Articles
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Weekly Reflections
What should Australia Celebrate?
Or maybe the question should be 'When should Australia celebrate?' January 26 seems an odd date. In fact it was not until 1935 that all Australian states used that date to celebrate something they called Australia Day. Because at first it was the New South Wales founding day, and other states such as South Australia pointed out that NSW was not the 'parent colony'. Each had their own days to remember their founding.
But eventually the day caught on. According to the official history, for the centenary, “Sir Henry Parkes, Premier of New South Wales, planned something for everyone, or almost everyone. When questioned about what was being planned for the Aborigines, Parkes retorted, 'And remind them that we have robbed them?' At the centre of his plans was the unveiling of a statue of Queen Victoria.”
By 1938 about one hundred Aborigines gathered in Sydney to present a different view of the celebrations.
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- Category: Weekly Reflections
Freedom from... freedom for …?
The terrible killings in France have sparked a huge response of outrage, and support for freedom of speech. The magazine Charlie Hebdo has released its latest issue with a cartoon of the prophet on the cover, according to news reports.
Some of the rhetoric in favour of free speech seems like a contrary fundamentalism itself. As though free speech was the highest value. In traditional Christian societies, free speech has been balanced with an awareness that offensive and insulting speech is mostly inappropriate. Laws have made libel and slander illegal.
More recently debates and laws have come into effect regarding “hate speech” and speech that is intended to arouse social animosities. Prior to this has been a trend, in western society at least, to lower the boundaries on crude and insulting speech. What used to be called swearing and offensive language.
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The Locust Effect
In 1875 trillions of locusts weighing 27 million tons bore down 200,000 square miles of the American Midwest and wiped out every living plant. Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros, in their book, The Locust Effect, show that a similar effect is happening to the world’s poor. As much as they try to work, save for their children’s education, buy small houses (or rooms) to live in, their efforts are consistently and effectively thwarted by an epidemic of violence.
The authors don’t focus on war zones or civil conflicts, although these are devastating enough. They illustrate in pitiful detail the ordinary criminal violence that afflicts the world’s poor – especially in developing countries.
Sexual violence (a “medical emergency” according to Medicine Sans Frontiers), slavery (there are more slaves in the world now than there were during the whole period of the 18th century slave trade), land grabbing, arbitrary detention and torture are some of the features of this violence.
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- Category: Weekly Reflections
Is this a new year?
Is this a new year? It's a very confusing question. Our financial year begins on July 1. Our church financial year begins on May 1. Our church Calendar year began on on November 30. Chinese new year begins on February 19. And Muslim New year doesn't start until October 15.
In 567 the Council of Tours abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year because of its pagan associations. At different times and places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the new year was celebrated on Dec. 25, the birth of Jesus; March 1; March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation; and Easter.In 1582, the Gregorian calendar reform restored January 1 as new year's day. Although not everyone agreed straight away. The British did not adopt the new date until 1752.
Does it make any difference?
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Peace on Earth?
Peace on earth has become as much a part of the Christmas legend as Silent Night and the animals. Perhaps the angels were guilty of false advertising. Maybe the speech about peace on earth was exaggerated. Certainly at the time there was not much peace. Jesus and his parents had to flee in the night for fear of being assassinated. Even when the king died they still were unable to return to Bethlehem because the next king was just as bad. For the families of all the other boys born in Bethlehem at that time there was no peace.
Maybe God picked a bad time. Or chose the wrong place. Surely he could have organised for his Son to be born in a safe place. But Jesus was born in an occupied country which was ruled by a puppet King who had all the characteristics of a corrupt and ruthless tyrant. How could Jesus hope to establish a kingdom in such a hostile place?
This is not just a story from long ago.
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Call him Jesus - and …
If the creator has joined himself to his creation in the birth of Jesus, it suggests that God was quite serious in being with us. In fact if Jesus is God with us in this sense, then it is possible that something completely and outstandingly new has occurred. But in what way are God and humanity together in the person of Jesus? Maybe Jesus was just two personalities living together in the one body?
There seems to be no evidence that Jesus is a kind of split or multiple personality, as though sometimes the God personality comes to the fore and sometimes the human is the one people are dealing with. As the gospels report it, Jesus seems to be a stable integrated person.
So how do the two natures –God and human – exist together?
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- Category: Weekly Reflections
The Hijacking of History
Have you noticed the way “historical” movies tend to adapt the story to fit the views or prejudices or interests of the modern audience? I am thinking of films like Noah or Exodus and so on. No doubt a certain amount of “adaptation” is necessary. The same happens with old drama. Shakespeare’s plays are regularly set in a modern context.
But history is different to drama. It is not that only a selected part of the history is described. Historical description is always selective. It is more that the history gets hijacked by modern concerns. At one level this may be a way of saying that the people of the past faced similar issues to us. But at another level it is a means of co-opting the history to support a particular modern point of view. As though the people in the past held the same view that we are supporting or opposing.