Tag: god

How many years make up a generation?

I was 25 years old when we had our first child. My first grandchild was born when I was about 50 and my first great-grandchild when I was 80. I have therefore seen life through three generations and into a fourth.

Every now and again, pretty often, I hear people on TV talking about the ‘Australian Way’. This comes up frequently when people are discussing immigration, multiculturalism and antisemitism! When Australian Mateship is mentioned, it seems to be about drinking beer over a BBQ. That, quite frankly, is pretty shallow!

0-25 -WWII, schooling until University Graduation and I started my first job. I grew up in the country, went to a small grade 1-7 school with one teacher for the 20+ children then I went to a large over 2,000 student High School and Graduated MBBS with a good credit! Most kids went to Sunday School, and the vast majority had Christian Education at school. There were few broken marriages although there no doubt was some under the blanket mis-behaviour! There was no formal sex education, but we all knew that storks were a fairy tale. Lots of time was spent outside playing sport in which all ages were prepared to play together. Boys were boys, girls were girls! We appreciated the differences!

25-50 – national service; 2 major wars and a cold war between the West and the USSR oriented group! The pill became increasing less controlled and became the open door to risk reduced sexual enjoyment before marriage. Sexual perversions began to be more readily accepted as normal alternatives. Broken marriages and divorce became common. The Judeo-Christian basis of Law began to wear thin. Children lived on what their parents had believed and had acted accordingly but ceased to believe in God and Truth. Previously forbidden media was justified as the right to Free Speech, and immorality began to become a selling point for enjoyment to the masses.

50-75 – God definitely was out of favour. Truth became just personal opinion. Morality became outmoded and immorality accepted as normal – even by teachers, University Lecturers and Politicians. This left the children to wander intellectually wherever they wanted to, except that Judeo-Christian thinking was not in favour! Although, and as a result of these changes, it has become necessary to protect children from strangers! Neighbours used to be like parental substitutes for children when I was a child, now they are likely to rape or murder them!

present – people are frightened to speak the truth because they are likely to be imprisoned for saying what made our country so liveable! Our politicians, by and large, have become a mishmash of liars who are more interested in false goals to keep themselves in power while the country goes down the gurgler both economically and morally!

More money or more education of the present type isn’t the answer. Neither is listening to the church leaders, nor to the Educators, nor the political activists unless they wake up to themselves and be transformed. A minority against the tide speak truth! We all need to hear God speaking through Christ Jesus. This is the answer!

Dominic Cartier

Can a non-scholar be a Christian?

I was, and greatly enjoyed being, a surgeon! Shortly after obtaining my higher degree in surgery I joined a Christian Mission to go to Ethiopia as a missionary surgeon in one of their hospitals. I was expected to and very willingly underwent an assessment of my beliefs as a Christian. Obviously and logically the mission had standards and desired a certain degree of theological unity among its members. Having satisfied them that I was okay and could be accepted as a member I went to Ethiopia, where I worked up to 80 hours a week as the only surgeon covering a population of more than a million, but I also had a vital relationship with the ‘spiritual’ side of mission life. Later on after the communist takeover was overturned I was in government hospitals on their Academic staff.

In one area that I worked in the early 2000’s the population was very largely Muslim. But there was a University with a student body of about 40,000. This student body was made up from candidates accepted from all over the country. A significant percentage of these students were ‘Protestant’ Christians. The Protestant Kale Hiwot church was small in the University town but was the central organizational base for the churches which were scattered over that region of the country which made up one of 13 regions in the whole country. The church eldership was basically made up of mature Christians who had some but not a great theological nor secular education. They were great people but the younger University students were much greater in number. An average attendance at the church which the University students attended would have been nearly a thousand. That was great but the young people kept referring to and using Paul’s phrase ‘we are not under law but under grace’ (Romans 6 v 14) to underpin the thought that, as they were no longer under law, they could act as they wanted and God would turn a blind eye. This sounds, and was, wrong. The kids were basically good kids but some of their actions were not acceptable by the elders! Well the problem was magnified because the majority of the University students, whether they were Protestant or Orthodox or Islamic, in the freedom of their situation and of modern thinking seemed to live on the same basis. The student population came from all over the country and lived in University housing without parental advice or control!

There were 500 recorded terminations among students by an American subsidised clinic in the last 6 months that I was there. There were a number of other places willing to perform abortions whose activity I have not included. Drugs were a problem. I remember an instance where I had to operate late at night on a senior member of our University staff who, when drinking and ‘drugging’ with a younger member of his own unit, was severely stabbed in his abdomen which caused a critical situation. Neither of them were members of the Protestant church to which I referred earlier but both claimed to be Orthodox Christians. So the problem of lack of morals was society wide!

The morals of our Western countries aren’t any better! It is not a theological issue in most people’s eyes. There is a broad sense of personal rights to freedom and consequently a loss of moral standards.

So how does that take me back to the Pauline teaching that ‘we are not under law but under grace’? In the context of his whole book of Romans, where he writes this phrase, Paul has said in the early part that all mankind is guilty under the law as sinners alienated to God. BUT the Grace of God in Jesus and the Easter Event gives us the opportunity to be forgiven! And that in a sense is the core of the Christian message, now God has given us the opportunity to be forgiven by His Grace and not be judged by our law breaking. There is, however, more to the law than the law relating to Justice.

In the Jewish religion the law had different aspects – sacrificial, dietary, health and moral for example. When we think about it, we also think of the law in different ways. Jesus said that He had not come to destroy the law. Most certainly he didn’t come to destroy the moral law. We have a good summary of God’s moral requirements in the ten commandments! (Exodus ch 20). Christianity is not legalism in that we have to obey certain rules to earn our way in God’s acceptance, but it is certainly a call to a high understanding of what God has laid down as moral. I find that so releasing. Most see the commandments as negative and they do have a prohibitive aspect but equally they are there to be a guide and encouragement to a wonderfully rich and peaceful life.