NOTE: THIS BLOG IS A POT-POURRI OF ARTICLES, NOTES, IDEAS – MANY STILL TO BE FULLY FORMED. I’M DRIBBLING SOME ARTICLES INTO THIS FOLDER ON jmm.org.au WEBSITE FROM TIME TO TIME…

DEADLINE FOR FINISHED MSS.: was to have been OCTOBER 2014, but Mosaic Press (with whom I had a contract) has gone into liquidation, so there’s less of a rush to do a paper- or e-book. will keep you all posted… 

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INTRODUCTION…

On 13 July 2013, a news story ‘went viral’ around the world.

Joao Maria de Souza, 45, had been in bed with his wife Leni when a cow fell through the ceiling of their home in Caratinga, southeast Brazil. 

The animal is believed to have escaped from a nearby farm and climbed onto the roof of the couple’s house, which backs onto a steep hill. The corrugated roof gave way and the one-and-a-half-ton creature fell eight feet onto Mr de Souza’s side of the bed…

Events like this have always prompted serious questions.

(When I was a high school English teacher back in the 1960s the first essay my classes wrote had the title: ‘Shut your windows, lock your doors, and disaster will fall from the sky’).

* Why does a meteor fall on some people and not others – and most of them on no one at all?

* Is this simply ‘chance’ or ‘luck’? 

* Are the powers ‘up there’ – gods or whatever – playing nasty games with us?

This book hopefully provides some answers to these questions, mainly from a Judeo-Christian perspective.

Rowland Croucher

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Have you heard of the ‘Swan-song phenomenon’? Psychologist Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California studied 1919 musical compositions written by 172 classical composers and compared how highly the works were rated by musicologists with how close the creation of those works came to the composers’ deaths.

Main finding: compositions that were written later in the artists’ lives – when, as Simonton wrote, ‘death was raising a fist to knock on the door’ – tended to be briefer, with cleaner, simpler melody lines, and yet scored high in aesthetic significance according to the experts. (Time, ‘The Art of Living’, September 23, 2013, p. 42).

I’m 77 this year, and it’s about 20 years since my last book was published. This little contribution is my best effort to say in a ‘cleaner, simpler’ fashion what I believe about the most important questions facing humankind. Writers these days can put their words together in a ‘cryptic teasing’ fashion: if the reader wants to know more about something, they can simply check with everyone’s friend Google Search.

As my Gmail auto-signature says…

Shalom! Salaam! Pax! eirene!

Rowland Croucher

jmm.org.au

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FOREWORD

When someone makes an appointment to see me, a ‘generalist’ pastoral counselor, what do we talk about?  Short answer: anything at all that’s important for them.

Within the first five minutes I invite my parishioner/client to ‘give me a headline or two’. And, then, mostly, we jump into the deep end. Some memorable ones:

#  ‘Rowland, I used to belong to a biker gang. Recently I’ve started going to church and I heard about the need to ‘confess your sins to one another’. Well, I killed seven people during those wild years… And nobody else knows… ‘

# ‘Pastor, I’m in my fifties now, and I’ve never had a close relationship with a man. I’d love to have been a mother, but it’s too late. I have a strong sexual drive and my way of dealing with that is to pleasure myself. My pastor, however, is a fundamentalist who reckons I’ll go to hell for doing what I do. I’m scared and often sleepless about it all. What do you think?’

#  To a 15/16-year-old: ‘Jane, what do you want to do with your life?’ ‘Oh, that’s easy: kill a couple of people.’ ‘Uh-huh… Anything else?’ ‘Yeah… burn down the [social welfare organisation’s] building: they should have been protecting me…’

# Undergrad student: ‘We’re doing philosophy, and recently studied the so-called “proofs” for God’s existence. My evangelical friend says he’s impressed by the “first cause” idea. I reckon there could have been an infinite regression of causes…’

Where do these conversations go from there? Read on. Here are my 40 -and-counting – ‘big ones’: one for each day if you want to give yourself some quality-time thinking about these issues and chasing up the footnotes…  (This is the first book I’ve written post-Google: love it!).

At this point you may need to know just a little about me. General ideological approach? ‘Progressive Evangelical Christian’. Not theologically ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘liberal’ – I have strong issues with some of their respective presuppositions. My Anglican friends say I’m ‘broad church’. Father Richard Rohr and popular Christian writer Brian McLaren are generally OK! Is there truth in other religions? Of course, God’s truth can be discovered in the most unlikely places. Is it OK to doubt what authority-figures put into our heads when we were impressionable? Again: of course. How much serious pastoral counseling have I actually done? About 25,000 hours, starting when I was a Teachers’ College Christian student leader in 1957, then within eleven full- and part-time pastoral vocations, from 1964 until this week!

Come and enjoy the ride my fellow-strugglers/learners…

Rowland Croucher        ([email protected])
Melbourne, Australia
May 2014

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QUESTIONS & RESPONSES: the ABC’s of a good life. 

CONTENTS

Note: this list is provisional. It may vary in terms of numbers of chapters, titles etc. See http://questionsresponses.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/abcs-contents-of-questions-and.html for another idea about arrangeing these topics – in alphabetical order). 

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Here’s the first-draft of a list of Contents which formed part of the contract I had with Mosaic Press (which is now defunct). 

PART 1: THE BIG PICTURE…

1.  GOOD & EVIL: Why be good; why fight evil? And are we born or made to be good or evil (either or both)?

2.  GOD & SATAN: What are we postmoderns supposed to do with all that medieval stuff?

3.  AUTHORITY & CERTAINTY: The eternal question: ‘What is Truth?’ Four sources of truth: reason, (a sacred book e.g. the Bible), tradition, experience.  

4. JESUS & CHRISTIANITY:  ‘An ancient Near Eastern carpenter claims to be God – do people still believe that?’

5. RELIGIONS, CHURCHES & SECTS: ‘They can’t all/any of them be right can they?’

6. PRAYER & MEDITATION. SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES: lectio divina, prayer, meditation, solitude, silence, stillness: finding peace in the desert – every day 

PART 2: ME, MYSELF & MINE – OH, AND OTHERS…

7. LOVE & JUSTICE: ‘Why do we mistreat so many people – defenceless children, religious and racial/ethnic minorities, the handicapped, sweat-shop workers… the list goes on..’

8. PRIDE & POWER: ‘Why do too many humans want to be #1?’

9. SEX, ROMANCE & MARRIAGE: ‘It can all be very nice or very horrible… Why?’

ROMANCE/’FALLING IN LOVE’: ‘A genetic trick to hook us into marriage’? SEXUAL ABUSE

10. WOMEN & MEN: In many countries/subjects women are doing better academically, but earn 5% less than men – where’s the sense/justice in that? Vive la difference? Mars/Venus and other theories… 

11. HOMOSEXUALITY & GENDER ISSUES: If blacks/gays/dwarfs/whoever had no choice… what are they asking of the rest of us?

12. PARENTS & CHILDREN: How to enjoy your life – even if you didn’t choose your parents well.

13. ABORTION & EUTHANASIA etc. : Moral issues where good (and bad) people differ.

PART 3: YOU’VE GOT ONE LIFE: MAKE THE MOST OF IT…

14. EMOTIONAL & INTELLECTUAL INTELLIGENCE:

15. LEADERS & FOLLOWERS:

16. HAPPINESS & JOY: ‘No, they’re not the same, but why am I mostly bereft of both of them?’

17. BIRDS & FLOWERS: ‘How can I enjoy “all things bright and beautiful” more?

18. SUCCESS & FAILURE:

19. STRESS & BURNOUT:

20. WORK & PLAY:

PART 4: (MORE) VIRTUES, VICES & HUMAN ARRANGEMENTS

WAR & PEACE:

POVERTY & HUNGER:

LAWS & POLITICS: Unfortunate necessities; mantras and shibolleths 

PART 5: AND IN THE END…

APOCALYPSE CHECKLIST: Caring for the planet – for future generations

GROWING OLD:  Towards simplicity the other side of complexity.

SICKNESS & HEALTH: If I reduced it to 10 ‘health commandments’ what would my list look like?’

DEATH & DYING:

TIME & ETERNITY: Theories about nothingness, reincarnation, heaven, & hell.

31. YOUR CHECK-LIST FOR A VERY GOOD LIFE: What’s general and universal; and what’s relative and personal. Including HEALTH checklist.

AND MAYBE THESE…

FUNDAMENTALISM(S): source of most of the world’s ideological-ethno-religious conflicts… Paradigm-shifts: ‘You don’t know you’re wearing chains until you begin moving…’

WHO AM I? And who gives me my grade/worth? Parents, mentors and heroes…

RELATIONSHIPS – LOVE/JUSTICE (Keys to all relationships). ‘Why do we mistreat so many people – defenceless children, religious and racial/ethnic minorities, the handicapped, sweat-shop workers… the list goes on…?’ 

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(This is another option for chapter-headings. See also  the earlier CONTENTS list – further up this page).

(What’s missing? Any suggestions for ‘K’?)

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

1. AUTHORITY & CERTAINTY: WHO SAYS?

2. BIBLE

3. CHRISTIANITY AND ITS RETAIL OUTLETS (CHURCHES)

4. DEATH & DYING

5. ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, EARTH

6. FAMILY: CHOOSING YOUR PARENTS WELL

7. GOD IS LOVE, GOOD & EVIL

8. HAPPINESS VS. JOY

9. ISLAM , INDIGENOUS/ABORIGINAL PEOPLES

10. JESUS

11. K????

12. LEADERSHIP & EMPOWERMENT; LGBTI QUESTIONS & RESPONSES

13. MARRIAGE & ROMANCE; MASTURBATION

14. ‘NOW’ HAS GREAT POWER

15. OTHERS: ‘WINNING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE’

16. POVERTY & JUSTICE; POLITICS & POWER; PARADIGM SHIFTS

17. QUADRILATERAL (WESLEYAN)

18. RELIGIONS

19. SPIRITUALITY; SINS & MISDEMEANOURS

20. TRUST / FAITH; TIME

21. UNFINISHED BUSINESS: EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING MEANS DEALING WITH YOUR PAIN

22. VOCATION: ON THE PLANET FOR A PURPOSE

23. WOMEN & MEN; WAR & PEACE; WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?  

24. X MARKS THE SPOT: THE CROSS OF CHRIST AS THE CENTRE OF HISTORY

25. YOU: YES YOU, ARE AN UNREPEATABLE MIRACLE OF GOD’S CREATION

26. ZERO-HOUR: ETERNITY, HEAVEN & HELL

CHECK-LISTS

APPENDIX

ENDNOTES

INDEX

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

FURTHER READING