CPXtra

Dissecting the causes of child abuse among priests

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:29:00 GMT

It is awful that, during Easter week, the public is focused not on the vision of hope that Jesus' life, death and resurrection offers, but on the terrible failings of his followers. The child sexual abuse scandal in Ireland, and the subsequent attempts to deal with it (including the Pope's recent apology) have made it harder than ever for those who are 'looking on from the sidelines' at Christian events to want to take any steps closer.

As Paul Colgan (a self-described "lapsed and a-la-carte " Catholic) wrote in The Punch, " I have no tolerance left for the Church’s protection of child abusers, its silencing of victims and failure to adequately apologise or explain why it failed to act against paedophiles. Why, I asked myself, should my daughter be exposed to these men in frocks and their beliefs?".

It must be said that some Churches have been doing better than others in responding to the revelations of abuse over decades, but I'm not planning to elevate or denigrate any one denomination here. What people really want to know is: what the hell went wrong? How did this obviously wrong behaviour, this prolonged and prevalent abuse, escape discovery and remain unaddressed for so long? As well as sheer grieving and sorrow, it is time to dissect the issue of how it happened.

I found this piece in the Huffington Post, written by a Jesuit priest, very helpful. In summary, the author looks at the results of a study of abuse by priests in the USA from 1950-2000 and discovers that proper psychological screening of candidates was not undertaken; there was too much pressure to protect 'the institution' rather than deal with the reality of evil; there was little understanding (or even any attempt at understanding) how harmful the abuse has been for the victims; and there was a prevailing culture of fear among priests about even talking about sexual matters, let alone paedophilia.

These are not excuses; no, no such thing. There are no excuses. But they are an attempt to explain what went wrong, in order that children can be better protected in the future. Real repentance and repair will require that such practical questions are asked, alongside the grieving, anger and bewilderment

Poetry makes things happen

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:11:00 GMT

It's World Poetry Day, but you wouldn't know it. No mention in the newspapers; no emails; not even any doggerel has crossed my desk. This is a travesty, because poetry makes things happen. I disagree with W. H. Auden who wrote, in his poem 'In Memory of W.B. Yeats', that "poetry makes nothing happen". Of course, Auden didn't really believe it, spending his life penning some of the most moving short poems of the 20th Century. Eventually, after a long time far, far away, Auden returned late in life to a form of Christian faith, at which point he revised a lot of his poetry. Obviously, he thought it worth doing because poetry does in fact have an impact on minds, hearts and lives.

Les Murray, the great Australian Christian poet, knows this. He talks about Wholespeak, which is the kind of language that pulls together ideas, images, experiences, memories, feelings, history, projections, observations into an aesthetic form with some sort of integrity—and we call that a poem. This is a great definition of poetry, but I still like the one offered by a cricket commentator who, after reading on air a poem that delighted him, announced, "That's a top poem! Top words in a top order!" Not a bad definition of poetry.

A poem like Dante's 14th Century Divine Comedy changed the way the world thinks about cosmology, justice and punishment.
A poem like Milton's 17th Century Paradise Lost helped to shape the modern understanding of human capacity for good and evil.
A poem like T.S. Eliot's 20th Century The Waste Land defined the modern era of moral confusion and malaise about human progress.

The Bible, of course, is full of world-changing poems, from the opening chapter (Genesis 1), to Psalm 23 about God as a Good Shepherd, to the brief, hymn-like verses of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, which records the earliest formulation of Christian beliefs. From the erotic verse of Song of Songs, to the startling prophetic verses of judgement and woe, to the overwhelming 'songs' of the apocalypse: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered/to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might/and honour and glory and blessing!" (Revelation 5:12).

In fact, the Bible itself might be thought of as a large Poem, holding together as it does from the accounts of creation, through the epic events of Israel's history, to the brief cosmos-altering life of Jesus, through to the vision of a new heaven and earth in the Book of Revelation. It's Wholespeak, Murray might say.

Happy World Poetry Day!

N.B. Murray defends poetry here, first in prose but finally with a poem!

Health and Spirituality

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:40:00 GMT

I have three close friends who suffer long-term depression. Periodically they become prisoners of their own minds, struggling to maintain career and family life. When things are bad, the world closes in around them leaving them isolated even among friends.

All three of them are Christians. They are loved and prayed for. Many people hope they will get better. So far, they have not.

I wonder what they, and others in their lives, might make of a study out of the US this year reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. The study found that “belief in a personal and concerned God” significantly improved responses to the medical treatment of major depression. Those who scored in the top third of the Religious Well-Being scale were 75% more likely to get better with medical treatment for clinical depression.

These findings come on the back of a growing body of research that indicates strong positive correlations between religious belief and practise and good health outcomes. People like Harold Koenig from Duke University believe that clinicians need to be aware of the role of religion in their patient’s lives. Only then can they give comprehensive treatment and care.

It’s hard to say what these studies mean. It would be easy to overstate their significance and leave the impression that you just have to ‘get religion’ and you’ll be on the way to health and happiness. That’s clearly not the case. But the sheer number of them calls for some reflection.

A certain darkness surrounds my three friends and it’s clear that religious faith hasn’t shielded them from that. But I’m interested to know to what degree their belief, assuming it hasn’t been crushed completely, might bring them shards of light and hope and eventually contribute in some way to their healing.

Beyond Debate

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:24:00 GMT

This week Melbourne hosts the Global Atheist Convention. Several thousand gratefully god-less souls of various flavours will squeeze into a very large auditorium (it’s sold out) for one great big shout-out for non-belief.

Some of the more acclaimed champions of ‘free thinking’ will be there—Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, A.C. Grayling, Dan Barker, along with a line up of comedians on hand to cheerfully heap scorn on the faithfully deluded.

The program has a festive feel, and indicates the celebratory nature of a gathering of those who, despite the souvenir T-shirts, caps, mugs, fridge magnets and bumper stickers, claim their only common ground is what they don’t have—belief.

At CPX we have spent considerable time and energy engaging with the latest and most evangelistic of the prophets of atheist piety. I’m not sorry we have. There are important arguments against religion that are being made loudly and trenchantly and these are worth testing and challenging. We have gathered the relevant material here if you’d like to take a look.

But I was struck today by an article by the brother of Christopher Hitchens, that most caustic of opponents of religion (notably absent from the convention). Just like his brother, Peter Hitchens is a talented writer. But, no doubt alarmingly for the older sibling, Peter is a Christian.

Given their pugnacious childhood it is not altogether surprising that they would adopt positions at polar ends of a spectrum. For many years in his youth, Peter was also counted among those who had rejected God and the church, but he slowly came back to faith in his 30s. This made an already difficult relationship with his brother nigh impossible. For many years they didn’t speak.

The article speaks of a kind of healing in the relationship around the time of a public debate between the two brothers on the existence of God and the goodness of religion in 2008. On that night, as he did in the article from the Daily Mail, the younger brother challenged the arguments made in God is Not Great – How Religion Poisons Everything, systematically drawing attention to what he saw as logical flaws, inconsistencies and blind spots.

But as Peter Hitchens makes clear, it is not really arguments that will win the day or change the heart of a person so sure of a godless universe and the singularly negative impact of religion. It’s not that a belief in God doesn’t have to be based on rational foundations. As Flannery O’Connor writes, “A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith … eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way”. If a belief system is true it shouldn’t be threatened in the face of attack.

But ultimately shrill and often ugly arguments for and against the existence of God mask something deeper and more personal.

‘Those who choose to argue in prose, even if it is very good prose, are unlikely to be receptive to a case which is most effectively couched in poetry,’ Peter Hitchens writes.

In other words, something beyond a debate is required; a force that penetrates the heart and transcends the merely rational. It’s scales falling from eyes and hearts being touched in fresh and surprising ways. Mystery. That’s what I think of when I contemplate those gathering in Melbourne this weekend, their different motivations, and personal stories of disillusionment with faith, steeling themselves for a life without God.

Christianity and Violence Part 6

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:34:00 GMT

Finally, there is an awkward question that atheist critics of the track-record of Christianity ought to face. It has to do with atheism’s intellectual capacity to restrain hatred and inspire love.

Christians and atheists alike are capable of both love and hate. Agreed. But when Christians love, they do so in full accordance with their worldview which begins with the love of God and the inherent value of His much beloved creatures. When Christians hate, they do so in logical defiance of that worldview. Here is the question, though.

What is there in the atheist’s perspective that can rationally inspire love and rationally discourage hate? I know that most atheists (in the Christianized West) choose love over hate. But if human beings are accidents in an unknowing universe, how can the decision to love or hate be anything more than a preference, a product of ‘feelings’ as atheist Bertrand Russell once famously acknowledged? On what grounds can the atheist speak rationally of the high and equal value of the poor or the weak or the asylum seeker?

Put another way, while it is obvious that only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity (the way of love), any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.

International Women's Day

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:19:00 GMT

Today is International women’s day. That’s where millions of people unite to celebrate the role of Christianity in helping females to flourish across the centuries, right? Not quite. The reality is that these days many people associate the church with the repression and subjugation of women. If PR departments exist within the walls of Church administration buildings they have some way to go in overcoming a general sense that the female cause has prospered despite the Christian faith and not because of it. At various times and places that reputation has been deserved.

But it’s worth going back to the beginning of the story to get to the heart of what Christianity should mean for women (and men). Jesus was the only rabbi of his day that we know of who had women disciples. He had women supporters and women who travelled with him. The Gospels record women as the ones who stayed close to Jesus as he endured crucifixion and as the first witnesses to the resurrection. It is difficult to overstate the significance of all this in a world where females were regarded as property with limited legal rights.

The dawning of the Christian age meant a radical shift in the way women were perceived. Sociologist Rodney Stark, who looks at a range of factors to account for the incredible growth in Christianity in the two centuries after Christ, believes its popularity among women was vital. Christianity’s view of the full equality of men and women before God was revolutionary and the implications profound.

For women, the new religion provided opportunities for them to play significant roles in the church that were especially taken up by those from the upper classes. The earliest church building yet found (Megiddo early 3rd Century) honours no fewer than six women on the mosaic floor, but only two men! No wonder so many critics from antiquity heaped scorn on Christianity for the way it drew in so many women (and slaves).

In Christian communities girls married later and enjoyed a better quality and longer life than their pagan counterparts. Largely this was due to the high rates of abortion in the Roman world—a decision made by the men.

Sexual chastity was extended to males as well as females under Christian teaching, another major shift, meaning family life was generally more secure. Infanticide was practiced widely on girls in the Greco-Roman world, and Christianity ruled this out. For these and other reasons, the early centuries of Christianity mark a great leap forward for females.

On International Woman’s day, as we consider the plight of millions of women and girls around the globe who still suffer indignities, deprivations, and the worst kinds of oppression because of their gender, it is worth recalling the Christian conception of what it is to be human, and urging all, whether believers or non-believers, to continue to be a part of the struggle to see that vision fully realised.

Christianity and Violence Part 5

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:40:00 GMT

At best, the criticisms of Hitchens and others that Christianity has done great evil through history prove only that Christians have not been Christian enough (sincere believers confess that daily). For anyone can tell you that when Christians are violent and imperialistic they are not obeying their Messiah but defying him who said “love your enemy and do good to those who hate you.” The solution to religious violence, then, is not less Christianity but more. Yale philosopher-theologian Professor Miroslav Volf says it brilliantly:

When it comes to Christianity the cure against religiously induced and legitimized violence is almost exactly the opposite of what an important intellectual current in the West since the Enlightenment has been suggesting. The cure is not less religion, but, in a carefully qualified sense, more religion … The more the Christian faith matters to its adherents as faith and the more they practice it as an ongoing tradition with strong ties to its origins and with clear cognitive and moral content, the better off we will be.1

The same point was made years ago by Albert Einstein. Though a Jew (a deistic Jew) and aware of the many inconsistencies of the German church, he believed that what Germany needed in that crucial hour was not less Christianity but more. In his 1915 essay “My opinion of the war” he wrote in conclusion: “But why so many words when I can say it in one sentence, and in a sentence very appropriate for a Jew. Honour your master, Jesus Christ, not only in words and songs but, rather, foremost in your deeds.” The solution to violent Christianity is real Christianity.

1. Miroslav Volf, “Christianity and Violence,” Boardman Lectureship in Christian Ethics, 2002, 1.

Religion and Violence Part 4

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:10:00 GMT

My second problem with the complaint of Hitchens and others that Christianity has done more harm than good is that the violence of Christendom is dwarfed by that of non-religious causes. Just think of WWI (8 million deaths) or WWII (35 million deaths).

Then there is the very awkward fact that the 20th century’s three great atheistic regimes were hotbeds of unrestrained violence. Joseph Stalin’s openly atheistic project killed at least 20 million people, which is more people each week than the Spanish Inquisition killed in its entire 350 year history. Pol Pot, another avowed atheist, is known to have slaughtered 2 million people out of a population of 8 million. This is not to claim that atheists are more violent than Christians. It simply underlines that violence is a perennial human problem, not a specifically religious one.

And those who suggest that these communist regimes were quasi-religious in their zeal and, therefore, provide further evidence of the pernicious effect of religion have abandoned sincere investigation into the problem and have settled on crass anti-religious apologetics. Better to state the obvious: religion or irreligion can inspire hate.

The claim that religion has started ‘most of the wars’ of history ought to cause embarrassment to thinking people. And yet it remains, as David Bentley Hart points out, “the sort of remark that sets many heads sagely nodding in recognition of what seems an undeniable truth. Such sentiments have become so much a part of the conventional grammar of “enlightened” scepticism that they are scarcely ever subjected to serious scrutiny.”1

1. David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: the Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies. Yale University Press, 2009, 5.

Speaking of Violence

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:15:00 GMT

Speaking of violence, this weekend saw the arrival of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to Australia. I didn’t go, but by all reports it was a brutal affair. Contestants battle it out in an octagon cage with more rules than the sport once had, but not enough to avoid the feel of a barely restrained, vicious brawl.

Kicking, kneeing, and choke-holds are part of the show, as is fighters pouncing on opponents who have gone down, to bash them more. There is no shortage of the promised blood on the canvas.

Sydney Morning Herald journalist Peter Fitzsimons, himself a former international rugby player and no shrinking violet, could barely contain his distaste for the event. ‘… it looks like we might have moved into an age when tens of thousands of people no longer want cups of tea. They want buckets of blood,’ he wrote.

It does feel like a different era. I’ve always enjoyed watching the battles of fiercely contested sport. Even boxing, at its highest level, carries something of the noble pursuit in my mind. The folklore around Ali and Foreman’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ still gives me goose bumps.

But in its various permutations this cage fighting, looks more Colosseum than MCG. And the reaction of the people in the stands is what interests me the most. Curiosity might make it hard to turn away when we see a car crash, but what might we say about an impulse to revel in the carnage?

Perhaps I’m being alarmist and melodramatic. To suggest that the arrival of UFC is a harbinger of the West going to hell in a hand basket might be taking things too far. But I can’t help thinking of the great historian Arnold Toynbee and his description of the common characteristics of great civilisations on their last legs. Rarely are they overrun, according to Toynbee, but rather they commit a kind of cultural suicide. Falling to a sense of abandon and lawlessness, once great peoples become adrift, unable to anchor themselves in any universal ground of justice, truth or reason.

One of a number of characteristics Toynbee identifies is escapism and retreat into distraction and entertainment. Presumably that becomes more extreme the further down that path you progress. He talks about an indiscriminate acceptance of anything and everything - "an act of self-surrender to the melting pot ... in Religion and Literature and Language and Art as well as ... Manners and Customs."

As I watched footage of jubilant fans leaving the arena sated from the experience of socially acceptable lavish violence, I couldn’t help thinking of a culture pushing further into a void; of something rotten in its spirit. An implosion.

Or am I missing something?

Religion and Violence Part 3

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:49:00 GMT

In my previous two posts I outlined why I think the charge against the Christian church of failing to live up to its calling is both serious and largely true. But it’s equally true that the popular imagination of the evils of Christian history is frequently exaggerated, to the point of being seriously misleading.

Let me offer two examples of this exaggerated retellings of the past. The Spanish Inquisition is often thought to be Christianity at its most bloodthirsty with hundreds of thousands of heretics killed (trawl the Internet and you will even find estimates of a million or more). However, in its 350 year history, the Spanish Inquisition probably killed around 6000 people1. That comes out at 18 deaths a year. Of course, one a year—one ever—is too much but the figure hardly sustains the monstrous narratives we often hear.

Or take the iconic Northern Ireland conflict. It is widely known that the thirty-year ‘troubles’ led to the deaths of fewer than 4000 people. Again, one death ‘in the name of Christ’ is a blasphemy, but how did the Northern Ireland conflict ever come to symbolize the ferocity of the church?

Compare it with the thoroughly ‘secular’ French Revolution. As many people were executed in the name of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ in a single year of the Revolution (the ‘Terror’ of September 1793 – July 1794) as were killed in the entire three decades of the ‘troubles’2.

1. This comes on the authority of Edward Peters, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading authority on the topic. See his Inquisition. University of California Press, 1989.

2. See William Doyle, The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001.

The Longest Road

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 02:05:00 GMT

Cormack McCarthy’s book The Road came out in 2006, gaining the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in the following year. It has gained renewed interest with the release of the Film starring Viggo Mortensen (from the Lord of the Rings) and Charlize Theron.

The story takes place in post apocalyptic America. A father and his 11 year-old son walk the road just trying to survive. All around them is chaos and anarchy. Bandits roam the countryside looking for food. It’s a dark and violent time.

Neither the book nor the film are for the faint-hearted. The story is deeply disturbing; shocking in parts. But McCarthy brings a profound and compelling honesty to this important subject. There is honesty about the human heart. Honesty about our good bits and the parts we’d rather keep hidden. Honesty about the depths we sometimes sink to, as well as the heights to which we may soar.

Ultimately there is a nagging question of whether even our best has any meaning if there is no God in which to situate and root our individual and collective stories.

Perhaps surprisingly, it offers a positive vision made all the more conspicuous by the backdrop of horror in which it is placed.

Read my article on the book here or listen to a podcast discussion I had with Greg Clarke.

A novel path to belief

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:41:00 GMT

I’ve had the last quarter of Marilynne Robinson’s 2004 novel, Gilead, waiting patiently for me on the bedside table for a year or so, hoping to be granted the honour of completion (I often struggle with the reading endgame). Now, transported away from the bedside table on holidays, I’ve at last reached the end of this exquisitely poised depiction of a dying preacher recording a memoir for his young son.

The book is replete with theological and anthropological gems, the fruit of the author’s deep knowledge of the Bible, of ministry life, and of the significance of the shape of our close relationships on our sense of life’s meaning. The American Reverend John Ames faces his own covetousness, anxiety and limitations, as well as his joys and his enduring (but admirably honest and non-triumphalistic) Christian faith as he pens his memoirs in the still of each Iowa night.

He worries that his sermons have made little impact and told only half-truths; he feels an awkward disconnect between the things that matter to him (friendships, the sunrise, the excitement of romantic love) and the things he does week by week. And yet, he is at heart a Christian who is on the side of love over justice, Gospel over Law, grace over all.

This is a novel for Bible students, clergy and trainee ministers to read and ponder—which is where I must express my surprise. Gilead won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was heralded as a masterpiece by reviewers everywhere. And yet, without a decent knowledge of the issues involved in Calvin’s theology, let alone the modern variations of Karl Barth, Ludwig Feuerbach and others, the story makes only superficial sense.

Did all the reviewers have theology degrees or Calvins’ Institutes on their shelves? I doubt it. So why was it praised far and wide? From the comments made by the reviewers, I suspect they detected in the slow-pulsed, contemplative, spiritual reflections of Reverend Ames something approaching real soul-searching. In its quietness, in its honest self-examination, this novel deals with something that really matters: your beliefs.

Although the details of the Reverend’s discussions over predestination or prevenient grace may not have carried meaning for every reader, the deep realities behind these doctrines—things like whether we are held responsible for our thoughts and deeds, or whether love for another overrules tradition, or whether a remorseful person who has committed great wrongs can in fact be more acceptable to God than a ‘Good Son’—connect deeply with us all. No theology degree required.

What this may mean is that the questions to which Christian faith provides answers are already in the minds and hearts of many a reader. They need the time and mental space that a novel such as Gilead affords in order to come to the surface and into full view. Beliefs this important deserve nothing less.

Greg Clarke

Objections to Christmas

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:53:00 GMT

Column 8 of the Sydney Morning Herald last week had an interesting entry from a man identifying only as a ‘Canberra Anglican parish priest’. In the lead up to Christmas he had organised some community carols in his local shopping centre, but met some resistance. ‘To my great amusement,’ he wrote, ‘the manager of the centre objected, because she thinks the “[expletive] Christians want to take over Christmas.” I'd always assumed that the “Christ” bit in both words might serve as a clue.'

It does appear that some people object to the traditional Christmas story being part of public life—shopping centre managers apparently, the odd journo, eagerly ‘pc’ local government officials and some vitriolic bloggers. But research out this week in a CPX-commissioned survey found that 91% of Australians are supportive of religious songs being sung in public at Christmas time. Other stats surprisingly challenge perceptions we might otherwise hold about the Australian religious psyche. 63% of those surveyed say that, contra Christopher Hitchens, the country would be worse off without Christianity. Australians regard the story of Jesus as more or less accurate. They tend to think highly of Jesus even if they never darken a church door.

But while most people might not feel especially aggrieved by the Herald Angels, or Good King Wenceslas trudging through the snow, the survey was hardly great comfort to those considering a clerical career. 42% of Australians are sure they won’t be heading to church this Christmas, and of the 45% who report being undecided, I’m going to hazard a guess that when it comes to the crunch they might opt to return to the pleasure of a freshly unwrapped ipod, or to don the togs for a swim instead.

The survey supports the sense I got when I recently conducted a bunch of vox pop interviews at Bondi beach on what people felt about the meaning of Christmas. Plenty said it was important not to lose the traditions of Christmas, but they said it in a way that indicated only the vaguest associations of family customs and childhood memory, rather than personal connection. Not everyone may want to ban nativity scenes from public places, or bar the local church choir from the mall, but those who view Christmas as holding the deepest of spiritual and personal meanings have a long way to go in communicating that message to a culture that has largely forgotten the force of it.

Symbols of Hope: Remembering the Berlin Wall

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:15:00 GMT

I have a piece of the Berlin Wall on my desk at home that someone bought for me in a store in Germany. It’s possible that a budding East-German entrepreneur newly introduced to the wiles of capitalism produced it by spray-painting their driveway before jack hammering the cement for the desired effect, but it looks authentic and I’m happy to believe it is.

It’s twenty years since the Wall came down so suddenly, unexpectedly and joyously. The edifice that so powerfully symbolised the might of Soviet Communist oppression is now—in large and small pieces—a treasured possession of museums, hotels, and universities and of artists, historians and tourists. Ironically and poetically it has come to symbolise freedom, beauty and creativity.

It’s a stunning reversal for those who grew up during the Cold War with the threat of nuclear annihilation casting a morbid shadow over fragile human attainments and hopes. This was a time when images of Red Square military parades and faceless men on Kremlin balconies, along with the film and novels of the period, created a mystical aura of vast, impenetrable evil. These were days when it was hard to imagine that the ‘iron curtain’, stunningly represented by Berlin’s bulwark of concrete, would ever fall. But fall it did, and this week we are recalling those strangely euphoric days.

It reminds me of an earlier time when the Apostle Paul stared through the bars of a Roman prison cell upon an empire he had experienced as immense in scope, lavish in achievement and brutal in dealing with potential opposition. It was to this empire that he took his message of an obscure Galilean teacher being the key to life. His chances of success in spreading this news must have looked as improbable as the gospel he preached. But two-and-a-half centuries later, within the same empire that periodically tortured, crucified and fed to lions adherents of this novel faith, followers of Jesus had slowly and peacefully gained influence and numbers to the point where an ambitious emperor could think it worth converting. The walls of pagan religion and unbelief were inexorably eroded, and the cross—a macabre symbol of cruelty and oppression—came to represent the greatest story of freedom and hope ever told.

Simon Smart

Don't Worry be Happy?

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:29:00 GMT

Over the centuries Christians have taken great comfort and inspiration from Jesus’ ‘Sermon on the Mount’ and his call to his followers to trust God with their lives and not to be anxious about the small stuff:

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matthew 6:25 – 27)

These words of timeless wisdom are especially relevant in the West today given the high rates of anxiety that afflict us as we wrestle with the uncertainties and fears of a materially abundant life, or ‘luxury’s disappointments’, as folk singer Billy Bragg once put it.

But I’ve always wondered what those same words of Jesus sound like today in the ears of believers in places like Ethiopia, Uganda, or Sudan when a mother holds her dead child whom she has begged God to save; or a father remains helpless while his family wastes away from starvation before his eyes. How could they feel anything but bitterness when coming across those words from the Gospel?

But here’s the thing. Believers in places of the world where health, food, safety from violence, comfort and security are scarce do in fact find in these verses immense hope and reasons for joy. I was reminded of this again this week, listening to Greg Clarke’s interview with Agnes Nyamayarwo. Agnes is well known as the Facilitator and founding member of the Mulago Positive women’s Network—a support group for HIV positive women in Uganda, and for her work with Bono from U2 in raising awareness in the U.S. of the African AIDS dilemma. Her life story neatly fits with most people’s greatest nightmares. A family ravaged by death, heartbreak and the merciless affliction of AIDS. And yet, she remains full of purpose and a deep sense of trust in God.

I found the same thing a couple of years ago when I interviewed a young Sudanese woman newly arrived in Australia, having spent twelve years in Kenyan refugee camp. She’d lost a brother and a half-brother to the violence of the civil war. Most of her life had been one of imminent danger and loss. ‘God is always with you whether things are dangerous or risky …whether things are going well or not,’ she told me. Like Agnes Nyamayarwo, there was an elegance and dignity about her and the high value she placed on a peace that only God can provide.

Some might want to dismiss this as a psychological coping mechanism—wishful thinking to help deal with the trauma of life. They could be right. But sometimes it’s in listening to the stories of the faithful from places less ‘blessed’ than our own, that the meaning of Jesus’ words comes to life. It’s the promise of a Father’s love that won’t go away; of a home prepared for those who believe and, in an ultimate sense, provision and security despite what life will throw at you. It’s a vision worth taking seriously.

Simon Smart