Life & Faith
Episodes
Thursday Aug 09, 2018
Life on Mars
Thursday Aug 09, 2018
Thursday Aug 09, 2018
An aerospace engineer and an astrogeologist discuss the whether and why of space exploration.
---
"For all these wonderful technologies, for all these incredible achievements that you see - rockets that can be reused, drones that can fly long missions, every discovery by the Hubble or the Kepler - there’s this realisation that when all the really, really good stuff comes along, I’m going to be dead."
When James Garth was a young, budding aerospace engineer, he came across an ad in his copy of Aviation Week that read: "In 200 years, space flight will be routine. You, however, will be dead." It was an existential-angst-inducing moment. But it hasn’t kept him from being constantly excited about the work he gets to do now.
"My main job is to make sure the wings don’t fall off – if the wings fall off, it’s a bad day, and if the wing stays on, it’s a good day," James says. He’s not being flippant – the wings of an aircraft, he explains, are designed to not fall off, of course, but only just.
"Aerospace is a really demanding profession because you’re pushing yourself up against the extremes of what is actually possible," he says. "You’ve got to shave out weight at every opportunity, you’ve got to constantly innovate and use new materials and new technologies … and that’s actually why I love doing aerospace engineering."
In this episode, we’re celebrating National Science Week in Australia with two conversations on space travel, the wonder of the cosmos, the possibility of life on other planets, and - of course - the best science fiction on offer.
Hear from two Australians with very cool jobs: James Garth, an aeronautical engineer, and a man who has travelled to Mars. Twice. Well, sort of.
"In the Canadian Arctic the ground is frozen, there’s permafrost, and we know there’s permafrost on Mars," Jonathan Clarke says about the location of his first Mars simulation experience. "In Utah you’ve got a red, dry desert with rocks that are full of clay, full of sulphates, just like we see on Mars," he says of the second.
An astrogeologist, Jon would love to go to Mars for real one day.
"I love beautiful places. Mars has grandeur. It’s got volcanos with cliffs eight kilometres high and canyons 12 kilometres deep, it’s got blue sunsets and pink skies, and great dust storms - it’s an extraordinarily beautiful landscape and I’d just love to be able to explore that in person."
---
These interviews were conducted at ISCAST’s Conference on Science and Christianity. Find out more about ISCAST here: www.iscast.org
---
SUBSCRIBE to ‘Life & Faith’ on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast
FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity
FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet
Thursday Jul 26, 2018
Guess Who’s Not Coming To Dinner
Thursday Jul 26, 2018
Thursday Jul 26, 2018
Politics, religion, and being a good guest at dinner - or a good citizen in the public square.
---
"The old edict in the UK is that there are certain conversations you avoid around the dinner table: one is politics, the other is religion. Seeing as I write on politics and religion, I don’t get invited to dinner very much."
Nick Spencer says it makes sense to think that the combination of religion and politics in a conversation at a dinner party will be explosive – politics is typically about compromise, and religion, to many people, is all about not compromising. He suggests, however, that "you can talk about politics and religion without heading straight for the neuralgic issues".
In this episode, Nick explores the ways in which people can mix politics and religion well.
He also uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate ways the Bible has frequently been used (and misused), and often to great effect, by both sides of politics in the UK. On the left, it has been used to "justify bombing in Syria", and on the right to "justify materialism and voluntarism".
But his point is not that politicians should leave religion out of politics. Instead, he makes a case for welcoming the Bible – and other rich, comprehensive moral doctrines – into public debate.
---
Nick Spencer’s book, The Political Samaritan: How power hijacked a parable, is available to purchase here: http://bit.ly/2LjoYuZ
---
SUBSCRIBE to ‘Life & Faith’ on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast
FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity
FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet
Thursday Jun 28, 2018
Gloves Off
Thursday Jun 28, 2018
Thursday Jun 28, 2018
The gripping, often irreverent, sometimes hilarious history of the Bible in Australian culture.
---
"It’s always been gloves off when it comes to the Bible in Australia."
The Bible is the most popular book in the world. But this blanket statement hides all kinds of realities - it’s loved and pored over by some, it gathers dust on many shelves, and it’s hotly debated in parliaments and universities, at dinner parties and in churches.
In Australia, across its history, the Bible shows up in surprising places.
"A lot of people have an opinion on the Bible, and that’s been true historically too," Meredith Lake, historian and author of The Bible in Australia says. "So in a way it was an entrée to the great debates in Australian society, culture and history."
In this episode, from convict tattoos to 19th-century feminist newspapers and an iconic Melbourne bookstore, and encompassing some of the more horrific and heartbreaking moments in Australia’s colonial history, Meredith Lake takes us on a biblical tour through the nation’s history. And she’s convinced the Bible’s core messages still resonate today.
"People try to bend their lives to what they take to be its meaning," Meredith says. "For the religious, it has a kind of authority in their lives that other texts don’t, and so we need to take seriously what they think it means."
---
You can purchase a copy of Meredith Lake's book, The Bible in Australia here: www.meredithlake.com/the-bible-in-australia
---
SUBSCRIBE to ‘Life & Faith’ on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast
FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity
FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet
Thursday Jun 21, 2018
Life Is But A Breath
Thursday Jun 21, 2018
Thursday Jun 21, 2018
How a near-death experience helped one man embrace all of life – the beautiful, and the ugly.
---
"Real faith is to trust God in the good and the bad."
After officiating a wedding, David Robertson wasn’t feeling too well and broke into a cold sweat. He ended up lying on the ground in front of his church, in a pool of his own blood.
Turns out, the Scottish church minister had contracted a virus that created two ulcers over a major artery, which had caused the bleeding. In hospital, his condition went from bad to worse. His lungs went down to 30 per cent capacity, he got pneumonia, and he needed close to 16 litres of blood product throughout his stay. His doctors told his wife: "it’s 50-50 whether he’ll live."
It was a long and traumatic road back to health, but David is now very much alive and well – which is a miracle. In fact, his doctor told him that he doesn’t understand how David’s still alive, or at least not in a vegetative state.
During a conversation with his doctor’s wife, David told her, "your husband saved my life." She replied, "[My husband] says that God saved your life. He says there are only two people in his whole career – and he’s been a surgeon for over 30 years – that he regards as a miracle. And you’re one of them."
In this episode, David shares his near-death experience, the road to recovery, and the lessons he learned along the way.
"Life is but a breath. But also, life is filled with glorious things, as well as the ugly."
---
SUBSCRIBE to ‘Life & Faith’ on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast
FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity
FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet
Thursday Jun 07, 2018
Jesus, Outside the Box
Thursday Jun 07, 2018
Thursday Jun 07, 2018
Will the real Jesus please stand up? John Dickson’s new book is a quest for the historical Jesus.
---
“The real Jesus in the sources is far more interesting. The Jesus there is striking, dangerous, intriguing, beautiful, bizarre, scary, and incredibly comforting. You just can’t pin him down. That’s the great thing about the historical Jesus – there’s no way of fitting him inside a box.”
In this episode, we explore the major portraits of the historical Jesus and what they might mean to us today.
“I think he’s the best card Christians have – maybe the only card. People are generally positive towards Jesus and it’s partly because there is a vague memory of a true aspect of Jesus, which is that he rebelled against the religious authorities of the day. That just resonates with people.”
---
John Dickson was a speaker at the Sydney Writers’ Festival earlier this year. You can find out more about the festival here: www.swf.org.au
A Doubter's Guide to Jesus: An Introduction to the Man from Nazareth for Believers and Skeptics by John Dickson is available to purchase now: www.bit.ly/2kJSbiH
---
SUBSCRIBE to ‘Life & Faith’ on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast
FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity
FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet
Thursday May 31, 2018
A Great Spirit
Thursday May 31, 2018
Thursday May 31, 2018
Two Aboriginal women give their first-hand accounts of growing up on Christian missions.
---
"I do a lot of praying. I just got to hand it over to the Lord. He understands what I’m going through and how I’m feeling. He went through a lot of grief himself and it must still break his heart to see the way some of us live."
Ngardarb Riches is a Bardi Jawi woman from the West Kimberley Coast of Australia. Aunty Maureen is a Barngala woman from South Australia. They’ve both lived on Christian missions, and they’ve both experienced the good and the bad that Christian missionaries and the government have done for Aboriginal people.
The bad includes the decimation of Aboriginal culture and language, and the removal from their land.
"My two eldest brothers went together to one boys’ home in Adelaide, my three youngest brothers went together to another boys’ home in Adelaide, and my two sisters went to a foster home in Adelaide," Aunty Maureen says. "The missionary said, 'could you take the other, the oldest girl?' And that lady replied, 'I only want the two pretty young girls.' That broke my heart because I wasn’t used to being separated from my family."
Aunty Maureen was eight years old when she was separated from her family. But somehow, she still calls the Christian mission where she lived a "happy place". She’s emphatic that, in the midst of all her loss and pain, the Christian faith was a source of comfort for her.
"We were just young kids all hurting," she says. "All we knew was the love of God and God loved us. The missionaries really cared for us and that’s the way they showed their love."
For Ngardarb, she was born in Derby during a period when her people were separated from their home, on what had been the Sunday Island Mission. It had closed down during the implementation of the Australian government’s assimilation policy.
It was another missionary couple who would later help the Bardi Jawi people return home – and Ngardarb was able to grow up on her people’s land.
"My people are the salt water people, so a lot of our living was in and around the islands and eating seafood, collecting it," Ngardarb says.
"So as a child, I still had that. Growing up I was so lucky to have those experiences where we would get the poison root from the bush, take it down when the tide went out and put it in the pools – that would stun the fish, it would take oxygen from the water and we were able to do traditional fishing. I was really lucky and it still happens where I come from now, that’s still being passed down to our generation today."
She says that if Christian missions hadn’t existed, a lot of her people would not be alive today.
"A lot of our families and tribes would have been wiped out because that was the intention of the government, because they said that we were a dying race," she says. "But we’re survivors, and a lot of the Christian missions gave us that opportunity to have our families survive, and to have that safe haven. We had to stop a lot of our practices and beliefs and stuff but at least it was somewhere safe."
---
We interviewed John Briggs, Ngardarb Riches, and Aunty Maureen for our documentary, For the Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined - it's in cinemas NOW. To book tickets, or host your own screening, visit: www.betterandworse.film
Learn more about the long road towards Aboriginal recognition and reconciliation by listening to this episode from the Life & Faith archives: http://bit.ly/2kz3I4l
---
SUBSCRIBE to ‘Life & Faith’ on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast
FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity
FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet
Thursday May 24, 2018
State of the Nation
Thursday May 24, 2018
Thursday May 24, 2018
Social researcher Hugh Mackay on building a more compassionate and less anxious society.
---
"Some public health experts are now saying that loneliness is a greater risk to our public health than obesity."
Hugh Mackay, one of Australia’s leading researchers, believes there’s something wrong with the state of our nation and the lives of its citizens.
"You can look at specific factors in individual cases and say, this person is anxious because of rent stress, or because of job insecurity, or because of relationship breakdown, or loss of faith … but when you’ve got epidemic proportions, I think you have to look at society," he says. "We need to live in communities that sustain us and nurture us, protect us and give us a sense of identity. When we feel cut off from the herd, anxiety goes up."
In his latest book, Australia Reimagined: Towards a more compassionate, less anxious society, Hugh Mackay addresses some of the forces at work in our communities - including disappointment in political leadership, loss of faith in once-respected institutions like the church, faltering education standards, and the proliferation of social media - that are causing us to experience, sometimes paradoxically, more loneliness.
"[Social media is] training us to communicate with each other in a way that strips the process of all the nuance … all the things that imply meaning that’s not just in the words."
He also says things may have to get worse before they get better.
"It’s the death and resurrection model, in a way. There has to be a death before there’s a renewal. ... I think politics will have to become more of a shamble, education levels will have to sink even further, the epidemic of mental illness will have to become even greater before we say this is now out of control. That’s assuming there isn’t a global war or economic disaster of some kind.”
But Hugh Mackay remains confident that people will figure out a way forward, and communities will flourish.
“What I’m more optimistic about is that our sense of being human, and the sense of connectedness with other humans, will prevail - and will be the thing that pulls us back from the brink of disaster.”
And faith, he suggests, will play a role in the renewal of our communities towards a more compassionate and less anxious society.
"Even among people who don’t have any religious faith, they admire it and often envy it," he says. "People recognise that the expression of faith, whether in medical care, social services, or education, is likely to be of a very high standard because it’s driven by this faith in the higher being, this higher power."
---
Australia Reimagined: Towards a more compassionate, less anxious society is in stores now and available online: www.bit.ly/2s8OVRx
Hugh Mackay was a speaker at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival. To find out more about the festival, or to listen to interviews with other speakers, go to: www.swf.org.au
---
SUBSCRIBE to ‘Life & Faith’ on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast
FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity
FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet
Thursday May 10, 2018
In Sickness and in Health
Thursday May 10, 2018
Thursday May 10, 2018
The hungry, the sick, the imprisoned - or as the Knights of Malta called them, "Our Lords the Sick".
---
"The Knights Hospitaller, as they were known, got permission to set up the first hospital in Jerusalem. They were connected with the Crusades and they were a sovereign military order. Why? Because they had to, in the course of their work, actually defend - sometimes with the sword - their work of being Hospitallers."
Iain Benson is a Professor of Law the University of Notre Dame in Australia, he’s worked on human rights charters around the world, and he’s also a member of the Order of Malta (also known the Knights Hospitaller, among their many names).
Traditionally, their chief vow was "to honour Our Lords the Sick".
It’s a strange phrase, but what it means is that when they look at a sick person – any sick person, rich or poor, Christian or Muslim or Jewish – they see Jesus, their Lord. So, they care for him or her. When Jesus says "whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me" ... the Knights Hospitaller take him seriously.
Today, you may have come across some of the Order of Malta’s modern off-shoots such as St John Ambulance, which services concerts and sporting events across Australia, and still provide the main ambulance service in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
One thousand years old, this order of knights is still going strong – all inspired by a particular story Jesus told more than a thousand years before that.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we take a close look at the work of the Knights Hospitaller. We note how unusual and attractive this kind of extreme care and compassion was in the Roman world, when Christians first started practising it – it was one reason why so many people became part of the Christian movement in the first few centuries after Jesus. And we consider the perspective of thinkers who would challenge the idea that caring for the sick is a self-evident good.
"Christians believe that each person is made in the image of God, and thus each person should be cared for, even if they are very ill," says Lynn Cohick from Wheaton College.
"This shocked pagans who were really anxious to get out of the way of any kind of sickness, they just would flee a city or a town. And the Christians stayed. That made a real impact on the pagans who wondered how could these Christians love – even at the cost, perhaps, of their own lives."
---
For The Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined is in cinemas now. Buy tickets, or host your own screening: www.betterandworse.film
Thursday Apr 26, 2018
Belfast Cabbie
Thursday Apr 26, 2018
Thursday Apr 26, 2018
Jim lived through the Troubles. He takes us on a very personal tour of this fraught history.
---
"When I used to get up out of bed in the mornings, my first thought was: how do we avoid being murdered, by the murder gangs? Also, how do we avoid the British army? And also, how do we attack the British Army? The change being today, when my kids get out of bed in the morning, they say, well ok, we have to go to work to get our mortgage paid. You see the change?"
It’s been 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement ended the 30-year period of conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.
Jim was 8 years old at the start of the conflict, so 1998 was the first time in his life he really remembers seeing peace. These days, he takes cab tours around Belfast – which is how Simon met him, in the course of filming a segment on the conflict for our documentary, For the Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined.
The Troubles is often cited as evidence that Christianity inevitably causes division and bloodshed. And it’s true that it was in some sense a clash between Catholics and Protestants. But it’s also a lot more complicated than that.
"Remember, in 1979 the Pope got down on his knees here and he said please, please, stop the violence. It continued on. Also remember, the Queen of England on many, many occasions, she appealed to the Protestant paramilitaries, the loyalist paramilitaries, to stop murdering people. Again, they didn’t listen. So religion was never taken on board by these paramilitary leaders."
Jim tells Simon about life during the Troubles: about the first Protestant he ever met; a game called "spot the bomb" that he and his mates used to play; and the story of the time he was shot - twice - by a British soldier. Join us on a very personal tour of this fraught history.
---
For The Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined is in cinemas from May 9. Buy tickets, or host your own screening: www.betterandworse.film
---
SUBSCRIBE to ‘Life & Faith’ on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast
FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity
FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet
Thursday Apr 19, 2018
Dominus Illuminatio Mea
Thursday Apr 19, 2018
Thursday Apr 19, 2018
John Lennox on where science came from, religious violence, and God talk in post-Soviet Russia.
---
"You probably believe in gravity - are you aware that nobody knows what it is? You believe in consciousness; no one knows what it is. You believe in energy; no one knows what it is. You believe in time; no one knows what it is. And yet they believe in these things."
John Lennox is a Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, a scientist, a Christian, and - as he finds reason to point out in this interview - not John Lennon.
We interviewed the good professor for our documentary, For the Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined. In this episode of Life & Faith, we play an extended version of our in-depth discussion on topics ranging from the old chestnut that Christianity has opposed science, to visiting Russia in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War.
Here are some highlights.
On the rise of modern science from the 15th and 16th centuries onwards:
"They came to the conclusion aptly expressed by CS Lewis: men became scientific because they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature because they believed in a law-giver," John Lennox says. "So we owe Christianity a great deal - which is precisely what you’d expect, of course, if Christianity were true."
On the worst of religion, and no religion:
"I think that using a religious message for political purposes often loses the whole spiritual dimension that’s supposed to reside at the heart of it, so it simply becomes another kind of political attempt to overthrow the power structures that exist. This has happened all through history, sadly," says John Lennox, before adding: "As a Christian I’m ashamed of it, but we’ve got to face it."
However, Professor Lennox observes, "those who criticise most loudly Christianity are often totally silent on the bloody history of the 20th century. There comes to mind what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said … he was asked to give account for 100 million deaths in the former Soviet Union. He said, 'If you want the short answer it is we have forgotten God.'"
On Russia, and how efforts to get rid of God and religion entirely didn’t quite work out as planned:
"Communism never completely crushed belief in God, just as no other ideology has ever overcome belief in God," John Lennox says. "I believe that is true because when people come to trust Christ and are genuine, they are not proceeding simply unaided under their own steam - and God gives them, sometimes, absolutely remarkable stickability, endurance, even under the heaviest of persecution."
---
For The Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined, is in cinemas from May 9. Buy tickets, or host your own screening: www.betterandworse.film
---
SUBSCRIBE to ‘Life & Faith’ on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/cpxpodcast
FIND US on Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicchristianity
FOLLOW US on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpx_tweet