Not long ago I heard about a US text book publisher that had revised its editorial policy. As a result of the review, a number of words and phrases were no longer considered worthy of publication. 'Adam and Eve', for instance, would be replaced with ‘Eve and Adam’ to demonstrate that males don’t take priority over females. The phrase ‘Founding fathers’ was jettisoned for its sexism, and ‘blind leading the blind’ for its handicapism. The deleted list was largely religious in nature. ‘Hell’ was to be replaced with ‘heck’ or ‘darn’; ‘pagan’ was to become ‘unbeliever’; ‘extremist’ and ‘fanatic’ were now to be rendered ‘believer’, ‘follower’ or ‘adherent’. ‘Satan’ and ‘devil’ were no longer deemed acceptable and so removed. Finally, even the word ‘God’ was cast aside—with no reason given. Some of these changes may be understandable; others teeter on the edge of ludicrous political correctness. What I found interesting, however, was the desire to squeeze divine-related matters out of the text—to reduce God to a full-stop, a space between sentences, or simply usher Him off the page altogether. As I read the publisher’s list I tisked and tutted… then later realised I’d been guilty of doing something similar. Let me explain. When I first became a Christian I felt a desire to learn the Bible. After graduating from Bible College I was like a wind-up toy waiting to be released—just itching to make my mark on the world for God. I joined a church as its youth director, and soon confronted the realities of Christian leadership. It was difficult. It was tiring. And I wanted to be (and, to be honest, look) successful. So, I turned to the Bible. For the next couple of years my devotional life revolved around discovering Scripture’s wisdom on Christian leadership. And I discovered principles the leadership and management gurus would admire. Over the years the positions changed, as did the questions I brought to my reading of Scripture. I began thinking more and more about spiritual growth, and enjoyed discovering biblical principles for living a vibrant, faithful, Christian life. Finding God’s will, spiritual gifts, confession, forgiveness, spiritual disciplines, money and generosity—I sought out the Bible’s truth on each. More good lessons were found. Now, there’s nothing wrong with searching the Bible for leadership or Christian living tips (or parenting or workplace tips for that matter). But a gaping hole became apparent in my devotional life: God. Concerned with tips and techniques, I missed finding him. I’d inadvertently pushed God to the margin of the page, editing him out of the text, forgetting him as the ultimate subject of life. Interestingly enough, when I scan the past years of my Christian experience I can recall hearing very few church sermons about God. (I’m in this business and have to admit I’ve only given a couple over that time myself.) What about you? When was the last time you heard a sermon, read an article, or watched a TV program about God? Not about getting something from him, receiving his blessing, making him happy, analysing theories about him or on how to do his work more effectively. I mean a message about God himself—his nature, personality, likes, dislikes, emotions, passions; his character traits. I wonder if we’ve become a more popular topic than the Almighty. Because, if our sermons, articles and programs, even our thoughts and conversations, are always focussed on how we can live in prosperity, how we can pray more effectively, how we can experience the miraculous, how we can benefit from forgiveness, how we can live better lives—well, it’s clear where the focus has turned. I’ve begun to realise that God uses what I call ‘winters of the spirit’—seasons when all the superficial, shallow and superfluous aspects of our lives begin to fall like leaves around us—to reveal himself as the one true constant. Passing through such a season recently, I’ve finally begun to do what I’ve felt a divine nudge to do for sometime. I’ve begun to turn the diamond again. But this time the question that lies at the heart of my Scripture reading is this—what is the Bible telling me about God? If you’d like to do something similar, the Psalms are a great place to start the exercise. And the funny thing is that truly knowing God provides the knowledge and passion to do what our techniques and tips were always trying to achieve. God’s holiness and righteousness fuels our social justice, his love and mercy motivates our mission work, his compassion and patience inspires our care, and his power stimulates our prayer. Yes, there may be forces out to reduce God to a full-stop or a space between sentences. But more and more, my prayer is that we may bring God back onto the page as the central character of life’s text.

© 2006 Sheridan Voysey is a writer, speaker, broadcaster and author of Unseen Footprints: Encountering the divine along the journey of life (Scripture Union, 2005). www.thethoughtfactory.net

What makes a song go to number one the charts? According to researchers at New York’s Columbia University, it may have little to do with talent or slick production.

In a story published recently in the science magazine Cosmos, the researchers set up a website with a range of songs by unknown artists for free download. They then advertised the website to web-surfing teenagers. Visitors to the site were invited to listen to the songs and rate them on a scale of one to five stars.

Some participants were given only the song title and artist; others were given the same information plus an indication of how often the song had been downloaded by others.

The researchers discovered that when visitors could see the success (or lack thereof) of a given song, they were more likely to go with the crowd. The popular songs became wildly popular; the less-downloaded songs were shunned. Where the most popular downloads were not known, downloads were spread more evenly across all the songs.

An expected outcome from a survey of teenagers, we might say. But what about us grown ups? How immune are we to the sway of peer pressure?

Well, to begin to answer that, let’s think about our wardrobes and compare the clothes we wear today with those we wore five or ten years ago. Few of us could claim they’re the same. Designs from the influential fashion houses hit the catwalks each month, declaring what it means to be relevant and trendy. These designs are bought by the up-market boutiques, and make their way onto the bodies of film, stage and music video-clip stars. The new look finally makes its way onto the in-store posters at mass market clothing stores to become society’s new acceptable standard of dress. There’s pressure on the rank and file to buy the new look and conform. In fact, you’re stigmatised as ‘uncool’ if you don’t. Hair styles, car models and household appliances can all be influenced by adult peer pressure too. (And, hey, I admit I’m not ready to hit a party in that floral-print short-sleave shirt which looked great in 1992. I’m seeing more and more widescreen TVs in my friends’ middle-class homes, and I’m starting to feel a bit self-conscious about my comparatively tweeny TEAC 18-inch model!)

So then, if the external worlds of us grown ups are prone to peer pressure, could our internal worlds—our beliefs and values—fall prey to popular conformity too?

Well, it’s been interesting to watch the way Intelligent Design has been received in Australia. The scientists and philosophers behind Intelligent Design believe there is evidence to show that this world and universe bear the marks of an intelligent being behind them. That’s as far as they take the argument—they don’t try and argue for any particular god as creator, believing that to be religion’s job.

Of course, any alternative to the popular theory of Evolution is bound to raise discussion and argument. But Intelligent Design has not been argued against so much as ridiculed. Comedians and media personalities have mocked it, in many cases showing little evidence that they’ve actually read any of the texts on it, and completely ignoring the fact that Intelligent Design is supported by hundreds (if not thousands) of the scientific community in mainstream universities around the world. It now seems popular to laugh at Intelligent Design. Like fashion and hair styles, the media really can shape our individual opinions and beliefs. In fact, just like wearing yesterday’s clothes, you can be stigmatised if you claim to believe in Intelligent Design.

But just say it’s true. What might that mean for our whole view of the world? Could we be missing out on the most intriguing discoveries in centuries? There may be many similar issues.

It’s good to ask ourselves if our beliefs and values are indeed our own or really just rehashed popular fashion. Because, as those Columbia researchers discovered, perhaps it’s only when we ignore the voices of popular opinion—the faddish, the trendy and the fashionable—that we’ll have an opportunity to hear a new song that may well open our eyes to a new way of seeing the world.

I want to get a bit spiritual on you, right up front this week. How much should you read into your dreams? Is there ever any message in them for us?

I came across the story of a Missionary named Ben Staggs once, who told of a fascinating experience he had when visiting the Boshu people, an extremely isolated group in Ethiopia. On arrival, Ben and his team were welcomed by a local leader named Golon Kabule. “We sat down and spoke a bit,” Ben says, “explaining that we had come to tell them of ‘God’s talk’. I described who God is, what He is like, and where He lives.” But after letting the missionary go on for a bit, Golon suddenly spoke up. “We must follow Christosi,” he said, using the word for Christ in that territory. Astonished, as Christ’s name hadn’t even been mentioned in the conversation, Ben asked where Golon had heard that name. Golon explained that Christ had appeared to him in a dream, told him that it was he who had given Golon his life, blood and bones, and that Golon was to follow him. Christ then said that in just five days someone would come to tell him about following that path. Ben and his team had arrived on the fifth day after the dream.

There are hundreds, even thousands, of reports of people in the developing world having similar experiences. The encounters have a similar theme—Christ appears and issues a straightforward call to follow him.

I’m the first to raise an eyebrow at these kinds of stories—wonder how believable they are. But keep in mind many of these people live in religiously restricted countries. In these places, saying you’re a follower of Christ can get you a death sentence, not a book deal.

But how often do such experiences happen in western countries? How often might they happen here in Oz?

I remember hearing Shona’s story one Sunday morning in 1999. “All my material, intellectual, family and selfish needs were being met,” she said to us listening in the church auditorium in Redcliffe, Queensland, “but there was definitely something more I needed, and my constant searching for this missing element was driving me nuts.” Enrolling her daughter in a Christian school, Shona decided to take a course on the Christian faith offered by the school to prepare for any tricky questions asked by her daughter in the future. About four weeks into the course Shona had a dream that literally shook her awake one night.

Here’s Shona’s description:

In my dream I was at a fabulous party having a wonderful time, when I heard a quiet knock at the door. I opened the door and there was this person. He wasn’t tremendously tall or anything but he really stood out because he was so radiant with such a clear white light. There were a couple of figures behind him, but they just faded into insignificance compared to him. “Wow,” I said, “I want a piece of what you have. I want to be like you.” “You can,” he said, and reached over and touched me above the heart. I looked down and I could see into my heart and there was a spark of his light there, and I knew it could grow. I woke bolt upright at about 2:30 in the morning and I realised then that was Jesus Christ himself talking to me. That was when I truly asked him to take control of me and to be with me always. I’ve since found the start of my dream echoes some words in the book of Revelation, chapter 3, verse 20: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me.

We can often read too much into our dreams. Mine can get quite vivid too, especially after a large Pepperoni Supreme or a good red curry. But when our dreams feature a character meeting the biblical descriptions of God’s name, character and call, it’s probably worth a second thought. Because it seems that, around the world, Christosi is often the heavenly visitor in a thousand dreams.

“It is time for climate-change agnostics to put aside their scepticism and acknowledge reality” says Alan Dupont, from the Lowly Institute, in an article for the Australian newspaper recently. He says, “The Earth is heating up at a rate never before experienced in human history and we are primarily responsible.”

Dupont is the Lowey Institute’s fellow for international security. He says our use of fossil fuels and our felling of forests over the centuries is altering our climate with detrimental affects for future generations. Climate change even affects international security. Unless these trends are halted, Dupont says, we’ll push our already fragile ecosystem to a point of no return.

Dupont’s figures are alarming:

For instance, climate scientists overwhelmingly accept that the world's glaciers and northern ice cap are rapidly melting. If present rates of melt continue, the arctic ice cap will disappear entirely by the year 2060. Rising seas will then inundate many coastal and low-lying areas. If Greenland's large ice mass melts too (which the latest data suggests is a possibility), the world's oceans could rise by 4-to-6metres this century. This may seem relatively small, but combined with large storms and mega-cyclones, it means serious flooding for Australian and Asian cities and coastal lands.

And this century will see a massive growth of carbon dioxide concentrations, regardless of what we do to reduce greenhouse-gases. The Earth's surface will warm by more than 2-degrees. Again, that sounds inconsequential. But, year to year and decade to decade, average global temperatures vary by only a few tenths of a degree. A jump of 2-degrees means more droughts, and more cyclones stronger than Hurricane Katrina.

Apart from the obvious problems of existence, Alan Dupont says such dramatic changes have security implications. Drought affects food production, natural disasters affect already impoverished nations, and extreme weather and temperature changes trigger short-term spikes of diseases like malaria and Ross River fever—and when all of these coincide with terrorism and ethnic or social tensions, the security impact becomes obvious.

So, amongst all that, how are Christians to respond? Some of us, awaiting Christ’s return, have felt that any involvement in environmental maters is just a waste of time. ‘Jesus will fix it all up when he comes, so let’s get on with spreading the word about him,’ goes the reasoning. But is this the final word? Does God care about the Earth? Is God an environmentalist?

Surprisingly (to me at least), I’ve discovered that the Bible has a lot to say about the environment:

In the book of Leviticus, the Israelites are told that when they enter the Promised Land, the edible plants and trees are to be left alone for four years. Only in the fifth year can they be eaten, so that, I quote, “they may yield more richly for you." (Lev. 19:23-25) This verse talks about nurturing nature and practicing consumer restraint for good benefits in the future.

An intriguing verse in Deuteronomy says, "If you come upon a bird's nest … with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on [them], you shall not take the mother with the young; you shall let the mother go..." (Deuteronomy 22:6-7) Another good use of resources so they may continue into the future.

Another verse in that book says, "When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it … you shall not destroy its trees … you may eat of them, but you shall not cut them down." (Deuteronomy 20:19-20)

In these verses God says to guard nature—no obliteration of species, no destruction for short-term gain, no short-sightedness about immediate need, no justification of greed. These verses have an eye on the present for the sake of the future. Even the fourth of the Ten Commandments—the one about the Sabbath, the day of rest—is described as a time not just for humans, but for work animals to rest too (Ex. 20:10; 23:12). And every seventh year, the sabbatical year, the crops, vineyards and olive orchards were to be allowed to rest. (Ex. 23:11)

And in addition to all this, Jesus told us to love our neighbours as ourselves (Matt. 22:3). We often interpret that to mean loving the person next door, across town or overseas, but ethicist Robert Parham suggests we should understand this statement not just geographically but chronologically. “[We] should see future generations as our neighbours,” he says. “[We] love our neighbours in the future with what we do in the present, or we damn them with what we fail to do or do wrongly.”

Alan Dupont would be happy.

Yes, God seems to be an environmentalist. And as long as we worship Him and not the earth, it seems like we should be environmentalists too.