Life & Faith

Are people essentially good or flawed? We review Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History.

In 1965, six Tongan teenage boys were marooned on a desert island for more than a year. But they didn’t descend into savagery, Lord of the Flies-style, once civilisation had been stripped away. Instead, they worked together, grew their own food, and sang and prayed together each day.

In Humankind: A Hopeful History, Dutch historian Rutger Bregman draws on the story of those boys to argue that humans are essentially good. We are more cooperative than unrelentingly selfish and cruel, Bregman says.

It’s a case he builds by drawing extensively on the human sciences: psychology, social psychology and evolutionary biology. 

But not theology. In this episode of Life & Faith, we interview Beth Felker Jones, Professor of Theology at Wheaton College in Illinois. We ask her to explain the Christian take on the essential nature of human beings, and how Christianity holds in tension the better (and worse) angels of our nature.

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Read:

Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History 

Why does the Second World War continue to have such a strong appeal for us?

“It’s the fudging of the truth that’s much more important than the actual lies … mythology is more difficult to get to grips with.”

In summer blockbusters and bestseller lists, on internet chat forums and national debates, World War II is a cultural touchstone for us. Decades on from Basil Fawlty’s famous “don’t mention the war” bit, this is the war we just can’t stop mentioning.

In this episode, Natasha tells a somewhat appalled Simon about the time she had a dream she interviewed Hitler for Life & Faith, and also has a more serious conversation with British historian Keith Lowe, author of (among other things) The Fear and the Freedom: Why the Second World War Still Matters. They discuss good and evil, a war criminal who later repented, the antagonism that many Holocaust survivors faced after the war, and the religious revival that followed in its wake. 

And, of course, whether comparisons between the Second World War and Covid are valid.

“People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, they want to part of a community - because that’s what they felt during the war.”

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Buy Keith’s book, The Fear and the Freedom

Read Natasha’s article, “What do the stories we tell about the Second World War say about us?”

Why does the Second World War continue to have such a strong appeal for us?

“It’s the fudging of the truth that’s much more important than the actual lies … mythology is more difficult to get to grips with.”

In summer blockbusters and bestseller lists, on internet chat forums and national debates, World War II is a cultural touchstone for us. Decades on from Basil Fawlty’s famous “don’t mention the war” bit, this is the war we just can’t stop mentioning.

In this episode, Natasha tells a somewhat appalled Simon about the time she had a dream she interviewed Hitler for Life & Faith, and also has a more serious conversation with British historian Keith Lowe, author of (among other things) The Fear and the Freedom: Why the Second World War Still Matters. They discuss good and evil, a war criminal who later repented, the antagonism that many Holocaust survivors faced after the war, and the religious revival that followed in its wake. 

And, of course, whether comparisons between the Second World War and Covid are valid.

“People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, they want to part of a community - because that’s what they felt during the war.”

---

Buy Keith’s book, The Fear and the Freedom

Read Natasha’s article, “What do the stories we tell about the Second World War say about us?”

A Christian sets out to meet the Jesus of Islam – and a Muslim encounters the Christian Jesus.

“The thing about Jesus is, if he was an idea or if he was a philosophy or if he was a character in a book, then yeah, we could all have opinions about him. But if Jesus is a real person, particularly if he's a real live person today that's interacting with the world, then we really don’t get to pick and choose what he's like … you just have to meet the person on their own terms, taking them as they come.”

Years ago, when he was living and working with a Muslim community in Melbourne, Richard Shumack ran into a friend outside the local gym. The guy was wearing a T-shirt that read I LOVE JESUS on the front, and on the back BECAUSE I’M A MUSLIM AND SO WAS HE.

Many people would be surprised to hear that in Islam, Jesus is revered as one of the prophets. Richard’s new book is called Jesus through Muslim Eyes, and in its pages he sets out to meet the Muslim Jesus.

In this episode, Richard explains what the Muslim Jesus and the Christian Jesus have in common, how they’re different, and why it matters. Simon and Natasha also hear from Abdu Murray, an author and speaker with RZIM who has looked at Jesus through Muslim eyes and through Christian eyes.

“Sometimes we made fun of it. Sometimes we thought, Those foolish Christians. How could they believe that a person who is trapped in a human body that needs to walk to get where it needs to go to and sweats and eats, and then eventually dies at the hands of the creation he created, how could this be the incarnation of God, the Almighty?”

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Buy Jesus through Muslim Eyes

The working mums of lockdown have had to juggle everything. They’ve had enough.

“The personal is political”, goes the feminist catchphrase. For one particular group of people—working mums—shutdown has made that very clear. 

If women have been fortunate enough to keep their jobs in what’s been dubbed the “pink-collar recession”, they’ve also more likely been the ones juggling working from home while also home-schooling and parenting children.

That’s also on top of any housework that needs doing—and, before COVID, Australian women already did roughly double the amount as men. Shutdown has mirrored these trends, according to a study of family life in lockdown from the University of Melbourne.

In this episode of Life & Faith, we speak to Devi Abraham, a Melbourne-based writer, podcaster, and mum to two boys. She tells us what it’s like to go back into lockdown to fight COVID’s second wave, and how she is approaching it differently this time.

We also hear from Natalie Ray, a mum and Christian minister in Sydney’s leafy north-west. She reflects on the ways that work often relies upon the flexibility of women to manage their schedules amidst the demands of family life.

Being a minister, Natalie also has a few thoughts on why Christians, of all people, should value care. Hint: it’s got something to do with Jesus.

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Read:

Professor Lyn Craig on how little we value ‘women’s work’

Annabel Crabb on how Covid-19 has left women anxious and overworked 

George Megalogenis on the “pink-collar recession”

Watch:

Annabel Crabb in conversation with George Megalogenis about her book The Wife Drought at The Wheeler Centre

Connect:

Contact Devi through her website, or through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter

What makes us such … apocaholics?

What happened to all the utopias? It seems like the stories we tell ourselves about the future now – in blockbusters, bestselling novels, reality TV shows, and your daily news feed – are almost uniformly bleak, even dystopian. What is feeding our cultural pessimism?

In this week’s episode, Simon Smart talks to Natasha Moore about her brand new book The Pleasures of Pessimism. They cover why we enjoy thinking about the end of the world, how they think they’d do in the event of civilisational collapse, and whether they consider themselves optimists or pessimists.

Mark Stephens, CPX colleague and expert on the apocalyptic biblical book of Revelation, stops by to talk about uses and abuses of that influential text. And we draft in thinkers like Steven Pinker, Alain de Botton, and Nick Spencer to help us weigh the idea of progress and whether everything is getting better and better – or worse and worse.

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Buy The Pleasures of Pessimism here: https://www.koorong.com/product/the-pleasures-of-pessimism-re-considering-series-natasha_9780647530757

Watch the full Munk Debate on Progress here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUmBWB54riE&t=35s

Listen to the full discussion with Nick Spencer “Same Species, Bigger Sticks” here: https://www.publicchristianity.org/same-species-bigger-sticks/

Professor John Lennox weighs up the benefits and potential pitfalls of AI and the implications it has for what it means to be human.

In this Episode of Life & Faith Simon Smart talks to Oxford Professor John Lennox about his new book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. Lennox poses some vital questions of the AI enterprise, offering some warnings that the technology is vastly outpacing important ethical considerations.

“I think any form of AI is like a knife. A really good knife can be used for surgery and it can be used for murder.”

Lennox believes that the implications of AI are such that it is vital that philosophers, ethicists, theologians, cultural commentators, novelists, and artists are involved in the debate.

He draws on the ancient Biblical text of Genesis in considering what is essential to human nature and what AI could mean for our futures.