All Stories Stories

Get Your Own Dirt

God was once approached by a scientist who said, “Listen God, we’ve decided we don’t need you anymore. These days we can clone people, transplant organs and do all sorts of things that used to be considered miraculous.”

God replied, “Don’t need me huh? How about we put your theory to the test. Why don’t we have a competition to see who can make a human being, say, a male human being.”

The scientist agrees, so God declares they should do it like he did in the good old days when he created Adam.

“Fine” says the scientist as he bends down to scoop up a handful of dirt.”

“Whoa!” says God, shaking his head in disapproval. “Not so fast. You get your own dirt.”

 

Source: unknown

Billionaire George Soros on Materialism

George Soros is multi-billionaire financial wiz. He retired from his Investment Agency at the age of 70 in the year 2000. He was also phenomenally successful as an investor. If you had invested $1,000 in his Quantum Fund when he started out in 1969, he would have turned your $1000 into $4 million by the year 2000.

Yet life was not always so easy for Soros. He was born in Budapest in 1930. He also Jewish. When the Nazis invaded his homeland during World War 2 his father had to bribe government officials for false identity papers so that George could pretend to be the godson of a gentile bureaucrat. Then the family had to spend a period of the war hiding in the attics and concealed stone cellars of almost a dozen homes.

After the war the teenage Soros moved to England and worked odd jobs. As a waiter at Quaglino’s, a posh restaurant in London, he found himself scavenging the leftover profiteroles. Eventually Soros enrolled in the London School of Economics, and the rest is history.

Partly because of his background Soros is not only a capitalist, he’s also a philanthropist. He has injected almost $3 billion into foundations designed to promote open and free societies throughout the world. He plans to give away the rest of his fortune – another $5 billion – by the time he turns 80.

In recent years Soros has turned his attention to the sorts of societies being created by our international economy. And he is concerned by what he sees. Unlike others who have had a rags to riches story Soros does not believe anyone can do it. Indeed, he is worried at the way financial success has become the dominant value of our age and the skewed social outcomes this is delivering. “Markets reduce everything, including human beings (labor) and nature (land), to commodities” he says. “We can have a market economy but we cannot have a market society.”

Source: Biographical information found at Soros Foundation website. Quotation on markets taken from George Soros, “Toward a Global Open Society”, The Atlantic Monthly; January 1998. Volume 281, No. 1; pages 20 – 32.

George Harrison Reconciles with His Sister

Former Beatle, George Harrison died in December 2001. During his final days his wife and child, and his sister, Louise were at his bedside. It was Louise’s presence that was especially poignant. You see, she and George had been feuding with each other for almost forty years. Their feud began when Louise opened a bed and breakfast named “A Hard Day’s Night”.

The rift was healed only when George realised he would probably die from his cancer. Louise reports that their reconciliation was difficult but satisfying. “We sort of held hands like we used to do” she said. “We used to talk for hours about life and God and the universe. We were able to look into each other’s eyes again with love. It was a very, very positive and loving meeting,”

This episode tells us exactly what reconciliation is – two people who have been at odds with one another, coming together in a renewed and restored relationship, one where they are able to “look into each other’s eyes again with love.” This is what it means to reconcile with God, and with our fellow human beings.

The tragedy of course, is that George and Louise took so long to reconcile, that they missed out on so much. Similarly, it is a tragedy when we wait so long to be reconciled to those we love and/or to God.

 

Source: Ananova News Service, December 9, 2001

Gathering Feathers

A woman once repeated a nasty piece of gossip about a friend. The news travelled, and soon everyone knew the nasty news. The woman’s friend was deeply hurt, not only by the untruths being said about her but by the betrayal by a friend.

The woman who had first passed on the gossip was also wounded, wracked with guilt over the pain she had caused her friend. She approached her grandfather, a man she had always seen as very wise, and asked what she could do to set things right.

“Buy a chicken, and have it killed. Then on your way home, pluck its feathers and drop them along the road. When you have done this come and see me again.”

The woman was somewhat perplexed by this advice but she followed it anyway. The next day she returned to her grandfather. This time he told her to go and collect all the feathers she had dropped on the road yesterday and bring them to him.

“But that’s impossible” she said. “They’ll have all blown away.”

“Exactly” said her grandfather, “it’s easy to drop them, but it’s impossible to get them back. It’s the same with gossip. It doesn’t take much to spread a rumour, but once you do, you can never  undo the hurt. But perhaps you can ask forgiveness.”

Source: unknown

Galileo's Telescope

In the year 1609 a man looked through a telescope and unleashed a revolution that would change the world forever. His name was Galileo Galilei. But how did this simple act of looking through a telescope unleash a revolution? Because Galileo Galilee was looking at the surface of the moon, and saw that it was full of craters and mountains. To you and I this is old news, but to Galileo and the people of his day it was a terrifying revolution. Galileo had grown up learning what everyone in his day “knew” to be “fact”. The earth was the changeable, imperfect, impure centre of an unchangeable, perfect and pure universe. And this universe spoke powerfully of God and humanity’s place in it. The earth was placed at the centre of the universe because humankind was at the centre of God’s concern. The various elements of the universe – the sun, moon and stars, existed for our benefit and ours alone. We were the focus of God’s unfathomable love. The heavens, being the creation of a pure, perfect and unchangeable God, were likewise pure, perfect and unchangeable. All that is, except the earth, which had become impure, imperfect and changeable as a result of human sin. Being at the centre of God’s concerns God had sent Christ to atone for our sin and reconcile us to himself.

But with one glance through his telescope Galileo’s view of the world was changed forever. The heavens were not perfect, pure and unchangeable and the earth was not the centre of the universe. Rather, the earth was a ball of mud floating through the vast, dark expanse of space. And so it raised the question. If we were not the physical centre of the universe, were we the centre of God’s love and purposes?

In the year Galileo died another great scientist, Isaac Newtown was born. Newton was the towering genius of his day, who demonstrated that the earth was part of an infinite universe governed by a variety of laws. These operated with mathematical certainty. If we knew those laws and the precise details of each circumstance we could accurately predict every event that would happen. Not just some events like the appearance of comets, but every event of the future. This seemed to make a miracle working, involved God impossible. God was removed from the ever-present helper to the Divine Watchmaker, who made the clock, then wound it up and let it go.

All however was not lost. Though we came to discover we were floating on a ball of mud through an infinite expanse of space governed by unmovable laws of nature, we take comfort that we human beings were created by God in 4004BC and created distinct from the animals to occupy a special place in his creation. But the comfort was ever so brief. For hot on the heels of Newtown came the geologist James Hutton and his argument that the earth’s shape was the result of tiny but continual changes taking place over aeons of time. Now we were not only a speck in space but a speck in time. Then came the final, dizzying blow to our sense of place, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. We were not the special, unique creation of God but the distant descendents of prehistoric microbes and the cousin of the ape.

This has become the dominant story of our culture, the mental map by which we navigate life. We see the world around us that we can see and touch as what is truly real. We pursue the only logical goal in such a world – individual happiness – and believe we’ll find it solely in what we can see and touch – possessions, relationships, work, leisure.

Source: Scott Higgins

Gabrielle Carey. From Puberty Blues to Faith

Gabrielle Carey is an Australian author most widely known for co-authoring Puberty Blues. In a later book, In My Father’s House Carey relates an incident that led to her conversion to Christ. Carey was raised in an atheist humanist household. Her father was a university lecturer with a passionate commitment to the left side of politics. Throughout her upbringing he railed against oppression, capitalism and was a key figure in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam years. He also railed against God and the church, finding it impossible to believe in a God when the world was full of so much suffering.

But that left Gabrielle tremendously burdened. In her book In My Father’s House she writes, “One of the hardest aspects of growing up as the daughter of a humanist was the worry of having to live up to incredibly high intellectual and moral standards. And worse, what happened when it was discovered that you hadn’t? Would you be given a second chance? Could you confess your weaknesses? Would you ever be forgiven? What would my father say if he found out that I was just another brainless, mind-moulded, media-manipulated failure to humanity?”

It was this burden of guilt Gabrielle found lifted when she converted to Christian faith. “Perhaps what I liked most about Catholicism” she writes, “or at the least the Catholicism the abbot had introduced to me, was knowing I could be wrong, knowing I could behave badly, awfully in fact, and that I would still be loved. That all I needed to do was own up and I’d be forgiven…At least with a Catholic God and father you could fail without feeling that it was the end of all hope. And that was such a relief.”

Source: Scott Higgins, based on Carey’s In My Father’s House (Pan McMillan, 1992)

From Humble Beginnings

For most of us who live in the West life would be pretty difficult without motor vehicles. They have proved an enormous convenience, and though a drain on the environment, an enormous benefit to us in many ways.

But it wasn’t always the case. The first ever “horseless carriage” was built in 1769 by a Frenchman named Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot. It was an enormous three wheeled, steam powered, gun carriage, which travelled along at the neckbreaking speed of 1 kilometre per hour.

At the time I can’t imagine many people saw that great a benefit in Cugnot’s horseless carriage. It was very expensive, very noisy, and it couldn’t match the pace of even the oldest nag. Yet from that horseless carriage came a revolution.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that it’s OK to start small, with an idea that seems crazy, and watch to see if from that embryonic vision, something great might happen.

 

Source: Scott Higgins. Scientific info from Dr Karl Kruszelnicki’s New Moments in Science #1

When a Sanctuary Becomes a Slaughtehouse. Facing Up to Evil

In September 2001 the New York Times Magazine published an article under this heading: “How Did a Rwandan Convent Turn from Sanctuary to Slaughterhouse?”. The article went on to describe the trial for crimes against humanity of two Benedictine nuns, Sister Gertrude and Sister Kisito. In 1994 Rwanda experienced a terribly violent period in its history. Conflict between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority flared into genocide. The Hutu government went on a rampage of violence and murder, slaughtering Tutsi’s on a massive scale. Many Tutsi people fled to the churches, believing that there they would find sanctuary. And so, thousands of people fled to the Benedictine convent headed by the Hutu, Sister Gertrude. But rather than providing shelter, Sister Gertrude went to the Hutu militia and asked them to “clear” the convent. The militia promptly obliged, beginning an indiscriminate shooting. 7000 Tutsis were killed. When some 500 fled to the convent’s garage Sister Gertrude and Sister Kisito provided the gasoline the militia used to burn them to death.

The New York Magazine article is dumbfounded by this evil. How is it that two angelic looking nuns could perpetrate such evil? The journalist ends with these questions: “The picture is not an allegory of innocence, after all, but a study in the unimaginable disguises of evil. What mixture of terror and hatred led these nuns to betray the promise of their faith? The Rwandan massacres left in their wake hundreds of disturbing questions like that one – How does mass violence suddenly erupt? Are we all capable of murdering our neighbours? Where does evil come from? – but none of them were resolved by the … court. Justice is built to establish the facts of evil. It cannot explain them.”

 

Source: Reported in New York Times Magazine, September 9, 2001.

Free as a Bird

A happy and cheerful man once captured a bird and placed it in a cage. “Give me my freedom sir!” cried the bird as he shut the door. Startled that the bird was talking to him, the man listened as it continued. “I am no use to you sir, for I have no beautiful feathers to look at nor am I able to sing beautiful songs, and I am to small to eat. If however, you promise to grant me my freedom I will tell you three wise teachings.”

The man agreed, whereupon the little bird told him: “First: Do not grieve over things that have already happened. Second: Do not wish for that which is unattainable. Third: Do not believe in that which cannot be possible.”

“Indeed, these are wise things you have taught me” said the man. As agreed, he opened the door of the cage and set the little bird free. The man sat and pondered the bird’s sayings, and the bird flew up to a branch high up in a tree. After a few moments the man heard the bird laughing. “Why do you laugh?” he called.

“Because I so easily won my freedom” replied the bird. “You humans pride yourselves on being the wisest of the creatures, yet I a tiny bird, have outwitted you. Within my belly lies a diamond the size of a hen’s egg. If you had not let me go you would be a wealthy man.”

Upon hearing this news our once happy and cheerful man became angry, sad and depressed. And the more the little bird laughed the angrier, sadder and more depressed the man became.

After some time the man started hurling abuse at the laughing bird as he attempted to recapture it. But to no avail. The little bird was always beyond his reach. Finally the little bird called out. “Listen to me O human. When you granted me freedom I gave you three teachings, yet you almost instantly forgot them. You should not grieve over things that have already happened, but still you are grieving that you gave me my freedom. You should not wish for things that you cannot obtain, and yet you want me, for whom freedom is my whole life, to voluntarily enter a prison. You should not believe that which is impossible, and yet you believe that I am carrying about inside my body a diamond as large as a hen’s egg, although I myself am only half the size of a hen’s egg.”

And with that the little bird flew away.

 

Source: Adapted from Otto Knoop, “Die drei Sprüche,” Ostmärkische Sagen, Märchen und Erzählungen (Lissa: Oskar Eulitz’ Verlag, 1909), no. 72, pp. 147-149 (translation by DL Ashlimann).

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the greatest and most influential architects of the twentieth century. As a boy he used to a lot of time on his uncle’s farm in Spring Green, USA. It was there that he had one of the most formative experiences of his life. He was 9 years old, it was a winter’s day, and he and his uncle had just walked across a snow-covered field. Frank’s uncle stopped the young boy and pointed to the tracks they had left in the snow. Frank’s meandered all over the place, while his uncle’s went in a straight line from start to finish. “Notice how your tracks wander aimlessly from the fence to the cattle to the woods and back again,” his uncle said. “And see how my tracks aim directly to my goal. There is an important lesson in that.”

Years later the world-famous architect pointed to the important lesson he learned that day, but it was not the lesson his uncle had intended him to learn. “I determined right then,” said Frank Lloyd Wright, “not to miss most things in life, as my uncle had.”

Sources: Details found at Biography.com and Focus on the Family letter, September, 1992, p. 14

Forgetting the Thistles

An Australian priest recalls an experience on his family farm. “My nephews and nieces insisted I accompany them up onto the hill so they could show me the ‘mouse plague’. They carried an assortment of containers full of water – jugs, buckets, bottles, depending on the age and size of the carrier. Richard, who was 12, pushed the wheelbarrow up, bearing a  large drum which he had filled to the brim. Three dogs accompanied us.

The top of the hill was completely covered with mouse warrens. Each child poured his water into a hole and as soon a bedraggled little mouse poked his head out of its flooding home it found itself plucked up by a merciless child. By the time the mouse hit the ground again it was lifeless. What that hand actually did to the mouse I could not quite make out but few mice survived those lightning fingers.

My job, it turned out, was to remove thistles from the dog’s feet. They were long, dry, and razor sharp, and embedded themselves deeply in the animal’s pads. Every few steps one or other of the dogs would stop in his tracks and lick his foot. It was endless. As soon as I set one dog free from it’s nasty stinging barbs another would require my help and then I could go back to the first and start over again. I wondered why we had brought the dogs, and I wondered why the children took no notice of the suffering animals.

The next day my brother-in-law told me he was driving some sheep through the hill paddock and asked if I wanted to come. I stood in the back of the ute and closed the gates he had already opened for the sheep. The dogs accompanied us again. They were in the back of the ute with me and barked endlessly, waiting for the command that would allow them to hunt up the dusty mob in front of us.

The order finally came and they were overboard. Back and forth they raced, moving the sheep in the direction they knew by long experience they were meant to go.

It was only when the panting three jumped back into the ute with me that it struck me how not one of the dogs had thistles in its feet, nor did I remember seeing any of them immobilised.

The lesson was obvious. When we put ourselves wholeheartedly into our work we don’t notice the difficulties, even the big ones.”

 

Source: submitted to OzSermonIllustrations by Fr John Speekman

Father Joseph

A member of a monastic order once committed a fault. A council was called to determine the punishment, but when the monks assembled it was noticed that Father Joseph was not among them. The superior sent someone to say to him, “Come, for everyone is waiting for you.”

So Father Joseph got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water, and carried it with him. When the others saw this they asked, “What is this, father?”

The old man said to them, “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the error of another?”

 

Source: unknown

Father Kolbe

Father Maximillian Kolbe was a Polish priest who died in the Nazi death camp Auschwitz during the Second World War. His story is one of inspiring sacrifice. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939 Father Kolbe knew the firary would be seized and sent most of the friars home. With the aid of a few remaining friars he turned the resources of the friary to providing shelter for 3,000 refugees, including 2,000 Jews. He was imprisoned and released, but was not deterred. He continued to provide shelter for refugees, until May 1941 when the Nazis closed down the friary and sent Kolbe and his four fellow priests to Auschwitz.

At Auschwitz Kolbe continued his sacrificial ways. The prisoners were slowly and systematically starved, so when food was brought everyone struggled to get their portion. Father Kolbe however, made a practise of standing aside until the others had been fed, often meaning there was nothing left for him. When he did receive a portion he was often found sharing it with others.

But Father Kolbe’s love reached its greatest heights in July 1941. In order to discourage escape attempts the camp had a rule that 10 men would be killed for every person that escaped. After a man from Kolbe’s bunker escaped the rest of the men were led out to face Commander Karl Fritsch. Ten men were selected to be placed in the starvation bunker. One of them, Franciszek Gajowniczek, broke down in sobs. “My poor wife! My poor children! What will they do?”

At this, Father Kolbe stepped forward, took off his cap, stood before the commandant and said, “I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.”

The Commandant was astounded. “What does this Polish pig want?” he asked.

Father Kolbe pointed to Franciszek and again made his request. “I am a Catholic priest from Poland. I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.”

The Commandant remained silent for a minute, then agreed to Father Kolbe’s request. Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks and Father Kolbe took his place. The ten condemned men were led off to Building 13, where they were left without food or water until they starved to death. After four weeks four of the men were still alive, Father Kolbe one of them. As the Nazis needed the chamber for more victims the four were put to death by lethal injection. And so on August 14, 1941 at the age of 47 years, Father Kolbe finally died, having given his life for Franciszek Gajowniczek. Franciszek survived the war and lived to the age of 95. He never forgot Father Kolbe or telling people of his heroic love.

Father of Kolbe of course, was following the example set for him by his Lord Jesus Christ. Just as Christ laid down his life four us, so Father Kolbe laid down his life for his brother.

 

Source: Information on Father Kolbe obtained from “The Holocaust” website (www.auschwitz.dk).

Famous False Predictions

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” – Popular Mechanics, 1949

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” – Western Union internal memo, 1876.

“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” – David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” – A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” – H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

“I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” – Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With The Wind.”

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” – Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” – Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.'” – Apple Computer Inc. founder, Steve Jobs, on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.” – Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” – Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” – Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” – Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

“X-rays will prove to be a hoax” Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1893.

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” – Bill Gates, 1981

“Unworthy of the attention of practical and scientific men” – British Parliamentary Committee report on Thomas Edison’s electric light bulb

Fakes and Forgeries? CS Lewis and Biblical Criticism

CS Lewis is one of the most loved of Christian writers, famous for books such as his Narnia Chronicles and Mere Christianity. Yet an American academic Kathryn Lindskoog recently made the controversial claim that some of the books published in Lewis’ name were not actually written by him. After Lewis died a number of manuscripts were found among his effects and published under his name. These include The Dark Tower, Forms of Things Unknown, A Man Born Blind and Christian Reunion. Lindskoog ran a computer analysis of The Dark Tower which, she says, shows that the style of writing and some themes are out of character for Lewis. She also argues that the handwriting of the manuscript is not Lewis’, and that the books were not written by Lewis but one of his associates.

Lindskoog is no kook. She is a scholar who has written many books on Lewis, worked for Lewis as a researcher in the 1950’s, and remained in contact with him until his death in 1963. Her claims are also supported by some others within the literary community.

Others however are not convinced. Many scholars who have also studied the original manuscripts believe the works are consistent with other writings of Lewis. They suggest that all Lindskoog’s analysis demonstrates is that no one, not even a great writer like Lewis, can produce the highest quality literature all the time.

The debate over Lewis is similar to a debate over some of the writings of Paul. One one side are a group of scholars who believe many of the books attributed to Paul were written not by the apostle, but by some of his associates or followers after his death. They were then published in his name to buttress the claim that they were an accurate representation of the apostle’s thought. The scholars who argue this way appeal to similar criteria as Lindskoog – writing style, themes, language. They point out that the style, themes and language of some books attributed to Paul are so far removed from the letters indisputably attributed to Paul that they must have come from another hand.

Yet more conservative scholars take a line similar to those defending the challenged Lewis works – differences in style, language and theme do not indicate a different author, but different circumstances at the time of writing.

 

Source: Information on Lindskoog and Lewis found in Sydney Morning  Herald July 24, 2001. Lindskoog’s claims are published in Sleuthing CS Lewis.

The Person God Uses

What sort of person does God use? Imagine a group of people gathered before you. You need to select from among them those most likely to play a pivotal role in God’s plans for humanity. They are so at ease with you that they open up and share their darkest secrets. One tells you that after a night of heavy drinking he was sexually abused by one of his own sons. Another confesses that he gave his wife to another man to sleep with. Yet another plotted with his mistress to kill her husband. Another murdered a man and is still on the run from the law. One is a prostitute. Another has a lifestyle marked by violence – he even killed people to impress a girlfriend and his prospective father-in-law. Yet another confesses that he cheated his brother out of his inheritance.

Could you use them? I hope so, for they are the heroes of faith described in Hebrews 11. Noah is the man who got drunk and was sexually abused; Abraham is the man who gave his wife to sleep with another; David is the one who plotted to have his mistress’ husband killed. Moses is the one who murdered an Egyptian and was never brought to account for it. Rahab was the prostitute. Samson is the man whose life was marked by violence and who killed to impress his girlfriend. Jacob is the person who cheated his brother out of his inheritance.

Scripture shows that God uses very flawed people indeed!

 

Source: Scott Higgins

Fairy Penguins and Fear

Philip Island, in Victoria Australia, plays host to one of the greatest nature experiences possible. On the shores of Philip Island are the burrows of thousands upon thousands of fairy penguins, extraordinarily cute little birds that stand only 30cm or so tall. Every morning the adult penguins head out to sea to catch fish. At the end of the day they return to land to bring back food for their chicks. Watching them get from the water to their burrows is both funny and exhilarating. The penguins surf in on the waves, then gather in groups at the water’s edge. Their burrows are 100 metres or so away, with the open space of the sandy beach between them. All of a sudden a group of penguins will take off, waddling as fast as their little legs will carry them across the beach. But then, having got 10 or 20 metres they’ll suddenly turn around and waddle back to the water. They wait, then try again. One group makes it, but another performs this strange ritual of turning back. And on it goes, through the dying light of day, until finally the penguins have all crossed the beach and met their chicks in their burrows.

What’s going on? Why the strange stop-start-return ritual? The answer’s quite simple. At sea the birds are fast swimmers, able to dive deep. At sea they’re safe from predators such as eagles and hawks and dogs and cats. In their burrows their safe below ground. But on the open beach they’re vulnerable and exposed. On the beach they can only waddle slowly and are easy pickings for predators. And so, as they cross the beach, the moment they see a shadow or something out of the corner of their eye, they turn back and race for the safety of the water.

It seems that we humans are a lot like those fairy penguins. When confronted with challenging situations we find ourselves like the penguins standing at the water’s edge. We know where we’ve got to go, we know we’ve got to get across that beach to get back to the burrow, but it can be so terrifying. When we step out of the water and start waddling across the beach we leave our safety zone behind, we’re in no-man’s land where it’s dangerous, uncertain and where we’re vulnerable. Yet to get to the burrow we must leave the safety zone behind and strike out into the danger zone.

Source: Scott Higgins.

A Mirror or a Window

When you read bible does it function as a window or a mirror? For many people the Bible serves as a mirror that reflects back to them what they already believe. It is a powerful mirror, for it provides divine sanction for their beliefs, values and behavior.  But unfortunately that’s all it does.

For others however the bible functions as a window by which they get to look into another world, into the worlds of people living in other times,cultures and places. They get to see things from the perspective of these other worlds and explore how faith was shaped. This allows them tocritique their own world and in the process to be transformed at a deep level.

Eyes Wide Shut

One of the most talked about films of 1999 was Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. It was Stanley Kubrick’s final film, and one in which he explores the nature of sexuality, desire and intimacy. It’s also very explicit.

Tom Cruise plays a successful young doctor, Bill Harford and Kidman plays his wife, Alice. They’ve been married nine years, have a daughter, have money, and seemingly have it all.

Then one night at a party both engage in a bit of flirtation. When they get home Alice reveals that she once had a very powerful sexual fantasy about a man she saw in a hotel. She’d never met the man before, she never acted on the fantasy, but it seemed so powerful she had actually imagined herself leaving Bill to pursue it. Bill is shocked, and throughout the rest of the film we find himself giving in to his own desires. He has an encounter with a prostitute, and as he spirals further and further into a web of depravity, he ends up at an invitation-only orgy that exposes him to the extremes of sexual desire and almost gets him killed.

Paralleling Bill’s sexual journey is the declining intimacy in his marriage. The sexual tension and deceit push Bill and Alice further apart, until towards the end of the movie they both realise just how destructive this sexual web has been, how close they’ve come to surrendering all that is good in their relationship. The film closes with an act of forgiveness in which Alice tells Bill that she loves him and that they need to make love.

Critics debate exactly what Kubrick was trying to say in the movie, but I think that one of the messages is the power of sexual desire to be constructive and destructive in our relationships. We learn that dark sexual desire lurks in the most unsuspected places – in ourselves, in our partners, in the very everyday people around us. Kubric wants us to see how powerful these are, how they can ensnare even the best of us. We discover that darker sexual desires can be exhilarating when fulfilled, but that they are ultimately empty when compared to the genuine emotional intimacy of a good marriage relationship. And I think the end of the movie makes clear the need to preserve our marriages from sexual depravity through a passionate pursuit of desire within the relationship.

Irreducible Complexity

Evolutionary theory suggests that life evolved in a series of small steps spread out over a very long period of time. Take the eye as an example. The human eye is extraordinarily complex. How did we get it? Evolutionary theory points to other animals with less complex eyes, such as jellyfish which have just a few light sensitive cells or starfish which has a more sophisticated eye than the jellyfish, but still only a very crude type of lens. The argument then runs that over time the eye developed gradually, from simple light sensitive cells through to the marvel of the human eye.

In 1996 molecular biologist Michael Behe published a book which challenges this concept. Behe has no problem with the thought that the universe is billions of years old or that life branched out from a common ancestor. The problem he points out is that molecular biology shows us that even the crude eye of the jellyfish is not simple. When Darwin formed his theory and when Neo-Darwinism developed it, molecular biology didn’t exist. We had no idea what goes on at the most basic level of existence – that is inside the cell. Now we do, and according to Behe what we’ve discovered are amazingly complex and elaborate chemical processes.

Behe suggests that these processes are “irreducibly complex”. Think of a mousetrap. It has a number of parts – a wooden base, a U-shaped metal hammer which crushes the mouse, a spring to activate the hammer, a holding bar to hold the hammer down, and a sensitive catch which releases the bar at the time a mouse nibbles the cheese. Take away any of these parts and the mousetrap won’t work. You won’t have a less crude instrument for catching mice if you take away the spring. You won’t have a less crude instrument if you replace the base with a paper one. It simply won’t work. There is no way to have a step by step development that yields a mousetrap.

Behe suggests this is what it’s like at the level of the cell, the basic building block of life. Its processes are not only complex, but irreducibly complex. There is no way to explain the emergence of the cell using the idea of gradual development from the simple to the more complex. And as the cell is the basic building block of life this suggests that although Darwinian evolution may be able to explain the development of life once the cell has emerged, it is unable to explain how the cell came to exist in the first place.

Source: Scott Higgins summarising from Michael J Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (Touchstone, 1996)

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