Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.

For my Sydney Anglican friends…

I’ve been watching the unfolding campaigns for the election of the new Archbishop of Sydney with great interest. It’s kind of an intersection of many of the things I’m passionate about – public Christianity, politics, social media, campaigning. It seems like there are two good candidates, and as an outsider, it’s not really my job to have a preference. My only preference would be that the campaigns don’t leave both candidates (and their bands of merry men) with a mess that is hard to clean up. As Kevin Rudd can attest, the most harmful and damaging criticisms come from your own team.

As an outsider, I’ve got to say, there’s nothing really appealing (except if you’re a politics nerd like me) about watching two men not campaign for high office, while their self-appointed champions trade barbs on social media. There’s been some pretty bizarre stuff going around – like fights over unattributed editorials in church publications, loaded throw away lines in articles, and arguments over statistics, which I guess is what happens in an adversarial approach to an appointment where the only thing splitting the candidates is age/youth and experience. Without knowing either of the candidates personally, it’s hard not to read one campaign’s affirmation of a candidate’s credentials or gifts as anything other than a tacit condemnation of the other candidate’s gifts in that area.

I guess, while I’m enjoying the show, I reckon this is the sort of campaigning that happens best off social media, and in a personal context, or behind closed doors.

So few people actually vote that it seems counter productive to involve thousands of Facebook onlookers from outside the denomination in some of the discussions that are happening.

I can’t actually figure out why the discussion is happening the way it is. Maybe one side set up a Facebook page and then the other followed suit. Maybe some nominators of one candidate had a discussion that needed a response – but it’s escalating in a crazy way, and it’s not pretty. You know the campaign has gone off the big issues when a Presbyterian in Brisbane is reading something like this:

“We are glad that something in writing has been produced by the [redacted] team; however, we feel that the statistics used in the document, whilst true in the limited perspective in which they are couched, are so misleading that they need to be addressed and placed in their proper context.”

I don’t need to associate a potential Archbishop with dodgy counting in a campaign. Even if it wasn’t him. Those outside the room aren’t aware of some of the nuances (unless they research). The candidates don’t nominate themselves, they don’t “campaign,” and what’s happening is coming from third parties. The candidates themselves, and most of the campaigning, is warm and gracious, and most of the people campaigning for either side like each other and agree on the big issues. But. I only know this because I could be bothered researching etc – there are myriad people up here in Queensland who are very confused by what’s going on. It’s a bad look.

So, Sydney Anglican friends and readers – I get the need to campaign. But keep it off the parts of the internet that aren’t opt-in. If people want to know the context and participate in the conversation, that is fine. Start up a Synod Group on Facebook where the discussion is private, and go at it hammer and tongs.

The more you talk (publicly) about the campaign tactics of the other team and not purely about each candidate’s vision for the future of the diocese and love for Jesus, the less those of us outside the diocese are inclined to take any sort of evangelical leadership from the guy who eventually gets the big hat, the nice house, and the long title.

When the campaign is about numbers, not issues, or qualifications, not character, and the past, not the future, you’re veering into really unhelpful territory for those watching at home.

I just wanted to issue this pictorial word of caution. This is what the campaign looks like to this outsider, on social media.

dogfight

While this is what is happening in the lives of the candidates. At least according to this interview.

playing-dogs

This is also why I think I’ll be happy the sky isn’t going to fall down in Sydney whoever gets appointed.

Glenn Davies

“In elections some candidates are hungry for the job. Others are prepared to do the job if the Synod calls them to it, believing that God’s will is manifest through the decision of the Synod. Therefore Rick and I believe that, while not aspiring to this office, we are trusting God will supply the requisite wisdom and strength to fulfill the office should the Synod decide to elect us.

At our recent Northern Regional Conference there were two elephants in the room, if you like, so Rick and I thought we would interview each other about how we were going, how our wives are going and then thoughts on the process. And then we prayed for each other, because – especially with social media, which provides a great temptation for immoderate, unedifying discourse – we wanted to model godly and edifying discourse. One person came up to me afterwards and said, “I’m so glad you did that, because I’d be happy for either of you to be archbishop”.

I consider prayer to be a wonderful way in which God has blessed me, because I am completely at peace about the whole process. The number of people who say, “We’re praying for you and Di” is overwhelming and very encouraging. If you really do trust God’s sovereignty, it’s under control.”

Rick Smith

“Glenn has been a great friend and brother for many years. Michelle [my wife] and Di Davies also met up for coffee yesterday, which they have done many times over the years. I long for the election process to reflect our warm fellowship and for people to be aware we have an opportunity to adorn the gospel and endear the process to a watching world in our manner, the questions we pursue and the issues we raise.

Lots of people ask, “Why should we vote for you?” and I don’t think either of us wants to answer that question. Ask me questions about who I am, about my personal convictions, ministry priorities and experience, and then Synod members will need to be prayerfully discerning about who to vote for. Nobody’s campaigning because nobody’s really aspiring to the role, although that’s not diminishing the importance of the role in shaping the mission of the Diocese. Because it’s not about what we want – it’s about where we are called to serve with the strength God gives.

I serve because I love the Lord Jesus and I continue to think God’s grace is amazing, so I’m happy to share that grace, proclaiming Jesus Christ and him crucified, in whatever role I’m asked to perform.”

It’s a shame there isn’t more of that being displayed for those of us who are relationally removed from the candidates and their troops, but connected to a few people involved in the process through the Christian network.”

August 1, 2013

A new addition…

You may have noticed it’s a little quiet around here.

Here’s why.

This is Xavier Macleay Campbell. He was born on Monday. We think we’ll keep him.


 

Again, for the record, my wife is amazing, and I’m thankful to God for my little family – and I continue to be blown away by the wondrous marvels of modern medicine and Australian health care.

July 31, 2013

On plundered gold.

My project is finished.

Here it is (PDF).

It was an MA project and so was externally marked. I’ve been waiting nervously by my inbox for several weeks.

Feel free to read it. Or not. It represents a significant amount of time and thought for me, and a huge amount of sacrifice for Robyn, and others who love me and let me spend hours reading, writing, and editing. I do think it’s of value for more than just me, and it has certainly become somewhat paradigmatic for how I read the Bible, how I’ll teach it, and how I understand our task as communicators.

Writing this project almost did me in. I still have profound writer’s block. I’m still mentally exhausted. The thought of sitting at the keyboard and writing anything else still hurts a little. It’s fair to say I was a little too invested in this task.

I should also mention here, given this is my soapbox, that I’m exceptionally proud of Robyn (my wife, for context), who finished her own Masters project, and thus her M Div in the last few weeks. She is amazing. And she did it while heavily pregnant and chasing our 18 month old daughter around. I do have lots to be thankful for.

I’ll be posting some reflections on what this project contains in coming days. Once I recover from the ego-crushing soul-destroying heartbreak of reading the marker’s comments, and having the idol that was mine own writing crushed into powder and scattered in a garden somewhere. It hurt so much that tonight I vaguebooked.

On a related note – see this from XKCD.

Keller was right. You know how big an idol something has become by how much it hurts when it gets cast down. I just want to mope in a dark room.

But I’ll get over it.

Here is the abstract:

In this paper I develop a theological framework for excellent and effective persuasive communication consistent with the message of the gospel of the crucified Lord Jesus in a particular socio-historical context.

To this end, I outline the development of communication mediums and methods relevant to the production of Biblical texts. This culminates with the rise of rhetoric with a particular emphasis on Aristotle’s three proofs: pathos, ethos, and logos, especially as developed for the Roman context by Cicero. I outline a model of sublime rhetoric as described by Longinus in On the Sublime, suggesting that truly excellent and ethical communicative acts involve a “sublime” consistency between Aristotle’s proofs.  Next I provide an overview of relevant modern communication theory, including speech-act and public relations theory, engaging with influential Public Relations theorist James Grunig to assess current models for excellent and ethical communication with external publics.

At this point I turn to establish a theological framework for understanding the relationship between the communicative acts of the communicative God, and a proposed communicative praxis based on the incarnation as the paradigmatic act of contextual communication.

This framework emphasises the functional aspect of the imago dei, the link between the imago dei and the imitatio Christi in Pauline thought and praxis, and an understanding of creation as “gold” to be adapted and adorned for communication about the creator.  I then assess this framework against communicative acts contained in the Bible – the Wisdom Literature, especially Proverbs, and Paul’s Corinthian Correspondence, against contemporary communicative acts – the Wisdom of Amenemope, and Cicero’s De Oratore. Finally, I turn to Luther’s Reformation campaign as a model of an early modern Christian communicative praxis consistent with this framework. I conclude that Grunig’s four models of public relations are inadequate for Christian communication, and propose a fifth model – an incarnational, self-renouncing cruciform communicative praxis – as the basis for sublime communication about the crucified Lord Jesus.

 

July 24, 2013

Australians all let us rejoice. For we have… strong borders and none shall pass…

For some context – read about our Prime Minister’s joyous proclamation on our new draconian refugee policy here. The TL:DR; version is:

“From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees.”

Dear Prime Minister,

Advance Australia Fair.

I loathe people smugglers. My anger grows every time a boat sinks. My blood boils. As boat after boat, child after child, life after life, are lost at sea en route to our shores seeking ‘wealth for toil,’ perhaps, as your Foreign Minister (and mine) Bob Carr would have us believe, or perhaps they are genuinely seeking refuge from persecution, as they are legally entitled to, from their own governments.

Maybe they turned to Australia looking for a better life, as so many settlers have since our nation was so erroneously declared terra nullius. Maybe they are economic refugees. But to steal an axiom from the legal system – better an economic refugee be safely resettled in Australia where they can contribute to our economy than a genuine refugee be locked up in PNG – violating our international obligations.

Maybe these refugees are “jumping the queue” or “illegal immigrants” in the eyes of some of my fellow citizens.

Maybe that’s why you’re acting just a short time before calling an election. But I remember learning that people will judge you by the company you keep.

Maybe you’re glad to be in lock step with people like your Facebook fan Raelene, who writes:

“Lets see them all coming by boat now….won’t be so attractive! A scourge started by the labor party, allowing Captain Emad and co to come here and start a lucrative business… let us not forget this and stop thanking Rudd he created this mess…..the scourge is Rudd!!”

Or like Daniel:

“A true refugee dose not come by boat they dont have the money to pay to come by boat . They sit and wait for years to come here the legal way . The ones that come by boat are just country shopping and wont to come here for the free hand outs . So closing the door is the best news ive heard for a long time .”

Or perhaps Deborah:

“Seriously thank you Mr Rudd. Australia finally has a solution to the boat people crisis. I’ve been to PNG and in all honesty its a hole. (The people are beautiful hearted there though) When the boat people realise they are going from one poor country to another, it should curb the boats. Obviously the ones who complain about being sent to PNG (which will be 99.9% of them) are obviously not true asylum seekers”

Or Adam.

Keep Australia Australian!!!

Or Pauline.

“All of you saying you are ashamed to be Australian, because of this new stand on queue jumpers, do the right thing then and put yourself on the boat and give the refugee your place. Hey, if you are ashamed to be an Australian, leave.”

It is clear you’re on a vote winner. You’re tapping into a real undercurrent of educated and rational anger. And acting strongly and decisively.

You may even scrape together a majority.

Perhaps you will do better at sparking a belief in resurrection than many of today’s churches.

But I’m an idealist.

Political expediency is not something I’m all that into. Securing votes while shirking our international humanitarian responsibilities doesn’t get me out on the hustings talking up a candidate. Nor does being the least bad option. Let’s face it. The Coalition are abominable on this issue.

But it seems like you’re out of ideas beyond “move right. win votes.” And I want to help.

Can’t we do something different? Can’t we change the game? Can’t you think outside the box and tackle the people smugglers head on? Before people get on a boat?

Can’t we do it without relying on Indonesian legal intervention and use the most powerful secular force known to modern man? The market.

Can’t we stop making people smuggling so lucrative?

We’re spending bucket loads on border security, and even more on detention. Why not spend that money on breaking the monopoly the smugglers enjoy.

Like you I’d love to see people smuggling stop.

I know you don’t want to see people dying in the process of pursuing life. And I know you’re an economic conservative. And I know you’re interested in job creation and, until recently, a big Australia. So I want to propose some market driven alternatives.

The best two ways I can think of to force people smugglers out of the market is to undercut them, or take away their boats.

The best way to save lives, if people are determined to get on boats, is to make sure they’re getting on safer boats.

What if we ran the boats? We could process asylum seekers en route. They could purchase a ticket for a fraction of what they’d pay to go with a people smuggler, fully refundable if their claim is legit. It might mean taking more asylum seekers, but if we controlled the process from start to finish there’d be less deaths at sea, less money for the criminals.

It seems that the lack of competition is what is making people smuggling so lucrative. Prices are high. Now, smugglers may make their prices much lower in order to stay competitive. I’ll leave your economists to figure out the details, but it seems to me that people smugglers are going to continue preying on the vulnerable even if we’re going to ship their precious human cargo off to PNG (at great expense). It seems that those people who are desperate enough to keep getting on boats even when we’re putting horrific billboards in their home countries to deter them, and even when boats are sinking with increasing regularity and claiming lives, will be continue to be desperate enough to get on boats even if it means ending up in PNG – so you’re not actually going to stop people smuggling. You know that right? You’re just stopping genuine refugees arriving in Australia.

And that’s a shame.

I know you’re a Christian. And I just want to finish by asking you to consider this issue not just from the Bible’s understanding of how the prosperous should treat those seeking refuge. That’s pretty clear. I want to go to someone who I know is something of an authority or influence for you.

Bonhoeffer.

You like Bonhoeffer.

Can you imagine how he would respond to this act of legislative and moral cowardice? I suspect in the same way that other people of principle are reacting to your decision.

I keep coming back to your article about Bonhoeffer. And how you think your faith should influence your politics. You say:

“Bonhoeffer is, without doubt, the man I admire most in the history of the twentieth century… He was never a nationalist, always an internationalist.”

“For Bonhoeffer, “Obedience to God’s will may be a religious experience but it is not an ethical one until it issues in actions that can be socially valued.”

This led Bonhoeffer to people smuggling.

After the failure of these efforts, in 1940 he joined the German Abwehr (military intelligence) as a double agent, and until his arrest in late 1943 he collaborated with the armed forces’ conspiracy against Hitler – and, at the same time, organised the secret evacuation of a number of German Jews to Switzerland.

Bonhoeffer’s was a muscular Christianity. He became the Thomas More of European Protestantism because he understood the cost of discipleship, and lived it. Both Bonhoeffer and More were truly men for all seasons.

You say…

“We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.” Bonhoeffer’s political theology is therefore one of a dissenting church that speaks truth to the state, and does so by giving voice to the voiceless. Its domain is the village, not the interior life of the chapel. Its core principle is to stand in defence of the defenceless or, in Bonhoeffer’s terms, of those who are “below”.

And then…

“I argue that a core, continuing principle shaping this engagement should be that Christianity, consistent with Bonhoeffer’s critique in the ’30s, must always take the side of the marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed. As noted above, this tradition is very much alive in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament. It is also very much alive in the recorded accounts of Jesus of Nazareth: his engagement with women, gentiles, tax collectors, prostitutes and the poor – all of whom, in the political and social environment of first-century Palestine, were fully paid-up members of the “marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed”. Furthermore, parallel to this identification with those “below” was Jesus’ revulsion at what he described as the hypocrisy of the religious and political elites of his time, that is, those who were “above”.”

Wouldn’t you rather stand with Bonhoeffer than with Raelene, Pauline, Adam, or Deborah?

Who is more marginalised than the refugee who no longer feels safe in their own country? Who gets on a boat, placing their life, and the lives of their families, in the hands of a people smuggler, if they are not oppressed and vulnerable?

“The function of the church in all these areas of social, economic and security policy is to speak directly to the state: to give power to the powerless, voice to those who have none, and to point to the great silences in our national discourse where otherwise there are no natural advocates.”

And then…

“Here lies the searing intensity of Bonhoeffer’s gaze, cast across the decades into our own less dramatic age: the need for the church to speak truthfully, prophetically and incisively in defiance of the superficiality of formal debate in contemporary Western politics. In other words, beyond the sound-and-light show of day-to-day political “debate”, what are the real underlying fault lines in the polity? Most critically, within those fault lines, who are the “voiceless” ones unable to clamour for attention in an already crowded political space – and who is speaking for them?”

I challenge you to listen to the moral voice of the church now – but I challenge you to think about not just how Bonhoeffer would have approached this issue, but how Jesus approached this issue for you – you who like all people, were alienated from God. Seeking asylum. And you who were brought into his kingdom by his sacrifice.

I want to leave you with your own words. Let this be a letter where the ghost of KRudd past speaks to the ghost of KRudd present.

“Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. That is why the government’s proposal to excise the Australian mainland from the entire Australian migration zone and to rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches. We should never forget that the reason we have a UN convention on the protection of refugees is in large part because of the horror of the Holocaust, when the West (including Australia) turned its back on the Jewish people of Germany and the other occupied countries of Europe who sought asylum during the ’30s.”

July 20, 2013

The Bible on Prime Time

I enjoyed this and thought it was a largely helpful rendition of the narrative of Genesis-Exodus. I really appreciated the way the show used and presented some of the behind the scenes aspects of the narrative with sensitivity. And then there were the ninja angels…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9glPC6TcVb8

In the absence of more substantive thoughts. Here are my tweets, and those I retweeted, from tonight…

Did you watch? Do you have thoughts?

July 16, 2013

Corporate singing. One heartbeat.

You know how sound waves, when they’re in sync, amplify – making the sound louder. It turns out that not only are our voices working in concert when we sing together in church, but our hearts beat together too (the study).

“Using pulse monitors attached to the singers’ ears, the researchers measured the changes in the choir members’ heart rates as they navigated the intricate harmonies of a Swedish hymn. When the choir began to sing, their heart rates slowed down.

“When you sing the phrases, it is a form of guided breathing,” says musicologist Bjorn Vickhoff of the Sahlgrenska Academy who led the project. “You exhale on the phrases and breathe in between the phrases. When you exhale, the heart slows down.”

But what really struck him was that it took almost no time at all for the singers’ heart rates to become synchronized. The readout from the pulse monitors starts as a jumble of jagged lines, but quickly becomes a series of uniform peaks. The heart rates fall into a shared rhythm guided by the song’s tempo.”

Cool hey. Coming soon to a video script near you…

 

 

July 15, 2013

Sharknado

Words can’t describe how much I need to own this movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwsqFR5bh6Q

July 13, 2013

Taking a leaf from Ron Burgundy

Apparently the anchors at this station will read anything they see on the autocue (and their fact checkers won’t read the autocue out loud).

I can not believe this made it to air unchecked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ug5zKwJuWbU

But the apology is pretty classy. And absolute.

July 13, 2013

Sorkin: One great TV show five times

I like Aaron Sorkin. We watched Newsroom season 1 on our recent holiday. I’m pretty sure I like it better than West Wing – just because it excites my inner sanctimonious journalist. I posted the first one of these Sorkinism videos a while back. But check this out.

July 13, 2013

Stunning theory about the interconnectedness of Pixar movies…

This is as good as the Radiohead 01 10 album theory, the (confirmed) Tarantino movie and movie within a movie universes (also this), and the Tommy Westphall’s mind theory that connects almost every television series known to mankind. All Pixar movies are connected and occur in the same universe.

Source: Pixar.wikia.com

It’s surprisingly plausible, and utterly convincing.

Here’s something from the middle of that post.

In the beginning of Up, Carl is forced to give up his house to a corporation because they are expanding the city. Think on that. What corporation is guilty for polluting the earth and wiping out life in the distant future because of technology overreach?

Buy-n-Large (BNL), a corporation that runs just about everything by the time we get toWall-E. In the “History of BNL” commercial from the movie, we’re told that BNL has even taken over the world governments. Did you catch that this one corporation achieved global dominance?

Interestingly, this is the same organization alluded to in Toy Story 3:

Toy Story 3 (Buzz's batteries)

Toy Story 3 (Buzz’s batteries)

In Finding Nemo, we have an entire population of sea creatures uniting to save a fish that was captured by humans. BNL shows up again in this universe via another news article that talks about a beautiful underwater world. In Finding Nemo, lines are being crossed. Humans are beginning to antagonize the increasingly networked and intelligent animals.

July 12, 2013

Bike parkour guy rides through kid’s imagination

This is cool. A little old. But cool. And the kind of thing you post to overcome horrendous writer’s block.

July 11, 2013

Exploding actresses and Disney Princesses

This is the coolest thing on the net this week.

July 7, 2013

My post-Google Reader future

I’ve been playing around with new feed readers – with the impending demise of Google Reader. Here is my dilemma, and my solution.

feedly
Image Credit: Feedly newsletter.

I love Reeder. It’s a great app. I have it on phone, iPad, and Mac – and it plays nicely across all my iThings. So I was putting most of my eggs in whatever basket Reeder managed to bring to the table after the developer promised life would continue beyond the death of Google Reader.

Reeder is working with Feedly – only in the IOS app format for now – so my desktop app is going to have to wait for an update. Feedly has its own apps too.

Digg’s new reader looks nice. And I liked the feature on the process of pulling it together that I read on it on Wired.

I’ve transferred my Reader subscriptions to both Digg and Feedly. Feedly looks the nicest. Digg is the most stripped back.

What are you doing in the post Google world?

 

July 1, 2013

Could this be the best talent show entry ever?

The absolute best thing about coming home from holidays is catching up on the Internet and finding memorable gems like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhQK-6iI7cI&feature=player_embedded#at=294

June 28, 2013

A letter to Charlie Pickering on the exodus of Exodus

Charlie,

I like you. I’ve been a fan since the early days – since the Mel and Charlie show on JJJ. I’m not a Jonny-come-lately Talking About Your Generation Pickering bandwagon jumper. You’re a smart guy. Whip smart. It’s fun watching you pull politicians apart on The Project, the show normally strikes a nice balance between smart advocacy on serious issues and humour – and I reckon that is largely a result of your own personality. It seems that’s the mix of most successful comedians.

But I had some issues with last night’s show (Friday June 21). I loved the segment on Refugees – and Walk Together – a good initiative from a Christian pastor, Brad Chilcott, I enjoyed most of the program, but I was a bit surprised with the segment on Exodus International’s Alan Chambers recent apology to the gay community. I understand it’s a story – but I didn’t think this was the quality of some of your better advocacy work. I appreciate that the panel has pretty strong views on the nature of same sex attraction. That people are born gay, or don’t choose to be gay. That it’s immutable. And while as a Bible believing Christian I’m happy to agree with the first – that people don’t generally have a choice when it comes to their sexual orientation – I’m puzzled about the idea that any aspect of any human will is something that individual does not have a right to attempt to change. As an exercise of their humanity. 

I know the Psychological Associations have moved from classing homosexual attraction from a disorder, to classing discomfort with one’s sexual orientation to a disorder – but surely we can think a little bigger, and a little more progressively on this front. I’m with you in not wanting to see vulnerable people forced to conform to a norm in society, or being taken advantage of – I don’t think Exodus International was particularly interested in a vendetta against unwilling converts, this isn’t a modern equivalent of trying to stamp out left-handedness. I’m also sure – as Alan Chambers himself seems to indicate – that there have been people who have been in these “conversion therapy” programs against their will, and I’ve got no doubt that this is potentially psychologically harmful. But what about people who go willingly? What about adult individuals who haven’t been brainwashed but simply want to exercise some self control in accordance with their religious beliefs? What about my friends who are Christians, same sex attracted, and want to enjoy a heterosexual relationship as an avenue for sexual expression? Both you, and Carrie, said some odd things, that to me suggests you really do believe that this kind of counselling never works.

Carrie’s nice line was:

“Sexuality can’t be changed but attitudes can.”

I have friends who are testimony to the fact that it does. Your absolute claim can’t be maintained. The research suggests you’re wrong too. Alan Chambers is responding to the problem with the idea that reparative therapy always works. It doesn’t. Sexuality occurs on a spectrum – we’ve known that since Kinsey. Some people can move along that scale, others can’t. Some people can move (probably the ones closes to the middle of the scale, some people who want to be faithful to their beliefs might simply live as celibate same sex attracted Christians.

I’m with Alan Chambers and the research (a study from Yarhouse and Jones in particular) that suggests that “reparative therapy” won’t always work. Especially if it’s defined as flicking some binary switch from gay to straight with no space for “neutral.”

Here’s what the study found.

“In addition to clarifying what we found, it is equally important to clarify what we did not find. First, we did not find that everyone can change. Saying that change is not impossible in general is not the same thing as saying that everyone can change, that anyone can change, or that change is possible for any given individual. Second, while we found that part of our research population experienced success to the degree that it might be called (as we have here) “conversion,” our evidence does not indicate that these changes are categorical, resulting in uncomplicated, dichotomous and unequivocal reversal of sexual orientation from utterly homosexual to utterly heterosexual. Most of the individuals who reported that they were heterosexual at T6 did not report themselves to be without experience of homosexual arousal, and they did not report their heterosexual orientation to be unequivocal and uncomplicated.”

Personally, I think “Reparative therapy” is a horrible name that somehow suggests homosexual orientation is more deviant than the standard heterosexual attraction that leads heterosexual people to all sorts of sinful sexual activity outside of marriage – we’re all broken on the sexuality front…). Let’s call it what it really is – a tool for helping equip individuals to live as they wish to live if their sexual orientation does not match their chosen identity.

The problem is that this study suggests reparative therapy does sometimes work – which means sexual orientation isn’t actually immutable. If it never worked there’d be a good reason to stop individuals pursuing this avenue for change. They also found that the process, when adults are deliberately engaged as individuals, is not actually harmful by any measure – this isn’t to deny that the process is possibly harmful – but it isn’t inherently harmful.

This data is backed up by the people who are staffing groups like Exodus, like Liberty, in Australia – and by my same sex attracted brothers and sisters in churches all around the world who are either content being single and remaining same sex attracted without being sexually active. These people are to be admired. Not ridiculed. They are taking Jesus’ call to “carry the cross” and applying it to their sexuality – dying to their own desires in order to be part of something bigger.

I can’t throw stones at groups like Exodus for trying to love and support these people.

You can. It seems.

It doesn’t help that Alan Chambers’ apology is so nuanced that it is the proverbial jelly being pinned to a wall – but he’s a guy who is same sex attracted and in a heterosexual marriage who will continue to maintain his position on gay marriage and gay sexual expression. The apology says so. He’s just wanting to change the tone of the conversation – and that’s admirable.

I cannot apologize for my deeply held biblical beliefs about the boundaries I see in scripture surrounding sex, but I will exercise my beliefs with great care and respect for those who do not share them.  I cannot apologize for my beliefs about marriage. But I do not have any desire to fight you on your beliefs or the rights that you seek. My beliefs about these things will never again interfere with God’s command to love my neighbor as I love myself.   

But back to last night. And your stone throwing. In the heat of the interview with Doug Pollard from the Rainbow Report he mentioned Liberty Inc and Living Waters as groups operating in Australia. Now Doug isn’t objective – that’s why he’s good talent. But you didn’t even feign objectivity in your line of questioning. You didn’t quiz him on where the evidence for his assertion that these groups involved people with no formal training came from. You Dorothy Dixed him. With this question/statement in particular. To which he responded “yes”… That means this isn’t just a leading question. It’s a statement.

“Given that we are about to head into a Royal Commission into various forms of abuse within religious organisations as it is. This strikes me as something that maybe in ten, twenty years time we’ll need a royal commission into these gay conversions as well.”

I’m going to call you out on this one. Shenanigans! The Royal Commission is broader than “within religious organisations” – deliberately. Sure. I’m with you on the horrific abuses perpetrated by people operating within religious organisations being terrible and heinous. Which is what makes this comparison truly awful. You, rightly, got stuck into the ACL when it made unflattering and unhelpful comparisons between homosexuality and other things – like smoking, and the Nazis, but here you’re comparing two equally horrible and unequal concepts – the systematic abuse and cover up of the abuse of children within institutions, and a voluntary activity undertaken by individuals with appropriate consent by groups with appropriate training. Far from “hiding” – Liberty Inc has a website. Which says:

All our counsellors are professionally trained and accredited

It is mandatory for all counsellors working with Liberty Inc to be degree qualified and be a member of the Christian Counsellors Association of Australia. The Christian Counsellors Association of Australia maintains minimum standards of ethical practice including privacy and confidentiality.”

Degree qualified. Seems Doug was misleading you. Farbeit from me to teach you about television and stuff – but you enabled Doug Pollard’s slander of an opposing group without giving the opposing group recourse to respond to the slander. This is low brow television at its worst under the veneer of a progressive agenda.

Doug mentioned smart phone apps that have been responsible for “uncovering the lie” that gay-to-straight conversion people are perpetrating. I can only imagine he’s referring to Grindr and a recent outing of a proponent of gay to straight conversion in the states. A guy named Matt Moore. Far from being a testimony to the failure of groups like Exodus, Moore’s story is a testimony to the grace and forgiveness for sexual brokenness found in the gospel.

I suggest reading his interview to get a sense of what it looks like to struggle to live out a life following Jesus within the sphere of your sexuality. What it means to take up your cross – which is what Jesus called people who followed him to do. And then I suggest that on Monday’s program you find someone who is carrying that cross and ask them about it. Rather than shouting down their sacrifice from a position of ignorance and hate.

CP: What would you say to a Christian suffering from same-sex attraction after this experience?

Moore:  The same thing I have always said: Jesus is better than sin. It doesn’t matter what the specific sin is, Jesus is better. He is more valuable, comforting and satisfying than homosexual behavior, and I can say that from experience. If you fall, get back up and keep pursuing Him. If Jesus went as far as to die for your sin, why would He not help you up when you stumble? The world will tell you to embrace your homosexual desires because it’ll make you happy in this life. Jesus tells you to deny yourself and follow Him and promises to give you eternal life if you do. You must decide everyday who you will believe and who you will follow: the way of the world or the Way of Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

June 22, 2013