Life & Faith

A detective and a scholar tackle the question: why are we all so obsessed with crime stories? --- “When I was a child, not everything was a detective story. Now it is, on television. And it’s almost as if we all want to know, we want to know the big question: who did it??”  Judging by the perennial popularity of detective novels and crime shows, and the current wave of true crime podcasts, it’s not a stretch to call our culture murder-obsessed. Why are these stories so fascinating to us? Is there something wrong with us? It’s a topic writers have long been drawn to, in essays like George Orwell’s “Decline of the English Murder” and W. H. Auden’s “The Guilty Vicarage”. In this episode of Life & Faith, Natasha Moore speaks with literary scholar and theologian Alison Milbank about the hold these stories have over us - and also Jim Warner Wallace, who’s been dealing with the real thing for decades in his work as a cold case detective.  “When you knock on the door of the neighbour of a serial killer, they’re likely to say, ‘Oh I’m so glad you’re taking that guy to jail, that guy is crazy - I mean it smells bad over there, there’s all kinds of weird noises, he’s always digging holes in his backyard’ … When you think of my kinds of cases, you knock on the neighbour’s door and tell them ‘I’m taking your neighbour to jail for this case from 30 years ago’, they’ll generally say, ‘No, I’ve known that guy for 30 years, he’s a great guy. No way could he have done that.’” From our deepest convictions about human nature to how you can tell if a suspect might be lying, this episode delves into the appeal of the murder mystery, and also unfolds the surprising story of how Jim came to apply his particular skill-set to the truth claims of the Christian faith.  “All of my cases, I call these ‘death by a thousand paper cuts’ - cases where you’ve got 80 pieces of evidence that point to this suspect. Any one of those pieces of evidence I’m not sure I would want to go to trial with … but when you have all 80 and they point to the same reasonable inference, this is now heavy and weighty. And that’s where I was with the Gospels.” 

Porn has become a way of life for everyone—even for those who don’t view it. --- “I came to the realisation that what I was asking was not a sociological question, ‘what is pornography?’ It actually was a question of metaphysics, where reality lies.” What explains pornography’s pull? Is it just the sex? Or the way it ritualises the endless desire for more? In this episode of Life & Faith, Catholic theologian Matthew Tan offers a theological take on the phenomenon of porn. In swapping the actual for the possible, and the real for the unreal, Matt says porn plays out a metaphysical move that can be traced back to the twelfth century, and the musings of medieval theologians. What’s more, he says the insatiable desire for ‘more’ isn’t simply a feature of porn but permeates modern life. Food porn, FOMO, online dating, envying the Insta-worthy lives of others: all are driven by the same porn logic. --- Resources mentioned in this episode: Matthew John Paul Tan, Redeeming Flesh: The Way of the Cross with Zombie Jesus. www.awkwardasiantheologian.com  

How a not-neat Bible maps onto our not-neat lives.  --- "A text without a context is a pretext for whatever you want it to mean. When you do the chicken nugget thing and excerpt a verse, or a half a verse, or two verses, or three verses from its original context and don’t bother to try to find out what it meant in its original context - guess what, you are bound to twist that text.”  What happens when you read the Bible wrong? What happens when you read it right?  In the second part of this conversation about the best-selling book of all time, Bible scholars Darrell Bock and Ben Witherington III talk about some of the challenges of reading this text - and a few epic interpretative fails - and how it has helped them navigate the highs and lows of life, including the birth and death of a daughter.  “You look at life at the back side of a tapestry, and normally what we see is loose threads and knots. But occasionally the light shines through the tapestry and we see God’s larger design weaving together the darks and the lights of life.”  --- Books mentioned in this episode: Ben Witherington and Ann Witherington, When a Daughter Dies: Walking the way of grace in the midst of our grief Ben Witherington III, Reading and Understanding the Bible Darrell Bock, Can I Trust the Bible?

A series of voices on the many voices that make up the world’s best-selling book.  --- “It’s the most read, most owned, best-selling book of all time.”  The Bible has over the centuries seeped into our language, our stories, even what we value and imagine. It’s true to say that it’s the most read book of all time - but we could equally call it one of the most unread, and sometimes one of the most badly read.  In this two-part episode of Life & Faith, three passionate readers of the Bible - Ben Witherington III, Darrell Bock, and Sarah Golsby-Smith - explain what’s unexpected and even shocking about it, and what it means to live in a Jesus-haunted culture. Featuring the seasickness that comes from trying to navigate English literature without it, why the female heroes of the Bible are so appealing, and what a personal encounter with this very ancient and surprisingly modern book can be like. “Reading the Bible as literature - I actually think it saved my life. I can remember sitting in church in first-year uni thinking I wish I got as much enjoyment out of reading the Bible as I do sitting in a lecture, listening to one of my professors talking about Hamlet … I think about the people who wrote the Scriptures, and the time and effort they put into making something beautiful so it could speak to us, and we read it like a recipe book! That to me seems like a crime.” 

New York Rabbi Bob Kaplan on how to share a society with people you radically disagree with. ---  “Being a rabbi, I always kid around that I am a Hebrew school dropout. The rabbi and I only agreed upon one thing in Hebrew school: he didn't want me there and I didn't want to be there.” Bob Kaplan never expected to become a rabbi. In this episode of Life & Faith, he tells Simon and Natasha about growing up non-kosher in Brooklyn, how he once managed a New England ashram, and what he’s learned over decades of community building about living with the “other”.  Rabbi Bob has worked with police and educators, he’s spoken at the White House, been a grief counsellor after 9/11, and worked on mediation and conflict resolution from Belfast to Jerusalem. He has a highly developed sense of our proficiency as humans in the art of hating, and a lot of hope when it comes to the possibility of building a “shared society”.  “Respect is something that needs to be earned; dignity is God-given. And that means that when I talk to you, I may disagree with your faith, I may disagree with your notion of life, but if I come off and tell you that right away and just say ‘you're a dumb idiot for believing that’, what I've done is I've closed down the ability to communicate with you. … How do you get to that place of understanding that you're encountering the divine when you're encountering another human being?” 

Valerie Browning on the choices that led to her life among the Afar nomads of the Ethiopian desert. --- “Why do you protect yourself? Life without risk is not life, it is simply not life.” Valerie Browning is a nurse and midwife who has spent the last 30 years among the Afar people of Ethiopia. She has endured civil war and snakebite, extreme heat and malaria, and nearly died in childbirth. She daily takes on the hardships confronting her people: famine, cholera, infant mortality, illiteracy, climate change, and the real causes of poverty.  It’s an unexpected path for someone who was born in England and grew up in country NSW. In this interview, Valerie explains what’s wonderful about Afar life, explains how she keeps going in the face of overwhelming need, and puts us all on the hook for the choices we make in our affluent Western context. “I see in the life of the Afar almost the life of the four Gospels. Where was Christ? Was he sitting in a very comfortable chair? Did he iron his clothes every day? Did he wear perfume? I don't think so. I really don't think so. Because he was with those who were the most neglected in the society. He seemed to be having a good time actually … It's up to all of us, in our own responsibility, in our own belief, to find out whether we're on the right path or not.” --- You can learn more about Valerie’s work and support it here: www.barbaramayfoundation.com  Listen to our interview with Valerie’s nephew Andrew Browning here: https://www.publicchristianity.org/missionary-doctor/  Photo credit: Joni Kabana. 

Tim Costello on what resources we have in the face of overwhelming human need.  --- “So much of our experience is that there’s such goodness in people, and generosity. But when you see evil and look it in the eye, it’s overwhelming.”  From arguing with Vladimir Putin about political dissidents and the relationship of church and state, to witnessing the devastation of the 2004 tsunami or the power of forgiveness in post-genocide Rwanda, Tim Costello has had an inside view of some of the most fraught issues of our time.  In the second part of Simon Smart’s interview with the man who’s been called “Australia’s pastor”, Tim shares lessons from his time as CEO of World Vision Australia, including questions around suffering and trauma, what a reasonable refugee policy would look like, burnout, and what makes humanitarian efforts genuinely effective.  “Boil down all the books on development in all the libraries in the world - and there’s hundreds of thousands of volumes - they really come down to: what works? It’s relationship. That your culture matters, that you have respect from us, that we will not take control of your life, but ask you what control and changes you want to make in your life. That takes time, and relationship.”  ---  Listen to Part I of this conversation: https://www.publicchristianity.org/a-lot-with-a-little-part-i/  --- SUBSCRIBE to Life & Faith on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast OR on Spotify: http://cpx.video/spotify FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet VISIT our website: www.publicchristianity.org 

Tim Costello, Australia’s favourite social justice advocate, looks back on a storied, surprising life. --- “I don’t think you ever understand your faith until you’re out of your own culture and have to see it through other cultural lenses … The Italian Baptists all voted communist. They believed the Christian Democrats, with the Mafia, with even the Catholic church, would never clean up corruption in Italy. Only a communist government would. And I just knew God was in heaven, Bob Menzies was in the lodge, and we Christians only voted Liberal, or conservative.”  The title of Tim Costello’s just-released memoir, A Lot with a Little, reflects his sense that the doors that have opened to him across his life have been more than he deserved. As a Baptist minister and lawyer, erstwhile mayor of St Kilda, and for many years CEO of World Vision Australia, his journey reflects his understanding that Christian faith is not a respectable, middle-class thing.  “So much of the Bible forces us to ask the questions of, who has power in this society and gets what they want? And who doesn’t have power and misses out? … The Bible has Mary when she’s pregnant, the mother of Jesus, singing a song: ‘The rich have been sent away empty-handed and the poor have been fed.’ That Bible reading was banned in Guatemala because it was seen to incite subversion! For me, the Bible is absolutely personal and transformative, but it addresses, what are the barriers to this 'goodwill on earth’?”  This first part of an extended interview with the man who’s been called Australia’s favourite social justice activist - and who’s also the newest addition to the CPX team - covers some colourful stories from Tim's various careers, including his failed attempt to evangelise the lead singer of AC/DC, and the relationship that the journalist Philip Adams has called “the most interesting sibling rivalry since Cain and Abel”.  --- SUBSCRIBE to Life & Faith on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast OR on Spotify: http://cpx.video/spotify FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet VISIT our website: www.publicchristianity.org 

The untold story of what drove Vincent Lingiari to lead the Wave Hill walk-off. --- “Those stories are as true and as real as someone having the audacity to say ‘I have a dream’ that racism will be changed in the United States of America. They’re the sorts of dreams that would motivate a leader to hold an eight-year campaign as opposed to an eight-week campaign.” It’s been 53 years since Vincent Lingiari led 200 Gurundji people—Aboriginal stockmen, domestic workers, and their families—on a walk-off from the Wave Hill cattle station in protest against atrocious housing and working conditions, meagre provisions and unequal pay. That strike morphed into an eight-year campaign to reclaim the traditional lands of the Gurundji people, and one that was realised—symbolically, at least—when in 1975, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam poured red dirt into Vincent Lingiari’s hands in symbolic recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. The walk-off and the ensuing protest are now seen as the birth of the land rights movement in Australia. Little is known, however, about the role Christian leaders played in the protest—a category that, it turns out, includes Vincent Lingiari.  And even less is known about the dreams Vincent Lingiari had that assured him that the land was promised to the Gurundji people. Mark Yettica-Paulson is the son of Rev. Graham Paulson, the first Indigenous Baptist minister, and the man who baptised Vincent Lingiari.  In this episode of Life & Faith, Mark shares his father’s memories of Vincent Lingiari, and how the Gurundji leader came to be seen as Moses figure who led his people out of captivity to a land of their own. --- SUBSCRIBE to Life & Faith on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast OR on Spotify: http://cpx.video/spotify FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet VISIT our website: www.publicchristianity.org 

Mark Greene on the frustrations, and the potential, of work in contemporary Western culture.  --- “It’s not at all clear to me that the way the work is currently being structured in Western culture is good for the majority of the people in it.”  Mark Greene grew up Jewish, and worked for a long time in advertising in London and New York. These days, he’s Executive Director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, and he spends a lot of his time thinking, speaking, and writing about the nature of work - which also means, the nature of God, and humans, and our life together.  "Camus famously said: work is not everything, but when work sours, all life stifles and dies. I think people are created for purposeful activity.”  In this episode, Mark considers our problematic experience of work, shares three key things that the research suggests make work enriching rather than soul-destroying, and tells stories of workplaces that are doing things differently.  --- Mark was in Sydney in July 2019 as a keynote speaker at the Work and Faith Conference. His books include Thank God It’s Monday and Of Love, Life and Caffè Latte.  --- SUBSCRIBE to Life & Faith on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast OR on Spotify: http://cpx.video/spotify FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet VISIT our website: www.publicchristianity.org