Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church

First a confession: I’ve watched MasterChef.

I’ve never had much of an interest. Still don’t, but we had family staying and they’re big fans.

I saw the episode where—shock—Marion Grasby lost. Apparently, she’d become the one to beat. Apparently, her satay sauce tasted great, but it didn’t look as appealing as the other competitor’s.

As a non-viewer introduced to the players only this past week, Marion’s loss didn’t mean much to me. It did to those staying with us. Even the other contestants thought so.

Marion is obviously a loser, or is she?

We all lose some time, at something. Does that make us a loser?

There’s a difference between losing at something and being a loser. We will have losses—that’s a part of life. Being a loser is an attitude that not only expects to lose, but lives as if your life calling is to be a failure.

Marion will never be master chef, she’s lost her chance. But she’s well on her way to achieving her goals. She’s already announced her own line of gourmet products—including her satay sauce. She’s rumoured to become “a face” of Coles supermarkets. And she’s already signed to be the first contestant to have a column in the new MasterChef Magazine.

Marion’s agent, Lisa Sullivan, says her phone has “rung off the hook” with offers. “There have been so many enquiries, for publishing deals to appearances for Marion,” she told Richard Clune of The Sunday Telegraph (“Marion Grasby tipped to be MasterChef millionaire,” July 10, 2010). “Her future is bright.”

“I get shocked at these sorts of things,” says Marion in the same article. “I feel I’ve been working really hard for not much reward since I quit journalism two years ago. It’s amazing.”

She’s no loser. Taking a loss doesn’t make you a loser.

Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church

“Will someone put their hand up and admit that we’re not an international soccer nation?” That was “Reper’s” comment in response to an ABC News story on the Internet about the drubbing Australia took Monday morning. In case you missed it, Germany beat Australia 4–0 in their World Cup soccer match.

Hands up those who got up early enough to watch it (a 4.20 am start time). Yes, I thought so. Thankfully, it was a long weekend.

I was there—in the lounge room. As an Australian watching from afar, it was embarrassing.

“Hank” said, “We played like a bunch of school kids. The team was lazy, undisciplined, no cohesion and no intelligence.”

Hank won’t be on the team’s Christmas card list this year. Neither will “Hector,” who suggested those who play soccer recognised “the football lesson being inflicted on the Australian team.” He said the team has a bad reputation for “biffo,” the lesson deserved.

Among the comments, though, some were positive. “Nat” encouraged the team to focus on the next two games—“Come on Aussie, come on!” “Carol Niemann” wrote about wanting to email the team to say she was not disappointed in them.

Even “Markitos,” a German who lived in Australia, was supportive. He said he was surprised at how well Germany played. Because of this, he felt Australia has a chance of winning against Ghana and Serbia. “So good luck, Mates!” (did you hear the German accent?).

Australia has qualified for the World Cup only three times. The team is not expected to win it. It’s easy to kick a team when it’s down. That’s when it’s easy to see the faults and look for blame.

But we’ve all been there. We’ve all failed. Sometimes badly. That’s life. And that’s when we need support and respect, and encouragement.

Soccer’s only a game. Life isn’t.

Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church

Christianity broke into a Greco-Roman world full of deities and gods with its belief of an unbridgeable gap between humanity and divinity. The gods didn’t care about humans, but they were formed by humans.

Aphrodite, the goddess of love, for instance, was considered in most places as a sexually driven being who caused grief in marriage and life. But she appeared elsewhere as a protector of cities and a protector of marriage within these cities.

Christians entered this world and surprised people by first saying there is but one God (capital “G”). They were accused of being atheists because it was obvious to everyone else there were many gods.

Then they made the stunning claim God cared about people. “The simple phrase ‘For God so loved the world . . .’ would have puzzled an educated pagan,” writes Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity. “And the notion that the gods care how we treat one another would be dismissed as patently absurd.”

But this understanding had a huge advantage because Christian teachings and faith helped make life meaningful—particularly during times of trauma. During epidemics, pagan priests and philosophers could find no meaning in or for them, and doctors fled the scene to save their own lives.

Dionysius (d 265), writing after an epidemic had ravaged the Empire for several years, noted while pagans were terrified, Christians greeted the epidemic as a “schooling and testing.” During these times, not only did Christianity explain what was happening (evil is found in our world in various forms) and comfort (God still cared about them and was with them in times of trouble), it provided something positive to do (care for those who were suffering).

Nothing’s changed.

Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church

Christianity has gone out of favour. It no longer holds the place it once did within society. There’s no expectation you will be Christian. Christianity is often seen as the odd religion, an old-fashioned religion or a superstition whose time has passed.

It’s now fashionable to take on an Eastern religion or a mix of New Age philosophies or to develop your own boutique religion, however bizarre.

Then there’s the impact of evangelical neo-atheists peddling their no-God wares. It’s becoming hip and seen as intellectually honest to be an atheist, and to criticise religion—any religion, and particularly Christianity—as something like a “virus of the mind” (Richard Dawkins’s description).

The Bible no longer has the respect it once did. Any authority it had is often rejected out of hand—and considered not helpful for real life.

Postmodernism has challenged a Christianity that had settled comfortably into a modernist way of thinking (developed in the late 19th century) despite both Darwin and Marx being influential in its philosophy and its assumption there is no compassionate, all-powerful God.

Not all modernism is anti-Christian, however, and neither is all of postmodernism. Postmodernism with its rejection of objective truth (meaning that truth is found within you), though, is a direct challenge to the Bible and the claims of Jesus.

The power of secular media and Hollywood to take a mostly anti-Christian message—particularly an anti-Christian lifestyle message—to almost every person on earth needs to be added into this mix.

So, how do we respond?

Almost 1800 years ago and living in a pagan world, Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage (d 258), told his flock, “We must labour not with words, but with deeds.”

Here is our response: being Christian. It’s that simple, and that difficult.

Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church

Reading some Seventh-day Adventist websites, you get the feeling Adventists are holding their breath waiting for decisions from the General Conference session in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The session, held every five years, has 2400 delegates meet to vote in leaders, debate issues and make or adjust policies for the worldwide church.

The session lasts for 11 days—it finished on Saturday, July 3. In the evenings, delegates receive reports from each of the divisions of the General Conference. On the Sabbaths of session, the delegates join other Adventists in worship. About 40,000 attended the first Sabbath. These meetings and Sabbaths are memorable—the business sessions tend not to be, unless there’s a contentious issue.

In an organisational chart of the Adventist Church, you’d find the General Conference (GC) at the top. At the bottom is us, the local church. We’re part of a conference of churches (the North New South Wales Conference, to be precise); each conference is a part of a union of conferences (ours is the Australian Union Conference); and each union is a part of one of the 13 divisions of the General Conference (ours is the South Pacific Division).

One of the reasons you won’t find many people holding their breath about the meetings is the distance from where we are to the GC. Most decisions at that level have minimal impact in local churches. Some emphases will be passed down the line and churches will, to varying degrees, work with them.

A new president of the General Conference was elected on the first Friday of the session—Ted Wilson. His is a difficult task. He needs our prayers. We should also pray for those meeting at the GC session. The decisions made are important.

Of course, any level of the Adventist Church that forgets its main role is to support and encourage the local congregation, has lost its purpose. That’s not harsh, that’s reality.