When I was a boy one of the popular hymns in my church was “Trust and Obey”. “Trust and obey” it declared, “for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” Good advice, except when it is blind trust and blind obedience. The bible, it seems to me, calls us to a thoughtful...
Jesus Not So Meek and Mild.
One of the most famous episodes in the life of Jesus was his “cleansing of the temple.” And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16 and...
The Other Triumphal Entry. Guess Who Rode Into Town at the Same Time as Jesus
At church we’re preaching a series based on a book by John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg that follows the last week of Jesus’s life as told in the Gospel of Mark. I’m finding it exhilarating. Crossan and Borg are helping me see things in Mark’s story that I never realised...
I haven’t lost my confidence in Gillian Triggs. I have lost my confidence in the PM.
In the last week the Prime Minister has launched a scathing attack on Human Rights Commission President Gillian Triggs, declaring the government has lost confidence in her. He cites two reasons for this: 1) the call for the release of a convicted manslaughterer; 2) the timing of the report into...
Abbott and Turnbull: contrasting responses to children in detention, but both wrong
The response of the federal government to the children in detention report has shocked me. The report reveals the shocking abuse of children in detention, yet the Prime Minister’s response is to shoot the messenger. The complete lack of empathy on display was chilling. On Q and A last night...
We are a nation that abuses children. The ugly truth exposed
This week our Prime Minister promised that good governance would begin again. Perhaps he could start by releasing children from detention on Nauru. Also released this week was the report of the Human Rights Commission inquiry into children held in detention. It is sobering and disturbing reading...
Why Tony Abbott Should be Replaced
Whether or not Tony Abbott is deposed as PM this morning, his position is surely terminal. At least I hope so, for under Abbott’s leadership we do not have a Liberal Party, we have a Conservative party. Conservatives, as the name implies, believe in conserving the existing structures in...
Did I Just Leave Jesus Hungry?
It’s early evening in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I walk through bustling streets. Hundreds of motorbikes whir by, punctuated by the presence of motor cars and trucks. The sidewalks are crowded. The sounds of car horns, chatter, laughter, music and hawkers combine to form a cacophony of life. This...
The parable of the flatlanders, or why apparently ridiculous things can be absolutely true
In the 1880s an Oxford mathematician by the name of Edwin Abbott wrote a book called Flatland. Flatland was a two-dimensional world, in which people and things could move side to side but not up or down. This was a world that resembled a sheet of paper, with its inhabitants shapes that appeared...
When doing nothing is doing everything
Yesterday was a day spent with my son. We played a closely fought set of table tennis, went for a swim during which we threw a football back and forth, duelled with with water pistols, and experimented with lying on the bottom of the pool. In the late afternoon we went to the cinema, picked up...