Friday 27 February 2015

My Adventures With God: Ch 38: I cause a riot

Chapter 38

I Cause a Near Riot in Synod

A funny thing happened just before the 1988 Diocesan Synod.

I was tending the roses in the big circular rose bed I had made at the Lang Lang Rectory. I don’t think I was thinking anything of note. Suddenly I was sure God was telling me he wanted to put a motion to synod. That in itself was a worry. But the content was worse. He wanted me to put a motion saying that “abortion on demand” which was the catch-cry of the day was wrong. I had not previously even thought of activism on this issue. I was not sanguine of success. But I was obedient and I sent in the motion.

When the time came to speak to my motion I was rather nervous. I started my speech. I never got to finish it I was howled down by shouts of rage and fury. How dare I question “a woman’s right to abortion”! As I recall Gideon got a similar response when he pulled down the altar to Baal in his home town!

The motion never went to a vote. The bishop suggested Synod refer the matter to the Social Responsibilities Committee for a report to the next Synod. I was seconded to the Committee.

The Chairman of the committee was a very deft politician and knew how to manipulate a committee. He made it quite clear at the first meeting that the final report would be unashamedly pro-abortion. But we went through the motions of looking into the topic. Several reports from other Anglican dioceses were circulated. Apart from the Sydney diocese one (which incidentally was well and intelligently written) they were all pro-abortion and all complete rubbish.

These Anglican reports got to me in a big way. They were all complete balderdash! Worse, they were smugly self satisfied with woolly thinking and sheer obstinate ignorance.

I had been going back to the Monash University library to read up on this topic. Monash was the home of professor Peter Singer and Helga Khuse who were noted pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia campaigners, so the library was well stocked with pro-abortion writings. But at least these writers had thought about the issue. I might think they were wrong, but I would not accuse them of being ignorant.

By contrast the Anglican papers were so poorly thought out and so lacking any attempt to find out what the argument was about that they would have got an instant fail as a first year essay! These Anglican writers could and should be accused of “pig ignorance”!

I thought: “This is not good enough! The church should have something to say on moral questions affecting large proportions of the population! The church should have people who have at least understood what secular moralists on both sides were saying. The church should not be smugly self satisfied at putting out drivel that a first year student would be embarrassed to write!” I was angry!

I spent more time in the Monash library. Yes they did have books on both sides of the question, but more importantly for me they had statistics! A lot of the pro-abortion arguments had been special pleading “Oh the terrible plight of the woman pregnant due to rape” …. Well how often does that happen? Should that be what the rules are based on, or should it just be an “exceptional circumstance” in which the rule is waived? Or again “Oh, the mothers who die because they are not allowed an abortion by heard hearted (male) priests”. Well that would be indeed terrible, but just what proportion of abortions currently are on the grounds of medical necessity to save the mothers life? Does anyone know?

There is an old adage “Hard cases make bad laws”. Was this happening on this issue, or were these “hard cases” the norm. Untill then writers world wide didn’t really know because there were just no reliable statistics. I found they did exist, and that they existed in Australia!

South Australia had made abortion legal, but they had required doctors to submit certain details for statistical analysis. This had been done over a period of I think about ten years and the statistics were analysed and published by the government medical officers involved. The results were stunning. In Australia at the most generous assessment 95% of abortions were carried out not for any of the “hard case” reasons given by lobbyists, but because it was economically or socially inconvenient for the mother to give birth to a live baby.

I also found that even communist governments were concerned at rising abortion rates – not out of any moral qualms but just as a women’s health issue, and researchers had been looking at changes needed to be made in working and domestic conditions to reduce the abortion rate. Given this I found the Anglican Church’s fanatical pro-abortion stance puzzling. They were not truly helping women by their dogmatic stance.

I am jumping forward a bit but I prepared a “dissenting report” which detailed the results of my research, I sent a copy to the bishop but I heard no more. Its style is much more analytical and reflective the style of the research papers I had been reading at that time than the later one which I wrote while studying moral philosophy at Melbourne University, but you can download both from www.Anglicanfuture.org




Friday 20 February 2015

My Adventures with God Ch 37: More Miracles

Ch 37: More Miracles

To re-cap: From our “back to the drawing board” experience we were re-building the church. Sociology had given us valuable insights, but the actual details came as answered prayer to our little prayer group. Spiritually and numerically the parish was growing. But what the diocese needed to see was growth measured in dollars – lots and lots of dollars.
I had stood firm against fund-raising when people wanted to do that instead of evangelism. But this was different, we had previously done the evangelism very successfully: now we needed some miracle money to convince the diocese we were on the right track. But you know what God is like: he does so much better than we can imagine or dare to ask!

In our family we have a saying “For God two-birds-with-one-stone is still wasting stones”. In this instance God raised money and built up the morale and numbers of the congregation at the same time.

Here is how:

Inez and Sue – but since they were both great prayers I should say “and God” – made a formidable team. Gala events were planned. The congregations were still small but we had huge numbers of people in the community who would gladly help out at grand events.

And grand they were! We believed that these events had to be fun for the workers and give them a great sense of achievement and being part of a winning team. This meant grand scale, good planning, effective team and morale building and really obvious success. People had to have fun and be proud to have been part of the team pulling off such a big successful event.

We might spend sleepless nights, but the team had to know they were supported, valued and they had to believe it would work!

Our first grand event was a Gala Fashion Show (with dinner of course). Now we had a fashion show each year at the flower festival with local women modelling clothes from Sparrows Emporium – a great thing but we were thinking bigger, much bigger! One of Inez’s friends in the district, Dulcie had been a top model in her youth: she still had contacts. We were getting real models, actual high fashion clothes, the correct trappings of catwalk and music. The real thing!

Next came the dinner part: we had lots of volunteers, and all those women who had gone into other churches, and some of the others from those churches who thought we were, as one lady said “A breath of fresh air” cooked and baked (yes including a Uniting Church lady who was the undisputed best sponge baker in the district – Vera of our church was undisputed second best)

For wait staff we put out the call and the town young people rallied, they brushed up exceedingly well in the natty black and white uniforms we got hold of somehow. I think about 30 of them rolled up!

It was stunning! Financially it was hugely successful. In team building it was amazing. In satisfaction level for the gang … you only had to look at their faces! They were exhausted but they had been part of something big!

We only did these really big things annually – the next year the theme was picnic races – still in the Lang Lang civic hall. But people got gourmet picnic hampers, a course of hurdles (and a water hazard) was set up round the hall. For safety riders ran behind their (human) horses with reins connecting them. I am told the town’s real life SP (illegal off-course) bookie was running the betting shop and everyone was given Monopoly money to bet with. Another howling success! I even won the “Lang Lang Cup” cup (I was the horse) elegantly made by one of the parishioners from a jam tin and fencing wire.

In between we catered for weddings with much smaller teams, and put on other social events. The men from the pub who I had talked to in the old days sitting in John’s barn – and their friends turned out to help wash up and things like that – since we often borrowed the glasses from the hotel they had a vested interest in getting them spotless! The barmaid I mentioned earlier was one of the team – the first time she helped at a “do” I remember the look on Jan’s face when she came out in her miniscule black skirt and fishnet stockings and see-through white blouse! I didn’t think people could really turn purple! I also thought some of the old men were going to have heart attacks – but for the opposite reason.

Having mentioned Jan I realise I have been remiss. I have only described the new fundraising ventures. I need to give due credit to Jan and the rest of the Ladies Guild who had for years been faithfully ploughing on, and were still hard at work doing their various fundraisings.


By the end of six months, yes we were still in debt but we were definitely gaining ground. In the analogy I used of a swing we were now on the down-stroke and gathering speed! It was a success. The diocesan bean counters were still sceptical. But we said we’d won our bet. And continuing improvement of the financial position as the months rolled by showed we were right. Also the church was growing, not the rapid expansion of the early days but good solid and above all stable growth. We had proved the sociological research findings right! More important we had been another demonstration that God is faithful. 

Tuesday 17 February 2015

William Wilberforce, 1797 book condensed: Chapter IV Section II (A)

Chapter IV Section II (A)

Just how Christian are most “Christians” (In England in 1797)

Here are some dysfunctions I see scattered in differing measures and combinations throughout our population.

First let me say that true religion is in the heart. It reigns supreme in the heart and gradually expels all that is contrary to it until it brings all the persons passions and desires under its control.

Many people who call themselves “Christians” are not like this. Will they let God into every part of their lives? No way! They are like this:

They start by seeing religion as a list of prohibitions. If we picture their lives as a farm, we could say they see religion like someone saying the dam is dangerous – so they put a fence around it – but then do what they like with the rest of the farm. Even then they often go to the fence and look longingly at the dam!

Some take the next step: they admit religion has some positive claim on them. Back to the farm picture we could say they fence off a small area for native animals - then they do what they like with the rest. In real life these people set aside a portion – be it small or big – of their time, money, effort and so forth as belonging to God, then fee free to do whatever they want with the rest. They may be stingy and only go to church on Sunday and put a little in the plate or they may tithe a tenth of their income, and perhaps give to charity beyond that. They may be much more generous with their time: go to church twice on Sunday, and Bible study or church committee meetings during the week, even daily prayer. But the crunch is this: after paying their perceived “dues” to God everything else belongs to them to do exactly what they like with.

Big mistake! Huge! This is not true Christianity.

If promoting the glory of God and possessing his favour is our highest regard then nothing short of giving God control over the whole farm will do. Every, yes every, aspect, part and moment of our lives – all that we are and all that we have – must be given to God. Yes, we must trust God. Trust that he cares for us, trust that he knows our needs and human obligations better than we do ourselves and that he will use his lordship over our lives in a way that will fulfil all these. Conversely, when people only give God part of their lives they are really saying they don't trust him!

“...we find in fact that the generality of mankind among the higher order, in the formation of their schemes, in the selection of their studies, in the choice of their place of residence, in the employment and distribution of their time, in their thoughts, conversation and amusements, are considered as being at liberty, if there be no actual vice, to consult in the main their own gratification.”

So instead of Christianity in all its beauty, we are left with a “decent” selfishness. A life frittered away in idleness or self-centred activities. A claim that “we are not hurting anyone, we are not neglecting our family or civic duties – so why should we not seek pleasure!”

Some “Christians” forget that health is only a meant to an end – useful labour! They make the pursuit of “health” their goal, and even their god.

Others again seem more to attach themselves to what have been well termed the “pomps and vanities of this world”. Magnificent houses, grand equipages, numerous retinues, splendid entertainments, high and fashionable connections appear to constitute in their estimation the supreme happiness of life.”

Others again let ambition or avarice rule the parts of their lives they keep from God. They let the cares of this world and the pursuit of advancement, power or money squeeze God further and further out of their day-to-day lives.

Still others pursue other ends – learning, art, science – to name a few. These are noble but they must not be in the highest place in our attention and our lives. We look forward to eternity: God must be our supreme good and our supreme goal



Tuesday 10 February 2015

William Wilberforce 1797 book condensed: Ch IV Sect I (B)

Chapter IV

On the prevailing inadequate conceptions concerning the nature and the strictness of practical Christianity
Sect. I (B)

It is the grand essential practical characteristic of true Christians, that relying on the promises to repenting sinners of acceptance through the Redeemer, they have renounced and abjured all other masters, and have fervently and unreservedly devoted themselves to God. … Christians are become the sworn enemies of sin; they will henceforth hold no parley with it, they will allow it in no shape, they will admit it in no composition; the war they have denounced against it is fervent, universal, irreconcilable.”


Christians give themselves without reserve to please Christ: they are not their own; all they are and all they have now belong to Jesus. None of this is now for their own gratification. Everything – abilities, skills, money, time, authority, influence – all is now consecrated to the honour of God and dedicated to the service of God.

Their minds belong to Christ: “we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ

Their lives: “He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who dies for them and was raised again

True in this life for all our efforts we fail to live up to this. But it remains our fixed desire to daily improve in all holiness. We know that: “without holiness no one will see the Lord” This is the description of true Christian: “We are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

It is not just about fear of misery or desire for happiness. These do have their place – but a lower one: the main thing is a passionate desire to please God. As a creature to please its Creator certainly, but more than that: Love. “We love God because he first loved us”. We love God because we have glimpsed the infinite beauty of his nature. We love God as “Our Father”.

This is the Christian love of God! A love compounded of admiration, of preference, of hope, of trust, of joy; chastised by reverential awe, and wakeful with continual gratitude.”

I don't want to wound any weak but sincere believer. You may not exactly fit this pattern. We are all different and different aspects of what I described may come to the fore in different people. The bottom line is this: a) determination to serve God, b) desire for growth in holiness, c) confessing how unworthy and how fallible we are.

Now my objector may say: “Very good, but you are describing “Super Christian”! Ordinary Christians don't need to aim that high!”

Yes, they do! The Bible casts its precepts in the broadest and most general terms. It never suggests anyone is “above the law”. Think about it. You wouldn't get far with that plea in a human court: why do you think God would fall for such a weak excuse.

Look at the uncompromising language of the Bible; “You are not your own, you were bought at a price”. We are commanded to do the most difficult things “That you may be children of you Father who is in heaven”. Which can only be achieved by complete transformation: “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” … “you must be born again.”
There is plenty more in the Bible: Everywhere Christians are described as children and servants of God with the requirement of obedient service that those close relationships entail.

Look at the well known passage: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength.” No amount of fast talking can make that sound as though ordinary Christians only have to meet some mediocre standard!

Idolatry. It is the number one sin in the Old Testament. The sin that really got up God's nose and the one his people were most prone to. They always tried to have God and their idols. God said firmly and repeatedly: “No way!” God won't have anything in our lives compete with wholehearted devotion to him. We are not just talking figurines of wood stone and metal here: we are talking whatever in our minds and hearts competes with God. All those self-centred desires we nurture and feed have to go. Even proper duties and affections have to come second to God: “Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”.

God will have nothing less than wholehearted zeal: “because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth

It is not in bowing the knee to idols that idolatry consists so much as as in the internal homage of the heart – as in the feeling towards them any of that supreme love, or reverence, or gratitude which God preserves to himself as his own exclusive prerogative. On the same principle, whatever draws off the heart from him, engrosses our prime regard, and holds chief place in our esteem and affections, that … is no less an idol to us than an image of wood or stone would be before which we should fall down and worship.”

So: stop trying to water down what God requires! Nothing less than fervent unreserved devotion to him and to serving his glory will do!



Friday 6 February 2015

My Adventures with God 36 : The Wager

Chapter 36: The Wager

I had thrown down the gauntlet to the received wisdom of managed adaptive decline in country parishes. I believes it was at God's direction. But I really needed God to back it up with a miracle.

I had declared that I would personally fund half my salary for six months. I had publicly wagered that in ths time the parish finances would recover to the point where it would be able to fund me 100%. If the experiment succeeded, I would return to full pay; if it failed I would quit.

The purpose of this experiment, as I saw it, was to show three things:

1. That God could provide.
2. That for denominations like the Anglican church, accepting decline as inevitable and simply reducing ministry in the face of it was wrong-headed.
3. Lastly to vindicate my belief that the church was – to use one popular story – meant to be a life boat station not a clubhouse.

On #1 and #2 I was challenging their view of God. True they cried out to God for help. True that help was, in so many country parishes conspicuously not forthcoming. But I believed the Bible gave the reason “I gave you cleanness of tooth (famine) in city after city yet you did not return to me says the Lord” is a recurring Old Testament theme. Sure they prayed for help – help to go on being the sort of church they wanted to be. God didn't answer, so they acted as though God could not help them and adapted and kept going as they wanted to. They never said: “The God of the Bible can act. He clearly is not acting – so what are we doing wrong?” To which the obvious answer would be: you are not giving him anything more than lip service; you don't act like he really exists; you don't act like Jesus wants all people everywhere to turn to him and be saved.

On #3, early in our time at Lang Lang whilst studying Ephesians a current application had struck me so forcefully that I felt God was using it to open my eyes to something which was important to him. In the early part of Ephesians Paul was on about the dividing wall between Jew and gentile being demolished and the two being united as one body in Christ. It was brought home to me that we faced an analogous situation. There was a dividing wall between the church community and the general community.

On the side of the church community, they were every bit as introspective as the first century Jews. They were happy to have “outreach” programs to encourage the secular community to donate money (which the general community often did),  for at least the right sort of people to swell the numbers in church (which the general community mostly didn't). What they never considered was that it might be their duty to take the Gospel of salvation to the secular community without strings or ulterior motives. Definitely they did not to allow, let alone welcome, an influx of “unchurched” who might be messy, might change things or want to do things differently or threaten their personal sense of identity.

Christ was not like that! He humbled himself and sacrificed his life to woo us rebellious humans.

As recounted earlier, God had blessed the efforts prompted by this insight with a spectacular revival in Lang Lang. However diocesan officialdom had been openly contemptuous that we had sought to convert young people and those from the less prestigious social classes to Christianity. When the three-pronged attack of the devil had brought an end both to the revival and to visible material success in the parish it was to them proof that we had been wrong to take the Gospel to young people and the “unchurched”.

At the time I opposed the Dioceses decision to reduce the Lang Lang parish to a half-time ministry and proposed this experiment, our church already advancing in spiritual recovery. We had the prayer group I mentioned previously. We had already seen God at work providing as we laid the needs of people and the parish in believing prayer before him. We had seen him take a hand in directing our path as we actively submitted our personal ideas and preferences to his. For Sue and me the devastating effects of her post-natal depression and my own chronic depression were lifting. All round God's hand could be seen destroying those works of the devil which had caused the collapse of the revival.

However, what the diocese saw was just the bank balance and that was going from bad to worse. Money was where God had to demonstrate his approval of us in order for the diocese to recognise it as that. This was the substance of my challenge. Could we with God's help – or more accurately could God, even through us – turn the parish finances around in just six months. That would be a miracle!


Tuesday 3 February 2015

William Wilberforce: 1797 Book condensed: Ch IV Sect I (A)

Chapter IV
On the prevailing inadequate conceptions concerning the nature and the strictness of practical Christianity
Sect. I (A)

Strictness? That may surprise you. I emphasised that our salvation is “by grace alone” through Jesus' death. Does that mean I am soft on “works”? Not at all. And the people I criticised for having a scheme of salvation that rested chiefly on their own exertions and performance for acceptance with God – are they much more strict? Surprising as it may seem – No. Quite the opposite.

It is a Truth or Error thing. Those who believe the true Gospel of salvation through Christ also believe the rest of the Gospel – dying to sin and living for Christ alone. Those who are in error about the Author of our salvation go on into further error. They start by believing that we can somehow earn our way into heaven and they end up by setting the requirement low enough that anyone can do it. This means they water the moral demands of Christ down to almost nothing.

This watering down of the Gospel seems now (in 1797) to be the commonly received opinion.

If you doubt this, just ask a nominal Christian in what way they would act differently if you could prove to them that Christianity was a fraud.

Actually you don't even need to do that. Just look at how these so called “Christians” live. Are their lives much different to the professed non-believers they live amongst? No. Not really.

Is that the Christianity of the early disciples? Is that the faith they suffered hardship persecution and martyrdom for? I think not!

You may say I am wrong here. You may claim that in our Christian civilisation the moral tone has been so raised by generations of Christians that now even unbelievers act better – in fact they copy Christians in their moral behaviour so much that there is no discernible difference.

Nice try! But are you seriously claiming that the motivation required to live as a Christian is so small that someone who doesn't believe it at all can live as good a Christian life as someone who does believe?

but let it then be asked, are the motives of Christianity so little necessary to the practice of it, its principles to its conclusions, that the one may be spared yet the other remain in undiminished force? Still then, its doctrines are no more than a barren and inapplicable or at least unnecessary theory, the place of which, it may perhaps be added, would be well supplied by a more simple and less costly scheme.

But can it be? Is Christianity then reduced to a mere creed? Is its practical influence bounded within a few external plausibilities? Does its essence consist only of a few speculative opinions, and a few useless and unprofitable tenets?”

As If! Could anything that weak warrant what Scripture says is the difference between believing and rejecting it? “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on them” No indeed. Christianity is no mere creed!

The morality of the Gospel is strong stuff too! “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” “be holy for God is holy” “Be perfect therefore as your Heavenly Father is perfect”

No one who takes these seriously can be satisfied by low attainments! This is why the Bible describes becoming a real Christian as needing a radical change. “All who have this hope purify themselves even as he is pure” True Christians are said to be created anew in the image of God, to be “temples of the Holy Spirit” the effects of which must appear “in all goodness righteousness and truth”.


These verses - and the Bible has many more like them - vindicate the strictness of the Christian morality. I will say more later when discussing the Christian character.