I have been spending time trying to get my wife’s book ready – hopefully it will be available soon. We are excited as the proofs should arrive this coming week. I will write more about it in the coming days.
http://wellsforshepherds.com/2023/05/09/coming-in-print-and-epub/
Currently I am reading Carl R. Trueman’s brilliant unpacking of our contemporary social morass in his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. This mind-bending unravelling of the nature of modern identity in the West is a “must read”. However, I just want to reflect on one chapter: Chapter 8 – The Triumph of the Erotic. In this chapter Trueman explores how Surrealism, inspired by the likes of Marx but particularly Freud, made a concerted attempt to destroy Christianity via the means of a sexual revolution.
The author traces how this process has worked in what he describes as the “pornification of mainstream culture.” We see this in more recent times through the rise of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine in the 1960s through to explicit sexual acts in mainstream television and films in the 2000s. There has been an increasingly overt wearing down of the old sexual morals. What was once hidden in dark places is now celebrated out in the open. As he points out, in today’s context Hefner looks conservative. Now porn in every aspect our culture is the norm.
The author then goes on to look at the implications for violence particularly towards women, and the impact of this revolution on the feminist movement as a whole.
My precis is brief and insufficient, however, the question this chapter raises for me is, how do we protect our children from this inescapable onslaught? In some ways contemporary society must resemble the situation of the early church in a pagan environment in which the culture was etched into every aspect of daily life. How do you grow up faithful to the gospel in such an environment?
Here are some thoughts, but I would love readers to add their contributions as well. For the church, this is a communal issue in which community must play a crucial role in the response:
These are just a few broad ideas. But Carl Trueman is right when describes this as an assault. The “pornification of our society” is an attack on faith, the family and the church. There are many who see these as outdated institutions. Therefore, we must be prepared to defend these institutions vigorously and passionately with the welfare of the most vulnerable foremost in our mind.
Over the last few weeks I have been sorting through my parents’ photos and putting them into a visual diary. This requires some research: who are they, where was it taken, when was it taken, and so on. I have pestered relatives for information to try to uncover some of the mysteries. Some photos, thankfully have some details scrawled on the back. The problem is that most of the people in the old photos have passed on a long time ago. Google search and maps have been handy companions but there is only so much they can tell you.
The process however, especially with the old photos is an emotional one – my dad as a 17 year old rugged up in a heavy coat. What were you thinking dad at the time this photo was taken? Where did you expect your life to lead? There are the photos of his time as an indentured worker in Germany. I see camaraderie and youth but not too many smiles. The Christmas Tree in 1943 is particularly evocative. And then there is the eerie doubly exposed photo of a young woman superimposed on what seems like a park. I have this faint memory that this was a girlfriend before my mother came on the scene. Why was this photo kept? I know my mother wanted it to be thrown out.
There are photos of Rotterdam before it was bombed by the Germans and then the Allies with the Kestein bicycle factory (thank you Google) with a loaded wagon pulled by draught horses. Another time and place. A world away from 2020. There are bicycling holidays after the war. What were your hopes then, dad, when so much had happened and when a blanket of pain and suffering had settled over Europe.
The sorting is a slow process as you can’t help but look at the photos and ponder as you try to sift behind the black, white and grey images and the softly fading faces.
Memories are enigmatic. Fact and memory are not necessarily identical. Are the memories real or constructed? Are they made from genuine moments or reconstructed by photos and family tales? Where, exactly, does the truth sit? Or when it comes to the past is truth only relative anyway?
My earliest memory centres on a wooden leg standing in corner of a darkened bedroom. Only many years later when I asked my mother about it did she tell me that it belonged to a great grandfather and I had seen it when we visited him. I must have been about two and a half at the time and the disembodied leg has been etched in my memory ever since. Other memories from that time include hiding under a desk which had drawers on either side and feeling secure while the adults talked. Taking a lolly from behind the counter at the barber’s is another. A warm recollection involves being held and cuddled by an Aunty and my bare foot exploring her coat pocket as she always had a treat for her one and only nephew. There are vague recollections too of the trip to Australia on the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt.
On the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt
By the time I emigrated to Australia I was three and a half. This life changing event only holds vague and, on the whole, unreliable memories. There was a model of a ship floating in a barrel. My parents couldn’t substantiate that one. There was also an overall sense of sadness. Not, I think, from leaving Holland but rather from the separation on the boat from my parents for long periods of time. I am told that I was sent to a crèche and that I didn’t like being with crying younger children. One clear image is standing on a lower deck and seeing my parents on the deck above – that memory is always associated with a severe heartache.
My memories take on a firmness (whether true or not!) after our arrival in Australia. All the recollections of the Anderson family at “The Hill” in Mepunga West: Ola, Beth, Old Mrs Anderson and the rest of the multi personalitied clan, represent a tangled ball of wool in which times and events are, after 65 years, impossible to disentangle. The overwhelming emotions, however, are one of joy and security. Even if I wasn’t fully aware of having left a family behind I was now truly embraced by a new one. The main characters in this experience have all passed on but they are still solidly secure in my head and heart.
“Helping” with the milking, feeding hay to the herd and taking the full milk cans to the depot near Smith’s Post Office and telephone exchange (a room at the back of another farm house) and the glorious spread of the afternoon tea before the second milking are all memory-videos that I can replay in my mind without hesitation.
After a few months at the Anderson’s we moved to a house in Allansford opposite the Post Office.
The warning my father gave me about not entering the shed was crystal clear. Many years later I found out that there was a water storage under the shed but floor of the shed floor had become rotten over time and one could fall through the floor and drown.
I had two Uncles who had arrived two years earlier and had been welcomed by the Anderson family. One of these, Adrian, built me a cart.
A clear evocation is walking to the depot (a truck-tray height platform where farmers brought their milk cans every morning and evening) and hanging a billy can on one of a series of nails alongside the platform and then picking up a billycan of fresh milk later in the day. The depot was a little way along the highway out of town. I am sure that my mother would have come with me but all I can recall is walking with the billy can along the side of the road.
Christopher Ingles’ parents owned the local general store just a few metres from our house. Fortunately for me they were kindly people who communicated with my parents. I learned an important life lesson in this store which was that you needed to pay for things in a shop. You couldn’t just walk in and get stuff!
I hadn’t started school yet and my mother had visions of me riding a horse to school. Mum got these visions from some of the films the authorities had shown prospective migrants about Australia. The only problem was that the school was 150 metres away – or should I say “yards” as this was predecimal Australia. In any case it didn’t matter as we moved to Ocean Grove before I started school.
We left footprints in the sand.
Mine large,
His small.
His dancing with excitement
In circles and jumps.
Mine in a straight line, alert
cautious.
A sand castle here,
A shell there.
Seaweed, seagulls
and sticks.
Exciting materials,
to explore and investigate.
His steps will become larger.
Mine will fade.
But there was a time
when we walked on the beach
together.
Not The Sun, but a headline I remember.
were a constant temptation to stop and read. However the ire of the customers and consequent lateness at school cured me any dalliance. However I clearly remember some of the headlines that occurred on my beat as a paperboy: the Berlin Wall, Cuba, space flights, civil wars in Africa and Marilyn Monroe’s death are still etched in my memory.
The other day my wife and I took our grandson (15 months) for a walk along the beach near the town where I grew up. Now I need to add that my family gets weary of me telling them about all the events that happened to me in or near this town. Then the roads weren’t paved, the street lights went out at midnight and we could leave our doors unlocked etc. However, now I have a new generation to pester!
Grandson and Granddad
The beach we walked on was the one I cleaned every summer during my High School years. From 5 am in the morning to 10 am my mate and I wandered along the beach with our buckets collecting the detritus of the previous day. If the wind was right we also found the loose change that had fallen out of pockets. The coins would sit on little mounds as the sand would have been blown from around them over night. On a good day this would increase our income by 10%. Later I got a promotion to toilet cleaner. This meant I had to clean 13 toilet blocks along this stretch of coast line but I got to drive the old Land Rover from block to block!. My final step up was garbage collector. Then I had reached the pinnacle of my career! Today the rubbish tip has become a golf course and I think to myself, I helped build that!
My favourite story from my time working on the foreshore was when I was preparing the tracks along the campsites before the influx of summer holidaymakers by removing excess sand using a tractor with a scoop. Hooning around a corner with the bucket in the air I
Old fashioned telephone lines- Google images
collected telephone lines snapping quite a few and interrupted a few conversations. My boss was initially livid but later thanked me because he had been asking the PMG (telecom of its day) for years to have the lines placed underground – which happened because of my youthful foolishness.
The road between my town and the next meandered for 3 kilometres through sand dunes and tea tree. Our town having been a Methodist resort was “dry”. No alcohol was sold within its boundaries. The town next door was under no restrictions. So this route was rather popular at the end of the day among certain gents. However the problem was that Victoria had a “6 o’clock” closing law. All hotels had to stop serving alcohol by 6 pm (this was repealed in 1966). So drinkers had to scull (Aussie vernacular for drinking) their beer as quickly as they could. For the drinkers in my town this made the homeward journey rather interesting if not hair raising.
One of our neighbours, we’ll call him Claude, terrified the locals and the streets in our town were very quiet, children pulled inside and dogs tied up, when we knew he was coming home.
Now I have a grandson it is incumbent upon me to instill his family history at every opportunity.
Grandson SensesI saw you before you saw me.I had a chance to study your little round face, framed by a snugly cap.I tried to place those familiar features, tried to find a possible source for the rest.You look like your daddy; With his nose and his forehead.You have your Mama’s red hair, and her chin.You are quite beautiful, and quite unique.I watched while you squirmed, grimaced, did the gentlest shudder. Your eyes moved under their lids, you retreated into your blanket. But all the while your eyes stayed shut. Could you hear our voices, your parents’ and mine? Did we sound clearer now that you are on the outside?I ran my finger along your downy cheek. So soft, that newly dry baby skin, like no other softness on earth. And warm still, a residual warmth from deep within your mother.We then smelled you, bringing our faces close to yours. A scent only found on the skin of the newly born.Finally, we kissed you, each of us in turn.When I came close I could hear the barely perceptible sighs and snuffles made by breaths brand new; breaths still in practice.The camera captures the moment, but my heart will hold these first senses of your life more closely, more carefully, more completely, for as long as my heart continues to beat.
I am still surprised by my own thoughts, feelings and behaviours at times. So the other day when our first grandchild was born I was surprised by the overwhelming surge of emotion that swept over me. When my wife contacted me with the news there was that mixture of tears, choking and adrenalin – all the more embarrassing because I was trying to teach at the time! I knew this was exciting but Teddy’s arrival was more than that. For a moment I was taken back 40 years when our first child was born. The red hair, once again, took my breath away. The miracle of new life enthralled me all over again. I remembered that mixture of anticipation and fear. Then I was a new dad now I am a new granddad.
I have had to wait a long time for this moment so for just that reason alone Teddy’s birth was very special. Untangling all the emotions is a bit like trying to roll up a ball of wool after the cat has got at it. There is just so much going through my heart and head. On one side you know the
Teddy and Opa
sleepless nights that the new parents will go through; the tiredness but that is outweighed by the enlargement of the family – a new person, a new personality that shares some of the parent’s but then makes it his own. There will be diamonds and coal – the good days and bad. There will be the accidents and illnesses but also the achievements. Life is dangerous but also exciting.
As a parent the greatest joy is being able to share with your child the story of faith; the story of God who not only created you but loves you with this amazing love. For me, that part of my daughter and son in law’s journey will be the most important and exciting one. There will be all the amazing “firsts” – tooth, step, mum, dad … opa, supergran. But ultimately these pale when a young heart comes to know their God personally.
I love you Rosey, Paul and Theodore – may God bless this new stage of your life with His amazing grace!
Here is another post by my wife whose passion is worship that involves all ages – especially children
Why is it that preachers look elsewhere when they speak with children about the things of God? Elsewhere than the Word of God?
They spend a great deal of time conjuring “likes” out of their box of tricks. The church is like…. being a Christian is like…. forgiveness is like….
And there are a lots of objects in their magician’s kit as well. Namely objects for object lessons. Unfortunately this sleight of hand only confuses the children who are before them.
Today we had a real magic trick performed for the kids. Three pieces of string of varying lengths were produced for the audience of a dozen preschoolers up to first graders. We heard about the tall people (longest string), the middle sized people (medium string), and … “babies” one child suggested for the shortest string, and we all laughed. More examples of varying things were suggested by the pastor, before he brought all six string ends together in one hand and said “watch this”. (I thought the correct word was abracadabra.)
Sure enough, he turned them into three pieces of equal length. Amazing!
Photo: Courtesy Domino the Jester
Then he did another trick.
He turned the trick into an object lesson.
“We all look different, but Jesus has made us all the same.”
Maybe I think too deeply, or too literally about these things. I suspect some children do too. Perhaps they’re thinking, “I don’t want Jesus to make me look like my brother. I don’t want my Mum and Dad or my baby sister to all be ‘middle sized'”. And that’s if they’ve managed to draw the connection between the strings and ‘us’.
Whichever way you choose to tackle this concept of Colossians 3:11, one thing’s for certain. Little children aged less than eight years old will probably not understand the abstractness of it.
This is when parents need to grow these concepts into their children as they walk along the road together, when they lie down and get up, when they eat and play together. This will be when the abstract becomes concrete for them.
And the pastors who are sitting with the church’s little ones at their feet?
Perhaps they should tell a story. A Bible story.
Travels from Ur 