Heal the sick and bind up the broken hearted

On Mike Bird's blog there has been some interesting discussion about a Christian perspective on the question of the government providing health care.
One issue that gets debated is about the quality of the current US system versus government systems elsewhere in the world.
I thought I might add my own limited personal experience and perspective. My wife is from the US and I lived for 10 years in the US. We had one child in the US and one in Australia. I would be the first to acknowledge that the US has the best university system in the world and that Australia's health care system has serious problems. Hence, I am not America bashing!

However, I find claims that the US health care system is the best in the world debatable, even for middle class families. When we had our first child in the US most decisions did not appear to be motivated by what would be best for the mother and baby, but rather what procedures and practises would minimise the chance of litigation (e.g., unneccessary proceduces and precautions), what could make the hospital money (e.g., billing for unnecessary services and products), save the insurance company money (e.g., discharge from hospital after 24 hours, incredibly breif consultations with the obstetrician where she stood with her hand on the door knob the whole time!) . Having the second child in Australia was completely different and so much more laid back.

The above issues only pertain to the efficiency and quality of the provision of health care to middle class families. The much more serious questions and issues are those about access and quality of health care for the poor and uninsured.

"The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them."

Ezekiel 34:4 (English Standard Version)

Can Hollywood make history?

Given that I think there is a paucity of good movies, I like to post about any good ones I see.
My family just watched Thirteen Days, a Hollywood production, staring Kevin Costner, about the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

A natural question about such a movie is, how accurate is it historically? For an answer, I found a helpful and balanced piece, by Ernest May, a Harvard Professor, who wrote the book on which the movie is based, drawing on secret White House tapes JFK made.

May concludes:

Thirteen Days is not a substitute for history. No one should see the movie expecting to learn exactly what happened. But the film comes close enough to truth that I will not be unhappy if it is both a big success now and a video store staple for years to come, with youths in America and around the world getting from it their first impressions of what was probably the greatest international crisis in all of human experience.

The miracle and mystery of Christmas

Here is a talk, A Scientist looks at the miracle and mystery of Christmas, that I gave two years ago to a group of parents at a school Gingerbread House making event.

I have a wonderful wife who is enthusiastic about my merits and accomplishments. (This week was our nineteenth anniversary!). The other day she told me I really should post the talk here.

Some of the main ideas in the talk, included in the title were inspired by Karl Barth's discussion of Christmas in chapter 14 of Dogmatics in Outline, which he summarises (in his usual dense prose):

The truth of the conception of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirt and of His birth of the Virgin Mary points to the true Incarnation of the true God achieved in His historical manifestation, and recalls the special form through which this beginning of the divine act of grace and revelation, that occurred in Jesus Christ, was distinguished from other human events.


The nativity painting below was painted by Bruegel in 1564.

The role of research in theological colleges II

I sent my previous post on this topic to several colleagues in theological colleges asking for their perspective. Geoff Thompson sent me some very thoughtful comments, which I reproduce below (with his permission, stressing these are just his own private views). I found Geoff's perspective particularly helpful.

Theologians engaging in research commit themselves to certain protocols of argument which are often absent from the populist theological debates which occur in the church. Involvement in research is, at the very least, a commitment to the academy’s culture of debate where protocols such as the following would (hopefully) apply: the sifting and weighing up of evidence, a humility to see the weaknesses in one's own position and to be corrected by one's critics, care in the construction of arguments, a willingness to employ persuasion rather than dogmatism, and (therefore) a refusal to be dominated by the immediate. All in all, this ought to produce an expectation that if you have something to say, it needs to be well-grounded (in whatever sources/evidence happen to apply) and said both well and with conviction.

Obviously, that might reflect a rather romanticised view of the academy but at its best I think the academy still stands for some such values and practices.

Sometimes theological discussion in the churches is illuminating and inspiring. Generally, however, the culture of theological discussion in the churches has little patience with the kinds of protocols noted above. It is frequently reactive, often trapped in denominational and geographical parochialism, and seldom well-informed. It is often driven by the pragmatic and the contingent, and is thereby distanced from any patient quest for the truth which intentionally draws on a larger horizon of theological wisdom. All of this is intensified by the underlying theological and biblical illiteracy which characterises so much contemporary Christianity.

Of course, for an alternative model to be recognised and appreciated, it would be necessary to break through the prevailing culture. The work and witness of the research-oriented theologian might not of itself be sufficient to effect that break through. Nevertheless, a research-strong faculty might become something of a benchmark within the life of the church for more patient and theologically-richer discussions within the church at large.

Scientists discover atheist gene!

I am waiting to see such a headline.

The Times (London) has a silly article, "You are born to believe in God," about the latest "research" that "shows" that people can't control their irrational tendencies and just have to believe in God..... The artilce makes dubious claims such as:

Such work is supported by other researchers who have found evidence linking religious feelings and experience to particular regions of the brain. They suggest people are programmed to get a feeling of spirituality from what is nothing more than electrical activity in these regions.

One could also say:

"Atheist thoughts are just nothing more than electrical activity in certain "rational" parts of the brain."

"William Wilberforce's passion to end slavery was really nothing more than electrical activity in certain "compassionate" parts of his brain."

"Terrorists anger and hatred is really nothing more than electrical activity in their brain".

So why don't these "scientists" make such claims?

This is reductionism and speculation run amok. Let us not consider this as real science.

All that glitters is not good

Previously, I wrote a post about the wonderful movie Bella. I just came across this interesting article in The Times (London) about the handsome male star, Eduardo Verastegui"Mexico's Brad Pitt," who is forsaking the trappings of Hollywood in order to live out his Christian convictions.

Being and becoming

The sermon at church this morning was entitled, "Holiness: Being and Becoming." The texts were Exodus 19:1-6 and Romans 6. Last week we look at the holiness of God: he is set apart and morally perfect. We are not. But in Christ, we are holy and perfect, in God's sight. But despite this position/status/qualification, we do not experience life that way and we are called to live holy lives in accordance with our position.

Being: we are holy in God's sight.
Becoming: God is making us holy as we co-operate with him.

Clearly, there are some "logical" tensions and paradoxes here, similar to those I have discussed before about free will and predestination.

I could not but think of two scholarly books which also have similar titles and are not completely unrelated.

From Being to Becoming, is a book about the foundations of physics by Ilya Prigogine, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977. He considered that determinism was not a valid scientific or philosophical position because of the subtleties associated with irreversibility and chaos. Furthermore, he considered that the question of the relation between Being and Becoming was "the central problem of Western ontology." He also discussed these ideas in a popular book, Order out of Chaos.

The second book is Becoming and Being: the Doctrine of God in Karl Barth and Charles Hartshorne by Colin Gunton, one of the most influential English theologians of the second half of the twentieth century. It is an expansion of his Oxford D. Phil thesis.

I mention these books just to illustrate how these questions do not have simple resolutions.