Down-under round-up: 7 October 2015

Issue of the week

I’ve chosen the question of mental health as my issue of the week. Our national broadcaster is spotlighting mental health issues, and I thought it’s worth some Christian attention, even if there’s been nothing written on it in the last week. 

I’m recommending the following resources:

• This interview by Greg Clarke with Professor Philip Mitchell, ‘Overcoming the darkness’ was my introduction to understanding depression. There’s plenty more said since then, but it still reads helpfully.
• This biographical piece by John Piper on hymn-writer William Cowper, ‘Insanity and spiritual songs’ first helped me (as a very ‘up’ person) feel what it might be like to grapple with debilitating mental health issues.
• Christians Get Depressed too by David Murray is the best book I (a non-expert pastor) know on depression and anxiety. It does not dismiss the helpful insights of medicine (his wife is a doctor), and neither over-spiritualises nor downplays the real help and perspectives the Scriptures can bring to this serious issue. (Courtesy of WTS Books, you can read a PDF of the preface and first chapter here.) And it’s short!
• If that’s not enough, Justin Taylor brought together an excellent list of resources here in ‘Suicide, mental illness, depression and the church’.

Making disciples of Jesus

If you read nothing else on the list, read this: ‘From sacrifice to fulfilment’ by CMS Victoria’s Mission Secretary, Wei Han Kuan. When I read it last Friday, I immediately thought it was a worthy candidate for best article of the year.

Indeed, last Friday was a good day for challenging articles regarding Christian expectations of comfort and suffering:

• ‘Jesus and the professional theologians’ by Peter Leithart, a warning about wanting to be liked
• ‘There is no crown without a cross for your kids’ by an author who has lost an infant and can understand the desire to want to keep them safe
• And Challies on ‘2 surefire ways to avoid persecution’.

Maybe God is trying to tell western Christians something. Oh, wait, maybe it was there in the New Testament all along.

Dan Darling relieving potentially false guilt over a not uncommon misunderstanding of Proverbs 22:6: ‘Why you can’t push kids into the kingdom’.

In light of the sad murder of an employee of the NSW Police Service by a 15-year-old Muslim youth, Michael Jensen urges the public: ‘Don't hang all religions with Islam's radicalisation problem’.

Key quote:

In its rush to look tolerant and even-handed, the liberal commentariat has worked itself into a lather of confusion. It cannot name the thing right in front of its face. The truth is this: in contemporary Australia, it is Islam, and only Islam, that has the problem with radicalisation. Not the Sikhs, not the Jews, not the Buddhists, not the Christians, not the Greenpeace youth group that meets down the road.
That is not to say that these groups have never had a problem with radical extremism, historically. But the problem presenting us today is quite a specific one.

Image of the week

Stephen McAlpine from Western Australia is providing stimulating thought on gospel ministry in light of current social issues. His hand-drawn diagram caught my eye, in a series of articles about how Christians should approach the same-sex marriage debate… We both oppose the redefinition, but I am more inclined than him to say we should fight it in the political realm. His argument is that we need to address the underlying matters, and perhaps not via a fraught and polarized, political debate (do check his recent, related articles).