Charlie Sheen is America’s highest paid television star, being paid $2 million for each episode of Two and a Half Men.
Despite this, somehow he found himself so desperate, angry and dysfunctional that he held a knife to his wife’s throat on Christmas Day and threatened to kill her.
If that doesn’t convince us that fame and fortune are not the real source of happiness, nothing will. Not even a Man rising from the dead… PH
A few young Christian men I know got together recently with the big highlight of their evening being watching Man vs Wild featuring Bear Grylls.
Turns out it was a more spiritual activity than they may have realised with Grylls revealing this month in Relevant magazine that he is a strong Christian.
The wild life adventurer who allows himself to be dropped in remote locations so that he can be filmed attempting to survive, says that he had a ‘natural’ faith as a child, although hasn’t always found believing easy.
‘It’s been kinda a wiggly, messy journey which is still continuing,’ Grylls told Relevant, a description that might also suit his TV show.
‘Christianity is not about religion – it’s about faith, about being held, about being forgiven. It’s about finding joy, finding home.’
T
urns out Grylls is an avid supporter of Alpha, a 10 week introduction to the Christian faith, written and presented by Nicky Gumble of Holy Trinity Brompton.
Gumble, a mentor and friend, says of Grylls, ‘I think Bear has a very simple faith. And simple in the good sense of the word. It’s a strong personal faith and he lives it out in his everyday life.’ PH
PS. Man vs Wild screens on SBS Mondays at 8.30pm and SBS says ‘the program has performed strongly since its debut with an average audience of 535,000 metro viewers.’
If several billion God believers can’t dint the unbelief of an atheist, perhaps just one family member’s faith might make the difference.
Christopher Hitchens is famous for his book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and is one of the poster boys of the new atheism secular liberalism. He was a special guest of this month’s Sydney Writers Festival as he promoted his memoir Hitch-22.
But while Christopher has been busy debating Christians and even threatening to have the Pope arrested, his brother Peter has rediscovered faith and published The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith.
As the Hitchens brothers’ books battle for bookstore ascendency, we see a microcosm of the struggle between belief and unbelief in the world.
While most atheists will cite logic and reason for the reason of their non-belief in God, behind this for many is a personal religious atrocity that has led them from grace. For Christopher Hitchens it may just have been the brutal, even sadistic regime he encountered at a church boarding school from the age of eight.
And while brother Peter went through his own atheistic ‘revelation’ it was not to last and his book now attacks the blind spots and flaws of atheistic argument.
There is no doubt much more to run in the story of these two men’s lives, and it is a reminder that wherever darkness seems to flourish, a resilient light is close at hand. Pray for Christopher and Peter Hitchens, that both would find themselves beneath the grace of God as they play a part on the world stage.
An excellent article on the belief and unbelief of the Hitchens brothers appears in the Fairfax media today . It is written by Simon Smart, the head of research and communications at the Centre for Public Christianity. PH
P: ‘He was tall and thin with black fuzzy hair.’
C: ‘That’s right, his name was Hawk and he was visiting someone on the ninth floor.’
He didn’t fly like a hawk this time, unfortunately
P2: ‘You know he drove to the flats before jumping. Who does that, drives somewhere to jump?’
Too many
Fixed someone up with a new set of clothes
Managed not to step on gangrene toes
Helped two friends avoid coming to blows
Some conversation about nobody knows
Marvellous it is how God’s love flows
PH
Having sat on the floor in the steamy visiting room of Kerobokan Prison with Andrew Chan and others of the Bali 9, any news of their faith and well-being holds a special interest. While the media rarely comprehends their faith, or the nature of their ordeal, today’ s report in the Sydney Morning Herald gives some insight.
Christians in Bali (including workers from our own church) work hard to support the Bali 9 and Schapelle Corby. Please continue to pray for them. Check out today’s report: God help us: Bali Nine pray.
If anyone in Australia has learned something about the giving and receiving of forgiveness, it is Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton.
Lindy was convicted in 1982 of killing her baby daughter Azariah while camping at Uluru in 1980 before being finally exonerated six years later. In that time, Lindy was judged wrongly not only by many in the police and court system, but by at least half of our nation, which was divided over the subject of her guilt or innocence.
Yesterday, Lindy, along with her second husband, Rick Creighton, was a guest speaker at St Ives Baptist Church as part of that church’s innovative Spirited Australians program. Forgiveness was a key theme.
Her visit attracted media attention, partly because Lindy Chamberlain will always be, to some degree, public property in Australia and partly because of revelations made during the talk.
Rick Creighton spoke of a young woman who was so convinced that Lindy had killed her baby, and so outraged, that she got herself convicted of a minor offence to get into the same Northern Territory jail where Lindy was serving a sentence for murder.Read More »
When I first saw the name R. F. Hallett carved in the stone of the Australian War Memorial, Villers-Bretonneax, France, in 2009, it was if it shouted out to me, ‘Hey, here I am, where have you been?’
I felt like Roy Frederick was waiting impatiently for someone to come find him, his body never recovered from the killing fields on which the memorial came to be built.
Under the warm sun and surrounded by the peaceful green fields of rural France, my wife and I had made our way from Paris to Amiens and then on to Villers Bretonneax as an act of remembrance for my father’s uncle who never returned from World War 1.
Ironically, Roy went to war with a bullet scar already showing on his foot, perhaps the result of an accident while hunting or working as a stockman.
Or maybe he belonged to gun club, as did many of those recruited around the same time, into the 36th battalion. Ambrose Carmichael, Minister for Public Information led a recruitment drive from the rifle clubs of NSW in early 1916. The battalion became known as ‘Carmichael’s Thousand’. Carmichael led by example and enlisted as well, serving in the battalion as a captain.
Whatever the source of his bullet scar, he was to see much, much worse in his short but bloody tour of duty along the battlefields of Europe.
While Roy never returned, his scant belongings did and among them were two religious books. Our family history is not particularly religious but it sounds as if Roy may have found some solace in faith in the face of death.
The rest of his story, as gleaned from Australian war records, follows and is my contribution to Anzac Day… Lest we forget.
When Lady Ga Ga sought a way to heap praise on her musical inspiration, Grace Jones, she said the 80’s singer and model was like her ‘Jesus’.
This might indicate that beneath the provocative (euphemism) performances and costumes, Lady Ga Ga is still within reach of her Catholic upbringing, even if unconsciously. Lady Ga Ga (Stefani Joanne Angelina) was educated at New York’s Sacred Heart school.
Once again, Jesus finds his way into the most unlikely of places.
As for Grace Jones, apart from the fact that Jesus has everything to do with grace, it is unclear as to what other similarities can be drawn.
In any case, Jones wants nothing to do with Ga Ga and turned down an offer to perform with her. ‘I’d just prefer to work with someone who is more original and someone who is not copying me, actually,’ the 61-year-old said.
She was not heard to comment that no one has been able to copy Jesus, because he is ‘the only Begotten’ and worthy of our worship.
Lady Ga Ga’s last brush with Jesus was when she wore her hair in a kind of Son of God halo effect with a skimpy blood-red outfit and was widely reported by celebrity magazines as ‘looking like Jesus’. I think not… PH
Walking away from the small community centre, past the sitting smokers, down the path in the warm sunshine, he stops and calls me Pete.
‘Pete, there are a lot of people on the streets who could get up if they wanted to but they don’t want to.’
I nod in agreement, ‘None of us make any changes in our life unless we really want to, so I guess that applies to people on the street too.’
‘I was homeless you know Pete,’ he says. ‘But I got myself up. Drugs are the real problem. Drugs and alcohol. I’ve never used drugs but alcohol was my problem.
‘But after I did 15 years straight of a 20 year sentence, the last thing the parole officer said to me was, “Are you going to give up drinking?” and I said, “Yes.”‘
And I haven’t drunk for 34 years.
‘That’s an inspirational story, you’re a great example,’ I say.
He chuckles, and fixes his ebony eyes on me and I feel privileged that this elderly man who carries a remarkable sense of wisdom and dignity, chooses to tell me his stories, week after week.
‘There was one time when I was drinking that I got picked up on the street by three policemen and put into a police van with three deros. When we pulled up at the station we all got out of the van and the police each took one of the deros into the police station and I walked straight across the road and into the Oxford Hotel,’ he says with a chuckle.
He talks about people in prison who ‘became’ Christians to get out of the big house. ‘I’m not a Christian, never will be, but I wouldn’t do that, just put it on.’
He recalled the advice of his mother. ‘She told me that God keeps way off in the distance and always has his eye on us. He’ll get them…’
Might not be great theology but I can feel the faith in this man, I can feel that he has a closeness to God that is born of respect, honour and honesty. One day I might just get to help him see it. I am encouraged. PH
Unprecedented coverage of the religious views of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and more recently Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has shifted today to focus on possibly the world’s greatest religious enigma, US President Barak Obama.
President Obama hosted an Easter Prayer Breakfast yesterday (April 6) with 90 guests including leaders from most major denominations, the National Council of Churches, leaders of small and large churches and well-known Christian identities such as Bill Hybels and Joel and Victoria Osteen.
In America, where the appearance of Christian faith is almost obligatory for politicians, President Obama has been somewhat reticent to be seen as too firmly placed in that ‘corner’ and has not joined a church since moving to Washington.
As he welcomed people to the breakfast, he noted that the White House had also held a Seder to mark the Jewish Passover and an Iftar with Muslim Americans during Ramadan.
However, in his eight minute speech at the breakfast, President Obama clearly identified himself as a Christian, ‘Today, I’m particularly blessed to welcome you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, for this Easter breakfast.’
Later, reflecting on what Easter meant to him, Obama said, ‘…as Christians, we believe the redemption can be delivered – by faith in Jesus Christ… And the possibility that redemption can make straight the crookedness of a character, make whole the incompleteness of a soul. Redemption makes life, however fleeting here on Earth, resound with eternal hope.’
Recalling the words of the prophet Micah – championed by Micah Challenge,the social justice arm of evangelical Christians – Obama encouraged those present to commit their spirit ‘to the pursuit of a life that is true, to act justly and to love mercy and walk humbly with the Lord.’
Two members of the Reserve Bank Board, one of Australia’s most powerful economic institutions, gave clear personal testimony to their faith in Jesus Christ in the lead up to Easter.
Speaking at Wesley Mission’s annual Easter breakfast, the Reserve Bank governor, Glen Stevens, was asked about his belief in God, to which he replied:
‘I would say that despite claims to the contrary there is a God. This is worth checking out and the critical issue people have to deal with is – was Jesus Christ who he claimed to be. If he wasn’t then you can forget about it; and if he wasn’t then I am living in a fool’s world.’
‘I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: “The Voice of the Irish”. As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea – and they cried out, as with one voice: “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us”.’ Patrick of Ireland from his letter, Declaration.
A great deal of history, legend, folklore and truth swirls around the great name of St Patrick, especially recalled today, St Patrick’s Day.
In his own words, we learn of a call, not unlike Paul’s to Macedonia, to go to Ireland, where he had previously been a slave, and ‘walk among us’.
The same God calls us today to walk in places where we were once slaves, and graciously and lovingly demonstrate the love of God. The God of redemption takes the very prison that enslaved us and turns it into a field of salvation, if we choose to walk there. PH
Chuck Norris, who turns 70 today, is a world-wide phenomenon, less for his acting attributes in shows such as Walker, Texas Ranger, as for the humorous persona of invincibility that has grown up around him.
chucknorrisfacts.com is one site that carries on the great tradition of implausible Chuck Norris feats such as: ‘According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, Chuck Norris can actually roundhouse kick you yesterday’.
Just goes to show we really do want to have someone in our life who always gets the job done.
In fact, Norris has found that ‘Someone‘ for himself. He is a devout Christian and although, in typical American style, that has sometimes meant getting entangled in right-wing politics, he is a genuine man of faith.Read More »
To really know your city or town you need to see it at different hours on different days. The cycle of time brings an ebb and flow of people like tides bringing different creatures to the shore.Read More »
I stood in a hospital ward on Friday night and listened to my 76-year-old father give his medical history to a junior doctor at Prince of Wales Hospital.
This was after he had explained, slowly and deliberately, to the young doctor, that he was a man of faith, had been a minister most of his life and believed in the healing power of Jesus.
His medical history began with having his tonsils out when he was a boy. (I thought, “We could be here for a long time…” I was wrong.) He had them out twice in fact – they either grew back or they didn’t get them all the first time.
Also as a boy, he had an abscess behind his knee. He thought for a while and then recounted his next item – a hernia operation in his sixties. As an after thought he remembered dislocating his elbow.
“Dad”, I said incredulously, “that was when I was about seven – over 40 years ago… and I can’t believe you can remember an abscess on your leg as boy.”
The doctor asked if there was anything else, and there wasn’t. Not bad for someone a few years short of 80.
Then the doctor asked what medications he took. This list was even shorter. “A vitamin C tablet, a vitamin E tablet and a fish oil tablet.”
The doctors stared, wrote something down, and nodded. “That’s very good. You are very healthy.”
Dad, by way of explanation, told him that he didn’t drink or smoke although he had drunk heavily until he became a Christian aged 32, when “God and I agreed I’d done my fair share of drinking.” He has not touched alcohol since.
Tomorrow my father will have a very delicate operation to strengthen a vertebrae in his neck largely destroyed by a tumour. Once they strengthen his neck, they’ll worry about the tumour. He has spent his time in hospital while waiting for the operation reading the Bible, a book called Faith Like Potatoes, and praying.
When doctors first saw the size of the tumour, its location and the damage it had caused, they could not believe the lack of pain and other symptoms dad had been experiencing. They felt certain he should have had a range of neurological symptoms but all he has had is a bit of stiff neck.
Dad has said several times that God has told him he will be healed. Who could argue with a man who is already a walking miracle? Please pray for him tomorrow. PH
In a world where private moments are played out on a global stage, nothing is certain about Tiger Wood’s statement today.
Is it a carefully stage-managed step towards restoring his golfing career and endorsements, or the honest confession of broken but recovering man?
Hopefully it is the latter, and if so, the apology part of his statement contains two important parts of repentance.
Firstly, he takes full and complete responsibility for his actions and did not attempt to blame anyone else, especially his wife.
Secondly, he acknowledged that the truth of his apology can only be judged by his actions over time.
To the extent that someone, who has lived a double life for years, can be sincere, these sentiments are important first steps to recovery.
Does God forgive someone who has betrayed his marriage vows numerous times in the most wanton fashion? The answer is yes, if through faith in Christ, he turns from those things.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
The same scandalous grace we need in our more private lives is available to internationally acclaimed golfers. And everyone else…
However, given that Tiger’s mother claims he has re-embraced Buddhism, a religion in which God does not really feature, the question is not so much, ‘Does God forgive him?’ but ‘Does Tiger Woods know God and even comprehend his need for God’s forgiveness?’ PH
“How are you going today, George?” I ask while standing in line for a meal at the Lambert St Lunch, Camperdown.
George is 60ish with long gray hair and unshaven face; is wearing a t-shirt, too-small shorts and joggers and carries his walking stick.
“Oh, not that good. I nearly fell over on the way here.”
“That’s no good,” I reply. “What happened?”
“Have you ever had your leg just slide out, like this, while your walking,” he says while demonstrating a strange sideward leg movement, precariously. A lunch volunteer, plate of food in hand, is watching as our conversation unfolds.
“Maybe George, but have you had that happen?”
“All the time,” he says seriously. “It’s probably because I’ve got no knee caps, so I’ve got to be careful.”Read More »
Clint Eastwood’s film Invictus features Nelson Mandela passing on the poem of the same name that steeled him against 27 years of incarceration to Francois Pienaar, captain of the World Cup winning South African rugby team.
The final two lines: ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul’ echo through the movie emphasising that regardless of our circumstances we are still in control of how we respond, how we behave, how we think.
Invictus – William Ernest Henley (1849–1903).
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
It is unclear if this is strictly historical as other sources claim Mandela actually gave Pienaar a copy of Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, The Man in the Arena. The speech is notable for the extended passage:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Eastwood lays a lengthy historical foundation for the film’s climax being South Africa’s unlikely World Cup win in 1995, a powerful moment of unity for a country seeking to move past decades of apartheid. For just a few moments, Eastwood descends into the schmaltz of Hollywood style sporting movies as he tries to build tension and excitement on the rugby field.
But such is the grandeur of Mandela’s life and vision that anoints the film that most patrons will easily overlook these moments and soak in the beauty of belief.
English poet Henley was unsure what God he thanked for his ‘unconquerable soul’, and perhaps Mandela shares this uncertainty. The only black footballer in the winning rugby team, Chester Williams, claimed not to think too much as it spoiled his rugby but seemed much more certain about his faith in God when called on to pray after the South African team’s great victory.
Thoughts?
PH
I first met Harry (not his real name) in Bali when he was jut a few years old. His mother, overwhelmed by the need to work very long hours for a pittance, had been unusually cruel to him, locking him in a cage and even attempting to kill him.
Someone knew of Tania’s (not her real name) children home and convinced the mother to allow Harry to be cared for there. As supporters of the home, we were privileged to meet the little fellow who was fast recovering from his ordeal.
The spark of intelligence in him was unmissable and his need or attention irrepressible. But the steadfast love of God expressed through the beautiful staff of this home, has met the need for attention in the most healthy way – balanced, unconditional, accountable love; and at the same time helped him excel in all kinds of way – cooking and surfing being just two.
This is one of many great stories coming from this home which is a partnership between a local woman and other staff and western people who want to reach out beyond their own comfort zone.
There are many huge organisations that do wonderful things for communities and nations at the aid and development level but we must never lose the ‘amateur lovers’ of this world who are moved of heart enough to change a child’s life through hugs, smiles, a room and one good day after another. PH
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