From Australia With Love

Hi MichaelChima,

We're still in school holiday period here and I'm beginning
this email from the middle of the Australian bush - at
beautiful Binacrombi.

It's raining (which is great, as we're still in drought) and
there are a small group of Rosella's gathered on our balcony.

Also exciting: 2 enormous fish were caught in our river today!
Unfortunately they were carp, which isn't great, as they are
pests. We need to work out how to re-trout the river!

Incidentally, if you haven't heard the bushman's recipe for
cooking carp, it's the same as for bush parrot:

1. Place a rock with carp in a billy full of water and boil.
2. When rock is nice and soft, carp is ready to eat.
3. Even then, throw out carp and eat rock as it tastes better

Enough frivolity. Let's do an article round-up.

New Articles


Three new articles for you this week:

A sermon:

* 'Why do Bad Things happen to Good People?'
That's the question Jesus is confronted with in Luke 13
and His response is not really what we wanted or expected:
http://www.fatherdave.org/article/article_852.html

A book review:

* Professors Mearsheimer and Walt's have just published a
very imporant book, entitled, "The Israel Lobby and US
Foreign Policy". I've got Uri Avnery's excellent review:
http://www.fatherdave.org/article/article_878.html

A surprise:

* An article by me on the dangers of 'identity theft'
And I've included some f/ree software, to help protect
your email address from being harvested by spambots.
http://www.fatherdave.org/article/article_877.html

Read. Absorb. Download. Enjoy! :-)



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What's new on http://www.fighting-fathers.com/forum ?


Firstly, my apologies for not being very active on the forum
over the holiday period though it's been gratifying to see
the place still teeming with life while I am absent.

There's been plenty of action in the 'faith issues' section,
with Brother Andrew, Stephen, and new kid on the block,
James M, making particularly noteworthy contributions.

Let me focus on a couple of threads from across the forum:

Original Sin


Christine and I have continued our dialogue over the question
of 'original sin', though I confess that I'm beginning to wax
philosophical. I think the thread needs an injection of fresh
ideas before I end up dragging it into esoteric academia. :-0

I've moved the discussion into the faith section so that it
might get more attention. Inject fresh ideas here:

Faith Issues -> General -> original sin, and Pelagius


Common Dreams


In a similar vein and in the same area of the forum, Stephen
has cut to the chase and asked us what sort of church do we
dream of becoming?

Do we want to be truly relevant, or do we fear letting go of
our long-held traditions, and are these the only two options?

Faith Issues -> General -> Common Dreams


We have a prophet in our midst

It is said of the Biblical prophets that their messages of
doom and destruction functioned as a form of 'shock therapy',
opening the eyes of the sleeping nation to the terrible sin
they were involved in.

In the same spirit, James M has burst on to the forum scene
with some no-holds-barred firey prophesies targetting the US,
Australia, Hillsong Church and others who have blood on their
hands through our global warring.

Don't write James off as an over-zealous dreamer, and note
that he is entirely accepting of criticism. I do urge you
to read and respond to this material. Here are some samples:

Social Comment -> World Politics -> Prophetic rebuke ,, Howard
Social Comment -> World Politics -> What God thinks ... USA

More on Internet P.0.r.n

The other thread that stood out for me this week was the one
on 'Dating, games and Lies' that started to re-focus on the
issue of men and p.0.r.n.

Alfamax's post on the subject gets my 'Post of the Week'
award this week, though I think there's still a lot more
that could be said on this subject and that needs to be said.

Let me encourage you to jump back on board with this one:

Faith Issues -> Feedback on Sermons ... -> Dating, ... Lies

---

OK. I'm going to leave it there this week.

As I said, the post from Alfamax gets 'Post of the Week' and
is now on display at http://fighting-fathers.blogspot.com

Before I let you go, a special invitation if you're in Sydney
this coming Saturday. We still have a couple of tickets left
for the Marrickville Multi-Faith Forum, convening on the topic
of 'A multi-faith response to Domestic Violence'.

The great draw-card for this meeting is not only hearing from
my f/riend Sheikh Mansour and other local clergy, but you'll
also get to hear from my wonderful partner, Ange, who will be
our representative speaker at the meeting.

The details are as follows:

Saturday October 20th, 4pm to 7pm (at the latest)

Petersham Town Hall, 107 Crystal Street, Petersham
BYO light food (preferably not pork chops but it's your call)
AND: You must let me know you're coming as space is limited

I'll hope to see some of on Saturday, but you'll hopefully be
getting the monthly ezine from me before then anyway. In the
meantime, please do consider making your contribution to the
forum, MichaelChima.

It's at http://www.fighting-fathers.com/forum in case you've
lost the URL. ;-)

May the Lord bless and strengthen you for the work to which
you have been called.

Yours in the Good Fight,

Dave
dave@fatherdave.org
www.fatherdave.org

P.P.S. Partner me in the Good Fight:
http://www.fatherdave.org/partners.htm