Greenwash: Honda

Advertising concept of constructing world's largest LED screen to flash feel-good images. $100,000.

Obtaining scores of new cars and taking them out into the countryside for filming. $1,000,000.

Replacing most of the cars with a combination of headlights and CGI. $300,000.

Film crew and distribution costs. $2,000,000.

Taking a beautiful gospel children's song that became a civil rights anthem and re-using it to sell cars that assuage environmental guilt. Worthless.
All figures have been pulled randomly from the air. I have no idea. However, much of the shoot was indeed done with CGI.

Lenten prayer

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made, and you forgive the sins of all who are penitent: create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain from you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer, Collect for Ash Wednesday

Repentance is not about making yourself feel miserable, but about celebrating the goodness of God, who loves everything he has made. Let us throw off the sin that diminishes and weighs us down and dance with joyful repentance. Are we wretched? Yes. But are we loved? A thousand times yes!

Still enjoying U2: real joy

Here's where we gotta be / Love and community / Laughter is eternity / If joy is real

- Bono, "Get On Your Boots" from No line on the horizon

Love and community are the great marks of Christian discipleship. "By this, shall everyone know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13.35)

This is hard. This is where we have got to be, but find ourselves continually slipping away from. Community takes time, commitment, forbearance, repeated attempts at communication, and forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. For many people, such a message seems hopelessly idealistic. They have been hurt too many times, misunderstood, ignored, abused or rejected by the very community that is meant to be the place where we learn love. Are love and community even possible?

Here's where we gotta be / Love and community / Laughter is eternity / If joy is real. And yet the Christian message is, in the end, a message of joy and of reality. It claims that being touch with reality is to be in touch with the deepest of joys, that existence is not ultimately tragic, that pain is not the final word.

Of course, being in touch with reality now also means mourning and weeping. Jesus said, "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh." (Luke 6.21). Life in a broken world yearning for God's healing breath will remain a life of groaning. But such sadness is due to the depth of love that God leads us into. It is love that leaves a mark, that opens us to the wounds that hurt so much. But love is also the only path to laughter and joy. And the good news is that God promises to comfort those who mourn, to turn weeping into laughter. It is God's redeeming love which means that weeping may linger for the night, / but joy comes with the morning.

And this hope - that the story of the world will, in the end, be a comedy rather than a tragedy - this hope is what makes possible a commitment now to "love and community". If our love springs from desperation then sooner or later, faced with difficulty, it will wither and die, or at least retreat to a safe distance. Love must be sustained by hope and faith. But just like love, faith and hope cannot sustain themselves, or be merely wishful thinking in the face of desperate need. Only love can sustain faith and hope, not our love, but the fact that we are first loved. We do not yet know how loved we are. We do not know how beautiful we are. We do not know how beautiful we will be.
Image by CAC.

Are you ready for the apocalypse?

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

Lent: a brief introduction

When I was growing up, only Easter and Christmas would enter into my year as structuring moments of the Christian calender. If you're going to have them, then you may as well celebrate them thoughtfully by adding Advent and Lent. Lent is to Easter what Advent is to Christmas, a time of preparation and anticipation for the great celebration to come. There are a number of good introductions to Lent around with suggestions on how to observe it. But here is a brief explanation from Rowan Williams:

Perhaps Lambeth Palace have adopted a Lenten approach to production. Or maybe they are simply continuing the great Christian tradition of amateur filmmaking.

Dying for the half-hearted and the corrupt

A priest is trying to escape from his sick captor, who is lying on the ground holding his ankle and decides at that moment to make his confession:

"Shall I tell you what I've done? - it's your business to listen. I've taken money from women to do you know what [...] I've given money to boys - you know what I mean. And I've eaten meat on Fridays." The awful jumble of the gross, the trivial, and the grotesque shot up between the two yellow fangs, and the hand on the priest's ankle shook and shook with the fever. "I've told lies, I haven't fasted in Lent for I don't know how many years. Once I had two women - I'll tell you what I did..." He had an immense self-importance: he was unable to picture a world of which he was only a typical part - a world of treachery, violence and lust in which his shame was altogether insignificant. How often the priest had heard the same confession - Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

- Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (Penguin, 1962 [1940]), 97.

Sin is boring, repetitive, old. God says, "Behold, I make all things new!"
Photo by Greg Fox.

U2: No Line on the Horizon

So I bought the new album (actually, Jessica bought it for me). I will leave the full reviews for others; suffice to say that there are definite highlights and a number of tracks that I think will grow on me. Instead, I will just comment on what I take to be one of the key lines in the album:

Only love, only love can leave such a mark / But only love, only love can heal such a scar

Love is an intensification of the problem. In fact, some may say that love is the problem. It is our attachment to perishable things that causes us pain. We invest ourselves in our work that is ignored or undone by our successor, in crafting music that fades before the next bar begins, in sculpting bodies that sag and bruise. We love dying people. We love and let down our guard, becoming vulnerable to pain.

But there is no other way to live. Love is what makes us human. We are loved into being, and quickly learn to love in return, though the quality of our love varies with the object of our love and with our perception of being loved first. Love is our origin, our task, our burden, our destiny.

Love is a wound that only love can heal.
For a more cynical take on the matter, Michael offers ten things that irritate him about U2 (perhaps I have just transgressed against #3... And since when was being earnest a hanging offence?).

A dangerous question

The serpent said to the woman, 'Did God say, "You shall not eat of any tree of the garden"?' (Genesis 3.1b)

"What is the real evil in this question? It is not that it is asked at all. Is it that the false answer is contained within it, that within it is attacked the basic attitude of the creature towards the Creator. Man is expected to be judge of God's word instead of simply hearing and doing it. This is accomplished as follows. On the basis of an idea, a principle, some previously gained knowledge about God, man is now to judge God's concrete Word. When man proceeds against the concrete Word of God with the weapon of a principle, with an idea of God, he is in the right from the first, he becomes God's master, he has left the path of obedience, he has withdrawn from God's addressing him."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, Chapter Three.

Which ideas of God are we in danger of using to escape from his concrete word to us in Christ?

Could it be the (thoroughly biblical) notion that "God is love" (1 John 4.8, 16), which we fill with our conception of love, rather than allowing God in Christ to define it ("this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and gave his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" - 1 John 4.10)? Or could it be a notion that God must be just and so we demand that he conform to our standards of justice?

Could it be that God is mystery, and so can not speak a word to us that we might understand? Or could it be that God reveals himself and so everything about him must be clear, any hint of mystery must be banished through rational exegesis?

What do you think?

Credit crisis: a visual aid

An animation in two parts.


I found this to be quite a helpful summary of some of the structural causes for the present economic downturn. Notice the assumptions at play: that money can always be multiplied through the opening of new markets, that someone else can carry the risk, that my pursuit of wealth is good for the whole system. All false.

Departing from fear

“The path out of fear is not power but trust, not strength but vulnerability before God.”

Scott Bader-Saye, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, 12.

Is it actually possible to fear not? So often, we think that the way to not be afraid is make ourselves stronger, become more secure through the acquisition of more resources, more money for a rainy day, or by hitting our enemies before they can hit us, or hitting them back harder than they hit us. Only when we have either removed the threat, or made ourselves impervious to it, can we let our guard down and cease our anxiety.

But a world where everyone is gathering more goodies lest they miss out is a world that is condemned to perpetual fear of our neighbour, and, increasingly, fear of the world itself that strains and groans under the demands we make of it. The only true and living path out of fear is trust. Trust in the God who provides abundantly. There is enough, and more. We can cease our desperate grasping and learn contentment.

But the path out of fear is not simply trust in God; we must also learn to trust our neighbour. This is a qualified trust, since trust has to be earned, or built, or grow. It is not simply bestowed unilaterally. Thus, I am not advocating a utopian vision that would recommend you leave your doors unlocked. Nonetheless, the way out of fear is showing yourself to be trustworthy and that you are willing to give some small sign of trust to your neighbour. Trust is built slowly as it is given and received. And fear is banished not by banishing enemies, but by loving them.

Of course, this is only possible through trusting the one who raised Jesus from the deadly hatred of his enemies. It is trust in this God that makes the attempt to love even a recalcitrant enemy thinkable. In this way, we make ourselves vulnerable to God, risking ourselves on his promise. We put him to the test, not in an empty show of self-aggrandisement, like throwing ourselves off a tall building to see if he sends an angel to catch us. No, we test him in the same way that Jesus did: through obedience, through not allowing fear to stop us loving our neighbour.
Eight points for guessing the country. Fifteen for the location.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

- Matthew 6.23

Is it possible for a government to follow this instruction? Can a corporation? What does this mean for thinking about possible threats that might arise the day after tomorrow? Or for any projects that require years of careful planning?

Perhaps we need to distinguish two meanings of "worry". On the one hand, worry can have a negative meaning similar to anxiety: a persistent fear of what might be, an endless imaginative dwelling in negative possibilities over which one has little control. I am worried that it might rain tomorrow and the party will be ruined.

But worry can also have a more neutral meaning close to concern: a careful focus upon the welfare of the object of concern. This need not involve anxiety, but is simply love looking forwards, anticipating needs before they arise.

I don't think that Jesus is ruling out this latter meaning, only the former. It is the anxious striving after security that he is addressing in this passage. Instead of trying to obtain safety, we are to seek first the kingdom of God, God's loving reign over all things. This kingdom is something that needs to be sought, it is not obvious. It is a treasure hidden in a field over which you might stumble, or a jewel of great price that you might discover after much seeking. It is hidden in plain sight in this extraordinary ordinary man from Nazareth.
Image by Andrew Filmer. Ten points for guessing the city.

Democracy: concession or perfection?

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

- Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness.

Is democracy merely a concession to human weakness or the truest expression of Christian convictions in the political sphere? Niebuhr believed that democracy had much to commend it, though he thought that the way that it was often justified in his day (the early to mid 20thC) involved overly optimistic estimations of human nature. He sought to defend democracy from its detractors while placing it on a firmer theological foundation by arguing that the checks and balances of democracy are a concession to human sinfulness.

In the early modern period, Martin Luther and Thomas Hobbes shared a deep conviction of the human capacity for and inclination towards destructive behaviours, but they thought that this necessitated an absolutist state to restrain these tendencies. Niebuhr is equally realistic in his assessment of human failings, but applied this also to political authorities. If the tendency towards selfishness is ubiquitous, then not even governing authorities are exempt. Who watches the watchers? This is why a political system that has mutual accountability built in and a separation of powers will prove slightly more corruption-resistant.
Five points for the first to identify this democratic institution.

For whom are we disrobing?

"The reason we eschewed formality in church services was because that was what WE on the inside wanted (or some of us, anyway) - the missiological reason was in fact only a justification for it."

Michael ponders the current reasons for anti-formality in some Sydney Anglican churches. Go on over to his post to contribute to the energetic and interesting discussion.

Atheist theologians

"Is not every unbeliever who has a reason for his atheism and his decision not to believe a theologian too? Atheists who have something against God and against faith in God usually know very well whom and what they are rejecting, and have their reasons. Nietzsche’s book The Antichrist has a lot to teach us about true Christianity, and the modern criticism of religion put forward by Feuerbach, Marx and Freud is still theological in its antitheology.

Beyond that, moreover, there is a protest atheism which wrestles with God as Job did, and for the sake of the suffering of created beings which cries out to high heaven denies that there is a just God who rules the world in love. This atheism is profoundly theological, for the theodicy question -- "If there is a good God, why all this evil?" -- is also the fundamental question of every Christian theology which takes seriously the dying Christ’s question to God: "My God, why have you forsaken me?"

- Jürgen Moltmann, "Godless theology".

Not all atheism is the same. There are atheists who are closer to the kingdom than they realise when their very repudiation of God is on moral grounds. They refuse to believe in God not primarily because such an idea of illogical or unnecessary, but because doing so would be immoral in a world so filled with suffering. Such people are often asking the right questions to which the gospel is such good news.

Augustine on the emotions

Scripture places the mind under the governance of God for his direction and assistance, and places the passions under the governance of the mind for their restraint and control so that they may be turned into the instruments of justice. In fact, in our discipline, the question is not whether the devout soul is angry, but why; not whethuer it is sad, but what causes its sadness; not whether it is afraid, but what is the object of its fear. To be indignant with the sinner with a view to his correction, to feel sorrow for the afflicted with a view to his release from suffering, to be afraid for one in danger so as to prevent his death - those are emotions which, as far as I can see, no sane judgement could reprove.

Augustine of Hippo, City of God, IX.5.

Augustine is sometimes criticised for being too Platonic, too quick to dismiss the emotions and the bodily in favour of the rational soul. But here, he shows quite a dramatic break with the classical tradition regarding the emotions.

Augustine claims that despite their differences, the various ancient schools of thought all basically agree that the wise man will suppress his emotions as much as possible, that the affective life is sub-human and to be transcended through reason. Earlier, he lampoons an example in Stoic teaching of a philosopher who is embarrassed that his face turns pale and his knees shake when he is on a boat threatened with shipwreck. For the Stoic, these unwanted expressions of fear don't belong in a life ruled by reason. The philosopher is to tell himself that the shipwreck can do no harm to his virtue, which is all that really matters and so is to be calm and composed.

Augustine contrasts this with the Christian view, in which the emotions not only have their proper place, but their own rationality. They can be investigated and understood, appreciated and even turned into "the instruments of justice". That is, he thinks that a healthy emotional life is possible in which my feelings are neither forcefully suppressed as irrational manifestations of my bodily nature, nor allowed to rule and make me their victim. The philosopher in the wind-tossed boat, far from aiming at a Stoic detachment from the crisis, ought to be rightly concerned for the lives of those on board and that emotion ought to lead him to do all he can to save them from the danger.

It is indeed possible to love God with all your heart, as well as all your mind.

The logic of pollution: exporting our mess

"Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of dirty industries to the LDCs [less developed countries]? I can think of three reasons: 1) The measurement of the costs of health- impairing pollution depends on the forgone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health-impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that. 2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low costs. I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. . . 3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income-elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under-five mortality is 200 per thousand."

- The Economist, Feb. 8, 1992

This quote, an World Bank internal memo signed by its then chief economist, Lawrence Summers, illustrates the logic of a narrow view of economy that fails to place it in a larger context. Although this memo puts it bluntly, this logic is at work every time the bottom line is seen as the bottom line.

Obama has recently appointed Lawrence Summers as head of his National Economic Council.

Consuming security

An interesting article arguing that consumerism is destroying America's national security. Which idol is more powerful?

Becoming a theologian: the ten step program

Ben Myers offers his advice for theological students. Compulsory reading for all theologians, theologians-in-training and those who dream of one day being theologians. As the great poet Homer says, "It's funny because it's true."

Scarcity is not the problem

"The conflict between the narratives of abundance and of scarcity is the defining problem confronting us at the turn of the millennium. The gospel story of abundance asserts that we originated in the magnificent, inexplicable love of a God who loved the world into generous being. The baptismal service declares that each of us has been miraculously loved into existence by God. And the story of abundance says that our lives will end in God, and that this well-being cannot be taken from us. In the words of St. Paul, neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor things -- nothing can separate us from God.

"What we know about our beginnings and our endings, then, creates a different kind of present tense for us. We can live according to an ethic whereby we are not driven, controlled, anxious, frantic or greedy, precisely because we are sufficiently at home and at peace to care about others as we have been cared for."

- Walter Brueggemann, "The Liturgy of Abundance and the Myth of Scarcity"

My ethics lecturer at Moore College, Andrew Cameron, would often say "scarcity is not the problem". At first, I thought he was crazy. Of course scarcity is a problem. There are people starving for lack of food or ill from lack of clean water, others who sell themselves into slavery for lack of money, or who go without medical care and suffer apparently unnecessary pain, farmers whose crops fail due to drought and changing weather patterns. All these people cry "we do not have enough!"

But that is not what he was saying. He was saying (I think) that scarcity is not the problem. Scarcity only becomes a problem due to other, deeper problems: our unwillingness to share, our ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the needs of our neighbours, our confusion of wants and needs, our fear that unless we hoard all we can then we might miss out, our delusion that endless economic growth is necessary for a healthy society or that boundless consumption will make us happy. These are the real problems. Scarcity is the symptom of a world out of joint. And lives based on the assumption of scarcity compound other problems. If I fear that there will not be enough to go around, I will be more reluctant to share.

The quote with which I began is from this article by well known Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. It is worth reading in full (it is not too long) as a great articulation of the fundamental Christian belief in God's generosity. God is not stingy. He has not shortchanged us. He provides abundantly (though not infinitely as our childish dreams desires). There is enough. There will be enough. Be not afraid.

Give us this day our daily bread. Amen.

One thousand

This is my 1,000th post. What are the chances of making it to 2,000?

Atheist: what Africa needs is more Christianity

This Times Online article by Matthew Parris is worth a look. He argues that Africa's biggest problem is a traditional belief system that encourages passivity and is forced to admit, despite his own atheist beliefs, that Christianity makes a difference.