Each Anzac Day I find myself struggling between a desire to honour the sacrifice made by those who went to war and the desire to dissociate myself from the idealisation of our soldiers as beyond critique and above reproach. I want to affirm the day is one on which we remember the horrors of war...
Fashion with a conscience
A few years ago I was in Cambodia being driven along one of its crowded streets where the only rule of the road seemed to be “get out of the way of somebody who’s driving a bigger vehicle than you”, when I saw a number of flatbed trucks carrying people jammed in like sardines pass by. I asked...
Learning the Art of Forgiveness
I have been fortunate to go through most of my life without the need to do much forgiving. Yes there have been exchanges of angry words and disappointments at how I have been treated, but with a few exceptions, nothing that has inflicted deep wounds. nonetheless from those painful episodes where I...
A nauseating contrast. Or why it pains me to read the Daily Telegraph
What a nauseous and stunning contrast! Earlier this week both the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian Australia ran articles on the 30,000 asylum seekers living in Australia on bridging visas. These are people who are deemed to have arrived in Australia “unlawfully”, that is by a boat...
Shifting paradigms on sexuality. Why we don’t hear or understand each other
One of the things I’m noticing about the same-sex debate within the church is that there is a stark difference between my parents generation and that of my children. It’s not uncommon for people in my parents and my grandparents generations to struggle with the idea that same-sex...
At the end of a big weekend
It’s 9.03 pm and I am sitting on a train from Sydney to Newcastle. It’s the end of a big weekend – up at 3.30am Saturday to fly to Melbourne to shoot a promo for a church solar panel program A Just Cause and Baptcare are partnering on. Back home around 10.30pm. Preached at my home...
The Space Between Hope and Disappointment. Or Why Following Jesus Is Gloriously Frustrating
The Space Between Hope and Disappointment. Or Why Following Jesus Is Gloriously Frustrating I live in the space between hope and disappointment. I am a hoper. A few weeks back I stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, at the very spot Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a...
The Company Jesus Keeps. An Easter Reflection
It said that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. If that’s true what does the Gospel story tell us about Jesus? The Gospels announce him as Israel’s long awaited King, yet he’s not born in a palace, hailed glorious by the nobility, but among cattle and...
When God ceased being a perpetrator of violence and became its victim. A Maundy Thursday reflection
Today is Maundy Thursday, the day on which Christians remember two great symbolic acts of Jesus: the celebration of the Passover and the washing of his disciples feet. Passover festival was a celebration of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, a liberation that was accomplished...
Who are the happiest people in the world?
Upon their return from countries with high levels of poverty I often hear people say “they might be poor, but they seem so much happier than us.” It’s a comforting thought for those of us who live with great wealth. But it’s not true. The 2016 World Happiness Report has just...