Monthly Archives: May 2012

Disappearing road

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This is about some poor road planning, as I see it, that increases danger to cyclists. In two cases, there was a safe riding option that road authorities changed into a dangerous one. In the third case, a careless use of road markings suggests a safe place to ride but increases the risks.

All these examples are in Albury, but I don’t pretend to know who is responsible for each decision and piece of roadwork. For that reason, I am not naming and blaming any local or state authorities. This is a post to point out seemingly thoughtless road set-up.

Atkins St, South Albury

This road is quite new, with a good surface and wide shoulders. Recently there was a change needed – an entry to the parking area for Albury Railway Station. Before the change, there were two lanes going north and one lane south. To make the right turn lane, a third north-going lane was added. The shoulder went from full width to zero.

In the video, you can see former shoulder-lane divider (now painted black), with ‘straight ahead’ arrows painted onto this part of the road surface. The part of the road is already on a curve, so the possibility of being on a bike and hit from behind has increased considerably.

Kaitlers Rd, Springdale Heights

This is a major road in Albury’s north. Running east-west, it receives plenty of traffic. East-west is important, because it means that sun in the eyes is a major problem at certain times. (At the eastern end of Kaitlers Road there are now traffic lights. These lights were put in place after a man was killed at the intersection early one morning. Coming home after night shift he was probably blinded by the morning sun. The media reports included plenty of, ‘We always said the sun makes this intersection dangerous.’)

When some shops were put in on a street corner, the wide shoulder was reduced to zero to create a turning lane for the shopping car park. Would it not have been possible for the car park entry to be on the smaller side street?

As the video starts, you can see the bike symbol painted on the road. I edited out about a kilometer of footage before the present start – the lane has plenty of these painted signs. Just as the lane/shoulder disappears, you can see briefly a signpost on the left: bike lane. What is the point of that? Did someone feel guilty? I am confident it makes no safety difference at all.

To make this decision even worse, the disappearing lane is about 200m from a large high school. The resumption of a normal lane is precisely where the ‘school zone, 40km/h’ starts. Australia says that students should increase their activity levels. And then we act to make riding in the vicinity of school more dangerous. Message and action, in this case, do not agree with each other.

Urana Rd, Lavington

This is a different kind of problem. Urana Rd is a very pleasant tree-lined drive into town. On Atkins St and Kaitlers Rd, the changes were from a good and safe set-up to a dangerous one. I have a lot more sympathy for the difficulty of marking Urana Rd safely. Yet I think it was not done too well.

In the video you will see that the left side of the road has two markings. Broken lines mark parking bays. About a metre away, a solid line apparently indicates the border between cycle lane and motor vehicle lane. Unfortunately, the ‘cycle lane’ is not safe. If anyone were to try and ride it, they would either have to swerve repeatedly into motor traffic, or ride straight ahead into tree roots.

When riding this road, it’s safest to ignore the solid line by riding a metre to the right. This avoids trees, as well as avoiding dangerous and unpredictable swerving. My suggestion for the road markers would be forget the solid line – just include the broken lines.

Thanks to my son Nahum for providing the camera work, keeping us both safe and legal while I did the driving.

 


 

Costly conversion

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Jesus said:
“For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” (Verse 28 in the seciton Luke 14:25-35.)

There’s a cost for all who trust Jesus. It’a hating mother, father, brother, sister, even one’s own life (verse 26). It’s bearing the cross (verse 27). It’s renouncing all that one has (verse 33). Jesus generously invites us to take him seriously – so seriously that nothing else matters.

To be honest and not manipulative, this costliness must feature when we ask people to become Christian. Evangelism calls people to count the cost of following the one who death for us is a priceless gift.

Udoh Osinyi understood some of this (only some, because he declined to become a Christian). Uncle Udoh is the man who raised his orphan nephew Isaiah Achebe. And Isaiah Achebe was father of the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe.

Chinua passes on the response of Udoh to being asked to convert:

[Udoh] said no, and pointed to the awesome row of insignia of his three titles. “What shall I do to these?” he had asked my father. It was an awesome question. What do I do to who I am? What do I do to history?

Udoh understood the cost of commitment, and was unwilling to pay.

To trust Christ is to trust Christ for a new identity, and even for a new history. All who believe the gospel can say, ‘I am not my past.’ This, wonderfully, is liberation: my ignorance and failure does not define me. This is also, and sadly, painful: we love to cling to our small achievments as if we might cease to exist without them.

Jesus’ words quoted above are more pointed for me than for Uncle Udoh. As far as I know, Udoh never started to follow Christ. Jesus’ theoretical tower-builder, however, started but was mocked for running out of cash: “This man began to build and could not finish!”

I fear the trap of following Jesus, but economising the cost of commitment. I fear making budget cuts along the way. I fear giving other Christians tacit permission to live with a half-built tower. I fear we may miss some of Christ’s riches because we love our own poverty too much.

 


 

Quick review: From the Holy Mountain

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From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of ByzantiumFrom the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium by William Dalrymple

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fascinating travel log. In 1994, the author, William Dalrymple, travelled the arc of the eastern Mediterranean – Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt – to visit sites significant to Orthodox Christianity.

Dalrymple’s constant companion was John Moschos. Moschos proved to be an inspiration, despite dying the the seventh century. Dalrymple’s journey, with Moschos’ The Spiritual Meadow as a reference, was an attempt to visit many of the places Moschos had journeyed through 1400 years earlier.

This setting provided many avenues for observation and comment: the nature of eastern Christianity; the rise of Islam; the transition from Byzantine to Ottoman rule; the history of Christian orthodoxy and heresy; the policies of the modern state of Israel; the Lebanese civil war; the nature of monasticism; the intifada; etc.

One thing I most appreciated about this book is that Dalrymple did not try to collapse all his reflections into a single and simplified summary. Instead, each place or person spoke with its own character. In each place there was a different mix of history, politics, religion and belief – and Dalrymple refrains from placing it all in the ‘Middle East Blender’ to homogenise them into a smooth weirdness.

As someone who knows next to nothing about Christianity eastern and Orthodox (the capital ‘O’ is important), it was good also to learn a little about this group of denominations. Saying this, however, I was not always convinced by Dalrymple’s account of the history of Christian theology. There are times when he seems to accept the model of ‘many competing Christianities’, in which the New Testament just happened to be victorious. Poor history of theology there, but it’s not a major feature of the book.

From the Holy Mountain raised two substantial concerns for me, regarding eastern Christianity.

Firstly, culturally, there are so many threats to the existence of Christians in these areas. Turkey’s modern history has squeezed them out, sometimes with violence. (Did you know that 1955 saw Europe’s worst race riot since Kristallnacht? It was against the Greeks of Istanbul.) Emigration threatens the existence of Christian communities in Palestine, and also weakens the Coptic Egyptian church. Knowing the current troubles in Syria, Dalrymple’s comments are eerily prescient, ‘Only in Syria had I seen the Christian population looking happy and confident, and even their future looked decidedly uncertain, with most expecting a major backlash as soon as Asad’s repressive minority regime began to crumble.’

Secondly, theologically, I was terribly saddened by the way so many of the Orthodox spoke of knowing God and his blessings – there was no real gospel at all. Saints are called on for magic-like intervention (both now and historically). Self-discipline and extreme renunciation is pictured as the way to deal with sins (both now and historically). And absent is any sense of the complete victory over sin and the devil won by Jesus’ death.

For example, we read the words of a monk who lived suspended in a small cage. Why this pain? ‘Burdened with many sins, and believing in the penalties that are threatened, I have devised this form of life, contriving moderate punishments for the body in order to reduce the mass of those awaited.’ Tragic – when Jesus already declared, ‘It is finished!’

Overall, for me this book provided wonderful insight into Byzantine Christianity and its descendants, as well as making me worried about the future of these people groups.

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Amos at Easter

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Reading Amos recently amazed me for the umpteenth time. The whole is, of course, extraordinary – its passion, its bold naming of evil, its firm resolve that God’s blessing comes with great responsibility. Breath-taking!

Along the way, some specific pre-echoes of Easter also jumped out. There may be more, but two verses in particular find a definite terminus in Jesus’ last week.

One relates to that odd mention in Mark’s gospel about an individual present when Jesus was arrested. A lightly-dressed young man, following Jesus, gets scared off when Jesus’ opponents make a grab for him. So he legged it, ‘and ran away naked’ (Mark 14:51-52). It’s a great verse for getting a laugh – perhaps we can’t help but look for a giggle while reading a story as tragic as the passion narrative. But after the laugh, everyone thinks, ‘Why is that in the account?’

Amos, in the eighth century before Christ, spoke of the coming judgement on Israel (Amos 2:14-16):

“Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain his strength, nor shall the mighty save his life; he who handles the bow shall not stand, and he who is swift of foot shall not save himself, nor shall he who rides the horse save his life; and he who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day,” declares the LORD.

This sounds like a good hint about the fulfilment of the prophet’s word in Jesus’ death – judgement is here, and even the young bucks are running away.

Another verse to note is Amos 8:9.

“And on that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.”

The Old Testament has plenty of prophetic words relating judgement to heavenly signs (moon, stars, sun, blood-colour, etc). But note the time: noon. This time reference is not common at all. Ominously, one possibly similar Old Testament verse is Deuteronomy 28:29 – part of the statement of curses for covenant disobedience.

The gospels do not use the word ‘noon’, but indicate this time by a different phrase. See Mark 15:33 – And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

We might ask, ‘Was God really judging evil at Easter, did he obliterate sin?’ Amos gives this answer, ‘When God judges sin, expect to see brave young men running away naked, and expect to see noon-time darkness.’

A great thing about the Bible is that, unlike the Quran, there are many books written over many years by a number of human authors. This enables the former writers to set up understanding of the later, and later writers to interact with the former. The Bible has its own internal commentary. The Bible is its own reading guide. What a blessing: God not only tells us what happened, he also tells us how to understand what happened. These two links between Amos and Mark’s gospel illustrate this perfectly.

 


 

 

Quick review: From Exegesis to Exposition

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From Exegesis to Exposition: A Practical Guide to Using Biblical HebrewFrom Exegesis to Exposition: A Practical Guide to Using Biblical Hebrew by Robert B. Chisholm Jr.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I recommend this book, but I also consider it has serious shortcomings. The title, though not exciting, is clear about its purpose. Chisholm writes to help people use Hebrew in the move From Exegesis to Exposition.

Where it’s strong is the exegesis – using Hebrew.

Where it’s weak is the exposition – writing sermons.

First, the strength. I have a little knowledge of Hebrew, and benefit from the Bible software that aids interaction with the original languages. The great usefulness of From Exegesis to Exposition is building on that basic knowledge. It’s not an introductory text, not the book to use to start learning Hebrew.

If you have some biblical Hebrew, you might be tempted into this book by reading some of the chapter sub-headings: how words work and play, basics of Hebrew syntax, the basic structure of Hebrew narrative and poetry. These are matters I would like to know better – and Chisholm helps me. Along the way, he is always providing examples from the text. These show him as an attentive reader who is careful to let the text itself shape his understanding.

Such care in reading is also exhibited in the eight sermon texts he provides. So, while I have concerns about the sermons, Chisholm’s love for the Hebrew Bible is very clear all the way through his book.

So to the weakness: exposition. From Exegesis to Exposition is less useful from Chapter 8, ‘Putting It All Together.’ He starts with a series of seven steps. (From ‘Step 1: Viewing the Forest’ to ‘Step 7: Viewing the Forest Again.’) Unusually for a book published in the US, these steps are not as well formatted as they could be. But that’s a relatively minor matter.

The most serious issue with the process is the end product – the eight example expositions – are all rather pale and tend towards behaviour improvement. They are not legalism, but their feel is definitely that of spiritual-moral improvement.

The underlying cause is a lack of whole Bible integration. Or, simply, there’s not enough Gospel of Jesus. The Old Testament passages are read as if answering the question, ‘What does this tell me about being a Christian?’ It’s the wrong question! Better is, ‘What does this tell me about Christ?’

Jesus taught that all the scriptures point to him and his ministry (see John 5:39-40, Luke 24:44-47, 2 Corinthians 1:20). Therefore Old Testament exposition, to be a true exposition, must also point to Jesus and his ministry. The Old Testament is for Christians indirectly, because we are in Christ, rather than directly (with the notable exception of Jewish followers of Jesus, of course).

This work needs to be strengthened with a more gospel-centred approach to the pre-Christmas scriptures. Perhaps by reading the work of Graeme Goldsworthy, or something similar.

My final recommendation: read From Exegesis to Exposition to learn how to use Hebrew better, read something else to gain skills in turning that Hebrew understanding into Christian teaching.

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We’re all so Christian

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A friend told me that Buddhism was life-changing. Her description of what Buddhism taught her sounded, to me, perfectly Christian and terribly non-Buddhist.

As she said, Buddhism teaches that pain arises from desire. But how did she understand this?

Her illustration and explanation said that trying to grasp onto things only leads to disappointment when they – inevitably – are taken away. So, instead, we should hold things lightly, happy to seek out good things but content even if they fade or prove unattainable.

But that’s not Buddhist, going by my (inadequate) understanding. It’s my understanding that Buddhist philosophy teaches that all desire causes pain and should be negated. Even a ‘gentle’ desire is, therefore, undesirable.

I could not help thinking that her ‘Buddhist’ ideas were profoundly Christian. And probably ideas she’d picked up in a society deeply shaped by biblical teaching.

It’s Christian to say that creation is good and that God made it for enjoyment (see 1 Timothy 4:4-5). It is also very important not to grasp on to what God gives us, for it is idolatry to exalt the creation over the Creator (Romans 1:27).

I think my friend exemplifies a very common situation: that someone ‘not interested in Christianity’ actually loves something that it explicitly Christian. The treasure of the Bible and its worldview is still a treasure, even when the giver receives no thanks.

In a way, all people raised in a place like Australia have Christan roots. We’re all ‘Christian’, even when far away from being a follower of Christ. In another example, I remember an atheist’s proposal for how atheist-Christian conversation should take place. It was full of good ideas like respect and true listening. Every one of the positive ideas was grounded in biblical doctrine: creation in God’s image justifies equal respect (survival of the fittest justifies no such thing).

I would like to know how to sensitively raise this with people. I don’t want to sound superior or triumphant – ‘You’ve just said a Christian thing, ner nernie ner ner.’ I would love to see people become open to investigate that which they’ve written off.

I didn’t say anything to my friend. What do you suggest?

 


 

Review: One-to-One Bible Reading

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As indicated by the subtitle of the book (a simple guide for every Christian), this work is intended to guide any Christian into reading the Bible with another person. I think it achieves this aim very succesfully.

One-to-One Bible Reading is short: barely 100 (small-sized) pages. Even so, it’s divided into two broad sections and 11 chapters, with two appendices being required to push it over the 100 page mark. It’s an easy read!

The author, David Helm, rightly points out an obvious reality: there’s good reason to read the Bible one-to-one with all kinds of people. It’s good for those not-yet-Christian: God’s word can convert them. It’s good for newer Christians: God’s word can effect on-going transformation. It’s good for established Christians: God’s word equips them for further minsitry. And in all these possibible scenarios, one-to-one reading provides what so many people are crying out for – relationship.

After arguing briefly the benefits of regular one-to-one Bible reading, Helm provides a substantial amount of practical advice and tips. Chapter headings give a feel for the ‘users’ guide’ feel for much of the book: ‘How do I get started?’, ‘What will a typical meeting look like?’, ‘Preparation’, Help with reading different biblical genres’, etc.

It’s all great material, and I am sure it will be immensely helpful to anyone, but particularly those embarking on such Bible reading for the first time. Helm want to show how easy it is to pick up the Bible and read it with someone. How good it is – Christians are probably convinced already. But how easy it is? I suspect that perceived difficulty is a major reason more Christians don’t read the Bible together. Helm even provides two simple fameworks for Bible reading to show that we should not be scared off from starting.

I have two suggestions for improvement. One would make the book shorter, the other would make it longer.

Firstly, shorter. Appendix 2 is a series of pages ready to be copied and full of useful questions for the different types of biblical writing (The Gospels and Acts, Old Testament narrative, and so on). This material is reproduced from Chapter 10, ‘Help with reading different biblical genres’, with formatting added. I can’t see why chapter 10 was not itself formatted as ready-to-copy. It seemed a waste of space.

Secondly, longer. I would like to see an expansion of Chapter 2, ‘Why read one-to-one?’ Chapter 2 is, it appears, the theological and pastoral rationale for one-to-one reading. It checks if the reader is convinced of the value of such a ministry. I would like the chapter to probe a little more boldly. For example, we need to ask if we actually trust the power of God’s word to transform. Or do we, as modern Christians, behave in a way that suggests there are other ‘powers’ that equip God’s people for every good work?

These suggestions are quite minor. I hope you buy and use this book, and that it encourages plenty more people to read the Bible with a friend, who will then read the Bible with a friend, who will …

I received a free review copy of this book (though I had already bought one for myself). Since I had the book, I asked for an e-book – so was surprised to receive a copy in the mail. Maybe the e-book version was not yet released when I asked for a copy, but it now appears to be available. You can buy the physical book here (Australia, SE Asia, Pacific), or here (North & South America, Europe, Africa).