Reviewed by Ted Witham

As a rule, they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. On that somewhat precarious principle, I like books that challenge my faith. I like to be forced to enrich my concepts of God, my superstitions about Word and Sacrament, or my unexamined assumptions about what the cross and resurrection mean.

The Violence of God and the War on Terror is one such book. Let its author, Jeremy Young, into your head long enough to convince you of the basic point in his book, and you have to change either how you think of faith or what authority you give to the Bible – or both.

 Young, an Anglican priest and family therapist, starts with the thought experiment that the Bible is the report of a family about an abusive family member. The people of the Old Testament describe a pattern sadly familiar to a family therapist. This God is apt to uncontrolled rage if he doesn’t get his own way. Often he orders total destruction of his enemies[1], and lets that anger hover over his family as a threat. Ultimately, as the historical books record, God uses superpowers Assyria and Babylon to crush his own people, destroying the kingdoms and allowing them to be taken into punitive exile. To cap all that, God then makes the Israelites feel that they had brought this punishment on themselves.

The family therapist notes the similarities between this wild rage, the actual violence, inducing guilt and the behaviour of a violent husband towards his wife, the people of Israel. Even passages like Hosea 11 extolling God’s gentle love are suspect: they are like the “honeymoon” phase in the abuse cycle.

In Young’s exposition, the New Testament God is not much better. There God behaves towards his Son as an abusive father. Young argues that the NT authors take this view whether you read the atonement expresses God’s love or God’s wrath. In fact, if God allows his son to be abandoned, tortured and crucified as a demonstration of love, this may be even sicker than a father striking his son in a rage or in an attempt to avenge his honour.

I loathed Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of Christ. It dwelt so lovingly on scarified flesh and unspeakable pain, and then had the temerity to place these horrors in the framework of God’s love.  A loving father, surely, would do everything in his power to prevent his son being treated with such violence.

The tragedy family therapists often see is that the victim of abuse often repeats the cycle of abuse in the next generation or the next relationship. Abused children can become abusive parents. Battered spouses often escape one violent partner only to fall into the brutal hands of another man who initially seems strong and protective, but turns out to be as violent as the first.

Young wonders whether the violence seen in Christian crusades, Islamic jihad or in Israeli over-reactions to Palestinian provocation is an outworking of Biblical religion. As children of Abraham’s God, we inflict on others what God has inflicted on us. Alternatively, we, the bride of Christ, allow ourselves to be so pathologically passive that we invite violence onto ourselves.

Of course, we have heard these allegations before – but usually from virulent atheists like Richard Dawkins, not, as here, from a Christian theologian noting this pattern in Scripture and daring to speak out his insight. Young goes further to claim that accounts of this violent God are not just a small part of Scripture, a minority tradition. Rather the abusive God is the Bible’s central message about him.

Young makes his case well. His unflinching honesty disconcerted me at times, though his conclusion did give me a little comfort.

Essentially, Young concludes, you have a choice between three logical consequences of his reading of Scripture:

1.     You can agree that God is violent, and God’s violence justifies my violence and that of others. This is the stated position of many jihadists, and the implied position of many Christian fundamentalists.

2.     You can decide on other grounds that God is not by nature violent. Rather, the minority view in Scripture is that God is essentially love (as in, for examples, the epistles attributed to St John[2]), and this view more nearly approaches the truth about God. This response raises huge questions about the authority of Scripture because your acceptance of Scripture becomes conditional.  As I attempted one day to justify homosexuality from Scripture Hugh McGinlay said to me with some exasperation, “Why don’t you just say that homosexuality is OK, and admit that the Bible is wrong on that point?” Hugh will be glad to know I am coming around to his viewpoint.

3.     You can join Richard Dawkinsand Christopher Hitchensand throw God out completely on the grounds that belief in God is dangerous[3], and those who worship God will sooner or later emulate God’s violence.

I take the second view, but with some fear and trembling. It seems to exalt my view over that of the Bible. However it may be less arrogant than that.  As Young points out, the community of interpretation, both Christian and Jewish, has tended to interpret Scripture as though “God is love” is the majority tradition.

The Violence of God is the last in a series of books I have been reading about Scripture’s “difficult” passages.  Ellen Davis' The Art of Reading Scripture urges us[4] to read Scripture as Christians, rather than primarily as scholars or fundamentalists.  Surely it makes sense for Christians to see, for example, Isaiah’s suffering servant as prefiguring Christ – rather than as scholars insisting only on the text’s original context, or as fundamentalists reducing the image to just one meaning. For Davis, any text can yield its blessing for us now.

Living Through Pain encourages[5] the reader of the Psalms to “hang in” with the Psalmist in her suffering, even if there is no solution or remedy for the Psalmist’s pain; to the extent of maybe concluding with Psalm 88 that all that remains is “darkness” – unresolved pain.

The world has become darker: for me, as chronic pain tries to further restrict my life; for the world, as an abusive President keeps striking out in rage against the trauma of 9/11, whose perpetrators were replicating the violence earlier directed against them.

It is an important time to look with courage into both the world’s darkness and the darkness at the heart of Scripture.  Only an unflinching gaze at the Bible’s horrors will reveal the love at its heart burning away the darkness, which has not overcome it.

Living in the US, we found some things difficult. Difficult perhaps only because they were different. American kids took us aback by asking us "What?" instead of “I beg your pardon”, but then our kids often called American adults by their Christian names, which Americans felt as disrespect.  Just as people thought our kids polite because they said "please" and "thank you", we found American kids very polite because they consistently called us " Sir" and "Ma'am".

Some issues, however, offended us because they were not just different, but morally deficient.  In a recent speech, Barack Obama quotes the truism that the most segregated hour in the US is on a Sunday morning.  That matches my experience.

I remember being surprised, for example, when asked to take services in the Episcopal churches in the North Carolina town of Oxford.  St Stephen’s Oxford, was the "white" church.  Carpeted and air-conditioned, white painted throughout, the church building reflected the wealth of the town.  The American flag decorated the sanctuary.  As the service began, the congregation sang “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”, and saluted the flag.  (During this ritual, I faced the altar in silence and acknowledged my God!)

St Stephen’s was full of white folks; not a black face, nor a brown face, nor a yellow face to be seen.  I knew the power of this.  It was not simply coincidence.  An elegant, well-spoken, black-skinned lady arrived one Sunday in our home church in Durham, NC.  We greeted her, other foreign students greeted her, local academics greeted her, but long-time locals ignored her.  We believed she came from an island off the American east coast but we never got to find out.  The lady tolerated her “welcome” for only a few weeks.  So we were not surprised by St Stephen’s in Oxford.

After my first service at St Stephen's, I crossed town to Saint Cyprian's Church, the so-called "black" church.  Saint Cyprian's had no carpet or air-conditioning, but in each pew, there were Martin Luther King Jr. fans for the ladies to wave to create a breeze.  There were black folks at St Stephen's.  But there were folks of almost every imaginable ethnic background, even some white folks who like their fellow congregants felt uncomfortable at St Stephen's.  Martin Luther King's fans were alive and well, but it was 20 years since Dr King had been martyred.  We asked ourselves, where were the results of the Civil Rights Movement?

Another 20 years on, and Barack Obama is still talking about the church's segregated hour.

But now there may be a difference.  Obama's speech delivered March 18, and usually reported as a speech on race, moved me deeply.  In the midst of a vigorous competition for power, the speech called for healing, reconciliation, and moving on to “a more perfect union".

Even if Mr Obama fails to win this year's race to the White House, this speech should go down in history for the power of its analysis, for its courage in facing an issue for America, and for the sincerity of its solutions.  Maybe Obama is the man for the moment.

As Professor Philip Gorski from Yale University points out, the speech was about more than race.  The speech pointed out America's "original sin” of slavery, but it moved beyond simply black men's rage.  Obama was not captive to the anger of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He reached out also to white poor and all decent Americans fearful of the oppressors in the current political and economic scene.  He spoke of reconciliation.  He spoke of a new coalition between the élite and the poor, a new covenant between leaders and the led.

Philip Gorski shows that this picture was not only about race and class, but also an appeal to civil religion.  Unlike in other democracies, the language of religion has always played a part in America’s public square.  The Religious Right use the language of religion to promote their view of redemptive violence.  Obama rightly rejects this.  The secular left has tried to empty the public square of religious language.  This, Obama knows, won't wash with the American public.

Decent America has been built in the overlap between belief and unbelief.  Civil religion has powerfully used the rhetoric of Christianity to build the common good.  Even so, care is taken in the language not to exclude non-believers.  This overlap, this civil religion resonates with the American people.

Barack Obama inspires partly because he knows how to appeal to the best instincts of his fellow citizens. In this Obama is not simply parroting the language of the civil religion, he is re-minting it.  This phrase "perfecting the Union" recalls both sacralised ways in which many Americans use the word Union (e.g. “these United States”) and also the language of the sacrament of marriage.  He is making something new of the sacred bond between Americans.

I would even take his language a step further; "union" is the language of mysticism.  Mr Obama is hinting that the experience of national unity parallels the journey into closeness with God: perfecting the union.

Because of this many Americans believe they have met in Obama a politician who is not cynical and self-serving.

Are there lessons in this for Australia?  The intensity of responses to the intervention in aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory suggests that race is important for Australia.  We do need to recognize our "original sin" of dispossession.  Until now, each succeeding generation of immigrants has simply added to the effects of aboriginal dispossession.  The formal Apology in Parliament last month gives me hope that we may now begin to heal the wounds at the heart of our national life.

But can we, like Barak Obama’s constituency, be inspired by the language of civil religion?  Unlike the United States, ours is a genuine secular democracy.  The Australian public square is blind to the religion, the beliefs, the philosophy of individuals.  The only identity we have in the public square is that of citizen.  Turkey was founded at about the same time as Australia, and like Turkey, we learned from the mistakes of the new nations of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Nations like the United States, Philip Gorski argues, use the rhetoric of civil religion, a discourse which doesn’t play in liberal democracies. He writes:

By civil religion, I mean a sacralization of the democratic polity and celebration of the sovereign people, that borrows heavily from theistic language and ritual. By religious nationalism, finally, I mean a sacralization of the national state and the election of the common people that glorifies blood sacrifice and rejects the restraints of the covenant.

When Kemal Ataturk founded Turkey the great mass of its citizens were Muslims.  The Australian States that entered federation were composed mainly of Christians.   But Turks and Australians both live in democracies and enjoy a paradox: their religion though respected is irrelevant to the political argument.  Political discourse is not sacralised.  An immediate benefit is that the language of redemptive violence can be decoupled from the rest of public discourse. 

When America is attacked, its public language makes its hard to express anything other than revenge.  In contrast, winning through force is a value only on the fringes of Australian rhetoric, even on ANZAC Day.

Australians Christians have a wide choice in how they participate in politics. Some Christians come into politics as Christians.  They make plain their values and how they derive those values from their faith.  The only "rule" their fellow citizens insist on is to recognise that others have beliefs that differ from theirs.

Other Christians, on the contrary, believe that when they enter the political arena, they leave behind their Christian language.  For them it is inappropriate to mix the language of worship with that of government.  They too must recognise that other participants in political debate may be atheists, Jews or Muslims.

Brian Hill and Tom Wallace in their work on curriculum have shown that Australians do share values and that these values derive ultimately from religion. However, when they are used in public discourse, they inspire only if they are stripped of their religious connotations. 

The idea of a “fair go” resonates more than the concept of justice.  The notion of “mateship” appeals more than the language of love.  Only sometimes, as in the example of reconciliation, does public language overlap with religious language.  Secular Australians apply the word “reconciliation” to the coming together of different groups. Christians may hear the word in this way and also in the context of forgiveness and absolution.

The problem is; the phrases "fair go" and "mateship" are shop-soiled. They have been debased by politicians using them with a self-serving political agenda. In addition, we Australians often use these words with complex layers of irony.

What inspires Americans, then, does not necessarily inspire Australians. Barak Obama moves me partly because I have lived in America, but there is no reason why Mr Obama will move other Australians.

But neither are Australians inspired by clichéd language. Mr Rudd was right to use the language of "Apology" in Parliament. It has few religious connotations, and the constant demand on former Prime Minister Howard to "say sorry" and his refusal to do so debased the phrase.

In the Apology, Rudd’s made an open declaration of the principles that should undergird relations between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The Prime Minister wants to:

“plac[e] an absolute premium on respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility as the guiding principles of this new partnership on closing the gap.”

Respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility are powerful words. I find much of the Prime Minister’s language boring and managerial, as words “real measures” and “targets” fail to excite me. But respect (for all God’s children), cooperation (partnership in righteousness) and mutual responsibility (loving one another), even stripped of their Gospel connotations can still call us to action.

 Australia will be best served by nonreligious political language for two main reasons.

·        . Nonreligious language keeps us away from the mythology of winning through force, and

·        . it has a chance of resonating with all of us. 

But we need speech-makers like Mr Rudd at his best who can re-mint the language of our shared values, and through them call us as citizens into ethical and visionary action. 

I have just been rereading parts of Martin Thornton's excellent .  I had forgotten how dismissively Thornton had treated Franciscan spirituality in England.  His first complaint, and indeed his conclusion, is that Franciscan spirituality is simply "confusion"! 

He condemns Franciscan spirituality as schizoid, because it is sometimes affective, sometimes intellectual, emphasising both the Nativity (Francis inventing the Christmas creche) and also the Passion (Francis receiving the stigmata).  Such extremes, Thornton explains, are far from English sensitivities, which prefer the gentler via media. Maybe he is just jealous because he can't have his spiritual cake and contemplate it too!

Thornton's treatment of the Victorine school is far less controverted.  He reminds us of the stages in the spiritual journey, the so-called Three Ways; purgative, illuminative, and unitive. I wish, I wish that the journey of faith was better explained to pilgrims.  Christians seem not to know that there are stages.  They expect to stay in the same comfortable state, and grow gently, without violence.  But it's not the way. 

Jesus uses the image of wheat to explain spiritual growth.  A grain of wheat, he says, goes into the ground and is dead — without apparent growth.  But then there is a sudden and violent transformation.  A green shoot appears and pushes its way to the sun, elbowing aside heavy soil and rocks in its way.  Once its head is in the air, the green shoot grows gradually and gently.  Winter turns to spring, the warmth gradually dries the green sappy plant. Then, within days, the plant is transformed again into a gold snappy reed bulging fruit standing in its top.  Gentle slow growth, violent transformation.  Gradual, sudden. The rhythm of natural growth.

We do not, of course, cannot, know how a wheat plant feels.  But Jesus was talking not about grass, but about people.  If we haven't experienced it ourselves, we can imagine what it is like to change suddenly from gentle gradual growth to cataclysmic transformation.  Well, actually we do know from experience.  The sudden shocking arrival of puberty is one occasion that throws us into confusion by the changes in our bodies, emotions and spirits.

Yet again this week I met a genuine pilgrim who believes they have suddenly lost their faith, gone beyond the tenets of Christianity, and need to leave the Christian communities which have nurtured them, and which they have nurtured. 

Their faith was so neat, believing, for example, that the Bible contains literal truth about Christ and his world.  Maybe, they suddenly think, they have been thinking about it wrongly all their lives. Their faith, which was so gentle, dependent on a sense of interaction in their prayer life, is suddenly thrown into disarray by the thought that No One is listening.

These are not signs of loss of faith.  These are signs that the stepping stones have become slippery.  These are indications that God is calling the pilgrim further and deeper.  In adolescence, the reaction to this imbalance might be expressed in anger or acting out.  In the spiritual life in the reaction is expressed in a desire for flight; fleeing that is, not soaring. On these stepping stones, what is needed is yes, a steadying arm, but also information.  There is a map to the road ahead, and now is the time to learn to read it.

To use a self-conscious image, the spiritual body has changed.  The map that was suited for feet on a solid path must be exchanged for a map which describes the way through a different medium, swimming in water or in the ether.

There are maps; the teachings of Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor, for example, lead the Christian through the stages that lead to God.  The great Franciscan Bonaventure in many places, and especially in his Itinerarium, the Journey of the Human Person into God, provides sure directions to the way ahead.  I wish, I wish that those who know these things would listen for those slipping and hand them even a simple map.

Martin Thornton reminds us that some spiritual skills are "learned" and some "infused".  Skills that we cannot learn ourselves will be granted to us by our gracious God.  Our task is to step out into the water swirling around the slippery steppingstone.

During school holidays, Sister Maree invited me to help her with the school holiday program.  Fitzroy in those days was populated by latchkey kids and their very poor parents.  70 of these kids came to a program that alternated between craft at the church and excursions to places like the swimming baths, the upper Yarra and variety shows.

Usually the excursions were a total disaster.  Walking back from the swimming baths, we had to cross a local road.  A four-year-old rushed from my group across the road towards Sister Maree.  The child was less in height than an approaching car... at least until the car hit her and sent the girl flying higher in the air.  She suffered only a broken arm.  It could have been far worse, as could have been the near-drowning in the flooded Yarra.  A boy slipped off the muddy bank, the water carried him rapidly downstream into the tangled branches of a fallen tree, from where we were able to retrieve him.

Despite this, the kids loved Sister Maree and seemed to thrive in the atmosphere of the program.  We hoped that our care was doing something good for them.  Those expeditions certainly stick in my memory!

As theological students in the 70s, we spent five days each year in the CHN Retreat House at Cheltenham.  In those days the Sisters were shadowy figures on the edge of thing is in black habits, veils and wimples, serving meals silently, and like Muslims, rushing back to the "The Sisters' Chapel" for prayers five times a day.

On this trip, it was a delight to sit down and eat with the sisters.  Nearly all of them have discarded their habits for modest street wear.  I saw one habit only in three days' visit. That was worn by a Sister who has chosen to live a solitary life, and appears only for Mass.

Sister Josephine, the current Mother, organised my stay efficiently and caringly.  Sister Margaret-Anne and I enjoyed several conversations about matters pastoral and theological -- Margaret works as a hospital chaplain -- and I was delighted to have a half-hour phone conversation with Sister Maree.  Maree and I agreed that we were both too old to take 70 lively undisciplined kids on dangerous excursions.  Other Sisters asked about W.A. and the Third Order, and told good jokes.

Sister Josephine organised Sister Shirley to take me to the airport bus.  I was unprepared for her conversation.  I asked her what her ministry was, which seemed to be pastoral care for whoever she met, so she asked me about my back.  I started to explain about chronic pain, and she cut me off.  "There is some one in Perth you should see," she said, "Margaret Court: she has a great healing ministry, and she would be able to fix your back."

I was taken aback.  I felt it fair to take Shirley seriously, and told her the story of my anointing before major surgery in 1969.  I said that in the moment of anointing and laying on of hands, I knew myself to be totally healed, and that my life's task was to live out that healing.  Shirley was appalled at my theology.  "God does not want you to live as you are.  Maybe if you saw Margaret Court, your back would be straightened, and maybe you'll pain taken away."

I didn't find the words on that day to explain to Sister Shirley that I thank God for the way I am.  Whatever I said seemed sick to her.  "Why would God want you be that way?" The more I tried to explain that everybody is limited, imperfect, in pain, and this is what life is like, the more Shirley disagreed.

This is a most challenging argument for Christians.  The tension between God's permissive will (God allows us to suffer), and God's deliberative will (God sometimes chooses to heal individuals), cannot be resolved this side of death.  I cannot know for certain whether I am unconsciously rejecting healing that God is offering.

Part of be being healed, however, is acceptance.  Just to carry on, especially with the disabilities I carry, I need to be somewhat settled about the way I am.  The Sister Shirleys of this world disturb that peace, and one part of me is glad that they do.  Without their insistent questioning of my acceptance, I might miss out on opportunities for healing.  But I also feel that their intervention is unhelpful.  I am past the place of having my hopes are falsely raised, but I am sure that many others with chronic difficulties can be seduced by false hopes.

The level of my pain and of the success of my coping with it, vary from day to day.  If on a day when I am not coping, someone starts insisting on the need for me to present myself to some healer, I find it hard to be objective.

satan invited Jesus to change rocks into bread.  Jesus refused.  It is not always creative or good to fix things.  If someone is healed, what a wonderful opportunity to praise God.  If Jesus fed the poor with rock cakes it would be an occasion for praise.  But in the wilderness Jesus shows us that it isn't always so.  Rocks are meant to be rocks.  Some people with scoliosis and chronic pain are meant to have scoliosis and chronic pain.

For me it is unhealthy to constantly expect God to give me a straight spine and no pain.  To do so is to be ungrateful for the body I have, for the person I am.  Of course I want to be changed.  But I can be changed only as I accept myself for who I am and offer that to God for healing.

So thank you, Sister Shirley, but no thank you.  My healing is to learn to live triumphantly with what God has given, and to learn not to scrabble for what God has not given.

Jack L. Seymour, Mapping Christian Education: Approaches to Christian Learning, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997. 139 pages. ISBN 0-687-00812-3

Reviewed by Ted Witham

To begin at the end of this encouraging “road map for the vast landscape of religious education”, in which four Christian educators each outline a contemporary approach to the way congregations learn and grow, Jack Seymour, Professor of Religious Education at Garrett Seminary in Illinois, sketches the task of Christian education with these words:

Christian education must provide open spaces where people can learn the faith tradition, engage that tradition with issues of life, and seek to live together in ways that are faithful to God.           (p. 118)

The collaborators for this book write of four different signposts surveying Christian education in the nineties:

·        transformation;

·        faith community;

·        spiritual growth, and

·        religious instruction.

Mennonite minister Daniel Schipani tells the story of a congregation that took seriously the issue of racism. They began with a small group who sought their own transformation first, before slowly encouraging the whole church to engage in reconciliation within the church and in the community. For Schipani, education is about enlarging people’s vision, inspiring vocation and deepening virtue. The purpose of the compassionate church is to begin to transform the world with love.

Robert O’Gorman enthusiastically charts the way the faith community is the basis for congregational learning. Learning from the experience of the Base Christian Communities in South America, O’Gorman is also conscious of the limits of small groups, and encourages them to turn outwards from their own lives to the wider community.

For Maria Harris and Gabriel Moran, personal spiritual growth is paramount. Silence, listening, sabbath, study and service all play their part in deepening and enriching the inner life.

Elizabeth Caldwell uses the metaphor of “home making” to describe the frontier of religious instruction. She reflects on the need many express to know more about their faith to better understand their life.

These four exploratory essays surprised me in the degree of overlap. It was like looking at a square paddock from each corner post. Even in a useful summary chart of the four approaches, in which he sets out the differences between the four poles, Seymour is obviously aware not only of their shared tradition, but also of the convergence of where ideas about congregational learning are today. ... so much so that he is able to list four clues which “coalesce” from the four approaches.

1) facing into the world is the task of Christian education;

2) the congregation is the primary setting for Christian education;

3) theological reflection is the methodology; and

4) religious learning occurs in hospitable, just, and open spaces for conversation and truth-telling. (p.121.)

It is not surprising to me, then, if Seymour has accurately portrayed our present situation, that programmes like Education for Ministry (EFM), Alpha and Godly Play are expanding world-wide, and processes like the catechumenate also provide a safe place for people to grow into faith.

Professor Seymour has done us a service by mapping our position in the contemporary world.

First published in the Anglican Messenger  (Perth WA) in 1997

I have finished reading Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion.  Confession time: I enjoyed much of it finding Dawkins an exciting teacher. He opened for me awe- inspiring windows onto the world in his wonderful descriptions of life at all levels. He is witty and often tendentious.  He enjoys his criticism of the whole world of religion, and his enjoyment burbles through the writing.

Of course, I don't agree with his basic premise that religion is inevitably dangerous and unhealthy. Dawkins goes far beyond his colleague Daniel Dennett, who describes religion as an "attractive nuisance".   I have particular difficulty with Dawkins’ framing of “The God Hypothesis”, and of his accusation that the church abuses children by teaching the religion.  These two difficulties are especially evident in his treatment of the story of Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac.

Dawkins treats the difficult story of the sacrifice of Isaac as if the story were a moral exemplar.  He thinks that the reader is to understand that child sacrifice is a “good thing”. In this view God takes back in a vicious way life that he has given. God then is a masochistic lunatic.  This interpretation does not begin to take seriously what Holy Scripture means for believers, nor how stories work in general.

First, to take child sacrifice in this story as a model for our behaviour defies commonsense.  Any reader, hearing the appalling command that God makes to Abraham, following the sad and reluctant steps of father and son, sensing the lostness in the landscape and in the dénouement itself, knows that the author is relying on us to see the whole scenario as wrong, wrong, wrong! 

The story condemns child sacrifice totally.  It is intended in its telling to present the ultimate dilemma: to discern out of two goods which is the greatest – one’s faith or one's family.

The author assumes that the reader knows how Abraham and Isaac have got to this point.  Isaac is the child promised by God to Abraham and Sarah even when it was impossible; when the parents were far beyond the normal years of childbearing.  The test for Abraham is not to choose between God and life, but between the giver of life and the gift of life.  Of course, Abraham is an indulgent father.  Of course, Abraham loves Isaac to distraction.  Of course there are no situations in which Abraham should be asked to give up Isaac.  But when Isaac's life is placed against Abraham’s faith in the living God, the situation changes.  In that situation, and in that situation only, Abraham should choose the giver of life over the gift of life.  The logic, indeed commonsense, is the same as choosing the life of the hen over the life of the egg.  No contest, except that the value of Isaac is far greater than the comparative value of an egg! [i]

So how could Professor Dawkins have known not to interpret Genesis 22 so negatively?  I think in three ways:

1.     1. By taking into account the 3,000-year history of interpretation, of which my simplified contribution is but one insignificant part.

2.     2. With an intelligent appreciation that whether or not the event is historically true, Genesis 22 is written as a novel, not a newspaper report;

3.     3. With greater confidence in the ability of readers to discern a helpful meaning from a story by themselves.

Only breathtaking arrogance could come up with an interpretation radically different from the thousands that have come before.  It is tantamount to a scientist accusing all his predecessors of falsifying their results.  The story of the sacrifice of Isaac is a difficult story and its interpretation has been attempted many times before.  Sir Humphrey would deem coming at the interpretation as an individual as "courageous" indeed.  Even Richard Dawkins needs the insights of our predecessors to explore a story as rich, dark and complex as Genesis 22.

The books of the Bible, Holy Scripture, because they belong to a community lose their meaning outside the community that gave them authority.  In both the Jewish and Christian communities interpreters are trained -- and usually ordained in order to extend that community of interpretation through time.

 Second, a basic principle when approaching texts is to ask, what kind of text is this?  It is easy to see that the Bible is composed of many different genres and to mistake, for example, legislation for the narrative produces peculiar interpretations.   Genesis 22 is novelistic.  It set before us a problem of cosmic proportions, a limit in what human beings may be required to discern.  Dawkins’ mistake   begins with his misunderstanding of the role of God.  In this narrative God is not presented as a supernatural being speaking audibly into the ears of his followers as Dawkins frequently caricatures God. In this chapter God is not a person but a device for describing the dilemma before Abraham, just as God in chapter 1 of Job is intended similarly to externalise an internal challenge.          

 Thirdly, Dawkins consistently underestimates the ability of people to interpret the Bible and to discern what is helpful for them.  In the teaching they receive from priests and ministers most people do not fashion their behaviour on the first interpretation of a passage that comes into their minds.  Most people, striking an interpretation that seems too bizarre, will simply reject or ignore it.  There are no known examples of parents rushing out to sacrifice children as a result of hearing Genesis 22.               

This last point sheds light on his insistence that teaching children religion is child abuse.  Dawkins claims that naming children as "Christian children" or “Muslim children” or “Jewish children” should stop because the children in question are unable to make the decisions implied in being Christian, Muslim or Jewish. Surely, he complains, these are matters for adults only.  There is a modicum of truth in Dawkins’ criticism on this point. However, it is in practice extremely difficult to brainwash children into believing a religion.  Simply teaching them at school, or modelling it at home is unlikely in practice to have much effect. Children would need to be quarantined 24/7 with unending reminders of their identity as Christian, Hindu or Taoist for any effect to be noticeable.  In the real world, and Dawkins’ fears are unnecessary.

So, what do with Dawkins?  There are some in the Christian community would issue a fatwa against him -- if they were the right religion!    Their anger is white hot against an onslaught of argument that Christianity is false. A more positive response is a calm restatement of the reasons we believe. Only a rational reply will go anywhere near satisfying Dawkins.  Only a calm and sincere reply will do justice to the Lord who inspires us.

Morning Prayer, this morning 26 October, invited us to recite Psalm 137. The lectionary had brackets around the two ‘troublesome’ verses at the end which encourage the bashing of heads of little ones. We could choose to omit them to preserve our sensibility. We chose this morning to read them.

I remember when I said these verses with zest and approval. As a student in St Mark's church in Fitzroy, I helped Sister Maree from the Community of the Holy Name (CHN) run holiday programs for children. Fitzroy was what I called a ‘sub-pension’ suburb, known for its poverty and violence. The children were hyperactive, unused to adult control and wildly unpredictable. Mostly, our interactions with them were deeply satisfying. They appreciated the activities and outings St Mark’s provided. On occasion, however, their insistent misbehaviour, vandalism and law-breaking were exasperating. ‘Blessed may he be who takes their little ones and bashes their heads against a stone!”  Blessed indeed, agreed the little community of Fitzroy at Evening Prayer.

I understood our reaction simply to be an expression of our frustration. And maybe it was.

But I am reading some essays which challenge me to go deeper into this issue of difficult texts. Ellen Davis and Richard Hays from my alma mater Duke Divinity School have collected a series of essays on The Art of Reading Scripture. (Eeerdmans 2003).  The impulse for this book is the urgent need of the church to read its sacred texts more seriously. They bear witness to a movement of scholars bumping up against the limits of critical Biblical studies and wanting to re-discover more faithful, more confessional ways of reading our own texts.

They find inspiration both in pre-modern ways of reading the Bible and in the concept of ‘performing’ the Scriptures. We should learn better how to read the Bible from, for example, St Francis of Assisi, who responded to his reading of Scripture by doing it.

The essays underscore the communal context (both now and through time) of the Scriptures. We read them, and learn to read them, in community.

These ideas reverberate with me. At a time when my fellow-believers say in Sydney are reducing the meaning of the text to one ideological interpretation, I grab any help I can get in discovering other ways of honouring the rich complexity of our Bible.

I can see that the difficult verses of Psalm 137 should not simply be ignored, but treated, if not as a “divinely dictated word”, then certainly as “in some sense, a gift from God, … an earnest of God’s blessing for those who seek God in faith,” as Ellen Davis puts it (p. 178).

I see myself as not a highly reactive person. I tend to let things happen and trust God in the unfolding of events. But Psalm 137 invites me into the world of those exiled in Babylon, who hang up their harps because they have no mirth in them. They have nothing to celebrate. Not only have they lost their Temple and their homes, but also they were witnesses to the brutal pillaging of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army.

These exiles have stood in chains and watched their women raped, their children’s bodies hacked apart, their little ones’ heads smashed. However much the Israelites deserved the punishment of exile, the atrocities committed against their family members and friends were real. I begin to ask myself how I would react if I was compelled to watch my daughter or son being tortured to death. I would hope that would raise my level of reactivity, and cause me to cry out in pain to the God I profess to trust.

Now I begin to understand the pain of the authors of Psalm 137. It is not surprising that they are angry and would like to see revenge taken on their captors. If I refuse to say the last two verses of the Psalm, I am refusing to enter into the real pain that is expressed. It is as if I am not validating their feelings: they are entitled to feel anguish and to express it in words.

This is a difficult text, because it reflects a difficult experience. As I read it, I should first of all allow the writers the right to own their own feelings, and to express those emotions in words.

Secondly, the difficult text gives me an opportunity to empathise with this extreme suffering – to the extent that I can, not ever having undergone anything like. I can be grateful to have such an opportunity.

Thirdly, I can acknowledge the bare fact that these are words. While the writers may want revenge, they are not now taking it. They are sublimating their feelings not into dire actions in the real world, but into words. I can learn from their extraordinary response how better to respond in my ordinary life.  A saint is not someone who doesn’t feel the ordinary emotions of humans, but they may become saints by not acting on them.

And finally, I now remember that the Bible is the history of God with God’s people. If the exiles are in agony in Babylon, how much more intense must be the agony of the God who has taken this people for his own.

I am next to embark on a chapter in Davis and Hays’ book on Genesis 22:1-19, the akedah, the binding of Isaac. I shall read that chapter in anticipation that it will further press me to the text of the Bible and welcome even the hard bits as God’s gift.

Sermon for St David’s, Applecross

9:30 am Eucharist, 2 September, 14^th Sunday after Pentecost, AD 2007

Hebrews 13:1-8,15-16 and Luke 14:1, 7-14

Some years ago, I preached a memorable sermon from the high ropes platform up there. ‘Memorable’ probably not because you remembered it, but because of why I remember it. You notice we don’t use the pulpit any more. From the pulpit, the preacher can see the people in the back row, and so can see who is asleep. So out of respect for your privacy we no longer use it, and for some other liturgical reasons, which I am not going to tell you; ‘cos they are ‘secret priests’ business’!

The memorable sermon was about the weakness of God. I was trying to say that God does not use almighty power to get his way. God’s strength would simply overwhelm us humans, so God uses weakness to win people. Christ’s weakness was on display on the cross, and it was that weakness that attained resurrection.

I obviously did not say it very well. When I had finished, a woman stood up and came to the front, to the crossing here. With obvious courage, she said to me, “You’re wrong. God is not weak. My God is all powerful and mighty. Your God is not true.”

In that moment, the last place I wanted to be was standing high above everyone else in the pulpit, dressed in robes as a representative of the church universal. Whatever I said to this person could only come across as overpowering. “I’m telling you that God is weak. You had better believe it because I say so.”  
I would have been the old cliché: I would have put myself ten feet above contradiction.

Before I tried to explain, I climbed down from the high wire so I was physically on the same level as she was. From here, it felt more appropriate to argue about strength and weakness.

It is a constant challenge for a preacher – finding the words that will best convey what you believe God is saying through the Bible readings. I have reflected on that exchange of views several times since then: how could I have better presented the paradox of God’s strength in weakness?

 “The humility of God.” In the past few months, this phrase has come repeatedly to my mind. It is the title of a book, The Humility of God by Franciscan sister Ilia Delio, but the phrase surfaced in my mind both before and after reading Sister Ilia’s wonderful book: “The humility of God”.

This is the idea that God chose, in Christ, to bend down to our level. Because God is love, God is also humble. To love someone, you have to be on their level. To love someone, you have to make space in your life for them. You have to be humble.

This morning’s gospel reading with the two parables about being humble as a guest and as a host, brings that phrase floating to the top of my mind: “the humility of God”. Humility is making space for others, not taking their space.

So the lesson of this morning’s readings:  be humble. As Jesus said, “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11)

But there’s a catch: is it is hard to get to be humble just by wanting to be humble. The more we try to be humble, the less we succeed. If we try hard to be humble we will end up being either arrogant (“Look how humble I am!”), or humiliated (“Look how stupid I have become by acting beneath myself!”)

Trying to be humble is what psychologists call a ‘paradoxical desire.’ Like trying to be happy. You can’t be happy by trying. It doesn’t work. Happiness seems to be a by-product of having worthwhile things to do and of reaching out to help others. If you do those two things, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be happy ever after. But those two things – meaningful tasks and caring for others – give you a chance for happiness. Happiness is a gift – or in Christian jargon – happiness is a “God-given grace.”

So if we want to be humble as God is humble; if we want, like God, to love from that deep part of our heart that invites others to love, we need to learn why the New Testament places so much emphasis on hospitality.

In this morning’s gospel, Jesus tel