So how about the head of ASIO saying that one of our former politicians was a foreign government asset? It was one of those announcements, in an otherwise routine speech that landed like a dead possum onto a picnic table – it had to be disposed of, but even when it’s gone its presence at all still puts you off your meal.
This week I attended the funeral of Joe Mullins. Joe died old and full of years (103 of them). He and his wife Edith (who died in 2009) had six children, and what seems to me like a bajillion grand-children and great grand-children.
1. I’m struck as I read the New Testament just how much of it is concerned with finding unity across distance.
Be it cultural distance (Jewish and non-Jewish Christians); confidence to live as a distinctive Christian minority who, nevertheless, are intelligible to the cultures around them (the so-called “stronger” and “weaker” Christians); and, of course, the mountains of passages about how to handle conflict, disagreement and sin.
A surprising thought rings out through these texts – unity within the body of Christ is deeply precious, it is worth contending for and is more important than being right. This thought is easier or harder to believe based on what’s going on around us.
You might’ve heard this week that the Federal Government has landed a deal on new industrial relations laws which will entitle employees to be able to ignore texts and calls from their bosses outside of work hours.
Unions are annoyed that the bill won’t include penalties for employers who do reach out off-the-clock, while employer groups are concerned that this will impact on “flexible working.”
At the centre of the Christian faith is the belief that by coming to earth as one of us, Christ could die for our sins, rise to new life, bring us into fellowship with him, and begin the process of putting right all that is gone wrong. But at the centre of that centre, tucked away where we don't always see it, is the idea that to become one of us, Jesus had to become flesh. To become a human person, he needed to become a human body. In John 1: 14 we read The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
You might have heard or seen on socials that the renowned Muslim-turned atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has announced that she’s now a lapsed atheist and has become a Christian. This is a big deal. She has been a prominent public atheist for decades, often sharing a stage with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
In a piece titled ‘Why I am now a Christian’ on the website Unherd she details how she read the book by Tom Holland Dominion (one of my favourites from the last few years) and came to the conclusion that the things she values: the nation state and the rule of law, the institutions of science, health and learning, free and fair markets, freedom of conscience and of the press — find their roots in Christianity.
The news of her conversion lit up my socials – but the intensity of celebration made me nervous. Not about her conversion – I’m glad it’s happened; I’ll join with the angels in heaven in rejoicing for her. What I’m concerned about is we’ve been here before.
Ever since I was little, I’ve heard people say “ohh if only [insert celebrity here] became a believer then…” and the sentence kind of trailed off after that.
A few years ago, another prominent atheist announced, to great fanfare, that he too had become a Christian – Kanye West. At the time, the Christian world was falling over itself to celebrate. His music was being played in churches and he was leading worship in the megachurches of the world.
But like seed growing in the third soil, his conversion seems to have metastasised into something quite dark. I listened yesterday to his new single, Vultures, which seems to be about him justifying his new-found antisemitism.
Paul warns in 1 Timothy 3 not to elevate people to leadership within churches who are recent converts, and the reason he offered for this is the danger of conceit. That conceit is not only a problem lurking in the heart of the individual, it’s actively fed up by us.
Part of the challenge for famous people when they become Christian is our expectations of them. We’re used to being led by celebrities. We expect celebrities to be immediately adept at articulating the things of faith, because we expect them to be adept at articulating everything else.
Kanye needed time to sit in church, experiencing the indignity of bumping on every misplayed note by the non-professional musicians up the front and being humbled by the experience. He needed time to be re-formed by the King of the Jews.
I hope Ayaan Hirsi Ali can take a bit of time now to sit in church, get immersed in a Christian community, and get to know her new Lord. My hope for her is that through the nourishment of meditation on the words of God in the scruptures, she’d be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
grace and Peace,
Steve
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