Category: Religion

AmazinGrace carries the cross in Jerusalem

Peter Hallett1 Comment

The Amazing Race Australia on Monday, July 18 will feature some of the four remaining teams carrying large wooden crosses through the streets of Jerusalem as part of the episode’s challenges. Check out a preview.

In a city so taut with religious and cultural tensions, it is a daring and perhaps provocative act, that recalls for Christians the crucifixion of Christ.

One of the effects of global tourism is to take long-held cultural, religious and historical events, locations and practices and make them marketable commodities for tourist consumption. While there are respectful ways of doing this, the Amazing Race epitomises the dilemma of rich tourists enjoying foreign lands while running the risk of carelessly trampling upon them.

In this case, a deeply significant religious symbol and act is incorporated into a reality show game in a city which is sacred for three world religions.  It is an ‘amazing’ clash of ‘realities’ and hopefully will provoke thought about the interactions of tourists and destinations; and even more so, about the meaning of ‘carrying your cross’.

The wooden cross (the exact shape is debated, but not important) was used for capital punishment in Roman occupied Israel around the first century AD. Part of the cruelty was at times to humiliate the condemned person by forcing them to drag the heavy implement through the city before they were nailed, tied and hung from it, dying a slow and painful death.

From the film, The Passion of the Christ

The New Testament records this being inflicted on Jesus, after a heavy beating, and is known by some as the passion of the Christ. This term encompasses not just his physical and mental anguish, but spiritual as well.

From a theological perspective, this was God in human flesh, suffering the worst humanity had to offer as identification with us but also as a substitution. Though perfect, he allowed himself to be punished as the worst of criminals and cut off from God so that we might be forgiven and re-connected to God.

So the cross is a powerful symbol of God’s grace extended to all. Perhaps it’s fitting that the show Amazing Race is also AmazinGrace…

At another level, Jesus often used the phrase, ‘carry your cross’ as a way of describing the challenge of following him. This must have been powerful imagery for his first century audience.

They would have seen or heard of the terrible journey through Jerusalem and other occupied cities of cross-laden people, heading for their deaths, under the ruthless eye of their Roman rulers.

To liken the life of a Christ-follower to carrying the cross, was a clear sign that it involved selflessness, vulnerability, suffering, obedience and a stretching of every fibre of being.

Not unexpectedly, it may not be the most popular influence for Christians (or anyone else) when making life choices, but thankfully we have the Amazing Race to bring it back to our attention.

While the cross-bearing exploits in the Amazing Race are a pale imitation of the real event, what’s more important is what we all do without the silent witness of the cross and the call of Jesus to carry it.

You may have never even heard of this call but it resonates through history and awaits your decision. After you watch the show, give the cross more thought…

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. Matthew 16:24-25

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:18

Lady Gaga describes herself as a ‘traditional Catholic’

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After urging her young fans to let their voices be heard in support of gay marriage, Lady Gaga described herself as a traditional Catholic, in an interview with Tracey Grimshaw on Nine’s A Current Affair.

In a remarkable display of pluralism, Gaga saw no conflict with her ‘untraditional’ views on marriage and her identification with Catholicism.

Clearly Ms Grimshaw was less able to undertake the mental gymnastics required and began a line of questioning on religion by suggesting Gaga must be a lapsed Catholic.

Gaga laughed, saying she’d never heard the term and went on to explain she was very traditional, praying every day, praying before every concert.

She reminded her audience of her lyric that says “God doesn’t make mistakes” and linked her Catholicism to her Italian heritage, saying her parents had no objections to her music or concerts.

Overall Lady Gaga came across as an intelligent and talented young woman who displayed the prevailing post-modern views on morality, referring often to her song “I was born this way” as affirmation of people as they find themselves.

While agreeing with the positive impact of encouraging self-acceptance and tolerance of others, the logical extension of the view is the abrogation of personal responsibility allowing murderers and paedophiles to equally claim “I was born this way”.

At the same time, she made it clear that she had taken personal responsibility to change from being “hell on wheels” to having nothing to with drugs or to do anything to jeapardise the relationship she has with her fans.

Previous Gaga post

Midnight arrival of world’s youngest, Christian nation

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Click on this photo to learn about the John Dau Sudan Foundation's work in South Sudan.

The world’s newest nation, and one of the poorest, came into being at midnight on July 9. The Republic of South Sudan gained its independence after decades of civil war with northern Sudan and more specifically following a 99% vote for independence in a referendum held in January this year.

The 10 southern states of Sudan now form South Sudan and the population of more than $8 million consists largely of Christian and animist Africans in contrast to the Muslim Arab north.

As well, South Sudan contains between 75-80% of Sudanese oil reserves although this has not benefited local people in the past due to northern domination and violent civil conflicts.

And while estimates vary as to the extent of Christianity, some statistics report South Sudan as having 2,009,374 practicing Roman Catholics and a large membership in the Episcopal Church of the Sudan as well as smaller Christian denominations. How many people identifying as Christian are also incorporating traditional animist practices is another matter.

For a fascinating history of Christianity in South Sudan and indeed north Africa, visit The Sudan Project blog (article written in 2006).

One area of conflict that continues between Sudan and South Sudan is the disputed area Nuba Mountains region where violence continues between the largely Christian and pro-Sudanese People’s Liberation Army Nuba people and northern government forces.

Nubian Christianity traces its origins to the “Ethiopian eunuch” who come to faith through Philip the evangelist who ran alongside the man’s chariot and explained to him how the Old Testament scriptures pointed to Christ.  The story is recorded in Acts 8 from verse 26 and concludes with the African man being baptised in a pool beside the road.

‘The “Ethiopian eunuch” of Acts was in fact not from the land today bearing that name, but from Nubia. (The queenly title given in Acts 8:27, Candace, is peculiar to the ancient Nubian kingdom of Meroe.)’ – From Nubian Christianity – the Neglected Heritage by Paul Bowers.

With such a strong link to the very earliest days of Christian faith, it is fair to say that the youngest nation in the world is also the youngest Christian nation.Read More »

Father Bob neighbour of next year’s The Block

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The producers of The Block may have a thing for living near celebrities but they certainly no how to make Father Bob angry.

“While this year’s houses in Richmond back on to Molly Meldrum’s lavish Egyptian-themed property, the four houses believed to have been bought for next year’s show are opposite the home of renegade priest, Father Bob Maguire,” the Herald Sun reported yesterday.

Father Bob tweeted that he was “Not happy me”. Well known for his media appearances and run-ins with Catholic authorities over his retirement, he clearly resented the renegade title.

The four side-by-side terraces in South Melbourne are located on Dorcas St, overlooking the parish of St Peter and Paul’s.

The properties were recently sold and came with planning permission for a third storey, to maximise city views.

See the Herald Sun story.

Hang on, that’s a balanced Hillsong article!

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July 7, 2011 was a big day for Hillsong. Not only was it the penultimate day of its 25th anniversary Hillsong conference at Darling Harbour, but also the day the Sydney Morning Herald printed a reasonably intelligent, mainly positive article about the mega-church.

Having taken to task the SMH several times for its mindless bias against Hillsong, which has seen the paper link the church with negative stories to which it has no actual connection, I thought it only fair to highlight the opposite.

Writer Ross Cameron describes how some friends visiting from England explain “they want to see Hillsong” and concludes with:

“Hillsong avoids many of the excesses of American TV spirituality. It’s delivered in the Australian vernacular and it respects the audience enough to make sure speakers know how to communicate. There are elements that don’t suit me, but Hillsong is changing people’s lives for the better. Some theological custodians argue Hillsong is just the power of positive thinking with a patina of Jesus. But even if that were true, would it be a bad thing? I would prefer being uplifted than depressed and it’s clearly better than my default position – lying on the couch with a coffee, The Insiders and three newspapers.

“Sydneysiders have taken a certain pleasure in finding fault with this church, and most have no idea of its impact. Hillsong is throwing modern Christianity a lifeline, while reaching out to others in a life beyond self.”
At last glance, there were 163 comments on the article with many agreeing that it is good to see a “positive Hillsong article from SMH for a change”. As usual, wherever there is a positive potrayal of Christianity, the evangelistic atheists are in a commenting frenzy with their usual taunts of “imaginary friends” and “sky fairy”.
Read more at the Sydney Morning Herald.
Previous Hillsong posts:

 

The Australian promotes John 3:16

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20110701-082028.jpgIt’s a rainy night on cold Norton St, but still plenty of diners and movie-goers are about. As I lift the edge of my umbrella to avoid colliding with two boys, one sliding on a wheel in his shoe, my vision slides across a poster and my brain computes iconic numbers and punctuation mark.

The advertisement on the back of a public phone pictures a Bible open to John’s third chapter.

The Australian is canvassing the issue of marriage but I wonder how many will recognise God’s shout-out to humanity contained in that ancient verse near the top of the pictured page.

‘For God so loved… gave his only… whoever believes… everlasting…’

If we don’t start there we’ll never understand anything else God has to say, about marriage or anything else.

On a double-shot mission from God

Peter Hallett1 Comment
Road distances (in kilometres) of towns and ci...
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Seeing the phrase “mission from God” on the front page of one of Sydney’s Sunday papers (June 26, 2011) sounds great until you realise it is a tongue-in-cheek reference to an evangelist crashing his car on the Pacific Highway after downing a few double-shots of Scotch.

Jason Hooper is an American evangelist touring parts of Australia with a New Zealand born Australian evangelist Ben Hughes. Hooper crashed into a parked Hyundai in Macksville and was found to have a blood-alcohol level of .206.

He later appeared in court and was disqualified from driving in NSW for three years but otherwise escaped penalty, much to the chagrin of locals, motoring organisations, the police and the Sunday Telegraph.

The magistrate took into account Hooper’s remorse and good character but the Telegraph was not impressed with Hooper’s reported claim that God had already forgiven him for his error.

And true to form with Sydney papers, the Telegraph found a way to inculcate Hillsong into the story saying that Hooper was touring with “Hillsong protegé Ben Hughes” – a claim that made it into the second paragraph.

As far as I can see, the only connection between Hughes and Hillsong is that he studied at Hillsong Leadership College at some stage, along with many thousands of other people. Keep in mind, Hughes has done nothing wrong and Hillsong isn’t even involved, so why were they mentioned?

It’s very unusual to see people defined by a place of study when describing traffic incidents. I don’t recall former-Judge Marcus Einfield being described as a “Sydney University protegé” when his traffic indiscretions were reported.

But to bring Jason Hooper and Marcus Enfield together for a moment – they both have learned the special retribution we save for people who make a career out of saying one thing, and then doing the opposite.

No wonder James in his New Testament letter warned against becoming a teacher because you would be “judged with greater strictness”. In both these cases, the men involved may have not been judged by the courts over-strictly, but certainly they will be by the public and the media. (Einfield has had another traffic scrape this week.)

A good reason to remain humble, accountable and realistic about your state of well-being – and driving! And let’s hope the next time God get’s a mention on the front page, it’s for something positive…

John 3:16 leads Bible verses on the internet

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Believe it or not, there is a website devoted to ranking the most popular Bible books, verses and even chapters appearing on the Internet.

Top Verses claims to analyse thousands of pages of teaching material to determine the most frequently referenced Bible verses. This information is entered into their search engine enabling it to return the most familiar verses first.

Read the full story at Australian Christian News.

The youngest of Jesus disciples and the last to write an account of the Christ, John, would be interested to learn three sections of his writing are leading the trends in this digital age:

1. John 3:16.     2. John 1:1.    3. John 14:6.

That most versatile of Paul’s letters, Ephesians heads the list of top Bible books followed be the more confronting James and the unexpected Titus.

Top Verses also list the most popular chapters, and as someone who has written a daily devotional on James it was interesting to see two of its chapters, James 4 and James 1 make the top 10.

I love James’ letter for its balance of personal faith, social action and supernatural ministry even though the book is usually known for tough talking.

Check out Transform Your Faith – 55 daily readings on the book of James and keep watching for the newly updated version which will be known as Faith Revolution.

Jesus reigns supreme on Facebook

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It’s list time at Utterance and first up is a look at the most interesting pages on Facebook, in which Jesus is a clear winner.

Unofficial Facebook resource, All Facebook, records the fan numbers and interactions of dedicated Facebook pages across the globe.

While noting that Justin Bieber had taken a leap forward, the site says that “he is ultimately left in the dust yet again by two religious pages that have spent all of June in the top two spots.”

Basing their list on the number of page interactions (comments, likes etc) All Facebook has Jesus Daily in first place with 1,645,286 interactions in June (5,948,071 fans) followed by The Bible with 1,071,096 interactions (7,609,076 fans).

Justine Bieber came in third with a mere 933,719 interactions (from a massive 29,756,538 fans) followed by Mario Teguh with 838,761 interactions from 4,221,188 fans.

Others in the top 20 include Lady Gaga, Harry Potter, Manchester United and Britney Spears.

But other Christian pages are also found in the top 20 including Jesus Christ in 13th place and Dios Es Bueno (God is good) in 14th. One way or another, Jesus is alive and well in the world of social networking.

Another interesting phenomenon is the influence of the growing use of social media – Facebook in particular – in non-Western nations.

A page called MTV Roadies is in the top 20 thanks to adoring Indian viewers of the reality television show of the same name while in Egypt, We are Khaled Said continues to be a very vocal page of the Egyptian uprising.

Of evangelistic atheists and an everlasting kingdom

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Amazing Grace, First version, in "Olney H...

The religification (my word, I think) of atheism is proceeding at pace and is part of an increased push in the Western world to remove Christian belief from public life.

Stephen Fry tweeted today, “If Christians rose up for Passion of the Christ, so humanists, agnostics, atheists etc might RT [re-tweet] the new film The Ledge!”.

The associated website describes The Ledge as, “the Brokeback Mountain moment for atheists, our tipping point, when we finally get the attention we deserve. Although books have put atheists into the intellectual mainstream, The Ledge is the first Hollywood drama to target the broader movie-going public with an openly atheist hero in a production big enough to attract A-list stars. This is unprecedented.”

Christians will notice close parallels with campaigns circulated through churches to rally support for movies such as Passion of the Christ, Amazing Grace, Bella and various other movies that were seen to authentically present Christian ‘heroes’ and messages.

Meanwhile the Atheist Foundation of Australia is launching a campaign to urge Australians to mark their census, ‘No religion’ as a way of limiting the influence of Christian beliefs in politics.

Read More »

And now atheists join the billboard conversation

Peter Hallett1 Comment

First the Muslims, then the Christians, and just as Rev Rob Forsyth suggested, now the atheists.

The Atheist Foundation of Australia (AFA) is preparing for one of its “biggest and most important projects” – a billboard campaign to encourage individuals and families to “think about the importance and impact of their answer to this leading Census question: ‘What is the person’s religion?'”

As the next Australian Census approaches on August 9, there will be concerted campaign by the AFA to have nominal or non-believing people mark their census “No religion”. Their nominated motivation for the campaign – to take religion out of politics on the basis that if there is a larger “no religion” segment of the community, the views of Christians and other people of faith will be less influential in the political realm.

In the meantime, the political aspect of this campaign has led to one of their billboards being refused, much to the AFA’s loud dismay.

Read the full story in Australian Christian News.

Faith by billboard conversation continues

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If you happen to commute along the M4 and also Victoria Rd (you are to be deeply pitied for that commute) then you may feel like you’re in the middle of a friendly, billboard-sized banter between a Christian and a Muslim. And the topic? Jesus.

Check out the full story at Australian Christian News.

Original billboard post
Forget billboards, they want to ban the  Bible

Philanthropy as a catalyst for meaningful change: Royal couple

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If actions display priorities, then the choice of the first official event attended by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge says a lot.

William and Kate attended a star-studded charity dinner for Ark – Absolute Return for Kids as their first official engagement since their wedding.

While what the duchess wore captured the usual attention (“a shimmering nude gown by Jenny Packham”) it was the sentiment that took them to the Ark Gala that captured mine.

The duke announced a joint venture between Ark and the Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry.

Prince William said he, his wife and brother wanted to use philanthropy as a “catalyst for meaningful change”.

Ark sponsors academy schools in the UK and programmes for disadvantaged children around the world.

Acknowledging the privileged education and upbringing he enjoyed, the Duke of Cambridge said, “So many young people do not have these advantages and as a result can lack the confidence and knowledge to realise their full potential.”

This comment carries forward the theme of the sermon preached at the Royal couple’s wedding: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

Read More »

Forget billboards, Islamic leader calls for Bible ban

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At a time when Christians and Muslims are conducting (mainly) respectful debates about large billboards with Islamic messages in Sydney, there has been a call in Pakistan for the Bible to be banned because it is blasphemous for Muslims.

The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party’s leader, Maulana Abdul Rauf Farooqi, at a press conference on May 30 in Lahore, informally petitioned the Supreme Court, complaining that the Bible includes stories about some of the biblical prophets that include “a variety of moral crimes, which undermine the sanctity of the holy figures.”

Pakistiani Christians, estimated at 3 million, fear the call for a Bible ban is a sign of a trend of deepening persecution against them.

Now might be a good time for people of Islamic faith enjoying democratic rights and freedom of religion in Australia to raise their voices against this call.

Read the fully story in Christian Telegraph

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