SRE & Ethics

I wrote this letter to the SMH today. Let's see if it gets published!

Joan Bielski (letters April 21st) may have stumbled onto a key issue in the debate over SRE lessons. When she cavalierly dismisses many Christian SRE lessons as ‘amateurish’ she is simply stating a fact – the teachers are amateurs. One wonders if the government is going to pay for the training of Ethics teachers or if they are going to ask current School teachers to do this job – not really fair either way. However, if they ask parents and other volunteers to join in (as for SRE) then after the launch hype has died down (in a year or two) I can hardly imagine kindies skipping home gleefully on a Friday arvo saying, “Yeah, we drew a picture of an ethic again today.”

John Smuts, Lewisham

Handel's Bible Overview

We headed in to St. Andrew's last night for Handel's Messiah. It was a great performance and the girls seemed to genuinely engage with it ... although were a bit bored by the end!

Two things that struck me:

1. The libretto (I didn't know what that meant either) is basically the Bible set to music. And most of it is from the OT - a little 1 Corinthians and Revelation at the end, a smattering of gospels, but most of it is from Isaiah, Malachi and the Psalms . He changes the odd pronoun here and there but essentially he just puts the OT down on paper and it is obvious (at least to him) how it all points to Jesus. So many Christians today are either scared or bored of the OT, and yet (according to Jesus himself) it is all about the Christ (Luke 24: 27).

We took some neighbours along and Emily helped them (and Sophie) follow in the Bible as Handel took us through the message of the whole Bible. I suppose it is a musical Bible Overview.

2. I didn't know that the audience is supposed to stand during the Hallelujah Chorus. Some research this morning tells me that it might have been started by King George II. But I didn't know that last night. Then I was just another Philistine made to feel an outsider from the club. I guess that is often how non-Christians feel at church.