Life & Faith

We want young people to have a healthy sense of themselves but artificially inflating their self-esteem, argue its detractors, is not the way to go about it. We speak to John Smith, author of Beyond the Myth of Self-esteem: Finding Fulfilment, and psychologist Collett Smart about where true self-worth might be found. 

The availability of online pornography has been called one of the biggest unconscious social experiments ever conducted. Research has shown that more than 90% of boys under the age of 16, and around 60% of girls, have visited a porn site online, and this exposure is having significant effects on the way that children and teenagers think about their own sexuality and relate to one another.  Liz Walker is one of Australia’s leading experts on the harm that pornography does to kids. She became addicted to pornography herself as a child, and is the founder of the Youth Wellbeing Project. She has just published a children’s book to help parents talk to their kids about the problem of pornography, called Not for Kids, which you can find at www.notforkids.info. This episode of Life & Faith addresses this all-but-silent public health crisis, and draws on interviews with a number of experts who gathered in February 2016 for a symposium on “Pornography and harms to children and young people” at the University of New South Wales. 

Simon Smart and Natasha Moore discuss some of the films nominated for the 2016 Oscars: The Big Short, Brooklyn, 45 Years, and Spotlight. Each of them talks about things we don’t really want to talk about - or offers viewers a moral dilemma to muddle through.

We discuss two myths of the modern age: a reliance upon pop evolutionary psychology that seeks to account for human behaviour via an appeal to our evolutionary past, and the ‘sex myth’ that links our individual worth and value to our bedroom antics.

Our first Life & Faith podcast for 2016 gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse into CPX’s new documentary about the good, the bad, and the ugly of Christian history. It’s called For the Love of God: How the Church is better and worse than you ever imagined. 

In light of a Church of England survey that found that as many as 4 in 10 British people don’t believe Jesus was a real person, historian John Dickson explains why the academy is in no such doubt that Jesus existed. We also discuss the meaning and significance of the Christmas story today – and why it absolutely matters that there was a baby in the manger.

If stories in the American news media are anything to go by, free speech is under assault on American college campuses. On this Life & Faith, we discuss this recent trend, as well as the banning of the Lord’s Prayer from UK cinemas, and explore the implications of excluding certain ideas from discussion.

Domestic abuse within the church dominated headlines early in 2015. On this Life & Faith we speak with Sandy Grant, who is heading up the Task Force to address Domestic Abuse within the Sydney Anglican Diocese, and speak with Barbara Roberts, survivor of domestic abuse, victim advocate, and author of a book on abuse and divorce within the church. If you are experiencing domestic abuse, we urge you to please seek help. Australian resources: If you are in immediate danger, ring 000. Ring the Respect Line for counselling, information and support 1800 737 732 or see www.1800respect.org.au You can also visit Safe Steps Family Violence Response Centre online at www.safesteps.org.au or call 1800 015 188 Visit Barbara Roberts’ blog A Cry for Justice for information, education, and stories particularly relevant to a Christian context www.cryingoutforjustice.com

On the occasion of the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, we talk about modern slavery with Jenny Stanger, National Manager of the Salvation Army’s initiative The Freedom Partnership, and explore slavery in the biblical context with John Dickson, historian and co-founder of the Centre for Public Christianity. For more information on The Freedom Partnership, see endslavery.salvos.org.au    

In The Life of I: The New Culture of Narcissism Anne Manne has written a sobering, and at times depressing, account of the way that our hypercompetitive, capitalist culture is making us more narcissistic: eager to seek our own interests at the expense of others. In this podcast she talks about what narcissism is, its negative effects, and what role religion and politics might have to play in producing empathy—what she regards as the antidote to narcissism.