Life & Faith

On the 20th anniversary of the Sydney Olympic Games, we look back at what made those games so special. Simon Smart and Mark Stephens ask what these kinds of events can tell us about who we are as human beings. Former Olympics Minister Bruce Baird talks us through the hair-raising bid process and the joy of seeing the whole thing come together so well. Veteran sportswriter Greg Baum outlines what he found so special about Sydney 2000. And seven-time Paralympian Liesl Tesch recalls the buzz of playing in front of packed houses cheering the home team on, and what this event did for Paralympians generally. And Simon Smart gets all nostalgic remembering his experiences going to anything he could get tickets for.   

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s 1992 “Redfern speech” laid out a challenge to extend opportunity and care, dignity and hope to the indigenous people of Australia. Nearly 30 years on that challenge remains. We have not yet succeeded in finding justice, wellbeing and a clear path for reconciliation and full inclusion of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people in the life of the nation. Keating called for building blocks of change. The story of Gawura school might well be one of the better examples of what he meant. Born out of a visit to South Africa by then Headmaster of St Andrews Cathedral School, Phillip Heath, Gawura is a school for indigenous children within a larger school in the heart of Sydney. It’s focus on indigenous culture, language and community provides a home for inner-city indigenous kids to thrive in an environment where they feel at home. What started as a risky venture full of obstacles and challenge has proven to be a haven for learning and the flourishing of indigenous students. And the school itself has become a gift to the wider school community. This is a good news story worth hearing.   

Are people essentially good or flawed? We review Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History. In 1965, six Tongan teenage boys were marooned on a desert island for more than a year. But they didn’t descend into savagery, Lord of the Flies-style, once civilisation had been stripped away. Instead, they worked together, grew their own food, and sang and prayed together each day. In Humankind: A Hopeful History, Dutch historian Rutger Bregman draws on the story of those boys to argue that humans are essentially good. We are more cooperative than unrelentingly selfish and cruel, Bregman says. It’s a case he builds by drawing extensively on the human sciences: psychology, social psychology and evolutionary biology.  But not theology. In this episode of Life & Faith, we interview Beth Felker Jones, Professor of Theology at Wheaton College in Illinois. We ask her to explain the Christian take on the essential nature of human beings, and how Christianity holds in tension the better (and worse) angels of our nature. — Read: Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History 

Why does the Second World War continue to have such a strong appeal for us? “It’s the fudging of the truth that’s much more important than the actual lies … mythology is more difficult to get to grips with.” In summer blockbusters and bestseller lists, on internet chat forums and national debates, World War II is a cultural touchstone for us. Decades on from Basil Fawlty’s famous “don’t mention the war” bit, this is the war we just can’t stop mentioning. In this episode, Natasha tells a somewhat appalled Simon about the time she had a dream she interviewed Hitler for Life & Faith, and also has a more serious conversation with British historian Keith Lowe, author of (among other things) The Fear and the Freedom: Why the Second World War Still Matters. They discuss good and evil, a war criminal who later repented, the antagonism that many Holocaust survivors faced after the war, and the religious revival that followed in its wake.  And, of course, whether comparisons between the Second World War and Covid are valid. “People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, they want to part of a community - because that’s what they felt during the war.” --- Buy Keith’s book, The Fear and the Freedom Read Natasha’s article, “What do the stories we tell about the Second World War say about us?”

A Christian sets out to meet the Jesus of Islam – and a Muslim encounters the Christian Jesus. “The thing about Jesus is, if he was an idea or if he was a philosophy or if he was a character in a book, then yeah, we could all have opinions about him. But if Jesus is a real person, particularly if he's a real live person today that's interacting with the world, then we really don’t get to pick and choose what he's like … you just have to meet the person on their own terms, taking them as they come.” Years ago, when he was living and working with a Muslim community in Melbourne, Richard Shumack ran into a friend outside the local gym. The guy was wearing a T-shirt that read I LOVE JESUS on the front, and on the back BECAUSE I’M A MUSLIM AND SO WAS HE. Many people would be surprised to hear that in Islam, Jesus is revered as one of the prophets. Richard’s new book is called Jesus through Muslim Eyes, and in its pages he sets out to meet the Muslim Jesus. In this episode, Richard explains what the Muslim Jesus and the Christian Jesus have in common, how they’re different, and why it matters. Simon and Natasha also hear from Abdu Murray, an author and speaker with RZIM who has looked at Jesus through Muslim eyes and through Christian eyes. “Sometimes we made fun of it. Sometimes we thought, Those foolish Christians. How could they believe that a person who is trapped in a human body that needs to walk to get where it needs to go to and sweats and eats, and then eventually dies at the hands of the creation he created, how could this be the incarnation of God, the Almighty?” --- Buy Jesus through Muslim Eyes    

The working mums of lockdown have had to juggle everything. They’ve had enough. “The personal is political”, goes the feminist catchphrase. For one particular group of people—working mums—shutdown has made that very clear.  If women have been fortunate enough to keep their jobs in what’s been dubbed the “pink-collar recession”, they’ve also more likely been the ones juggling working from home while also home-schooling and parenting children. That’s also on top of any housework that needs doing—and, before COVID, Australian women already did roughly double the amount as men. Shutdown has mirrored these trends, according to a study of family life in lockdown from the University of Melbourne. In this episode of Life & Faith, we speak to Devi Abraham, a Melbourne-based writer, podcaster, and mum to two boys. She tells us what it’s like to go back into lockdown to fight COVID’s second wave, and how she is approaching it differently this time. We also hear from Natalie Ray, a mum and Christian minister in Sydney’s leafy north-west. She reflects on the ways that work often relies upon the flexibility of women to manage their schedules amidst the demands of family life. Being a minister, Natalie also has a few thoughts on why Christians, of all people, should value care. Hint: it’s got something to do with Jesus. — Read: Professor Lyn Craig on how little we value ‘women’s work’ Annabel Crabb on how Covid-19 has left women anxious and overworked  George Megalogenis on the “pink-collar recession” Watch: Annabel Crabb in conversation with George Megalogenis about her book The Wife Drought at The Wheeler Centre Connect: Contact Devi through her website, or through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter  

What makes us such … apocaholics? What happened to all the utopias? It seems like the stories we tell ourselves about the future now – in blockbusters, bestselling novels, reality TV shows, and your daily news feed – are almost uniformly bleak, even dystopian. What is feeding our cultural pessimism? In this week’s episode, Simon Smart talks to Natasha Moore about her brand new book The Pleasures of Pessimism. They cover why we enjoy thinking about the end of the world, how they think they’d do in the event of civilisational collapse, and whether they consider themselves optimists or pessimists. Mark Stephens, CPX colleague and expert on the apocalyptic biblical book of Revelation, stops by to talk about uses and abuses of that influential text. And we draft in thinkers like Steven Pinker, Alain de Botton, and Nick Spencer to help us weigh the idea of progress and whether everything is getting better and better – or worse and worse. --- Buy The Pleasures of Pessimism here: https://www.koorong.com/product/the-pleasures-of-pessimism-re-considering-series-natasha_9780647530757 Watch the full Munk Debate on Progress here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUmBWB54riE&t=35s Listen to the full discussion with Nick Spencer “Same Species, Bigger Sticks” here: https://www.publicchristianity.org/same-species-bigger-sticks/

Professor John Lennox weighs up the benefits and potential pitfalls of AI and the implications it has for what it means to be human. In this Episode of Life & Faith Simon Smart talks to Oxford Professor John Lennox about his new book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. Lennox poses some vital questions of the AI enterprise, offering some warnings that the technology is vastly outpacing important ethical considerations. “I think any form of AI is like a knife. A really good knife can be used for surgery and it can be used for murder.” Lennox believes that the implications of AI are such that it is vital that philosophers, ethicists, theologians, cultural commentators, novelists, and artists are involved in the debate. He draws on the ancient Biblical text of Genesis in considering what is essential to human nature and what AI could mean for our futures. 

What happens when religious language reckons with racial injustice.   “The original sin of this country still stains our nation today,” said Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden in the wake of the police killing, in May, of George Floyd. The phrase “America’s original sin is slavery” is so widely used in the United States that it is practically cliché. But what does it actually mean? “When you call something sinful, you’re speaking to a transcendent moral norm. As a person of faith, I think that what America does isn’t simply wrong to other human beings. It offends God himself,” says Esau McCaulley, an Assistant Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois, and the author of the forthcoming Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. In this episode of Life & Faith, we explore the crossover between the metaphor of ‘original sin’ in discussions of racial injustice and the Jewish and Christian idea of human brokenness found right at the beginning of the Bible. Not only does the metaphor invoke collective wrongdoing, but questions of justice and restitution. We also invite Ray Minniecon, a descendant of the Karbi Karbi and Gurang Gurang peoples, an Aboriginal pastor and activist, to examine Australia’s complicity in a similar, but different, ‘original sin’: the dispossession of the indigenous people of Australia. “We’ve been living these lies for far too long,” Ray said, citing the declaration, not overturned until 1992 with the Mabo Decision, that Australia was terra nullius or ‘empty land’. “Until those lies are addressed, which are the sins of the nation, then how on earth can we start to work out a better future?” — Read Esau McCaulley’s New York Times opinion piece ‘What the Bible has to Say About Black Anger’ Buy Esau McCaulley’s forthcoming book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope Follow Esau McCaulley on Twitter Listen to Ray Minniecon discuss self-determination and sacrifice on Speaking Out at the ABC

Oncologist and writer Ranjana Srivastava believes there is such a thing.   “Having watched countless people die, I do think that there are ways that you can make the end more peaceful for yourself and for those you love. I do think that there are better ways of dying.” How often do you think about your own death?  Ranjana Srivastava is a cancer specialist and the author, most recently, of A Better Death: Conversations about the art of living and dying well. She sees a lot of death - and the ways that our tendency to avoid talking or thinking about death serves us badly. In this conversation, Natasha Moore talks to Dr Srivastava about what the process of dying is actually like, what she wishes people knew about it, and what she’s seen religion do (or fail to do) for people at the end.  Natasha also speaks with Anglican minister Andrew Katay about death at a funeral, and what it means to be “ready” to die. “I think a good death is one when you're ready to die. You can put that more strongly and say: it really is one of the core central purposes of being a grown-up person that your death doesn't come as some kind of weird surprise to you. I cannot tell you the number of old people that I meet and talk with who are surprised by the reality of death.” --- Read/find out more:  Ranjana Srivastava, A Better Death: Conversations about the art of living and dying well WeCroak app Natasha Moore, “What does it mean to die well?”, ABC Religion & Ethics