Seven Sins of Sydney

I had this thought for a series entitled: the Seven Sins of Sydney.

The idea would be to really ask: what are the deep moral faultlines that run through the city we love? Let's not be trite about this. You could say 'Greed', but the trick would be to nail down excatly how greed is expressed in Sydney, and not elsewhere.

It sounds, in a way, a pompous project. But is no different than Tim Friedman's songs which skewer Sydney's pride, and its shallowness, and its greed.

Question is: what are the Seven Sins?

Here's a sketch:

1 - The Pursuit of Space - It's built on a wholesale theft of Real Estate. We clamber over one another to get a slice of the view...
2 - Loyalty to Mates - it trumps every other value...
3 - Excessive Punishment - from the flogging parson on...
4 - Brawling
5 - Confusing the Penultimate for the Ultimate
6 - Work till you drop
7 - Smutty little secrets - Sydney and sex...

Any others?

Talking about Progressive Christianity

I participated in an ABC show about 'Progressive Christianity' and you can listen to it here:


http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2010/2924630.htm


The fascinating thing to me about Progressive Christianity is the apparent contradiction between the radical sceptism to the point of paranoia about orthdox Christianity on the one hand and the gullible blind faith about the claims of the Jesus Seminar on the other. Or: the contradiction between the extreme rationalism on which it is founded (disbelief in miracles, for example) and the extreme fideism about other beliefs that are held.

5 reasons why I don't like lists of Bible verses

Often writers of theological essays will pull out a statement and then offer a list of bible verses to back it up, in brackets. People seem to think this is indicative of how scripturally based a piece of theology is. I don't like this. Why?

1. Instead of drawing my attention to the text of Scripture, it actually makes me skip over it and move on. It makes me think I know the Bible when I don't.

2. SO OFTEN, when I look up the verses in a list, they don't say what the author claims they self-evidently say. Or, they say it in a very, very different way. Or, a subtle point is lost.

3. It looks messy. (OK, that's not so important!)

4. It treats the Bible like a bank of data to be mined, and not a narrative of salvation-history.

5. It means a tendency to prefer 'direct-statement' evidence in theological argument over the testimony of say, the character of God revealed in his might acts, or the nature of the literary context.

A great example of this is Is 45:7.

I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.



Which apparently looks like it charges God with direct agency in evil. I've seen it cited in lists of bible references as a proof text to this end. But this short-cuts an enormously complex and very serious exegetical AND theological discussion which needs to be had... don't it?



What I do instead is that I try to quote the actual words of a particular text, and refer to those. Not without its own difficulties, but I think it is preferable.

my piece on SRE

My piece on SRE is here.

The usual enlightened comments follow.