Life & Faith

Benjamin Gilmour reflects on 26 years as a paramedic, a poet, and a filmmaker - including in Afghanistan.------Benjamin Gilmour’s book The Gap recounts a very intense summer working as a paramedic out of Bondi Ambulance station in Sydney. He comes face to face with violence, drugs, domestic disputes, brawls, heart attacks, emergency births. There’s even a kidnapping! The trauma, death and distress inevitably take their toll on Benjamin and his colleagues. The gallows humour can only take you so far. Benjamin describes his love for the job, his patients, and his deep empathy for humans and their fallibility.  That same empathy has taken him to far away places of danger, conflict and also searing beauty, where Ben’s compassionate eye as a poet and filmmaker have provided him with extraordinary stories and experiences.His film Jirga, filmed in Afghanistan, explores the complexities of war, guilt and the pursuit of forgiveness. The film reflects Benjamin’s own spiritual journey and search for the best of humanity in all its messiness and glory.

Scott Stephens, editor of ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, shares his own fascinating backstory.------As editor of the ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, Scott Stephens spends his days trawling through the best of contemporary theological and ethical thinking. But the story of his life proves just as intriguing as the material he daily immerses himself in.In this episode of Life & Faith, Scott talks about being the son of a staunchly Republican father and a peacenik mother who instilled in him a love of art and literature, and an upbringing that set Scott on his current course in life.------Scott will be delivering the 2021 Richard Johnson Lecture. Tickets for this livestreamed event are available here: https://bit.ly/3lqkNwg ABC’s Religion & Ethics website: www.abc.net.au/religion

Dr Jenny Brown explains wellbeing and maturity in the context of your “family system”.  --- “One of the distinctives about Bowen family systems theory is, it isn't about people who have mental illness and people who don't. It's about all of us humans struggling with very similar issues. … There's not really this distinction between the expert who's got her life together and the client who is seeking help.” Dr Jenny Brown is the founder of the Family Systems Institute and the author of several books, including Growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life’s Relationships. She is an enthusiastic proponent of Bowen family systems theory - a theory of human behaviour that focuses on how our identity and wellbeing as individuals is a function of the relationship webs we are embedded within. Drawing on her clinical experience, research, family background, and personal faith, Jenny joins Simon Smart and Natasha Moore for a conversation about adulting, birth order, responsibility, dysfunction, intensity, and the process of change. “We grow our resilience and our responsibility and our coping mechanisms within the laboratory of our important relationships - even the difficult relationships. But if we avoid difficulty, if we avoid learning to hold our boundaries, manage our reactivity, our emotions getting stirred up … if we can do that in our original family, then we can do it anywhere. That's the real place of a good workout for growing the capacity to be a flourishing human in the world.” --- Explore:  2021 New College Lectures, “Nurture: Confronting a Crisis” Family Systems Institute Growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life’s Relationships Confident Parenting: Restoring Your Confidence as a Parent By Making Yourself the Project and Not Trying to Change Your Child Bowen Family Systems Theory in Christian Ministry The Parent Hope Project ---  Need help? Call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Sociologist John Carroll unpacks the ongoing appeal of the Harry Potter series.-------Nearly a quarter of a century after the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling’s story of the “boy who lived” continues to capture the imaginations of children - and adults. The Harry Potter effect, it’s claimed, got kids reading again, got kids’ books selling at greater volumes, and made it possible for writers to produce longer novels for younger readers. John Carroll, Emeritus Professor of sociology at La Trobe University, makes a bigger claim: that Harry Potter makes Rowling the greatest contributor to the public good of the last 20 years. In this episode, he makes his case to Simon Smart. This conversation is for you if you’re a Harry Potter fan - but also if you’re not! It ranges from the materialism of our age and our death avoidance to the difference between a hero and a saviour, the importance of vocation, and our deep desire to live in an enchanted world.“That's quite explicit in the Harry Potter books. I mean, the ordinary people, everyone knows, are called Muggles, and they’re mugs. Their lives are boring. Harry’s forced adopted family for the first 11 years of his life is terrified by basically the meaningless of its own existence. And in a sense, I think what's going on here is a warning to children: adulthood is at risk of being just like that, beware! The magic, the enchantment is in danger of going out of life.”------Links:John Carroll, “Harry Potter & the teller of truth”, The Australian, 10 July 2021Wizarding World, Kids React to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Unwinnable wars, fear, discrimination: we sift the long-term impact of the September 11 attacks.------It’s been twenty years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, when terrorist group Al-Qaeda flew two passenger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. Another plane hit the Pentagon in Washington DC, while a fourth plane – headed, it is thought, for the US Capitol – instead crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.The attacks stunned the US and shook the myth of American invincibility. Military strikes on Afghanistan followed in October 2001 as then-US President George W. Bush demanded the Taliban, the country’s de facto ruling power, hand over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks. The US-led ‘war on terror’ expanded to include Iraq in 2003, in search of its reputed weapons of mass destruction.In August 2021, the Taliban reasserted control over Afghanistan just as the last American troops withdrew from the region.As we mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 on Life & Faith, we speak to Mark Maclennan, an Australian tourist who found himself at the World Trade Centre right after it had been hit. David Smith, Associate Professor at the United States Studies Centre and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney, summarises the impact of the event and its aftermath on the United States and beyond.Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, artist Makoto Fujimura, and the work of Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, also feature in this episode.------Explore:Rowan Williams’ Writing in the Dust: Reflections on 11th September and its AftermathInterview with Makoto FujimuraInterview with David Smith on US Politics and Religion

Andrew McUtchen on the challenge and joy of the most important job he’ll ever have. ------ Andrew McUtchen is the co-creator of The Father Hood, an online community that supports Dads to take on the challenge of being the best Dad they can be. Father to three girls aged 6,7 and 8, along with an older stepdaughter, Andrew believes this is the best time in history to be a Dad.  Expectations of fathers have radically changed in recent decades. Andrew tells Life & Faith why that change is such a good thing. And why he wouldn’t have it any other way. In this episode Andrew and Simon share some common threads in their respective upbringings, both being one of three boys with a Dad who was a minister. This leads to a discussion of the spirituality of parenting and the things to be gained by having your life turned upside down. And along the way they touch on wonder, awe and the power of appealing to our better instincts.  "There's an opportunity to reconnect with spirituality through parenthood because ... suddenly your drives are self less instead of selfish and they're giving instead of taking and suddenly you just rediscover all this goodness in yourself." ------ https://www.the-father-hood.com/  

In a world obsessed with success, plenty of us feel a compulsive need to achieve. ------ We tell ourselves - and our kids - to try hard and never give up, for this is the secret to success. But by the time young people finish school, many students find it hard not to link their efforts and abilities with their identity and their self-worth with their achievements.  CPXer Justine Toh’s book Achievement Addiction calls out our fraught relationship with success. In this episode, we talk about tiger parenting and its fixation on academic accomplishment and how meritocratic ideas associating success with effort imply that our wins and failures are always deserved. We also discuss other social cues showing the value we place on achievement - like the way former Australian Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey once described Australia as a nation of “lifters, not leaners” which distinguishes between those who contribute to the public purse and those who take from it.  We also talk to Julia, a Sydney-based cardiologist, who wouldn’t describe herself as an achievement addict but who found herself striving for significance. She lets us in on what might be found on the other side of achievement.  ------ Explore: Justine Toh’s Achievement Addiction and other titles in the Re:CONSIDERING series. Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Michael J. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good

Journalist Greg Sheridan makes a compelling case for reading the Bible book by book and finding within those pages a Jesus as intriguing as he is attractive and compelling.    ------ When journalist Greg Sheridan outed himself as Christian with his book “God is Good for You”, a friend challenged him to follow it up with something that would illuminate the living Jesus of the gospels. That was enough for Greg to commit to a couple of years soaking in the New Testament in search of a way to explain the Christian story to a people largely estranged from it.    The result is Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our world.   Sheridan says of his reading of the Bible, “ ... it's so gripping. It's so immediate, it's so visceral … there's also a tremendous power to it”. Here is his attempt to convey something of that power, and he does so with a disarming honesty and wide-eyed enthusiasm. His aim is to point people to the life-giving words of Jesus and his early followers and the way that message continues to enthrall, challenge and inspire today.      In this episode of Life & Faith Simon Smart speaks with Greg about the book, why he wrote it and the people who come to life within it. ------ Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in our world by Greg Sheridan

Life & Faith marks a milestone, and gets a bit nostalgic.  ------ This week is the 400th episode of Life & Faith!  In this episode, Simon Smart, Justine Toh, and Natasha Moore get together (remotely) to swap stories of their favourite episodes, tech fails, meeting their heroes, and memorable surprises over the years of making the podcast. They also manage to cajole producer Allan Dowthwaite, the man who makes everything at CPX work, out from his preferred spot behind the scenes to answer a few questions in front of the microphone. Join the team on a trip down memory lane with the ghost of episodes past, and enjoy Tim Winton making a joke at his own expense, Justine reflecting on spiritual seekers, Simon and Al recalling the least amount of prep time they ever had for an interview, Natasha admitting the most intimidating person she’s ever interviewed, and the novelist Christos Tsiolkas offering a powerful distillation of what Christianity (a faith he does not share) is all about. ------ Episodes referenced in this episode:  Hope Is Violent Misadventures in Wellness Murder Most Popular  An Empty Plate An Evangelical Election Out of the Fishbowl  He Had a Dream Fear Is a Useless Thing Wrestling Paul

80 years on, Life & Faith charts the ripple effects of a much-loved book. ------ “I got out a yellow pad, cause I’m a lawyer, and I would have two columns – there is a God, there isn’t a God; Jesus Christ is God, he isn’t God – I went down that, and I went through the whole rational process and I thought to myself wow … I’ve never gone into a courtroom and argued against a mind like this.” On Wednesday 6 August 1941, a relatively unknown Oxford don fronted up to a microphone at the BBC in London to give the first of a series of talks that would evolve into what is probably one of the most influential books of the 20th century - one which continues to have ripple effects well into the 21st. C. S. Lewis spoke to his fellow citizens, during a time of crisis and hardship, about the nature of reality, morality, human nature, God, and the meaning of life. Later he referred to his account of what he believed as “mere” Christianity - the faith that has been common to Christians everywhere and at all times, explained in ways that stirred people’s imaginations and satisfied their intellectual curiosity. Mere Christianity has only grown in popularity, decade after decade, and in this episode of Life & Faith Simon and Natasha hear from a number of people who have loved this book and would even say that it changed their lives.  John Lennox - like Lewis, an Oxford don and Northern Irishman - describes what it was like to hear Lewis speak in the flesh. Nixon’s “hatchet man”, Chuck Colson, who famously became a Christian just before going to prison over his role in Watergate and devoted his life to prison reform and ministry until his death in 2012, tells his story of transformation. And three young Aussies describe their own encounters with this still compelling book, 80 years on from its first incarnation. “‘A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.’ So yeah, I wasn’t very careful. And let this happen … thank God.”  ------ Explore:  The surviving recording of C. S. Lewis’ original broadcast talks  Chuck Colson, “How God Turned Around Nixon’s Hatchet Man”  George Marsden, C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: A Biography