The Cross, Conversion Therapy, and the Countries Down Under

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“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…”

Ephesians 2:1-2A

Introduction

Recently, Australian news sources have been abuzz with plans for a bill outlawing conversion therapy to be passed in New South Wales. Though I do not think that we have any direct access to what the Australian bill contains, looking at our (New Zealand’s) conversion therapy act passed in 2022 will surely do some good.1 I will briefly provide an overview of the bill in this section, list two objections against our bill in the second section, and then address a deeper issue, namely the fundamental conflict of the Christian Gospel and conversion therapy bills.2

The explicit aim of the New Zealand conversion therapy bill is twofold: to “recognise and prevent harm caused by conversion practices” and to “promote respectful and open discussions regarding sexuality and gender.” A conversion practice is defined as a “practice, sustained effort, or treatment” that “is directed towards an individual because of the individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression” and which is performed “with the intention of changing or suppressing the individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

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Abortion and Peter Singer: Singing out of Tune

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“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”

Psalm 139:13

It is not a controversial fact that life begins at fertilization.1 For instance, a Princeton University webpage lists fifteen academic sources that support this point. One of the quoted sources clearly states that “fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed”.2 An article from PubMed states that “Biologists from 1,058 academic institutions… assessed survey items on when a human’s life begins and, overall, 96% (5337 out of 5577) affirmed the fertilization view [human life begins at fertilization]”.3 I could go on.

So, the abortion debate is now centred on philosophical considerations. One case study will do. Peter Singer, Emeritus Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, answers whether he would save a mouse or human being from a fire: in “almost all cases [he] would save the human being”. Interestingly, the reason for this saving is “not because the human being is human” but because “it matters whether a being is the kind of being who can see that he or she actually has a life — that is, can see that he or she is the same being who exists now, who existed in the past, and who will exist in the future”. Singer’s criteria for something that is worth saving involves some kind of temporal awareness. To explicitly connect this answer to abortion, “no newborn baby is a person” because newborn babies do not have “a sense of the future”.4

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Of Toolsheds, Marsh-Wiggles, Atheism, and the New Year

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“…in your light do we see light.”

-Psalm 36:9

Of Toolsheds and Marsh-Wiggles

A few minutes before the dawn of the New Year, I found myself on a steep and crowded street that overlooked most of the Auckland skyline. Most people (I included) aimed phones at the skyline in anticipation. A vague countdown began, and then the vast horizon blossomed with fireworks. I was struck by the sheer number of people fixated on recording, swaying their phones to and fro like wands by which memory and atmosphere could be captured.

The aim of this article is an indictment of modernity. As Michael Ward states: “The incessant spiritual orchestration that accompanies [the universe], that actually constitutes it, and that is normally inaudible, is now also considered incredible. The cosmos therefore comes to be regarded as nothing more than a very elaborate machine when in reality it is tingling with life…'”1 Ward claims that the medieval conception of the universe as a “festival not a machine” is now beyond belief.2 Our world has become disenchanted. In the words of Saturn by Sleeping at Last, we have lost the reality of, “How rare and beautiful it is to even exist”.

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On Christmas: Reflections on Homelessness

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Audio reading of the following article

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seem them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

Hebrews 11:13

“In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you…”

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Homelessness

Home is a valued thing. Think about it. We all know John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads, where he sings: “Country roads, take me home / To the place I belong”. In nostalgic homesickness, the narrator1 describes West Virginia, where “Life is old there, older than the trees / Younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze”. He is constantly reminded of this home: “The radio reminds of a home far away / Driving down the road, I get a feeling / That I should have been home yesterday…”. Even the Bible speaks of home, for in Psalm 137, the Psalmist says: “By the waters of Babylon, / there we sat down and wept / when we remembered Zion.” When the Israelite’s captors demanded that they sing, their reply was: “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” They were not home. They could not sing.

Or, ignoring the blasphemy and the terrible lyrics, observe how Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes casts home in a romantic light: “Home is wherever I’m with you”. Loving You’s Like Coming Home by Don Williams echoes this sentiment: “It’s a lonesome and endless highway I’ve been searching for so long / After all the miles I’ve travelled loving you’s like coming home”. Moving to Augustine’s Confessions, the African bishop describes his friendship with a childhood friend, “sweet to me above all the sweetness of that my life”. The friend was close to death and was baptised when unconscious. When he regained consciousness, Augustine attempted to joke with his friend about the baptism, but “he shuddered at me, as if I were his enemy”. The melancholic punchline hits: “A few days after, during my absence, he had a return of the fever, and died”. The friend died without reconciliation. Augustine’s world was rocked: “My native country was a torture to me, and my father’s house a wondrous unhappiness; and whatsoever I had participated in with him, wanting him, turned into a frightful torture.”2

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Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part Two

Barbie doll, blond beauty toy

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

John 1:4

Articles in this Series

Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part One

Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part Two

Feminism

In this section, I aim at a twofold goal: to provide commentary on the opening scene of the Barbie Movie, thereby leading to a discussion of demeaning children and abortion, and to present a Biblical case for the role of men and women.

The trailer or first scene of the movie begins with a landscape shot, shifting to depicting little girls playing with dolls and prams. The girls sit on a barren, rocky landscape. “Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls.” says the narrator dramatically. Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, a symphonic poem named after Nietzsche’s nihilistic philosophical work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, begins to play and continues in the background. The narrator continues: “But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls until…”. The music crescendos. A giant Barbie dressed in a black-and-white swimsuit appears. She lowers her sunglasses, smiles at the girls, and winks. The next shot immediately depicts a girl shattering a doll with a different doll. Another doll is thrown into the air.1

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Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part One

Polaroid Barbie camera (camera)

“And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,”

-Revelation 20:2

Articles in this Series

Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part One

Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part Two

Introduction

A few weeks ago, I had the unfortunate time watching the Barbie Movie in cinemas. It was an experience roughly analogous to having a wet cat dragged slowly over the nape of your neck, given that the cat was also brandishing its claws. However, in writing this review (mainly consisting of theological and philosophical reflection), I do not seek to lament or explore the psychological intricacies of this feline sensation. I fully recognise that in writing a review for a movie as especially pink, vibrant, and tongue-in-cheek as this one, I risk the labels of “Puritanical”, “bigot”, “fun-hater”, or other fallacious bullets contained in the liberal barrage. I will gladly accept the first: the Puritans were excellent theologians. I will deny the second and third while simultaneously wondering if those who utilise these terms have taken an elementary class in informal logical fallacies.

In the first section, I will briefly summarise of the plot of the movie (from my memory, so incomplete and perhaps inaccurate) and hopefully not risk the breach of any copyright laws. In the second section, I will seek to provide a theological framework from which we ought to approach our viewing of media.

The third and fourth sections will be in the next article. In the third section, I will critique the feminism permeating the Barbie movie, showing how it is perhaps more nuanced than expected, and provide some Biblical teaching against feminism. In the fourth section, I will evaluate the existentialism in the movie and provide the only alternative, namely the Biblical alternative. The conclusion, as the name suggests, will conclude. Let us proceed.

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