The fire will not die

I just heard some bad news. Someone walked into a Baptist church, somewhere in the U.S. and shot dead the pastor who was preaching. So I've prayed for those who were bereaved by that murder, but it's impossible not to be downcast about a thing like that - and to feel angry as well. But there is something to remember here. What happened when that man died was not a defeat. It was a painful tragedy, but not a defeat for Christianity.
The evil one, aka 'Satan', wants to hurt Christians, and to destroy Christianity; and when you see it resorting to a thing like that then you know the evil one is getting desperate. (I say 'it' because I will not dignify the evil one with a respectful personal pronoun). Satan's usual tactic is to be guileful, to try and deceive people into ignoring the calls of God. It gives them distractions, or lies to lead them astray. If people are content and complacent, and feel no need to stay in touch with God, then satan is getting things arranged just nicely. That is when they are furthest from God. When a crisis arises, or a period of suffering, that's when the human reaches out for help and comfort from God. So the evil one prefers not to do it that way, it seems. Besides, since Satan is 'the father of lies' then doing things in an underhanded, dishonest way is the preferred modus operandi. It is as if Satan knows just how despicable a thing it is, and its actions are; and feels embarrassed at itself when seen too openly. So if people can be kept foolishly happy with amusements, distractions or indulgences like food, drink, money, ego-boosts, sexual indulgence, then all is smooth and sweatless for the 'prince of darkness'. We can't so easily see the potential evil in keeping people dulled and duped that way. But if something jars their complacency or spoils their party and humans see the need for God then the evil one loses its grip on them. It is better for Satan to act covertly without showing its hand too clearly. Therefore when something violent and terrible happens, we can see the evil of it straight away. And that alerts us to the need for God, to know Him and keep in contact. So to lash out and strike in this obvious way shows the evil one has run out of better ideas. What has happened is the making of a martyr.
Centuries ago, when the Romans were persecuting Christians, they defeated their own object. Some people would see the Christians dying in the Colosseum and realize: those followers of Jesus have got something worth dying for. Many of the spectators could see the power of Christianity - and turned to it themselves. The evil that satan drove the persecuters too backfired on it, and instead of destroying Christianity it enlarged it.
It is unfortunate that hurt and pain are sometimes what it takes to turn humans to God. But it seems that is what happens. After the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001,
reports were that many people looked to God. They were reminded, rather terribly, how fragile life and the things of this world are. Sometimes it can be done another way, happily. The first Billy Graham crusade in Australia was followed by a measurable drop in the crime rate; a decrease in the number of births outside marriage; and (I think) a decrease in the incidence of suicide. So it need not take a cruel shock or pain to evangelize. It can be done by preaching, proclaiming the Word. But you can be sure the evil one saw what God was doing through Billy Graham and was frantic with rage. God did not allow Satan to strike Billy Graham and silence him. I can't know why some of God's people live to old age and others die early. I can't say why this Baptist pastor was not protected from the gunman. I'm not God, and there are many things I can't know. What I do think is, when satan does manage to take someone down violently it is because it cannot do so any other way. The evil one is forced out into the open, seen for what it is and not able to deceive by operating from the shadows. And the souls of the Christians will not perish, they're taken to be with God in the Kingdom. That is the devil's final defeat. What it would most like to have, human souls, it is deprived.
Come again, Lord Jesus.

"All God's Children"

This is the only film review I've done and might be the only one. But it seems a special case.
"All God's Children" seemed to be a little known film in Australia, I don't know if it received more notice in other countries. It is not overtly Christian or religious, as the title might imply. What happens is this.
The film opens with two boys - one white, one black - stealing a school bus. The the alarm is given, and the audience finds out that it is a type of bus in which the brakes do not work until the engine is warmed up. The boys, not knowing that, are at risk of a serious accident.
The next thing we see is the bus crashing!
After that the action goes into flashback, so that we pick up the plot. It is set against the background of the "bussing" experiment in the U.S. when the government intervened in school enrollments. This was to prevent some schools having only students from middle class or wealthy backgrounds, and others only students from poor backgrounds. The plan was to have a racial and socio-economic mix in each school, and to transport students by bus if necessary to get them to schools outside their area.
In the film, these two boys are staging a protest against it. That is why they stole the bus. The government plan would have the effect of sending them to different schools, and as well as being friends they make an excellent combination on the school football team.
Then the action returns to the present. Police have found the bus crash, with ONE badly burnt body in it. Tests will be needed to learn which of the two it is. The other boy has escaped from the crash, and gone missing. That notches up the tension. The characters in the film, and the audience, are waiting to find out which of the boys has died.
There is quite a lot in the film, revealed through the dialogue. It would get away from the point to go into too much detail about that. As the plot develops, the audience is introduced to both sets of parents, black and white. The dialogue reveals the perspectives of each on the issues of race and education.
At the final moment of the film, we hear that scientific testing has revealed which of the boys was the one found dead in the bus.
The last thing the audience hears is ONE of the mothers crying heartbrokenly, having learned that she has lost her child.
But the audience never finds out which of them it is. And that is the point that we are confronted with.
Does it make it any better, which one of them it is? Isn't is just as bad, either way?
I can't remember the names of any cast members except ( I think) Richard Widmark. The film was made back in the 1970s. It seemed to receive little acclaim, but I thought it made an excellent point. We are ALL God's children. Race does not change our value. Neither, it could be added does gender. But that would be another story.

Through a glass, darkly.

What some people call "girls behaving badly" was the theme of a T.V. documentary recently. The girls are called "ladettes" or "yobettes", because they carry on the way some young men do, and aim to beat the men at their own game. So the night out consists of having a lot to drink and carrying on with wild behaviour. Baring their breasts from a bus window, shouting out lewd comments and chanting 'let's get boozed and let's get laid' is all the go. When two of these girls are interviewed by the show's presenter, one of them tells us that she punched a hole in the house wall in rage when her mother refused to give her money to go out raging for the night. Another one, explaining why she does it, ends up in tears and admits "I'm in trouble. I need help". You can ask why is it that girls get critisised for behaving that way when boys are shown more tolerance. Excuses get made like "They're just sowing their wild oats" or "It's just youth" and more of that kind. The point here is that the girls are out to beat the boys at their own game. And they are suffering for it the way some boyss do.
Some of the girls, it emerges, have been badly treated by boys. So they get their own back. They can do it too. They can treat boys like disposable sex objects. Use someone like a chicken drumstick you buy at a fast food shop. Eat what you want and treat the left overs as garbage. They can get drunk and pick fights. They can trash everyone around them, and themselves. And if anyone complains they get ridiculed and attacked for being a puritan moralist who just resents anyone else having a "good time".
Then the other side of the picture involves. Some of them have started to suffer liver damage and brain damage from all the drinking. Some of them have been infected with STDs and they can't even remember where they contracted them. That happens with men too, of course. The issue is, some girls seem to think it's a good idea to copy them.
So that's how they want to prove something. It's how they get a sense of self. Girls set out to out do the boys, and don't stop to ask: who said the wild boys had the right idea about how to live? In both cases, the issue can be a lack of hope for anything better.
If you want to see the harm done by living purely for this world, there it is. To have an identity and a sense of self-worth, you have to show off and get the attention of others in the quickest and easiest way. The only value you place on yourself is the value other people seem to place on you. And some of those others only value what they can get some use of, or amusement from.
If people get their sense of worth from God, they do not need the approval of others. If someone really knows that God cares about them and values them, they do not have the same need to get social approval or prove something by making a reputation. So they are not so prone to damage themselves by trying to be the biggest rager of dare-devil in the world. And they might live longer that way.
That is easy to say. If you want human company and friendship, it's difficult not to try and get the attention and applause of other people. But then, which people do you want to get noticed by? If it's the 'fun crowd' who do all the raging, what happens if they also demand self-destructive or denigrating behaviour from you?
I've been there myself. This is not some wise old man who knows it all, it is a survivor of mistakes made in taking a foolish, misguided approach to life. But I was never so desperate that I would let other people gull me into making a complete wreck of myself. Even before actually becoming a Christian, I had some sense of a God who cared. There was something in the universe apart from blind chance and the approval of other human beings. That saved me from destoying myself.
One of the most miserable cases I heard of was this: a young man wanted in to a gang. Their rite of initiation was that you had to climb out of a train window; crawl across the roof of the train and back in by a window on the other side - while the train was moving. He tried to do it, fell and broke his neck. He is now quadraplegic. That was the price of trying to be part of the crowd he thought were cool. And zillions of people can comment about how foolish it was, and yet people still do it. Another case was a girl who became wildly promiscuous because she thought that was the only way to get boys to like her - or at least notice her. This is not news. People have known about this for centuries. Trouble is, it keeps happening.
So am I right in thinking that this happens when people do not have a sense of God caring? They think that impressing certain people is the only way to get a life? Or they think 'life's a bitch and then you die', so what's to be lost by taking chances?
For years the so-called 'liberated thinkers' have been trying to eliminate the influence of Christianity from the western world. The trouble is, they have nothing better to replace it with.

Wishful thinking.

An arts commentator said once that society has now become secular, arts are the new spirituality and art galleries are the new cathedrals, where people go to take in what this society has to teach. That could be a bit over the top, but it's an interesting comment. Another angle on society's outlook is this: once, the extended family and the church helped raise children. In fact it was said 'It takes a village to raise a child'. Now, education has replaced spiritual instruction. Instead of the church and extended family helping raise a child, the school and its staff have to do so. Many people have rejected or drifted away from the church. And there is less contact with extended family, for some; and less community involvement Parents keep their children closer. So schools have to do the job instead.
Not only that, but teachers should do so painlessly. They should raise their students to be perfect without causing them any discomfort.In New South Wales the Education Department gave out guidelines for student protection, which forbade a teacher to raise their voice or speak sharply to a kid. Teachers who did could have a complaint made and investigators came to the school to check them out. Right now there is controversy about it in the press. Teachers are saying that it is impossible to control a class without being able to speak sharply and rebuke bad behaviour where necessary. Where that gets really ugly is, they cannot properly stop some kids bullying others. The bully getting a telling off complains that they are the victim.
The result is, many teachers want to change jobs. I was terribly glad to get out of teaching (in the public system) myself. But there's more to it than that.
For the convenience of others, it is assumed that teachers have complete power to make kids do some things and stop them doing others. People who say that may not realize quite what they are implying.
If teachers actually could exert complete control over their students, make them do and not do exactly what they wanted, they would be quite dangerous people. A teacher could be a real life Pied Piper, who took total power over the children of the village and led them away with him, never to be seen again. It could be quite scary and dangerous.
Power tends to corrupt, the saying goes; and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. If all the self-serving commentators actually thought about it, they should realize that they really do not want ANYONE being able to control kids that way. A teacher, or anyone, who could exert that sort of absolute power over someone's mind is able to manipulate them.
Do they actually want that? Do they want anyone else controlling their children at all?
Would it be better if children, teenagers, young persons, learnt to control themselves? And should that start with the parents, before the young ones even get to school?
On this subject, you can also see how public education is based on a faulty premise, from a Christian perspective. Secular humanism teaches that people are all born basically 'good' and well intentioned. Only a bad environment makes them behave badly. This sounds nice because we want to see ourselves and others in a positive way. But Christianity teaches that human beings are born sinful and need to be taught to repent and accept the guidance of the Holy Spirit. God loves us but does NOT flatter us. He commands us to love one another, but NOT flatter one another.
So secular school authorities assume that if teachers are always set the right example and are 'nice' to kids they will always follow the example and be 'nice' back. IF ONLY. Were it was that simple then schools and families and the whole of society would have learnt to live in complete peace decades ago -make that centuries ago.
There will be no joy in schools until it is seen that correction may be needed. That does not mean bringing back the whip and being cruel. I hate cruelty just like everybody else except sick sadists. But it does mean a student behaving badly should be told so, and penalised if need be so they get the message. Teachers have to have a means of upholding their own control if they are going to do their job. And for their own good, before it's too late, parents need to accept that their children are NOT perfect; and the responsibility for guiding them rests with the family.
Even that is not enough if people try leaving God out of the equation. Human creatures can't do it on their own. History is full of pitiful examples of people who 'blew it' because they lacked the wisdom or goodness to avoid their own ruin. That is why Shakepeare's tragedies are still relevant. They show how it happens.

Classic tragedy.

In Australia this month we've had a senior criminal investigator caught attempting to smuggle narcotics into the country. It's a major betrayal of trust - and you see cases like it everywhere. It's also a real life example of the classic Greek or Shakepearian tragedy.
The officer involved was a highly accomplished crime fighter who had reached a very high-ranking position. He's a person of talent and achievement, who has earned respect and standing. And it was all ruined by one major flaw. That officer was an addicted gambler. Some reports say he owed a million dollars to bookmakers for money lost betting on horse races.
I'm not going to run the man down. I could, because we've all got the right to believe that people do the job they're paid to and honour the trust placed in them. But if I'm quite honest with myself, I'd have to admit: in the wrong circumstances, that could have been me. That doesn't mean I'm seriously dishonest, or that I've got a gambling problem. I do not. But like any other human, I've got character flaws.
Self-understanding includes knowing your own weaknesses. It's easy to forget that when we live in a society that encourages the individual to be 'self-actualising,' which can actually mean self centred: you put yourself first. But that man could have saved himself huge embarrassment - and his family, likewise - if he'd just kept an act together. I can't explain all his behaviour because I'm not his analyst. But anyone can see that he made a bad mistake and kept on compounding it. Could it be that the power and standing of his position went to his head? He got carried away by his own sense of grandness?
Shakespeare wrote tragic plays, showing the same miserable scenario working it's way out. Macbeth was a gallant nobleman seduced by his dreams of kingship. Othello was a warrior and man of standing who failed to control his jealousy and lapsed in understanding the way people sometimes behave. And they went down - tragedy, the great character ruined by their critical flaw.
So what is a Christian to say about this, without getting self-righteous?
All I can think of is, seek God and follow His leading. I'd better be careful myself, after I undertook to write this little lecture. If anyone reads this, I admit to you, I've failed to live up to my own principles enough times. It can be HUMBLING, you might say. I know this, too. If I'd been given any great amount of power, it might have corrupted me the way it corrupts so many others.
Good literature can show the reader or viewer how life works, that way, and give a timely warning. That's one reason, probably, why Shakespeare's work is classic, and stays in print and in production.
The Holy Scripture warns anyone who reads it: beware pride, greed, self-spoiling.
It can be irritating if one person takes it on themself to critisize another. But it can be disastrous if we lose sight of the fact that mere humans all have flaws. Don't let them destroy you.