Soul Thoughts

Faith and relevance in the 21st century

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No one knows the day or the hour

June 10, 2010 / / 2 Comments

In memory of a former colleague who  tragically passed away, here is an article I wrote back in 2010. RIP Paul. 

In the last few years I have been struck by the death of a few people around my age.

One was my cousin Olaf, found dead in his bed in Germany by work colleagues. He was 42 and left behind a wife and two young children. Another was the popular Melbourne sports journalist Clinton Grybas, also found dead in his apartment. He was 32. Then there was Heath Ledger, a brilliant actor with everything before him, dead at the age of 28.

Following on from this, in the last couple of years there have been four people that I have known in various capacities who have taken their own lives. These kinds of deaths have added an extra element of tragedy, as they will leave inevitable questions of guilt and unresolved sadness with their loved ones who are left behind.

Why is it that everything dies? Why don’t we live forever? Why, the second we are born, do we begin to die? John Mellencamp, in his song, For the Children, expresses this eternal question so eloquently when he says,

I wish I could give you an answer, as to when life really begins,

I wish I could tell you where we went, when our days here come to an end.

Wish I could see the future, the same way I see the past.

Wish I could draw a conclusion, why nothing here seems to last.

Life is a mystery, death equally so. The only reason I can come up with as to why nothing here seems to last – and I don’t mean this to sound glib – is the Christian explanation of the fall of humanity. There is something in us that knows that life is not the way it should be, that something is wrong with everything. Equally, we have a deep sense that death is not the way things are supposed to be. It is not normal. Death is terrible. The fact that a loved one is now in the arms of Jesus is comfort, but it does not fully take away the sense of finality that we experience when someone we cherish is taken from us. Something has disrupted the proper state of affairs, and to me, belief in the fall of humanity, as an attempt to make some sort of explanation of it, makes a whole lot of sense.

Death is one of the few certainties in life. Unless Jesus comes back in our lifetimes, some day every one of us will die. As I grew from a young boy into an adolescent, I remember thinking that, in my young mind, there was no reason why I could not live forever. In fact I was going to be the first person to defy the odds. It seems that every young person has similar thoughts for at least a period of their life. We think we are invincible – hence the tragic deaths of so many young drivers on our roads each year. Now though, as I pass the half-way mark of the average lifespan of the Australian male, the reality that I am actually not invincible is something I have become more aware of.

The fact of life is that we simply never know when our time is up. No one knows the day or the hour. We make plans for the future. We say we’ll meet our friends at 7pm tomorrow night for dinner, but the reality is we can’t be sure of that. Clinton Grybas had it all ahead of him. By all accounts he was a lovely man, and was seen by many as the next big name in Australian sports journalism. The last thing on anyone’s mind would have been the idea that he would never get there. The same with my cousin Olaf. His 2 little boys will now never know their father.

John Smith, founder and President of God’s Squad, has said that life is primarily about loss. As I approached my 40th birthday last year, I realised that life is also about how you deal with the losses that will inevitably face you. Gary Thomas, in his book, The Beautiful Fight – Surrendering to the Transforming Presence of God Every Day of Your Life, says that “Pain in this world is a foregone conclusion. The only question is whether we choose to live a life of redemptive pain or of self-destructive pain. I pray you’ll choose redemptive pain.” The reality of death drives me closer to God. It gives me more of a passion for Christ. And it brings me closer to the conviction that nothing else in life matters but love. Love is above all. This is what life is about. When everything else is stripped away, what really counts is love.

Over the many chequered years of human history, death has remained the one fact of life that we have never been able to deal with. Death is indeed the great leveler. Whether rich or poor, selfless or greedy, we all face the same fate. In the end we can’t take what we have with us. There has been a popular bumper sticker which says “the one who dies with most toys wins”. I saw a brilliant response to that once which said “the one who dies with most toys still dies”.

When I was in my early twenties my Dad said to me that it’s a young person’s world. I think what he meant was to make the most of life while I’m young. But it’s true isn’t it. Our culture tries to deal with the inevitability of death by denying it. We want to pack as many experiences into life as we can fit. Life is packaged for the young, especially, the young, beautiful and hip. We have anti-aging creams, women get breast implants, celebrities get cosmetic surgery, and it’s all done in an effort to maintain our youth against the ever-increasing ravages of time. Some people even refuse to go to funerals in an attempt to deny the inevitable. Often our response to death is one of denial. John Mellencamp again expresses this further in his song Longest Days:

So you pretend not to notice that everything has changed.

The way that you looked and the friends you once had,

So you keep on acting the same

It is a mark of maturity when people can look death in the eye for what it is and be real about it. A pastor of mine once related a story told to him by an elderly man who one day woke up and realised that, at the age of 65, his life had gone in the click of a finger. Just like that, all of a sudden he was facing the twilight of his life. It has been said that when we are on our death beds we are not going to look back and wish we’d spent more time in the office. We are going to look back and wish we’d spent more time with our families, more time in relationship, more time just being. Bono, in the U2 song, Kite, sings, “I’m not afraid to die, I’m not afraid to live. And when I’m flat on my back I hope to feel like I did.” When I am lying in my grave, I hope I will have lived the life of a person who wasn’t afraid to live.

Further on in his song Longest Days, Mellencamp, reflects on the shortness of life:

But nothing lasts forever,

Your best efforts don’t always pay.

Sometimes you get sick, and don’t get better.

That’s when life is short, even in its longest days

None of us can avoid the fate that inevitably awaits us. What we can do though is face life with courage, faith and hope. The old Serenity Prayer says it all:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

This is a prayer for the ages. As our lives pass through time like the clouds on a windy day, thank God that there is hope. Thank God that the universe is a friendly place. Thank God that in the end, truth will win out, that there will indeed be no more tears and no more pain (Rev. 21:4). And thank God that on that day we will finally be able to say “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55).

As I think of the death of the father of a friend of mine this week, and the death of an aunt a few months ago, the words that keep coming to mind are ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’. Our Lord knew the deep sadness of death. He knew it more than we will ever know it, but he also knew the sadness of losing a loved one. When his friend Lazarus died, Jesus was highly emotional (Jn 11:35). But like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds sing, Jesus knew that death is not the end. Check out this moving, haunting song:

Nick Cave & Friends – Death is not the End.avi

Uploaded by Miri12RS on 2011-04-14.

While reality seems to scream at us that death is the end of everything, faith says something else. Death is not the end. Life is what has no end. Suffering and death will pass, for they are not normal. Though we may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we have nothing to fear, for He is with us. He walks before us into the sunlight of a new day, guiding us, leading us. Though we may carry our cross today, one day soon there will be resurrection. Then we will see the new heavens and the new earth coming together, and we will rejoice, and we will finally know that this is how it was meant to be.

Back online

June 5, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I’m finally back online after changing hosting companies. Gradually I’ll be getting the old theme back as well as all of my articles and links, as well as the bookstore. I’ll still be posting new articles during that time. Stay tuned over the next few weeks.

The saving power of technology

May 30, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I love technology. I love living in the 21st century with all its gadgets, and I’m continually amazed at what we are able to do now that we couldn’t do even 5 years ago. Who knows what we’ll be able to do in 5 years from now? When a new piece of technology comes out, there is that special surge of excitement you get with the anticipation of buying something new. A new technology purchase makes you feel good; you feel excited, and you want to spend all your time with your new friend. Sounds a lot like being in love doesn’t it? Take the recent launch of the iPad in Australia for example. Apparently we’re the first country outside of the US to sell the new tablet which does everything the iPhone does except make phone calls. People lined up for hours outside Apple stores all over Australia (some even slept outside stores overnight) to get their hands on this fabulous new device that promises to change the way we do computing. In a few years time though – give or take – the iPad will be old hat. After a while we tend to take for granted the technology we have at our disposal today. We often can’t imagine how we coped before mobile phones and the internet.

Last year we commemorated the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. At the time it was celebrated the world over as Neil Armstrong took his ‘one giant leap for mankind’. Though I was only 6 weeks old at the time, I am told that it brought the world together like few events can. But did you know that, if you have a mobile phone, that phone has more computer power than the rocket that took Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts to the moon? That’s just in 40 years, just one generation.

Technology has the power for so much good today. We have seen this through such campaigns as GetUp!, where thousands of people can be harnessed in a few days to lobby the Government on all sorts of issues. We can make free video calls with our friends and family overseas via Skype; we can make a host of new friends on Facebook. But technology also has the power for so much evil. Patrick Carnes, who specialises in addiction issues, says that since the advent of the internet, more than 10% of internet users regularly use the web to look at pornography, such is the ease with which it can be downloaded right into your own home.

This is where the problem with our technology lies. My pastor said some years ago that technology has become our new foundation for living. For centuries it has been money, but now it is money and technology. I remember when the talk of human cloning first began some years ago, there was an interview with a scientist about it who, when asked at a press conference about the ethics of it, simply said “we are going to do it”, as if it was preposterous to even contemplate not doing it when we have the means right in front of us, as if it was a waste of our newfound knowledge to not go ahead with it, and as if anyone opposing it was getting in the way of progress. It was the arrogance of the human spirit saying we are going to do it because we can.

As well as basing our living choices around technology, we are constantly living with the tension of trying to recreate the experience we feel when we first buy our new toy. That feeling of being in love, of being swept off our feet by the iPad of our dreams is something we desperately want to hang on to. In a healthy situation, the feeling of being in love is wonderful, and it is right to enjoy it to the full. But our problem with our purchases is that we try to hang onto that experience and make it last as long as possible until it finally disappears like sand through our fingers and we go out and look for our next purchase. And therein lies the power of the seduction of our culture. Every day, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists in the United States, we are told to buy that experience up to 3,000 times. And again and again we do, just like the adolescent who doesn’t understand the virtue of restraint. The American Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr, has said that Australian culture is just like such an adolescent. He describes the first half of life as infantile, where there is the question of boundaries, identity, security and significance. It is always win/lose, about the container. He then describes the second half of life as being about the contents – it needs to be offered to people. People in the second stage of life need to see that that’s what they want to be. Going further, he describes 4 stages to growth:

  1. Student
  2. Family, houses and children
  3. Forest-dweller, going beyond the comfort zone
  4. Wisdom

Rohr says that Australia is in the first half of life ie. it is infantile, where life has a lot to do with security and significance; and we are also generally not past stage 2 in the stages of growth. We are obsessed with comfort, as is seen in the rapidly diminishing Australian dream of owning your own home.

Many years ago Midnight Oil sang “who can stand in the way when there’s a dollar to be made”. That song is just as relevant today as it was back in the ‘greed is good’ days of the 1980s. Nothing has changed since then, and in fact nothing has changed since the dawn of humanity. The prophet Jeremiah said that the human heart is deceitful above all things.

How insane are we to actually believe that technology can be our saviour? Like many advances in human progress over the years, and particularly since the Industrial Revolution, much good has come about by our technological progress, but so has much evil as well. But don’t get me wrong; technology itself is not the issue. What we need is not less technology per se; what we need is a transformation of the human heart, something that technology can never deliver.

With each new advance in technology, there is the promise of making our lives immeasurably easier. And in so many ways it does. But is that always a good thing, and are we really any better off? Much has been written about the fact that in our technologically advanced society, the rate of depression and stress has gone through the roof.

The recent U2 song ’Breathe’ has a line which says “there’s nothing you have that I need”. That is the attitude we must have with the technological enhancements of our age. While there is a level at which much technology certainly is needed, it is not our salvation. Never has been and never will be. A sign of an addicted culture is when we allow legitimate activities to become our master when they were always designed to be our servant. Technology has done so much good for the world, and will continue to do so. But there is only one Master who follows through on the promise of life. We cannot serve both God and technology.

The problem of online 'connectedness'

May 23, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I plan to publish a post soon on the ‘saving power of technology’ which will show the subtle effect that technology has on us in the 21st century. But as an intro to that, I want to highlight an excellent article in today’s Age which exposes the false connection that much online interaction creates. We need to be careful to not demonise all online communications, as they have brought huge benefits to humanity. But, as I mentioned in a comment on this article, they generally create the illusion of true intimacy and can never replace true personal connection. As I write I am reminded again of the great book on this by Larry Crabb. Funnily enough, his book is called ‘Connecting’.

Some interesting findings on happiness

May 15, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The ever-valuable ABC website had some interesting stories recently on happiness and how we can achieve what seems so elusive, despite us having seemingly everything in our power in the 21st century to grasp it.

The first ‘finding’ was that, surprise, surprise, looking to others more than ourselves makes us happy. These are the findings of the Happiness Institute. Yes, we even have a think-tank devoted to this deepest of human yearnings. Dr. Tim Sharp, founder of the Happiness Institute, says that thinking about the happiness of others is the key to finding it ourselves.

The next article is another encouraging one, because it comes from none other than the head of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke. He recently advised university students not to pursue careers solely to become wealthy. He also “urged students to make time for their family and friends and to contribute to the wider community”.

I love the fact that we have institutions like the ABC that promote these sorts of findings and statements from those with some sort of authority. Because you wouldn’t think what Tim Sharp and Ben Bernanke were saying was true at all if you looked at the rest of the media. Jesus made the Good Samaritan the hero of that great story and tells us to go and do likewise. As well as this, he warns against the trappings of wealth. Tim Sharp and Ben Bernanke are in good company.

The world wide web of addiction

May 8, 2010 / / 0 Comments

A year or so ago I posted an article about internet addiction. With the rapid onset and seemingly exponential advancement of technology, the problem seems to be an ever-expanding one – forming a web of ensalvement of its own you might say. The latest commentary on this is the somewhat tnogue-in-cheek but still highly disturbing account written in today’s Age by Lisa Pryor. I particularly resonate with her introduction in which she laments the paradox of our time-restricted culture where we also somehow find the time to indulge in completely banal activities such as twittering at 3am about our insomnia. Check it out here.

'V' reveals the impact of love

May 2, 2010 / / 0 Comments

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My wife and I have been getting into the latest sci-fi series ‘V’. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it traces the impact of an alien visit on the earth’s population. Arriving with a message of peace, the Visitors appear just like us but are really revealed to be lizard-like creatures , some of whom have been with us for years working as sleeper agents. Their motives for coming to Earth are also gradually seen to be apparently sinister, though in what way is yet to be unveiled.

The plotline of the story revolves around a rebel outfit amongst the Visitors, known as the Fifth Column, and their fight to expose the sinister motives of the Visitors’ leadership, especially its head, a lady called Anna.

The fascinating story to come out of ‘V’ is that the reason for the resistance of the Fifth Column, is that, in living with humanity on Earth, they have what can only be called a conversion experience of wanting to be like them in terms of human emotion and care and love. They see it as much more preferable to the Spock-like lack of emotion and detached efficiency of their own race. In seeking to crush the resistance, which includes a ragtag group of humans, Anna makes the profound comment that humans’ biggest weakness is love, which is why their torture techniques include showing scenes of family members being killed by the Vs.

It is yet to be revealed what the final outcome will be, but wouldn’t it be great if the end of the story involved the conversion of the Vs to the way of love? I reckon the best way for the Fifth Column to defeat them would be seeking their salvation in the same way that they themselves were turned around by seeing the power of love over hate (never mind humanity’s lust for power and self-centredness – that’s a different story!). After all, Abraham Lincoln once said that the best way to defeat your enemies is to turn them into friends. I look forward to the upcoming episodes…

Power of a lyric – Window in the Skies

May 1, 2010 / / 2 Comments

‘I’ve got no shame…oh can’t you see what love has done?’ – U2, Window in the Skies

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeQzoBrCxh8]

Therapist John Bradshaw talks about the concept of toxic shame, which arises out of the core belief that you are a bad person rather than a loved person who still tends to go their own way.

Bradshaw uses this concept in relation to the addict who hates their destructive behaviour but is unable to stop it. He then goes on to talk about the inner child and how that child has been deeply wounded and has never grown up. And so we have, in our society today, many children walking around in adult’s bodies. Toxic shame is destructive and must be distinguished from healthy shame. The latter is born of a healthy conscience which lets us know when we have done something destructive. Some might also use the term ‘convicted’ as in when we are convicted of sin.

The huge difference between healthy shame and toxic shame is that when something destructive is done, toxic shame concludes, “I’m a bad person”, whereas healthy shame says “I’ve done the wrong thing but I’m still loved”. The difference lies deep down in the human psyche; it has to do with our core beliefs about who we are. The person filled with toxic shame has a core belief that “I am not worth loving and so therefore it makes sense that I would take part in behaviour that is destructive, both to others and to myself”. The person who is able to feel healthy shame when they do something destructive has a core belief that they are loved unconditionally, and the fact that they occasionally do the wrong thing does not take away from that.

The person filled with toxic shame is much more likely to participate in behaviours that result in a downward spiral of destruction even though they don’t want to. The prime example of this is the addict who desperately wants to stop but finds themselves absolutely powerless to do so.They are trapped in a cycle where their behaviour confirms in their own mind that they are hopeless, so they may as well act like it. So then they act like it, which further confirms their core belief, and so the cycle continues.

The person with such a core belief is also trapped in another sense. They are trapped in the sense that they are unable to focus on anything outside of themselves. Their lives are focused ever inward and they are unable to give. Thus they are self-centred in the extreme. They often want to be a different person, but because they are trapped in the cycle of self, they are never able to realise their full potential. They are therefore despondent and miserable, without joy, unable to think clearly, and riddled with anxiety.

The only cure for the deep wound in the human heart is having a deep knowing of divine forgiveness. John Smith said many years ago that the effect of acceptance of forgiveness on society is much more powerful than any social welfare theory.

Knowing that you are a loved child of God quite literally makes all the difference in the world. It frees you from the bondage of self; it frees you to be able to give and to love, and thereby find the life you’ve always been looking for. The old words of the 1st letter of John are true – we love because He first loved us.

In a society where we are (literally) sold the message that having more stuff will cure the ache within, where the idea of ‘retail therapy’ is believed by millions, the words of Jesus have more relevance than ever – “what will it profit you if you gain the whole world but lose your very self?”.

May you know the life that is truly life; a life of service of others in the name of Jesus. Perfect love drives out all fear, all anxiety, and all toxic shame. Never again need we resort to acts which hurt others and which in turn hurt ourselves. If the Son will set you free, you will be free indeed. We have been given grace upon grace. Freely we have received, so we can freely give, all because He first loved us.

Finding inspiration in the old hymns

April 30, 2010 / / 0 Comments

In our Christian culture, with its emphasis on glitz and noise, it is important to look back at times on some of the great hymns that have come to us down through the ages. Some of the greatest hymns of history were written in the most unlikely of circumstances. Consider the most famous of all, Amazing Grace. Its author, John Newton, would later be a mentor to William Wilberforce in his fight against the evil of slavery. But in 1779, when this hymn was written, Newton was a slave trader and wrote Amazing Grace while waiting in a port for a shipment of slaves. 

Another famous hymn, Abide with Me, was written by H.F. Lyte when he was suffering from severe ill-health. Mark Sayers recounts the story of the writing of this hymn in his recent book, The Vertical Self. Sayers says,

on September 4, 1847, the Reverend H.F. Lyte preached his last sermon. Suffering from ill-health, he would be dead before the year was out. He left his chapel, which was filled mostly with fishermen, went back to his home, and wrote the classic hymn, Abide with Me…When you consider that ministers like Reverend Lyte feared that the intellectual foundations of their faith were collapsing around them, the hymn takes on a different tone. It is a plea for God to stay with humanity, because religion seemed to be leaving Western culture.

Probably the most inspirational story of a hymn being written in unlikely circumstances is that of Horatio Spafford when he wrote It is Well with My Soul. Spafford wrote this hymn in the context of losing almost everything he owned in a fire, followed by his 4 year old son to Scarlet fever, and then shortly after, his 4 daughters in a tragedy at sea. The clip below tells the story in moving detail of Spafford’s extraordinary faith in a God who is close to the broken hearted and who provides hope for those who have none.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3lgJrLhb5Y]

Next time you sing these hymns, remember the stories behind them. They are not just boring old songs of a bygone era. They tell a rich history of the work of a God of grace and restoration in the lives of ordinary people like you and me.

John Clarke and Bryan Dawe at it again

April 30, 2010 / / 0 Comments

To gain insights into insightful political commentary, you often can’t go past comedians. John Clarke and Bryan Dawe have been doing it for years. In this one they expose the hypocrisy and folly of the Rudd Government’s total backflip on emissions trading. Not that I think the ETS was a good idea in the first place, but the Government has shot itself in the foot by giving the impression that it was the be-all and end-all of climate change mitigation. Now that they have deferred it, people will think they have abandoned the fight against climate change. What this sketch highlights though is their failure to provide enough incentive for renewable energies. The reason, according to John ‘Kevin Rudd’ Clarke – “because we have coal!” Check out the video here.

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