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OPINION
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Tim Costello Why a soup kitchen gave to Nepal Last month I was in Nepal with World Vision, following the devastating earthquake that hit the country on April 25. Australians have responded with characteristic generosity and compassion, and many of our church partners, including Bible Society, have been in the forefront. In one church on Melbourne’s suburban outskirts, there’s a weekly soup kitchen where a few hundred people gather each Monday. These are people who have faced huge challenges – poverty, addiction, family violence, mental health issues, and more. When the church pastor spoke about Nepal, people decided to act. Despite their very limited resources, they put together several hundred dollars, much of it in coins, for World Vision’s appeal. Some might say the burden of helping shouldn’t fall on people who are themselves struggling. But empathy and compassion are no less strong among people who have little. Indeed, those who have
known hardship themselves often become more generous and open in their response to others. As Jesus taught about the widow’s mite, the giving of the poor can be an even greater and more meaningful sacrifice, and deserves respect. Compassion moves ordinary people to respond both emotionally and practically to a clear need. But as well as our immediate, compassionate response, we need to ask questions about justice. When disaster strikes, we need to ask whether destruction and suffering are exacerbated by the poverty and injustice that frame the lives of poor communities. Many parts of the world are vulnerable to disaster because of climate or geology. Yet the impact can be immeasurably greater for poor people. After a disaster, poor people usually find themselves without reserves of food, money or tradeable goods. Low building standards create immediate danger as well as long-term homelessness and dislocation. Subsistence farmers can’t survive if they lose even one crop, apart from losing tools and seeds, or the damage and contamination of their land. Poor countries like Nepal lack the infrastructure to enable relief, let alone recovery and rebuilding. Poor countries are usually profoundly unequal societies, with wealth concentrated in very few hands. Our short-term priority is to save lives and bring healing to the injured, the bereaved and the dispossessed. But let’s also keep an eye on the urgency of building resilience by reducing the poverty and injustice that make disasters like Nepal’s earthquake so much more devastating.
JUNE 2015
Letters God overcomes homosexuality As I read the article in the April edition of Eternity (“Wesley Hill, gay and Christian”) I was deeply troubled. In effect, it denies the saving grace of God in being able to redeem and sanctify people from sin. While Hill uses Scripture to bolster his position, he fails to observe that, in fact, God’s people are not to fuse a sin identity with their salvation. “Gay and Christian?” Christians are empowered by the Spirit to kill sinful desires (Col 3:5, 1 Pet 2:11) and resist sin (Titus 2:1114). Simply because Hill hasn’t experienced this in his own life does not mean that others can be denied God’s work. God has been very much at work in my life to overcome homosexuality, and that has come about through walking intimately with him. If Hill can call himself “gay and Christian”, can someone else call themselves “alcoholic and Christian”? Christ has come to redeem us from sin, not to keep us entangled in it. Haydn Sennitt, Panania, NSW.
Day of worship
With reference to Pr Phil Littlejohn’s letter, “Sabbath Covenant”, Eternity, No 57, I found Pr Littlejohn’s letter on the Sabbath interesting. From my reading of the Bible, the Sabbath was established at creation (Gen 2:2-3). There was no nation of Israel then, and if sin had not entered God’s perfect world, I
“Coming to a book burning is great. There’s some really good stuff here.” presume there would never have been a nation of Israel necessary, to be a “light to the Gentiles”. Ex 20:8 reads, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy ...” This implies that it had been forgotten during the 430 years of slavery in Egypt. I believe that God’s law, written twice on stone by him at Sinai, is binding on mankind forever, as a code for life, but never as a means of salvation, which is clearly by grace through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross at Calvary. The nation of Israel did not understand this. They immediately said, “All that the Lord has said, we will do.” They did not realise the sinfulness of their own hearts, and the impossibility of their being able to be saved by keeping the law. In Jesus we saw the law lived in a life, and he says to us in John 14:15, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
God’s law is “holy, just and good” (Rom 7:12). It keeps us safe and provides a hedge around us in our daily lives. Only as we try to be saved by keeping it (legalism), does it become a problem for us. Jesus worshipped on the Sabbath (Luke 4:16), “as was his custom”. In Matthew 24:20, Jesus said, “Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath.” This was pointing forward to 70AD, when the temple was destroyed by Titus. So Sabbath was still the day of worship then. The apostles and the early church worshipped on the Sabbath (Acts 13:42-44; 16:13; 17:12; 18:4, 11). It was only in 476AD that people were encouraged to worship on Sunday, rather than on the Sabbath, when Constantine became “Christianised”. Brenda H. Kinkead, Cherrybrook, NSW
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