Here is Love

One evening in church a little while back, I got distracted while singing one of the choruses. My eyes happened to light on the final words of an unfamiliar hymn on the opposite page: And heav’n’s peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love.

Hmm, I mused. The ‘suspicion’ switch turned on in my head.

If I’m not mistaken, I thought, those lyrics are a reference to Psalm 85:10. I immediately began to wonder about the age of the hymn. There was nothing helpful on the page except the composer’s name, William Rees, along with two verses:

Here is love, vast as the ocean,

Loving-kindness as the flood,

When the Prince of Life, our Ransom,

Shed for us His precious blood.

Who His love will not remember?

Who can cease to sing His praise?

He can never be forgotten,

Throughout heav’n’s eternal days.


On the mount of crucifixion,

Fountains opened deep and wide;

Through the floodgates of God’s mercy

Flowed a vast and gracious tide.

Grace and love, like mighty rivers,

Poured incessant from above,

And heav’n’s peace and perfect justice

Kissed a guilty world in love.


It looked old. But not that old. It lacked a telltale thee or thou. Still those apostrophes were hopeful signs.

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Reflect or Reshape?

When my dad was diagnosed with cancer, he was keen to investigate both conventional and alternative medicine. As a consequence, he sent me off on his behalf to a course in ‘German New Medicine’.

The brainchild of oncologist, Dr Geerd Hamer, it looks upon cancer as a ‘disease of the soul’—and thus not only physical in nature but also psychological and spiritual.

The physical aspect looks back at a moment of trauma, usually a year or two in the past. The psychological component is about the words the person speaks over themselves at that moment of trauma. And the spiritual component of it looks at why those particular words were chosen and at long–term issues of forgiveness.

Ever since I did the course, I’ve got phonecalls from various people who know I attended, asking what the handbook suggests were the words that could initiate a particular disease. I’ve yet to have anyone disagree with what I’ve uncovered; in fact, mostly a dozen lightbulbs have gone on all at once for anyone who has asked.


According to Geerd Hamer, who looked at over 40 000 patients to formulate his theory, the words we speak over ourselves at a moment of trauma have immense power.

There is nothing new in the idea that words have power. In the first chapter of Genesis, God creates the heavens and the earth by the power of the spoken word.

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You Are What You Read 1

I was an avid reader throughout my childhood. I had such an instinctive respect for books no one had to tell me not to crease the corner of a page or bend the spine. I was shocked the first time I saw someone turn down a page just to mark where they were up to. It was like mutilating a baby.

Likewise, no one had to tell me that, once a book was begun, it had to be finished. I sensed the unwritten contract between myself and the writer: the commitment to get to the end, no matter what.

Had you asked me back then if I’d ever broken this self–imposed rule, I’d have said ‘no’. However, as an adult, I’ve been surprised to remember books I started and put aside. It wasn’t that I was bored. They were great books. No, it was almost an instinct for self–preservation. There was one particular book (which I eventually read as an adult) that I got out of the school library and started at least five times—never getting beyond the third page.

Even now, with all the self–understanding I have, I can look at those three pages in Alan Garner’s Elidor and wonder what I discerned in them to make me shut the book and take it back. And then to try again—and think twice about having done so.

How did I know the rest of the story would destroy my hope in what life offers?

I’m a firm believer in a happy ending. Not necessarily within the story itself but it must hold out the promise that all will eventually be well. By ‘happy ending’, I’m not talking about a Pollyanna sweetness–and–light finale. Far from it. My all–time favourite movie is the seriously underrated Colossus: The Forbin Project which certainly doesn’t finish on an upbeat note. The world has just been taken over by a giant supercomputer which, in order to enforce its benign tyranny, kills anyone who stands between it and world peace. Yet the final scene, as Forbin vows never to yield leaves no doubt the fall of Colossus was inevitable in the face of an indomitable human spirit.

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Discovered or Improvised?

Back when I was at school, algebra was taught as a symbolic language. Over the years, the emphasis changed and, by the time I left mathematics teaching, it was being introduced through arithmetic patterns. Somehow I got the best of both worlds: I was equally at home with algebra as a language or as a system of recognising numerical relationships.

These two ways of thinking about the nature of equations could not be more different but I was fortunate in being able to move from one system to the other without missing a beat. Despite the disdain of modern mathematics educators for symbolic language, I’m deeply grateful I was brought up with it. Because the day came when I realised that, once you are fluent in one symbolic language, you have the essential grammar of them all.

Dream symbols operate according to the same rules of language as algebra; literary symbols often do too, especially when those symbols are ‘invented’ names within a ‘made-up’ plot.

In Discovered or Invented?, I looked at the question which perplexes some very eminent mathematicians: Is mathematics a construction of the human mind or does it exist somewhere ‘out there’, just waiting to be found?

In Discovered or Imagined?, I looked at a similar question in relation to fiction: Do storytellers make up their ‘secondary worlds’ or do the stories exist somewhere ‘out there’, just waiting to be told?

On an even deeper level: Are the names we think we ‘make up’ for characters simply a random conglomeration of suitable syllables or are they already ‘out there’, just waiting to be exposed?

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A Meshach Moment

A zillion years ago, back when I was in Grade 10, my history teacher gave my class an assignment on ‘totalitarianism’. I’d just started it when I happened to encounter the husband of a friend of my mum’s. He was from Poland, he’d been in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War and he was, so he feared, unable to return home because he’d be executed by the Soviet secret police. His hatred of both Germans and Russians was immense.

He asked about my homework. I told him and asked: ‘Would you say that it’s better to be without law than to endure a system like Stalinist Russia?’

Intense grey eyes suddenly bored into me. His answer was one I’ve never forgotten: ‘Any system of law, no matter how brutal, repressive or tyrannical, is better than none. When I was in the concentration camp, nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the barbarity of the time between the Nazis leaving and the Russians arriving. Any system of law is better than anarchy.’

As I’ve recalled this thought over the years, I’ve realised it contains the essence of a truth Christians have largely forgotten.

Law is an aspect of God’s grace.

According to Vishal Mangalwadi, until the eighteenth century, Christians took this as self-evident. The gift of the Ten Commandments freed mankind from anarchy and lawlessness. Yet human nature tends to inveterate law-breaking and so we desire mercy, not strict justice.

By the nineteenth century, mercy was seen to embody God’s grace but justice fell under a cloud. Into the twentieth century, theology separated law from grace—and so Christian colleges dropped their law departments or, if they retained them, the colleges themselves became increasingly secularised.

Mangalwadi comments that believers in America are currently appalled that every ‘Christian’ president has appointed mostly atheists as Supreme Court judges. But he also comments there’s no one else to choose. Without law students at Christian campuses, there’s a lack of faith-professing lawyers.

Now you may wonder what this has to do with writing. Quite a lot.

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The Emperor’s New Clothes?

I have a confession to make. It’s a fairly awkward one so I apologise in advance for displaying my shortcomings in public.

Some years ago, when I was helping to organise a writers’ conference, I received a phone call from an author who was interested in attending the event. ‘My work isn’t so much Christian,’ she mentioned, ‘as Christian worldview.’

Not wishing to appear totally rude or absolutely ignorant, I remained silent but I was perplexed. What on earth constituted ‘Christian worldview’? And what distinguished it from ‘Christian’?

Although this was the first time I heard the phrase, it’s something I’ve heard many times since. In fact, since that time, I’ve tried hard to educate myself about ‘Christian worldview’, particularly when it comes to writing. Without any success, I have to say. It’s a concept I’ve always found so subtle that I was never sure what it really meant. And it always seemed to me everyone else could detect it with ease while I blundered along in a fog. I’d try to work out some sort of definition for the idea but the more I thought about it, the more nebulous it got.

Numerous books were recommended to me for their marvellous ‘Christian worldview’ but I couldn’t see it at all in what I read. I found the notion increasingly difficult to comprehend; sometimes there was a rave review in front of me and all I could think was: ‘If I didn’t already know the author was a Christian, there’s absolutely nothing here to tell me differently.’

I kept fairly quiet about this thought because, until very recently, I was ashamed to say that it was something that had crossed my mind about some very notable Aussie and Kiwi Christian authors.  When aspiring writers mentioned they wrote from a ‘Christian worldview’, I’d get frustrated. To me, it was invisible, untouchable, undetectable.

I’ve even had my own fiction described as ‘Christian worldview’ and wondered which aspects of it qualified for that title and why. Sure, there are some specifically Christian concepts and embedded Scripture references in my fiction, but I was (and am) fairly sure most of them go over people’s heads unless I tell them what they are.

And those aspects aside, all that was left was a good, moral story. But good, moral stories don’t make a ‘Christian worldview’.  At least I don’t think they do. Good, moral stories make the work good and moral.  Stories of hope and light don’t make a ‘Christian worldview’. At least I don’t think they do. Bright hopeful stories make a work bright and hopeful. Epic battles between good and evil don’t make a ‘Christian worldview’. At least I don’t think they do. Epic battles between and good and evil define what’s good or evil.

It requires something far more to qualify as worldview.

I expressed this thought recently to another writer who recommended a wonderful novel she’d just read. We happened to be debating this question of ‘Christian worldview’ and she raised a valid point: it wasn’t necessary to a good book. She cited the novel she’d just read as an exemplar and mentioned the name of the author. ‘But she’s a Christian,’ I said.

‘I’d never have guessed that,’ was the reply.

There are complex issues arising from this. One of them is: if it’s impossible to tell the author is a Christian from their work, even if the work is very good, then does the work really have a ‘Christian worldview’?

With a huge sigh of relief, I have to say that I’ve realised at last that this is the wrong question. 

I was at a luncheon recently, listening to Vishal Mangalwadi, a speaker from India who is one of the world’s foremost evangelical thinkers. He made a number of points that finally laid all my queries, doubts and confusion to rest.

There is, he said, no such thing as Christian worldview in the twenty-first century.

There should be, he went on, but there isn’t. To illustrate his point, he narrated his visit to a university where he met a professor of applied physics. ‘How is it,’ he inquired of this expert, ‘that the energy dispersed by the Big Bang turned into clumps of matter? What sort of process was involved?’  After several minutes of discussion amongst his colleagues, the professor answered, ‘That’s not a question for applied physics. That’s not our field. You should ask a theoretical physicist that.’

Vishal later spoke to a professor of economics about the current crisis on Wall Street, suggesting that the corruption which has led to almost-global economic collapse might have been averted if students in economics and business courses had been given some moral framework in which to operate. The professor agreed entirely but said, ‘That’s not a question for economics. That’s not our field. It’s not my job to teach ethics; I’m an economist.’

The point, Vishal went on, is that modern academia puts subjects into silos. A reign of darkness dominates the intellectual life of the West. And in such a culture, there is no such thing as a worldview, just a view inside a silo.

The Bible too is inside a silo. It is meant to be the sun, lighting up every subject, every book, every endeavour, every discipline, every part of the world.  By its light, we are meant to see every aspect of creation and every activity of mankind: applied physics should not be separate from theoretical physics nor ethics from economics nor mathematics from poetry nor music from biology—nor any of them from the Bible.

Until all these aspects of knowledge are out of their silos, there can be no such thing as worldview.

I now understand why I couldn’t see ‘Christian worldview’ in modern novels. To distinguish between Christian and Christian worldview automatically negates any aspect of worldview.

Vishal’s idea is frankly medieval. It hasn’t been current since the Middle Ages. Still, if he’s right, then we’ve been duped. As in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale The Emperor’s New Clothes, we’ve not only been deceived but we’ve paid an exorbitant price for the privilege of getting nothing for something.

Perhaps you disagree with me and have an insight I’ve missed. If so, please take the opportunity to comment.

But if you do agree with me, I challenge you, as Vishal Mangalwadi challenged me, not to be, first and foremost, an apostle or prophet, teacher or miracle-worker or to look to any of the offices we’re encouraged to seek today. Rather, simply be a witness.

To create in your writing a truly Christian worldview by taking Christianity out of its silo and making it into your sun.

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In the twelfth century, the legends of King Arthur were enthusiastically embraced by the French. Lancelot appeared and was made famous in The Knight of the Cart, a poem by Chrétien de Troyes. Chrétien’s less famous foray into the world of Camelot is his poem, Erec and Enid.

In her essay Erec and Enide—Cosmic Measures in Nature and the Hebrew Heritage, Joan Helm looked at the significance of the numbers 1111 and 1742 within the poem’s structure. She connected 1111 to the mathematics of the City of God in the prophecy of Ezekiel and ultimately to the ‘kiss of heaven and earth’. There are other medieval poems with the same motif and numeric design.

Helm was a scholar at the University of Queensland who became internationally renowned for her discovery of mathematical architecture within Old French texts. She makes the point in Erec and Enid, moreover, that the old English land measurement system is not a hodgepodge but a deliberate construction, meant to reflect Ezekiel’s town plan of the New Jerusalem with its built-in 1111s. It seems to have been an ancient tradition that when heaven comes down to touch earth, somewhere below the orbit of the moon, there was a uniquely appropriate mathematical way to express it: using a series of ones.

Which is why I find this curious fact delightfully amusing: the Hubble Space Telescope weighs 11110 kg.

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DM Cornish

Around the age of fifteen or sixteen, when a boy has read sufficient science fiction or fantasy to aspire to create his own literary cosmos, he begins a monster story.

Why boys choose a variation on the name ‘Jabberwock’ for the monster and why the creature’s nature should be ambiguous rather than out-and-out evil is a question I’ve never resolved.*

An archetype is obviously involved. However, this does not explain why, of the seven basic plots identified by Christopher Booker, the choice consistently falls on ‘overcoming the monster.’ Nor why the name remains constant.

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