Ethics in School

It was a fascinating episode of Insight on SBS last night, as audience members put their views on the pilot ethics program in NSW public primary schools. The ethics program runs as an alternative to the ‘scripture’ classes (or whatever religious classes are being offered at a particular school). I was impressed by the standard of the debate; a lot of incisive points were made, and the rather simple American fundamentalist only got to speak once.

I don’t think the Christians have a particularly strong case for objecting to the program. The problem is that children whose parents don’t want them taking religious instruction are left with nothing to do; the secular ethics class gives them an alternative.

The North Sydney Anglican bishop Glenn Davies wanted the framework behind the ethics class made transparent. Or perhaps his concern was that it wasn’t giving students a moral framework with which to make ethical decisions. (This is a question I have too.) He also wanted ethics discussed by all students, including Christian ones, so that those students with a religious worldview had a voice.

The situation is complex in post-Christendom.

Quote: Scripture as Condiment

… we tend to use scripture like a condiment, something added to our intellectual and political positions after they have been cooking for a while.

- Lillian Daniel in Christian Century, 23 March 2010, p. 36

Us pacifists who love Fight Club

So what are all us Christian pacifists who love the film Fight Club to make of the alleged fight club at John Forrest High School in Perth? (Chris Summerfield, you must have some thoughts!) The film seemed to sum up our anger at the Ikea world, at the triumph of the corporate world, and our hope that we might resist it. What better way than an underground fight club which morphs into an anarchist movement of anti-corporate terrorists?

It’s one of my favourite films, and for a time I tried to develop a theology of how it manifested my faith convictions. I still kind of think that, but I’m not as evangelistic about it as I once was. And then I see on the news these fifteen year olds taking it all very literally and belting each other bare chested, just like Brad Pitt. And I think oh gee, what have I done?

You kids – why do you have to take it so literally? Us twenty and thirtysomethings just take it metaphorically for some kind of inner defiance, an authenticity which is symbolised by bare chested fighting but not manifested as it.

Yeah, you’re right, we look like hypocrites.

The context is difference, though. In the film we have a bunch of aging Gen Xers who have lost touch with passion, with anything primal, and who beat each other up to experience life deeply once again. I know it’s flawed, but there’s something in it. In the John Forrest situation, there’s bullying and pressure to fight each other and not ageing paunchy office workers but teenagers who spend their school days in macho displays of hostility.

In the end, Fight Club is ambivalent about violence, that’s what I reckon. It keeps leading to these sickening moments of inhumanity, like where ‘Cornelius’ (Edward Norton) is caught up in bloodlust and beats Orlando Bloom to a pulp. Everyone goes quiet. And like when Bob (Meatloaf) is killed and no-one cares because the goal of mayhem has become more important than the people.

My new novel, House of Zealots (not yet published) deals with Fight Club quite a bit. Here’s the first mention.

Love is coming over Leo like influenza. He first felt it when he met Phoebe at Samantha’s New Year’s Eve party, the quiet girl in a tartan skirt drinking red wine in the corner. Since then, whenever he’s seen her aches and pains have troubled his heart for days. Now that he’s moving into the same house as her, the aches and pains have turned into a full fever of love and she is filling up his thoughts and feelings.
His mind is buzzing, trying to think of strategies to impress her. When she’s in the kitchen, he brings in the only thing he has to add to that room – a Fight Club blockmount to hang on the picture hook. Tyler Durden and Cornelius smile viciously at the consumer world of Ikea porn they are about to demolish. Leo wants his life to hum with the same anarchic cool.
‘What do you think?’ he asks Phoebe.
‘Phoebe’s a pacifist, Leo,’ Samantha interrupts. ‘Films called Fight Club don’t go down well with pacifists.’
‘No – I liked it,’ Phoebe says. ‘It was inspiring, and sort of ambivalent about violence.’
‘It’s fucking awesome!’ Leo says, a tower of feeling inside him he wishes he had the words to convey.
Phoebe smiles. ‘I guess it was that too.’
Her restraint humiliates him. He wonders what sort of guy she would go for.

Radicals, learn from Christian Union

It’s a hard thing us radical Christians ask of people.

We ask them to join a movement without all the answers, without clear boundaries (and with common fences with both liberals and evangelicals), and without churches. So many of us have so many questions and so many problems that we’re not sure quite sure how to help other people starting out on the same way.

Basically, radical Christianity isn’t organised enough. Granted, if you get too organised, you lose your edge, you stop being radical. There’s no easy answer to this one. But conservative Christianity is often disciplined, structured and efficient. And this helps it works for people.

I’m thinking of the Christian Unions on university campuses, affiliated with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students. I’m surprised by the number of people who haven’t even heard of AFES or CU. (But then I’m surprised of the number of people going to evangelical churches who don’t know what evangelicalism is, or even that it’s a movement and that there’s Christians who are following Jesus who aren’t evangelicals.) For those who get involved in CU at university, it is often a defining experience. It is an intense experience of community with other Christians united by a commitment to know the Bible and evangelise the campus.

For the first time, young people are taught to read the Bible carefully and intelligently. It is a movement with answers and a way to live, a clear path to follow. One of my friends jokes that this path means studying engineering at UWA, marrying a woman CUer who knows how to submit, earning some money and then studying at Trinity or Moore to become a AFES staffworker or a church minister.

CU is very successful. Students get involved and get committed. And I think being organised really helps. CUers know what they’re meant to do. For some of them, it really does seem to work. (Others burn out; especially those with too many questions.)

I believe radical Christianity will always be small, but I also think we can be better organised. I think we can offer people some structure, even if pressing all the answers on them isn’t what we’re about. My big hope was always to offer them a church, because I really do think that the church is the way God’s people should be organised. Parachurch organisations can only take us so far. Parachurches end up being occasional meetings, they’re structured around events. They definitely have their purpose, but we need worshipping communities of disciples. And I had a church to offer people for a while, but things went wrong. I hope there’s a next time.

An insight : proud to be intellectual

My faith is intellectual. I admit it. I’ve been apologising for that for a long time, but yesterday as I passed all these books in my library that I would like to have the time to read, I realised I wasn’t going to apologise for it any longer.

So many people are critical of those of us who find ourselves relating to God through books and ideas. But I had this sudden renewed insight that my way of relating to God might have come from Him.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in being practical. I believe that whatever I come to understand intellectually needs to be lived out or it means nothing. I don’t like endless debating or theological egos. I believe that prayer and all the other spiritual disciplines are essential.

But my faith is nourished by reading, thinking and writing, and just because that doesn’t work for so many people, doesn’t make it wrong for me.

I’ve made the mistake in the past of thinking everyone should be like me and find God in books too, but I mustn’t overcorrect and think that I must be like everyone else.

I also think I have a role in making what I discover accessible, and I intend to keep that up.

Photos from Tom Sine

If you were at the Tom Sine event at Vose Seminary, last week, you might want to see these photos from the night…. http://vose.wa.edu.au/view/news/20080430113407/