A lesson in what happens when you ignore bits of the text...

Hugh Mackay in todays Sydney Sun-Herald.

What seems strange is the freedom he uses certain phrases and descriptions of the incarnation of Jesus (and distorts them), to Christianise what are essentially pagan ideas.

It is incredible when people ignore the biblical explanation of an event, to create their own one special interpretation. But what is sad is that some people still respect Hugh for his social commentary, and may think these ideas really are what Jesus is about...

Power of God rests with the wisdom of humanity

THOUGH many Christians won't admit it, the birth of Jesus poses the ultimate challenge to the idea of God as a supernatural being. The teachings of Jesus present God as an inner, spiritual experience - the spirit of goodness, truth and love - that simply cannot co-exist with the old concept of God as a vindictive, partisan, arrogant, angry, judgemental being, manipulating the external world at will.

The genius of Christianity is the revelation that "the Word was made flesh"; that the "guy in the sky" was dead. The Christian God exists within us, and nowhere else. It is a spirit with the power to make us whole ("holiness" being a fancy religious word for wholeness).

If we nurture that spirit and revere its power, we will have found God - not in the wonders of "creation" but in the greater wonders of human kindness and charity. Since there's no supernatural God to attend to the world's suffering, we ourselves must act. That's why Christianity is so intensely focused on social justice and the needs of the sick, the poor, the marginalised.

For Christians, the circumstances of Jesus's birth are intensely symbolic: no room in the inn; a stable shared with animals; a manger for a cradle. Their message is that goodness (God within us) is borne out of humility. Arrogance, triumphalism and vengeance turn out to be the most ungodly traits imaginable.

Merry Christmas

Keeping Busy over January

Summer Bible Series
Sundays 5pm in January
St Peters Anglican Church, Hornsby

The weak and foolish church

Join us in an informal setting to study the bible together every Sunday evening in January 2007. All ages are welcome.

January 7: The weak and foolish prisoner
January 14: The weak and foolish messenger
January 21: The weak and foolish leaders
January 28: The weak and foolish lifestyle

More on the CIS Night

An edited bit of part of the speech is extracted by The Australian here...

So Labor has a leader who champions Bonhoeffer's muscular Christianity and finds him in the tradition of Thomas More, who defied the king and paid with his life. Why did Rudd write this article? Not because he had spare time on a rainy day. It was part of Rudd's campaign to establish his philosophical credentials for the Labor leadership.

For Rudd, what counts is how the individual Christian should relate to the state. His answer is unequivocal. They should relate by Bonhoeffer's principle of action, and that means taking the "side of the marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed". Rudd says the church's role "in all these areas of social, economic and security policy is to speak directly to the state". He wants the church to fill the moral and political vacuums.

There is no compromise. In case you missed the point, Rudd gets specific: "We should repudiate the proposition that such policy debates are somehow simply 'the practical matters of the state' which should be left to 'practical' politicians rather than to 'impractical' pastors, preachers and theologians."

It would be hard to imagine a more comprehensive rejection of aggressive secularists seeking to keep religion and church out of politics. For Rudd, religion has an important and constructive role to play. The state, in turn, has an obligation to listen, if not to endorse.

Religion and Politics

The Centre for Independant Studies had a talk tonight on the interaction of Religion and Politics.

Much was said about the slow resurgence of religion, though unfortunately by aggregation, many points seemed to be lost or dulled as attempts were made to generalise across various groupings.

The core message was a constitutional law one. Australia has a seperation of church and state, but not a wall which prevents the two from intermingling.

Interesting points were made about the extent of church involvement in secular activities, and recent calls for this to increase.

I wonder though how effective this could be. Politicians will try and get churches to support them. As churches increase their political commentary, they may be over time endangering their focus on their core tasks.

To get the balance right, that is the hard thing.