly excited and walked right into the middle of another dance drama theatre. I saw Lisa across the room and yelled out to her. She didn’t hear me so I raised my voice to be heard. This immediately changed the room. Two girls ran out and another one dived under the couch. My own kids kept on doing what they were doing, they had no reason to do anything else. However, we realised that for the other young girls present that their experiences had trained them to expect something very different than our little ones did. It took a few minutes to find them all and re-gather them in.

We spent the next few years that they were in our house showing them that another way is possible, that there are men who are strong in love and compassion and do not see women as objects.

Jean Vanier once remarked that those who gather to love and follow Jesus are not there as a “solution to the problems of a hurting world, but rather are a sign that love is possible”.

We can all make our households into what the Celtic tradition called ‘thin places’—places where the connection between God and us isn’t so strongly veiled as it usually is. It begins with me and you. For many it begins in a transformed attitude towards our parents and siblings.

The last verse of the Old Testament has a beautiful guide for when the Lord comes; “he will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents.” (Malachi 4:6) So many people I meet want to change the world for Jesus but are still rude to their loving parents, and they don’t see the disconnect there.

If we want to address domestic violence, we need transformed family relationships. Many look at followers of Jesus and want to know if that makes any difference, particularly in how we relate to each other. Let us make our love for one another the hallmark of our faith (John 13:34-35) and not our ability to recite ‘truths’.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” said Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

The people in the flat next door to us soon became like family. Sadly, there was violence in their household. One day while Lisa was heavily pregnant with our firstborn, she saw that the violence had spilled out onto the street.

She ran out and stood her pregnant belly in between two of them, held her arms out wide and yelled, “Stop. I love you both, so if you want to keep hitting her you’ll have to hit me first.” This high risk move worked, even though I would never recommend this story as normative or as something that should be blindly replicated. This wasn’t a random intervention. Lisa had invested energy into building relationships with husband, wife, and children over a few years and hence knew them very well.

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“Jean Vanier once remarked that those who gather to love and follow Jesus are not there as a ‘solution to the problems of a hurting world, but ather are a sign that love is possible’.”

I like the image, though, of a vulnerable woman standing with her hands outstretched, risking it all to bring peace. It reminds me of Jesus on the cross with his arms stretched out wide bleeding for all of us.

Lisa and I spent a lot of time with the family, and sadly the violence didn’t stop. The only thing holding the wife back was fear of her sons growing up without a man in their lives. So we reassured her that if she kicked him out we would take care of her sons as if they were ours. This gave her the courage to kick him out.

Over the next few years we made good on the promise.

These two young men are beautiful and strong and would never hit a woman because they have been raised among strong woman and men who are one in Christ. We can make a difference, if we work together just imagine what we could do!?

Mother Theresa, over three decades ago, observed that it is fashionable to talk about the poor but that it was still unfashionable to talk with them. The same still applies today. A local Indigenous woman once told me, “You are who with whom you eat with love.” A hallmark of Jesus’ ministry was who he broke bread with. We will not make poverty history until we make it personal.

Sadly violence happens in all suburbs across this nation, with up to two women killed a week. The Bible never commands us to seek out issues, but it does asks us to ‘Love God and love neighbour’ (Matthew 22:36-40).

If we are doing that well, then we will find ourselves on the front lines.

So, who are you sharing your meals with? Be careful though: it just might end up changing your life. ●

² It is very important to note that statistically, most men who grow up with an abusive parent do not go on to replicate the violence in their adult lives. childwitnesstoviolence.org

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What’s Normal Writer Laura Pintur

‘Normal’ can be defined as conforming to the standard that is set around us. But what if the ‘standard’ that is being set around us is harming us more than helping us?

I want to focus on four big topics that I think are right in the heart of today’s culture that don’t receive much critical attention; porn, sex, relationships, and success. Are these things harming us more than helping us?

I’m now 24, but growing up these were four of my biggest struggles. Growing up I had so many questions: is it normal for me to do all the porn-inspired things that boys ask of me during sexual experiences, even though I don’t want to? Is it normal for me to feel like I have to send naked photos of myself? Is it normal for me to feel pressured to be in a relationship because if I do all my problems will be solved? Is it normal for me to think that success means having lots of money, going to parties and getting drunk, taking lots of drugs, and hooking up with lots of boys?

What even is normal?

Well I thought that all of the above was totally normal until I was equipped with the tools to think critically.

About a year ago my Mum dragged me along to a talk on the sexualisation of girls. I was expecting it to be an evening of fluffy talk and attempted empowerment (the ‘you’re beautiful the way you are’ sort) but instead it changed my life. The talk was by a woman called Melinda Tankard Reist, who is a trailblazer in this area.

She helped me to see that the culture around me was infused with sexualisation of both girls and boys, and that all the ideas I had built up over the years had been fed to me by a culture that champions success, popularity, and ambition over love, hope, and compassion.

Melinda took the crowd on a journey through media and popular culture and showed us the formative landscape around us that has made so many of us who we are today.

From babies’ clothes covered with sexualised slogans, to blatantly sexist billboards, to Dolly magazine (yes, I got a lot of my sex-Ed from the sealed section of Dolly…), to music videos and how porn is affecting our culture, Melinda covered the lot. I was shocked. But what she said gave me the right tools to think critically about the culture around me; to be an actor within it, and not just a subject to it. All my questions as a teenager were thrown down the drain with one big revelation: there’s nothing 14 | wrong with me, there’s something wrong with a culture

that constantly makes me feel not good enough, not hot enough, not successful enough.

Since attending Melinda’s talk I have had my eyes opened up to how saturated our culture is in these messages about sex, relationships, and success, but most significantly porn. The research and statistics all indicate that we are living in a porn epidemic. But while stats are powerful, it’s the personal stories of real people that are sending up red flags left, right, and centre. It’s the stories of my friends; of the young people who are becoming addicted to porn before they’ve even had their first kiss; of the girls who believe they have to say ‘yes’ to everything sexual they get asked to do; and the boys who think that what they see in porn is normal, who don’t realize that porn is rewiring their brains to see women as sex objects. It’s not the boys’ fault for asking and it’s not the girls’ fault for saying yes. It’s the culture’s fault for allowing it to get this far.

We are all pawns in porn’s game.

I’ve never actually searched for or watched porn. But you don’t have to do that to be affected by porn, as we all are—it’s become so normal we don’t even notice.

We live in a pornified world. It’s in the movies, music videos, advertising, social media, video games... it’s everywhere.

And it’s become so normal to think that we should look a certain way, act a certain way, and think a certain way.

But just because it’s normal doesn’t mean it’s healthy.

This normal can lead us to be something we don’t want to be.

At the moment, we are losing this battle. Porn usage has accelerated at a lighting-fast pace and grown into a juggernaut that almost seems too big to even bring up. But the fact of the situation is that we need to. We need to engage in a conversation with our friends, with our kids, and within our churches and youth groups, otherwise we are going to be outrun by this beast.

One example of a product that is normalised in our pornified culture is the ‘lads’ mag’, Zoo Magazine. Zoo normalises the objectification of women throughout its printed magazine and social media through use of

A British university study compared the language and content in lads’ mags (including Zoo), with statements from convicted rapists. Shockingly (or perhaps not so shockingly) it found that many people couldn’t distinguish the source of the comments. That is, Zoo uses language practically indecipherable from that of sex offenders.

When 1 in 3 girls are sexually abused in their life, we have the duty to ask ourselves what the cultural drivers behind this are. I believe it is in mainstream media, and Zoo is just one example of this. Is this something we want to be normal in our society today? Or is there another way?

These facts and figures are shocking on paper. But they’re so ‘normal’ and ingrained in our culture that we can often not notice the prevalence of this kind of material and how easily accessible it is to even young children. Magazines like Zoo were widely available on the shelves of family stores such as Coles and Woolworths.

These supermarkets were contributing to the normalisation of these things by selling these magazines.

Struck by this, I partnered with grassroots campaign movement Collective Shout and ran a campaign to get Zoo Magazine off Coles and Woolwoths’ shelves. In just a short few weeks the online petition on change. org had gained momentum and gathered over 40,000 signatures from other people who wanted to challenge what culture had made normal. It inspired one Coles employee, a 20-year-old girl from Melbourne, to take action with her union and ask for them to take the magazine off the shelves. Her one complaint, along with the 40,000 other voices of those who signed the petition led to Zoo Magazine being taken of the shelves. One week later, news.com.au reported that because of “catastrophic” sales from Coles taking out Zoo, the entire magazine had closed down.

you name it. They are being fed the lie that they are not enough, and it’s coming at them from all angles.

We’ve glorified the inglorious and given ear to voices that mean us harm.

Yet, in the depths of all that culture tells us is normal there is a God wanting to speak truth deep into our hearts.

God longs for us to understand what true love looks like, and to use the voice that he has given us to challenge what’s normal.

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degrading images and content. It gives advice to boys like, ‘You want to pick the loosest, skankiest one of the lot, fetch her a drink and separate her from the flock’. Not only is the language used to describe women demeaning, but Zoo seems to be actively encouraging its readers to get a girl drunk and take advantage of her.

Through the grace of Jesus, we are able to come to God just as we are, without needing to prove our worth. We can come with our brokenness, our hurt, our longings and dreams and trust that he is bigger than all of it. He sees you as you are and loves you as you are, no matter what you think you deserve or what you’re worth—he looks at you and calls you worthy.

They say that porn kills love. This is true. But what if we were able to kill porn with love. What if the very thing we thought had been stolen from us was the only thing strong enough to us to take back control and actually defeat this monster? It’s a David and Goliath battle. It’s big. No army, no great campaign, no great laws, no great person is going to solely take down this beast, but I have hope that the underrated gesture of love—given to us by God—can ultimately defeat this beast.

Because we were created in love. We were created to love. That is what I believe is normal. We are not objects for other people to enjoy, but we are people called to enjoy the richness of God’s love and the wonderful things he has given us in this world. Love has the power to break chains, set people free and transform the world around us. It will take a lot of work, and it might take some time, but love killing porn? That’s what’s normal. ●

This was more than what I could have ever expected, especially having had no experience running a campaign.

I was blown away by the response from the media and the general public who were very interested in the conversation that had been started through this campaign.

Since then I have now been traveling around Australia, speaking in schools and youth groups challenging what’s normal. Through meeting young people across the country, I have heard the same message again and again. Kids as young as eleven are being exposed to content and images that distort their view of what’s normal. They start to believe that they are not enough—not good enough, hot enough, rich enough, sexy enough…

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A Place to Call Home Writer Charlene Delos Santos

I was born in Manila, Philippines, and moved to Melbourne with my family in 1989 as a 6 year old. One of the first conversations I had with my cousin (who had already been living in Australia for a few years) was “Who do you barrack for?” I didn’t understand what ‘barrack’ meant, but this conversation resulted in me deciding that Collingwood was my team (many of you probably think that was the worst decision!).

But as a 6 year old in this foreign place, all I wanted to do was fit in! So if barracking for a footy team was one of the things I had to do, so be it!

The tension of working out where I fit in culturally continued to play out during my teenage and young adult years. I belonged to a youth group where most of my friends were white, blonde, and tall. I always felt like the odd one out, being Asian, having black hair, and being very short. And of course as a teenager you just want to fit in and be like your friends, so I tried to figure out the brands of clothing to wear and the type of music to listen to so that I wouldn’t be associated with being Asian but that I would fit in with my white friends. It wasn’t that my friends didn’t appreciate my cultural background, I was just a bit fearful of sharing what it means to be Filipino—maybe they would think I was weird; after all I already looked different from them! And as a teenager, all I wanted to do was fit in.

It wasn’t until I was 18 that I started wanting to embrace my cultural roots and became part of a missional community which was predominately other second generation Asian-Australians. That’s where I felt like I was at home—this was my tribe. We experimented with food from our different cultures, we would attempt to speak in our native tongue, and we shared our struggles of being Asian and Australian. I had a couple of mentors from this community who helped me to explore my cultural identity. And within this context we sought to follow Jesus.

In my early 20’s I started working for Scripture Union (SU). Similar to my youth group, I also found it quite hard to feel at home at SU because the staff team were mainly white. I had started there as an intern, and then became an employee. I had grown up with a worldview where respecting your elders and your boss was high priority, and what they say goes. I found myself quite torn because I was now expected to speak up and express my own opinions even if I disagreed with my boss or older colleagues. But this would be considered rude and disrespectful in my Asian culture—especially being one of the youngest on the team! It took me a while until I recognised some of these worldviews and values clashing 16 | within me. I started feeling more at home at SU when we

started recruiting more employees, interns, and volunteers from diverse backgrounds. What a difference that made for me to feel at home!

As I get to know other second generation people from diverse cultural backgrounds, the theme of ‘home’ and where we fit in always comes up. We’ve grown up here in Australia, learning the culture, yet still have connections with our motherland because of the values that are instilled in us from our family and relatives. We are trying to juggle different worldviews, because we don’t quite fit into a single culture. We’re trying to work out who we are and where we belong.

God’s Work Of Bringing Cultures Together

In Revelation 7:9 (NIV) we are painted this picture: “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.”

Here we read that God is bringing people of different cultures, nations, and tongues together. I can’t help but question whether the spaces that we gather reflect this picture. Now as a 32 year old, whenever I go to a conference or a training event or a meeting, my eyes always scan for people of colour. I have the same longing as I did growing up—am I welcome here? Do I feel at home?

Am I welcome to express my culture?

Here in Australia we have an amazing opportunity and challenge, for the Church to reflect the picture of diversity and join in what God is doing! We are blessed to have so many cultures represented here in Australia. Yet we are also challenged as racism and prejudice stream through our screens and streets. I think we are afraid of those who are different from us—we are afraid of ‘the other’.

We only need to delve into our short history and see the hurt and pain from our Indigenous brothers and sisters. I have only recently begun the journey of trying to understand some of this myself, as I get to know and make friends with Indigenous people and look into our racial history. I have visited the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, and was really upset at the decisions that our government has made that marginalised people of colour (and what our government continues to do!). We still have a long way to go, but I believe we are in a unique time where we can journey with God in bringing about people from different cultures, eating, and celebrating together!

Creating Space

All around, there are groups creating spaces for people from diverse cultural backgrounds to come together and learn from each other.

Syndal Baptist Church is made up of people from over 50 cultural backgrounds. In the 70s a Vietnamese congregation was formed as part of the church, and then over 15 years ago a Chinese congregation joined.

Many questions came about in regards to whether these monocultural migrant ethnic congregations had a future. With this challenge, the church has embraced a multicultural vision and has been thoughtful in how to integrate people of different cultural backgrounds and to especially think about the second generation children and young people.

They have encouraged people from non English speaking backgrounds to develop their own ministries, they recognise different social behaviours and approaches of AustralianChinese children and have adapted their Sunday School, and more and more they are seeing an integration of several cultures in their children, youth, and young adult ministries.

Praxis is a network of Christian youth work practitioners and deliver a Diploma in Youth Work in partnership with churches and organisations. One of their aims is to develop culturally intelligent youth workers.

I have seen their students delve into their cultural roots, explore why culture is important, visit and learn from an Indigenous community, and reflect on their own journey.

Surrender Australia seeks to have Indigenous Australians be a core of and central voice at their conferences and events. They create a unique space where the wider church can hear and learn from our Indigenous brothers and sisters and those on the margins. A highlight of the Melbourne conference is Indigenous Night, where we

hear from Indigenous elders and leaders share what God is doing in their communities. There are very few spaces where over a hundred Indigenous people from all over Australia gathers with the wider church and have their voices heard.

These are just some of the stories from groups who see the importance of culture and seek to cultivate and celebrate diversity.

Cultural Intelligence

The more we recognise the call to build faith communities that embraces the diversity of cultures, the more we realise our need to build on our cultural intelligence and competency. Soong-Chan Rah writes that “cultural intelligence requires delving deeper into the biblical, theological, cultural and sociological issues as well as understanding the practical element of cross-cultural ministry.” It requires us to look at ourselves, our history, and our prejudices. It requires us to think creatively about how we make room for people to make connections and seek to understand each other.

Here are some questions and ideas to explore with your church as you seek to move towards the vision painted in Revelation. → As you explore some of these questions and ideas within your church community, my hope is that you will become more aware of young people with a similar story to mine; that you will take up the challenge to walk alongside cultural groups who are at the fringes of your church, community, and gatherings; that you will be more sensitive to individuals and groups who are seeking to be heard and to find their sense of home. I look forward to hearing more stories that reflect what God is doing as he brings people from every nation, tribe, people, and language together to ultimately find their home in him. ●

Leadership Get a trainer to come in and help your leadership team to reflect on culture.

Reflect on your team make up, attitudes, systems and structures, and what barriers might there be for people from other cultures to participate in the life of the church. Do your systems and decision-making processes encourage participation, oppress others, or create barriers for people to participate?

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“I think we are afraid of those who are different from us—we are afraid of ‘the other’.”

Who holds the power in your church to make decisions?

Read up on books on cultural intelligence. Soong-Chan Rah’s book Many Colors is a good start!

Hospitality and Gatherings What type of meeting and gathering spaces do you create? What do you eat and how do you celebrate when you gather?

Do you acknowledge the traditional owners of the land when you gather? How much does your church community know about the Indigenous people and land where you gather?

Reflect on your local community What cultures are represented in your community? What do you know/don’t know?

Does your youth ministry reflect your local community? Are you and your young people in spaces where you are getting to know people of other cultures?

Personal Journey What prejudices might you be holding within yourself that God needs to bring to light and work on?

What journey have you taken in understanding your own cultural tale?

What have you done to understand the journey of our Indigenous people?

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How The Other Half Lives Writer Mitchell Salmon

CONTENT WARNING: This article explores topics of sexual harassment and sexual abuse.

Elrond was in trouble. He had a bunch of thugs breathing down his neck, wishing him violent ill-will. Luckily for Elrond, I—his faithful and benevolent Game Master—sent help in the form of veteran Shadowrunner Abby Road pulling up in a stolen car.

Tabletop Role Playing Games like Shadowrun are board games taken to the next level. They require players to act out stories as their characters, such as Elrond, with dice deciding the outcomes of decisions, and a Game Master acting as all the characters who aren’t players. As the Game Master, I immediately stepped into the combat boots and ripped tights of vampire-hunting, spell-slinging, computer-hacking, shotgun-wielding, Brit-punkinspired Abby Road.

“Come with me if you want to live,” I had Abby say, even giving her a moment to comment on the awesomeness of the reference.

Elrond winked in return. “I’d follow you anywhere, baby.”

Around the gaming table, we all chuckled. Alright, the player was playing an unpleasant character. Acting in character is a crucial part of tabletop RPGs. So, as Abby, I treated the player to a stony silence, describing a contemptuous flick of my (Abby’s) multi-coloured, long-and-undercut hair. “Oh,” said Elrond’s player knowingly. “I bet she’s a lesbian.”

I had been a woman all of eighty seconds at that point, and had already experienced an unwelcome sexual advance and had my sexuality questioned on the basis of my appearance.

I don’t say any of this to take a shot at my mate playing Elrond—he was acting as a character he does not respect—but the attitudes displayed by his character are illustrative. Sexism is real. And it’s everywhere.

The Huffington Post created a video at the end of 2015 called 48 Things Women Hear In A Lifetime (That Men Just Don’t).1 In this video, a collection of diverse women, ranging in age from early childhood to seniors, recite comments that resonate as common—or at least not overtly odd or even uncomfortable—things to say to

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women. The tagline is, “Watch 80 years of subtle sexism in under two minutes.”

“Your dad will have to chase the boys away when you’re older,” a young girl says. “You look so pretty,” says the next girl. “Oh, you like video games? The boys must love that,” says another.

The quotes continue and the women speaking age. Soon the comments begin to relate to sex, relationships, alcohol, food. The final comment is from an older woman saying, “You must have been beautiful when you were younger.”

The things that are striking are two-fold. So many of the comments levelled at these women—with themes repeating at every stage of life—are based on appearance, sexuality, and relationships. And the second point explains the first: most of the comments frame the woman in relation to a man or men.

We live in a society that is, unofficially and sometimes unnoticeably, patriarchal. A patriarchy is a “social organisation marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly, control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.” 2 In patriarchal systems, women only exist, have worth, have purpose, in relationship to men. These male-dominated attitudes are all through the statements in the Huffington Post’s video. They position women to be defined by their relationships with males, whether that is to their husband, boyfriend, father, potential partner, or friend. A young woman’s interest in video games should have exactly zero connection to even the concept of romantic relationship; she’s there to kick ass at Call of Duty, not impress a boy.

A useful tool in the toolbox of gender-based critical thinking is known as the ‘Male Gaze’. This conceptual device invites the user to consider how women are positioned in different settings for the benefit not of themselves but of men. Turn your attention to advertising, media, film, and fiction and view each of these through a critical lens that questions how women are positioned—in physicality,

2

1 youtu.be/9yMFw_vWboE merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriarchy

Twitter user @mamzellBoo tweeted, “#WhenIWas 16, a guy grabbed and crushed my breast in the downtown.

When I told it to my sis, she asked what kind of shirt I wore that day.” 6

When so much of what it commonly means to be a woman is attached in some way to the approval or dispensation of men, it is no surprise that this begins to feed into a system of privilege experienced by men. And this privilege begins to dramatically affect how many men interact with women.

It is so common for victims of rape, sexual assault, or sexual harassment to be implicated in causing the crime.

What possible bearing could this woman’s shirt have on that unnamed man’s decision to touch her breast without consent? Did that man construe that—hypothetically—a low cut top was somehow an invitation for physical contact?

Twitter user @ohmytasha tweeted, “#WhenIWas 13 my male math teacher told me I didn’t need to learn geometry because I already had such good curves.” 4 This tweet was part of the explosion of the hashtag #WhenIWas, which has been used by women (and some men) on Twitter to share their stories of sexual harassment, ranging from disgusting comments (above) to rape and ongoing sexual abuse. (PLEASE NOTE: Browsing the hashtag is not an easy read) We live in a culture where a small minority of men think it is okay to force a woman into sexual activity without her consent. They are part of a larger minority that consciously believes that women owe them love or sex or attention or even just the simple pleasure of being attractive because that is what women do for men.

In 2014 a young man named Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen more in a mass shooting in California. After his death, videos of Rodger emerged in which he expressed frustration with the fact that no woman would date him, which contributed to his premeditated killing spree. In his opinion, it was somehow ‘unfair’ that he was a virgin at 22. Even more disturbingly, this sentiment garnered a certain amount of sympathy from minority elements of the YouTube comments section.5

All women are taught, explicitly and implicitly, that their sexual safety is in their own hands. They should make conscious choices to ensure they are not wearing provocative clothing or to avoid situations where rape or sexual assault is likely to happen, when in reality the blame for rape rests entirely with the rapist.

YVQ | Issue 12 | July 2016

sexuality, appearance, and role—and you begin to see that the male gaze informs most of what we take for normal. Watch how female superheroes and action movie stars pose in posters compared to their male peers.3

Rape, sexual assault, or sexual harassment is never the victim’s fault, no matter what kind of clothes they might wear. To borrow from comedian John Oliver, “Here’s a fun game: insert any other crime into [comments that blame the victims of sexual crimes]. Listen guys, if you don’t want to get burgled, don’t live in a house.” 7 We live in a culture that is quicker to tell women not to get raped than to tell men not to rape.

When we teach women to wear or not wear particular clothes to avoid sexual violence or harassment—to not look like they are ‘asking for it’—or when we teach women to never put down their drink at a party because they don’t know who could put what in it, we are telling women that they live in a world where rape is inevitable and the only thing to do is to take steps to avoid it. And I refuse to be okay with that world.

There are men who assume that women exist to love them. There are men who believe that women serve no purpose but to be their lover, wife, mother of their children, or smoking hot trophy. In this twisted perception of what human relationships (romantic or not) are created

by God to be, it is no surprise that rape happens.

Twitter user @jgrnl77 tweeted, “#WhenIWas in first grade my friends and I were told not to play on the jungle gym if wearing dresses, because boys might look up our skirts.” 8 Here she and her friends are instructed to change their behaviour and curtail their own enjoyment of the schoolyard play equipment due to the actions and attitudes of the boys. The victims are punished for the actions of the perpetrators.

What is even more horrifying is how often discussion about rape and rape culture turns into victim blaming.

Victim blaming is the phenomenon of considering the victim of a transgression to be part of, or the sole cause of the crime.

Of course, an easy response to such a story is ‘boys will be boys’. But this is the cornerstone of the problem; what does that say about what a boy is? Have we developed a culture in our men where rape, sexual harassment, and peeking up the girls’ skirts is wearily expected?

i.imgur.com/16yGO.jpg twitter.com/ohmytasha/status/722377511573839872?s=09 5 vox.com/2014/5/25/5749480/why-yesallwomen-is-the-most-important-thing-youll-read-today 6 twitter.com/mamzellBoo/status/729778151186927616?s=09 7 youtu.be/PuNIwYsz7PI — Language warning.

8 twitter.com/jgrnl77/status/730550268035616768?s=09 3 4

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When the Huffington Post released the video outlined above, a huge amount of the feedback was men (and some women) angrily pointing out that men, too, hear a lifetime’s worth of coded and uncoded sexist comments—as a reflection of this outrage, at time of writing the first video has five thousand upvotes on YouTube, and six thousand downvotes. Huffington Post then produced a video entitled 48 Things Men Hear In A Lifetime (That Are Bad For Everyone).9 Because here’s the thing: men experience sexism too.

Every day, men are bombarded with messages that tell them that to qualify as men, they need to do certain things, act a certain way, fulfil certain roles. Sexism against men is real, and it’s everywhere.

But sexism does not ‘go both ways’. Many men will talk about experiences of having their male-ness impact on people’s perception of them. But this is not some kind of ‘reverse sexism’ whereby women enact revenge for their mistreatment over thousands of years. This is the exact same sexism that tells women that they are only valued for their aesthetic qualities.

Sexism comes from ascribing gendered norms to people.

Women should be pretty. Women should wear make up. Women should avoid sex, or embrace sex (as in the Huffington Post’s first video, somehow they get both), or marry, or do the cooking, or have babies, or not earn more than their partner. And sexism ascribes gendered norms to men, too. Don’t play with dolls, be tough, don’t cry, earn enough to support your family, if you can’t convince a women to sleep with you you’re not really a man. What the Huffington Post identifies in the brackets of its second video’s title is that sexism hurts all of us, but the damage it causes to the formation of young men can have lasting harm—in both attitudes and physical harm—not only for the young man himself but for every person, and in particular women, that he encounters in his life.

Sexism is fundamentally a male problem. Patriarchal attitudes, where men are dominant because of their maleness and women secondary because of their female-ness, hurt everyone differently, but they start with the mistaken belief that men are more valuable than women.

This is not an inherent truth, this is something my fellow men throughout history—my ancient and sometimes modern brothers—have constructed. Yet when God created humans, he created them equal: male and female, made in his image (Genesis 1:27). It is only after the Fall that a patriarchal hierarchy fractures the relationship between man and woman (Genesis 3:16)—this imbalance is a consequence of a broken, Fallen world, not the

world God created, and of relationships fractured by sin.

In the New Testament, in light of Jesus’ message, Paul describes a redemption that restores men and women to equality (Galatians 3:28).

And so I believe that sexism is fundamentally a male responsibility. Just like the problems that stem from it, such as rape culture, harassment online and in real life, and domestic violence—all of which affect both women and men in different spaces—men are the overwhelming majority of perpetrators. Gender inequality, by which women are devalued and men are overly valued, is a thing men over all of history have built. Fellow men, this is our problem.

We all inflict sexism on each other. We all contribute to these problems, faced by every man and every woman on the planet. But the beauty of that sad fact is that we are all in a position to make a change. Speaking directly to my fellow men, I implore you, as a man of God, to speak up when you could remain silent, to call out a sexist joke and to tell your friend that it’s not funny, to use your privilege to lift others up even if it means being seen and heard a little bit less in the future. To my sisters the world over, I tell you that you are not alone. To all of us I say that this is not a male versus female story but an opportunity to be better together.

In the words of Sir Patrick Stewart, “People won’t listen to you or take you seriously unless you’re an old white man, and since I’m an old white man I’m going to use that to help the people who need it.” Sir Patrick’s life has been touched by personal experiences of gendered violence, and he is now a tireless campaigner for the support of vulnerable women and against the attitudes that contribute to violence in the home—attitudes rooted in gender inequality and sexism.10 Sir Patrick uses his male voice to speak with, and to share the stories of, people who don’t have a voice in patriarchal systems. Whether he realises it or not, he is carrying out James’ exhortation in James 1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

This is an opportunity to join God in (re)creating a world with no vulnerabilities and no oppression, least of all because of someone’s gender. And the only way it will happen is if we are all on board together. ●

youtu.be/jk8YmtEJvDc theguardian.com/society/2009/nov/27/patrick-stewart-domestic-violence, and youtube.com/ watch?v=Xi_27bpIb30 9

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10

Writer Bobbie Conlon

I couldn’t count the amount of times people have told me that I am one of the ‘good Aboriginals’, someone that broke the typical stereotype of how an Aboriginal person is portrayed. I became a ‘good Aboriginal’ in their mind purely because I didn’t drink or take any drugs, I lived in a good home, and I was a committed worker not relying on ‘the dole’.

This is a very raw way to start an article but this is a real, re-occurring experience for me in my journey of understanding my Aboriginality—which is something that someone who is Aboriginal can struggle to understand. I have come across many contrasting ideals and perspectives about what an Aboriginal is or who we are supposed to be according to social media and statistics.

When I was 19 years old I had formed an image of what it meant to be an Aboriginal and firmly decided that I wanted nothing to do with the culture. I would chose not to identify as an Aboriginal and if asked I would state that I am simply a tanned Australian, out of fear of the reaction. Unfortunately, growing up I didn’t have a safe place to naturally find myself—something every young person needs to do. When young people transition into adulthood they need time to discover what their identity is and what elements are shaping their identity.

Working with youth for the past eight years, I’ve witnessed a similarity in the growth and maturing of young people whether they are Christian or not. I have come to an understanding that creating a safe place for young people to discover and question is essential. Whenever I questioned my Aboriginal identity I was subject to different people’s perspectives and ideals, and not ones that I had formed on my own. That part of my identity had no positive foundation, causing to me to disengage with my Aboriginality.

I don’t speak for every young Aboriginal person, but this was my journey towards discovering and accepting my complete identity. From my personal experience, there is still racism in Australia towards Aboriginal people.

I’m not talking about overt racism—the over the top, in your face, out loud racism. While there is overt racism in Australia, that definitely isn’t limited to Aboriginal people. The type of racism I wish to address is called covert racism. This is the subtle, disguised, and under the radar racism. It’s a type of racism that you don’t even know you are committing as it can be so well hidden within society it seems somewhat accepted. Covert racism underpins every statement that says, “Bobbie, you are one of the good Aboriginals.”

Every person that told me I was one of the ‘good ones’ wasn’t trying to be openly racist towards me (hopefully); it was their strong ideas about Aboriginals that made me an exception to the rule. A contributing factor of covert racism are the embedded stereotypes within our society.

It is easy to adopt the ideologies that accompany stereotypes if people aren’t or haven’t been exposed to anything else.

YVQ | Issue 12 | July 2016

The Good Aboriginal

In Year 10 I was chased around the school by the Deputy Principle who told me that because I was Aboriginal I required help and was at high risk of having depression.

Similarly, I have been journeying with a young girl who is discovering her identity as a fair skinned Aboriginal.

When she told someone that she attends the yarning circle I run for young Aboriginal women, they scoffed at her saying, “Why do you even go to that? You’re not even that Aboriginal!” Can you imagine how she felt? Belittled and devalued because she didn’t fit the mould of being a dark skinned Aboriginal. As she was telling her story, it opened a pathway for other girls to start sharing their stories. What they didn’t know was that all their stories were examples of how they were affected by covert racism.

One story that was shared came from two girls who live in different remote communities. They explained that in school their teacher asked them a question about what a Bora ring was. The teacher singled the girls out, explaining to the class that they would definitely know the answer. If the teacher had done prior research, she would have found out that where these girls come from they don’t call it a Bora ring, so of course they didn’t know the answer. When I asked them how they felt, their response was, “The teacher pointed us out in class and tried to get us to answer the question, she kept saying ‘Come on girls, answer it’ and we didn’t know the answer, we have never heard of it before. We rang our family back home and they told us that we don’t call it a Bora ring. It made us feel like we didn’t know our own culture.”

As soon as a certain group of people are put in a box and assumed to be the same, it becomes limiting and hurtful.

Questions and statements like, “What part Aboriginal are you?”, “You don’t look Aboriginal”, and “Can you pronounce this word? You should be able to because you are Aboriginal!” are all based on covert racist thinking. They seem harmless, but they can remind us of the horror and genocide that occurred to Aboriginal people, and imply that there is an unrealistic formula to being Aboriginal.

These are some of the stereotypes that are affecting our young Aboriginal people of today.

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The pain that comes with not knowing who you are or not being accepted for who you are can cause people to resort to the extremes. I have seen many young people shift from being proud in their culture and who they are in that identity to accepting these socially produced stories and stereotypes. These stories and stereotypes are circulated so often that it somehow becomes truth to them; they need to prove their Aboriginality to the world, but more to themselves by adopting these customs.

My hope is that by reading this article, you are able to check yourself. What thoughts, ideas, pictures and feelings do you have of Aboriginal people? What stories have you heard and where have you heard them? With the knowledge of how powerful covert racism can be, what pieces of information needs to be critically questioned by asking, ‘Is this true for all Aboriginal people?’

My guess is that, whatever it is, it wouldn’t be true for all Aboriginal people.

Another young man I know is fair skinned and feels the need to prove the fact that he is Aboriginal. He started smoking marijuana and when I asked him why he replied, “Because Bob, it’s deadly!” as if it was a fact. Deadly is a word that is most commonly used as describing something as good. This young man starting smoking because to him, it was fact that all Aboriginals smoke.

The reason behind the negative encounters some Aboriginal youth face is the simple fact that there was no relationship built. In a lot of the cases I’ve mentioned above around covert racism happened because no one took the time to invest in a relationship. Relationships are important to Aboriginal people. We value relationships and the sacredness of what is kept inside a relationship. It’s being connected to one another. In any relationship we learn about the other person, we start to see them for who they are and not what society tells us they should be. Relationships break down the barriers that stereotypes have built. It’s no surprise that God himself demonstrates the beauty of being in relationship and the importance of being connected to one another.

If we turn to God’s word now, we see that everyone is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14, NIV) We aren’t made to live out stereotypes and fulfill statistics but rather we are to look to the plans God has for us, plans of good that give us hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). It may be cliché to write those verses but in all honesty racism is very limiting and degrading whereas the scriptures give us freedom and hope.

Paul creates a beautiful picture as he writes his letter to the Colossians. He talks of Christ’s supremacy.

“Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.

Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.” (Colossians 1:15-16, NLT) If what Paul writes is true, then it must mean that God made us, we are his creation and he holds us together.

Beyond anything else, beyond culture, the first and most important part of our identity is our identity in Christ. If he created us and holds us together then surely we need to identify with him.

If we need to identify with him, then how much more necessary would it be for those who are confused in their identity to identify with him. Yet sometimes it can be hard for some to do this, and impossible for those who don’t know Christ. If everything was created by God, it also means that every person was created by God whether they know it or not. Maybe we need to shift our thinking and start seeing people as though they were made by God. Would this change the way we think, act, and feel towards certain groups of people?

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John 17:20-23 says, “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.”

That should be our aim, to be one. Jesus doesn’t discriminate here, he doesn’t separate us, he is praying for us to be one. Jesus is praying for us! He wants us to experience the beauty of being connected. That is powerful.

1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, “So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.”

I wish to encourage you by thanking you for wanting to address racism and how it affects Aboriginal youth.

Continue to press past the barriers that society has, build relationships, and engage in conversations that not only build up and encourage Aboriginal youth but that also lead other people towards investing in a relationship that will ultimately challenge covert racist thinking. ●

Further Reading This edition of YVQ is really just a starting point. The topics discussed in these pages have so much more depth than has been covered here, and we encourage you to leap off the starting blocks provided by our contributors in this edition and dive further into these topics.

We asked our contributors to suggest some extra reading for those who wish to engage with these topics further, in addition to the articles referenced in their articles. There are also resources on topics that were not covered in this edition of YVQ. Engaging With Other Cultures

Gender and Sexism

Yang, Meewon (2012) M. Theol thesis: Ways of Being Multicultural Church: An evaluation of Multicultural Church Models in the Baptist Union of Victoria

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. Privilege explained simply: whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straightwhite-male-the-lowest-difficulty-settingthere-is

Rah, Soong-Chan (2010) Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church Engagement with Indigenous Communities Indigenous Ministries Australia suggests resources from their reading list: imaaustralia.org.au/resources/reading-list Sex and Sexualisation Consent, explained using Tea: youtu.be/fGoWLWS4-kU Get in touch with writer Laura Pintur, and share your story: whatsnormal.co Domestic Violence Resources and support around domestic violence: childwitnesstoviolence.org Resources curated by Churches of Christ Vic/Tas and friends: churchesofchrist.org.au/dvtoolkit2015 People Seeking Asylum Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a documentary about people seeking asylum in Australia: deepblueseafilm.com Mary Meets Mohammad, a documentary about a detention centre in Tasmania: marymeetsmohammad.com

Anita Sarkeesian, feminist media commentator: youtube.com/user/feministfrequency Jackson Katz, anti-sexism and anti-violence educator: ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_ violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_ issue?language=en Polygraph’s analysis of gender representation in film by dialogue: polygraph.cool/films People with Disabilities Stevie Wills, performance poet and activist, reflecting on living with disability: steviewills.com/articles/wombat Luke14, an initiative of CBM, with resources for churches seeking to become more inclusive places for people with disabilities: cbm.org.au/luke14 Many topics covered in this issue of YVQ are confronting. If you have been affected by reading this issue, or because you have experienced these things in your own life, please talk to a friend or leader in your church community, or contact a professional service such as Lifeline or Beyond Blue.

Lifeline: 13 11 14 Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636

Youth Vision Training and Internships Youth Vision is committed to developing emerging leaders and providing training programs and opportunities for leaders to develop skills, grow in their own spiritual formation, and discern how God is leading them. These resources and programs can be in the form of events, training days, or longer term internship programs. Whatever your needs, your state YV team will be able to provide quality training and resourcing to you and your team.

Each state team has resources and opportunities to share with emerging leaders, and would love to journey through a leadership discussion with you.

NSW

| youthvisionnsw.org.au

VIC/TAS

| churchesofchrist.org.au/youthvision

SA

| churchesofchrist-sa.org.au

WA

| yvwa.com.au

QLD

| cofc.com.au

youthvision.org.au