A few years back I walked barefoot across a 2 metre pile of red hot burning coals. I was at an Anthony Robbins seminar. A friend of mine, an Anthony Robbins fan, had arranged a ticket for me, and so I found myself at the Sydney Entertainment Centre with 3000 others for a three day seminar with one of the world’s leading self-help gurus. It was self-help meets rock show and the undoubted...
I heard a story that a wealthy businessman approached the CEO of an Australian aid and development agency with the offer of a $1 million donation. He wanted it to go to Africa and he didn’t want any of it to be spent on administration. ‘Certainly we can do that’ replied the CEO. He opened up his computer, pulled up a phone directory from an African nation and invited the...
I’ve just finished reading “Do Fish Feel Pain?” by fish biologist Victoria Braithwaite (Oxford Uni, 2010). Braithwaite is one of the few people in the world who has conducted research on fish pain. Her conclusion? Fish do feel pain and there are significant ethical implications. As someone who loves fishing I think I need to pay attention. Anyone who sees a fish flapping around...
Last weekend I attended the Revive conference in Sydney. The keynote speaker was Matthew Barnett, lead pastor at the ‘Dream Centre’ in Los Angeles. The ministry began after Barnett felt God was calling him to serve the people no one else was interested in. Today the Dream Centre serves 40,000 people on a weekly basis, with programs in drug rehabilitation, employment training and...
It seems that scientific literacy has little to do with attitudes to climate change. Given all the major scientific academies, most esteemed science journals, and major scientific bodies affirm the high probability that human actions are changing the climate, one might expect that the more scientifically literate a person is the more likely they will be to accept the scientific consensus. This...
My fellow Australians, The last hundred years have witnessed the spread of freedom. We Australians joined the fight against the violent ideology of Nazi Germany. We stood shoulder to shoulder with our allies to conquer the unfreedoms of Communism. We have joined the global resistance to the oppressive vision of contemporary terrorism. The blood of our young men and women was spilled on the...
Yesterday the expert panel set up by the Government released its report on how to prevent deaths of asylum seekers on their way to Australia by boat. The Government is now rushing to pass the recommendations into law. The report recognises that the only lasting solution is cooperation among nations in the region to ensure that all asylum seekers can reach a place of safety, have their claim...
With Parliament set to resume debate on asylum seekers it is worthwhile reminding ourselves of some simple facts. These are drawn from an August 2011 report by the Centre for Policy Development titled A New Approach. Breaking the Stalemate on Refugees and Asylum Seekers. One of the authors, John Menadue, was Secretary of the Department of Immigration during the Fraser Government. 1. Australia has...
For many years I puzzled over the bible’s teaching on poverty and wealth. Why were Jesus and the prophets so down on wealthy people? Why was poverty so commonly framed as a justice issue? Why the singling out of widows and orphans? It all came together when I learned the significance of land. The biblical world was marked by wide scale peasant agriculture. This meant that the majority of...
What will God do now? That’s the question swimming in our heads when we get to the end of Genesis chapter 11. In eleven brilliantly constructed chapters the writer of Genesis sums up the human predicament: created to construct communities of faith, justice, generosity and grace as we multiply and fill God’s earth, we instead create communities of faithlessness, injustice, greed and...