At the risk of sounding like a whinger, dobber, moral crusader, and all round fun police, I’ve made a complaint. Two, actually.

1. To Channel 9 for a promotion of ‘False Witness’, which aired on Sunday night. It featured a topless stripper, nipples and all – just a brief shot, but clearly visible. Just to be clear – it was a promo, with no ratings advice beforehand.

2. To the Advertising Standards Bureau for a massive Bunda Boutique poster I’m seeing everywhere, featuring a naked woman lying down in the usual awkward position with the usual bored, vacant, unproductive expression on her face.

A few months ago, I’m sure I wouldn’t have bothered.

But since then I’ve been disturbed and inspired by this book, not only to see just how widespread and damaging the sexualisation of children in our culture is, but to be more active in providing a Christian voice in the public moral discourse surrounding it (and other issues!).

This particularly has stuck with me: “community silence on sexism in advertising is read by advertisers as agreement, if not encouragement, and thus the landscape remains a gallery of highly sexualised images of women that harass and exclude” (p73).

So, I’m complaining. But complainers need a warning too. Paul tells the Philippians to ‘do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above repraoch in the midst of a crooked and pervese generation, among whome you appear as lights in the world’ (Phil 2:14-15).

I’m not entirely sure how to do this – provide a Christian voice in the public moral ‘town square’, while  shining as a light for the gospel. I don’t think it means not engaging. I don’t think it means secluding, constructing walls around ourselves, our families, our churches, whatever.

I do think it means engaging, writing letters, providing a voice – but not in self-defense or anxiety, not in a fearful restlessness born from the idea that Christians are just another interest group trying to make their voice heard. We can engage, but in peace, in the security of the knowledge of Jesus’ lordship over all things – including the advertising industry. We can engage because in Christ we have something to say about the right ordering of God’s world. We can engage because we care for others, for our city that needs Christ, for our children and neighbours for whom Jesus died.

Father, help me to see Jesus today
and not myself,
my failings or my merit;
not shaming guilt that blocks my way
nor pride, which does inherit
a poor, weak wealth,
a mirage; though fair,
when grasped is only air.

Father, help me to hear Jesus today
above the din,
the suffocating haze
of all this world which screams to say
that I AM worth my gaze.
Lord, make it dim
and fill my ear
with Jesus, sweet and clear.

Father, help me to love Jesus today
as he loved me
and show in that embrace
where in his bloodied arms I lay
all else receives its place
and can be loved truly.
Father, I plead,
help my great need.

Amen.

(c) Duncan Andrews 2009

There are so many in-jokes here, so if it doesn’t make sense, don’t worry… It’s not very good poetry but it was fun to write and funnerer to read at the MTC review!

I came to college all wide -eyed and keen,
off the Big School for my very first day.
I put my bible where it could be seen,
but to my horror, I heard someone say,

‘Is that an ESV?
Brother, I feel your pain!
You have my sympathy -
It must drive you insane!’

Recovering, I drew breath and asked what was his caper
I said ‘What you talkin’ bout?’ like a young Garry Coleman.
Knowingly, he produced a book of gilded edged paper
and pointed to the word on front and said out loud, ‘Holman’.

‘Holman is the new black -
all the cool kids read it!
Oh, and get yourself a mac,
Brother, you’re going to need it.’

For my nerves I went and brewed myself some tea;
My hands were trembling, and I had shaking knees.
I used to feel a smug superiority
when my friends pulled out their NIVs!

But now I found
the tables had turned.
By eyes were cast down,
My stomach, churned.

—

Months later now, and we’re ALL in love with Con,
and Sheady’s been pluggin the Holman too,
and noone’s game to say he’s wrong;
So, really, what else is a guy to do?

But pay a visit
to the Moore Books store,
and come out with it,
proudly through the door.

You see at $9.95, it’s virtually a steal,
so to my six versions on the shelf I think I’ll add number seven.
And I know it represents a-platonic-eschatology-and-a-works-based-soteriology-but-I-can’t-help-but-feel,
That a Holman might get me just a little bit closer to heaven.

I heard a fantastic sermon this week by Peter Brain, bishop of the Armidale diocese in NSW. Apart from just being a bit different (he preached on one verse – Eph 5:20 – a bold move in the heartland of Biblical Theology!) it was a timely reminder to be thankful.

What stood out to me was that what Paul says is not so much a reminder as an instruction - Be thankful. I find my instinctive reading of verses like this is to turn it into an aspirational goal – it would be really good, and one day maybe I’ll get there, if I could be thankful all the time.

But I wonder how different our lives would be if we took these positive commands (be thankful, rejoice always, love one another, just to name a few) as seriously as we seem to take the Bible’s negative ones.

So, I’m experimenting with being thankful. Not aspiring to thankfulness, not hoping for thankfulness, but doing it, and not doing its inverse (grumbling). It’s silly really, that I even need to say that – if I recognised the truth of things, just how gracious God is to us, and at what cost, thankfulness would be the most natural, assumed, unselfconscious thing in the world; and grumbling the most perverse.

I’ve just started reading Miroslav Volf’s ‘Free of Charge’, with high expectations given the wrap he gets. I have to say I’m still waiting to get into the book – for some reason it hasn’t really grabbed me yet. But I’m only on page 50 so perhaps it’ll come!

One thing I have appreciated though is this paragraph, on the relationship between faith and generosity:

… faith doesn’t tell us how little we are and what we can’t do. On the contrary, it celebrates what we most properly are – God’s empowered creatures – and it frees us to our greatest accomplishments… If faith denies anything, it denies that we are tiny, self-obsesed specks of matter who are reaching for the stars but remain hopelessly nailed to the earth stuck in our own self-absorption. Faith is the first part of the bridge from self-centredness to generosity. (p44)

Faith is open hands. Faith isn’t a ‘thing’ we own, but the recognition that we are ‘receivers and receivers only’. This recognition frees us to be truly generous, with neither patronising benevolence nor coercive, grasping love.

_________
Pic on Flickr by Joseph Gurney

I made a new friend yesterday
I’m not quite sure of her name.
She didn’t have a lot to say
But we did play a funny game.

“Chase you!” I said
and I chased and chased
and chased until I was red.
“Race you!” I said
and we raced and raced
but she was always one step ahead!

_________________
Pic on Flickr by Don3rdSE

George Herbert, by Philocrites on Flickr

“Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores”
- C. S. Lewis, on reading George Herbert before he became a Christian.

I first came across George Herbert in high school through studying the metaphysical poets. I read this poem and was hooked. I remember I didn’t really get the poem, but I still felt something of its weight and beauty:

“My stuffe is flesh, not brasse; my senses live,
And grumble oft, that they have more in me
Then he that curbs them, being but one to five :
Yet I love thee.”

I find that when I read someone’s writing, more than ideas and plots and characters I get an impression of the author. This impression seems to stick with me in a more significant way than the specifics of the book. Maybe that’s just because I have a bad book memory – I always struggle to remember the details, even just hours after I’ve read something!

Anyway, the impression this poem left me with was of someone who was deep in his love and yearning for God, and also was so real, so earthy and ready to admit his weakness, so humble. He was someone who knew the ways of learning and honour and pleasure; who didn’t cling to God in ignorance of these things but fully aware of them:

“I know all these, and have them in my hand :
Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes
I flie to thee, and fully understand
Both the main sale, and the commodities ;
And at what rate and price I have thy love ;
With all the circumstances that may move :
Yet through these labyrinths, not my groveling wit,
But thy silk twist let down from heav’n to me,
Did both conduct and teach me, how by it
To climbe to thee.”

Another reason I love Herbert is his moral and practical conviction. His LONG poem The Church-Porch is brilliant in its wit and wise advice:

The way to make thy son rich is to fill
His mind with rest, before his trunk with riches:
For wealth without contentment climbs a hill
To feel those tempests, which fly over ditches.
But if thy son can make ten pound his measure
Then all thou addest may be called his treasure.

Or this, so moving and insightful:

Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makes
Error a fault, and truth discourtesy.
Why should I feel another man’s mistakes
More than his sickness or poverty?
In love I should: but anger is not love,
Nor wisdom neither: therefore gently move.

George Herbert's parish church, by Philocrites on Flickr

Herbert’s output was huge, and there’s much more to say – but instead of filling up more post-space, go and read for yourself! If you’re ok with reading a computer screen, go here. Otherwise if you’re a bibliophile like me, get to a good 2nd hand bookshop and find some Herbert to fill up your soul.

I’ve been AWOL from blogging for a while – sorry about that. For some strange reason life seems to have got busier in my holidays!

Hope to be back posting soon.

I know I do. I love this poem (along with everything else I’ve read by A. A. Milne). Read it to the end – it’s worth it!

The Old Sailor
by A.A. Milne

There was once an old sailor my grandfather knew
Who had so many things which he wanted to do
That, whenever he thought it was time to begin,
He couldn’t because of the state he was in.

He was shipwrecked, and lived on a island for weeks,
And he wanted a hat, and he wanted some breeks;
And he wanted some nets, or a line and some hooks
For the turtles and things which you read of in books.

And, thinking of this, he remembered a thing
Which he wanted (for water) and that was a spring;
And he thought that to talk to he’d look for, and keep
(If he found it) a goat, or some chickens and sheep.

Then, because of the weather, he wanted a hut
With a door (to come in by) which opened and shut
(With a jerk, which was useful if snakes were about),
And a very strong lock to keep savages out.

He began on the fish-hooks, and when he’d begun
He decided he couldn’t because of the sun.
So he knew what he ought to begin with, and that
Was to find, or to make, a large sun-stopping hat.

He was making the hat with some leaves from a tree,
When he thought, “I’m as hot as a body can be,
And I’ve nothing to take for my terrible thirst;
So I’ll look for a spring, and I’ll look for it first.”

Then he thought as he started, “Oh, dear and oh, dear!
I’ll be lonely tomorrow with nobody here!”
So he made in his note-book a couple of notes:
“I must first find some chickens” and “No, I mean goats.”

He had just seen a goat (which he knew by the shape)
When he thought, “But I must have boat for escape.
But a boat means a sail, which means needles and thread;
So I’d better sit down and make needles instead.”

He began on a needle, but thought as he worked,
That, if this was an island where savages lurked,
Sitting safe in his hut he’d have nothing to fear,
Whereas now they might suddenly breathe in his ear!

So he thought of his hut … and he thought of his boat,
And his hat and his breeks, and his chickens and goat,
And the hooks (for his food) and the spring (for his thirst) …
But he never could think which he ought to do first.

And so in the end he did nothing at all,
But basked on the shingle wrapped up in a shawl.
And I think it was dreadful the way he behaved -
He did nothing but bask until he was saved!