Painting Fakes

This morning in church we read the story of Jesus healing the centurion's slave from Luke 7:1-10.  I found it hard to listen to the sermon because I kept being distracted by the story.  Here's what was distracting me. This story takes place in the village of Capernaum and has three main characters - the centurion's slave, the centurion himself, and Jesus.  The slave is the trigger for the story: ...a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. Other translations say that the slave "was dear to him".  There's some ambiguity here - was the slave a loved member of his household, or a valuable piece of property?  Either way, what follows in the story indicates that when Jesus is asked to heal this slave it is not seen as an act of service towards the slave, but towards the centurion himself. This is not surprising when you think of who the centurion was.  He was a Roman army officer, roughly equivalent to a captain

My birthday is long gone and finally the new Richard Thompson CD that I ordered with my birthday money has arrived.  Because it's my birthday I ordered the deluxe version which includes a set of acoustic demos and I'm glad I did because to my mind a band doesn't always add much to Thompson's amazing guitar playing.  I saw him live in Brisbane a few years ago, standing alone on the stage of the Tivoli, and didn't miss the rest of the band for a moment. I must admit though that the new album is a little patchy, and I'm getting more enjoyment out of the one that arrived earlier, Martha Tilston's Lucy and the Wolves.   I caught on to Tilston when I picked up a copy of Milkmaids and Architects in a second hand shop and couldn't understand how anyone could part with it.  If you've never heard her, listen to this beautiful performance of "Music of the Moon".  Lucy is better, if you need to make that kind of comparison. It has a quiet

I've been really enjoying Australian Observer's coverage of the Afghanistan debate and other such matters.  One of the things he's highlighted is that while our politicians are talking about defeating the Taliban, the Afghani government, with the support of the US Military, is giving Taliban commanders safe conduct to attend negotiations aimed at ending their insurgency and bringing them into the political system. It reminded me of something I learnt way back in undergraduate politics.  Democracy is not secured by the will of the majority, but by the consent of the minority.  You can see this in our recent election dramas.  Despite the rhetoric and posturing, once Labor had secured the votes of enough independents the Liberals accepted that they were once more the Opposition.  They tried to disrupt and block, but only within the bounds of parliamentary procedure.  They kept turning up in Parliament, they debated, they sat down when the speaker told them to.  In other w

Rupert Murdoch, one of Australia's most valuable exports, has recently taken his private jet to London to deliver the inaugural Baroness Thatcher Lecture .  Here's what he has to say about the woman who was British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. My words tonight will be flavoured by those of Margaret Thatcher herself. We sometimes forget how pithy she is – how wise her thoughts, and how pertinent they remain even though she left office long ago. And we cannot forget that she is no ideologue, but a person of pragmatism, an optimist whose optimism is founded in her faith in the individual.  Hers is a generous spirit, a spirit based in an appreciation of personal potential and not of an impersonal ideology. As she said: "With all due respect to the drafters of the American Declaration of Independence, all men and women are not created equal, at least in regard to their characters, abilities and aptitudes." It was that appreciation of individual aptitude and ab

I was talking with someone on the Internet about Biblical inerrancy, and said as I often do that I didn't really understand properly what the term meant.  He referred me to a document called the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy .  This document was produced in 1978 at a conference sponsored by a group called the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy.  Its 300 signatories included a number of evangelical luminaries of the time including JI Packer, Francis Schaeffer and RC Sproule.  The same group produced two more statements in succeeding years and the second, The Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics , is a kind of follow up and explanation of the first. The core of the statement is a set of 19 articles, each of which is framed as an affirmation of what the authors believe, followed by a denial of the position they are refuting.  It's a pithy, elegant statement written by some highly intelligent men, and it certainly helped me to understand what people me

The news here in Australia is full of the canonisation of the first Australian Saint, Mary MacKillop , founder of the Order of St Joseph.  Being a Protestant, I've never quite got the whole sainthood thing.  We were taught that all of us are saints (sanctified ones) and that this comes about as a result of God's grace.  We were also taught that it's wrong to pray to anyone other than God himself - my evangelical teachers were very big on "there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ the Righteous" from 1 Timothy 2:5. As a result I've watched the whole thing with mixed emotions - not only bafflement, but pleasure, irony and cynicism. Pleasure because for a change we are celebrating a national hero whose life was dedicated to doing good.  Mary MacKillop was a woman whose mission was to care for poor women and children, found schools and lift people up out of poverty.  She wasn't afraid to take on the church to do so either, and

For some reason I've been listening to Paul McCartney's Silly Love Songs .   It's one of those songs that refuses to leave once it's in your head, even when you try to drive it out with lashings of punk rock or Pink Floyd. I didn't like this song when it first came out in the mid-1970s.  At the time I thought this was because it was silly and superficial.  I was a very serious teenager.  Now I think I was just too immature to appreciate it.  For a start, it's not as simple as it seems.  There's a lot going on beneath the surface.  A jaunty bass rhythm, a horn section counterpointing with lush strings, interwoven harmonies and counter-melodies.  McCartney was (and is) no fool musically. Then the lyrics provide a joyous piece of self-satire, as well as a cheerful poke in the eye for people like his ex-mate John Lennon who seemed to take the art of pop music a lot more seriously than he did.  He asks, "why not have fun?"  Lennon always seemed to