Modern Slavery? CPX Interview with Baroness Caroline Cox

Baroness Caroline Cox of Queensbury is a nurse, lecturer, author, advocate, humanitarian and cross-bench member of the House of Lords in Britain. She has lead a rich and full life that would fill the pages of an adventure novel. For decades she has worked to provide relief to people suffering in countries across the globe. Determined not to pontificate from afar, her policy has always to go where the people are and the trouble is at its worst. Her commitment and bravery in the face of real threat and deep discomfort is extraordinary.

This interview focuses on the reality of modern slavery. It is sad to think that despite the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain led by William Wilberforce, that slavery is such a significant issue around the world - and even in Australia.  Check out this video from CPX, then pray and think about what you can do:


Baroness Cox: Modern Slavery from CPX on Vimeo.

SATISFYING THE LAW??

In Chapter 5 of The Cross of Christ, Stott continues in the discussion of who is satisfied by the cross by asking the question 'Is it the law that is satisfied'?
He summarises this argument succinctly:

Sin is lawlessness (1 Jn 3:4), a disregard for God's law and disobedience to it. But the law cannot be broken with impunity. Sinners therefore incur the penalty of their law-breaking. They cannot simply be let off. The law must be upheld, its dignity defended and its just penalties paid. The law is thereby 'satisfied'.

The strength of this argument is that it recognises the justice or righteousness of God – in that His law is right and true demands an appropriate punishment.

Can a 16 Year-Old Girl Really Do Anything?

It was remarkable to see the reception that 16 year-old Jessica Watson received on her arrival in Sydney on Saturday. Tens of thousands of people turned out to welcome the girl that our Prime Minister called our "newest hero". As someone who has sailed around the world (HMAS Sydney, 1990, 450 foot ship, crew of 225, 6 months, lots of stops!) and experienced some of the challenges of being at sea in rough weather, I have nothing but respect for Jessica's efforts to sail around the world, solo, unassisted in a 34 foot boat in seven months!

Of course Jessica received a great deal of support from her parents and sponsors and was able to be in regular contact through the wonders of satellite communications. Nevertheless she had to face the challenges of solo sailing with all its inherent dangers, including huge seas which apparently knocked her boat over 7 times. It takes a special kind of mental toughness to tackle such a huge endeavour and to persevere to the end.

We might be thinking differently if there had been some accident or disaster. Many more experienced round-the-world sailors have failed in their attempts. Remember Tony Bullimore and Thierry Dubois – rescued by HMAS Adelaide from the Southern Ocean in 1997? Bullimore had to wait 5 days in his upturned boat before being rescued. Another competitor in the same race, Gerry Rouffs, lost his life.

But Saturday was all about celebrating Jessica's success. When the Prime Minister called Jessica a hero, she said:

I'm going to disagree with the Prime Minister. I don't consider myself a hero. I'm an ordinary girl who believed in her dream. You don't have to be someone special, or anyone special to achieve something amazing. You've just got to have a dream, believe in it and work hard.

They are inspiring words, but are they true? They certainly are a great encouragement to young people to dream great dreams and work hard to achieve them. While it is true that not everyone who dreams a dream and really believes in it will achieve their goal, it is also true that people who dream big and work hard to achieve their dream are more likely to achieve something!

This leads me to reflect on what young Christians dream about. Do we encourage our young people to dream great dreams for God and work hard to achieve them? Or are we happy to let them continue on with the same ambitions as the world around them? It is great for the 'old folks' to dream of reaching our city, nation and the world for God – when in reality our capacity to do the new things needed for such a mission are much more limited. But what if our young people started to dream big and started working on being and doing what is necessary to proclaim Christ to everyone around us? What if they were prepared to give up the small ambitions of the world and continue their whole lives working in God's strength to see His kingdom grow? Then we might indeed see great things done for God's kingdom in our own day.

SATISFYING THE DEVIL??

In Chapter 5 of The Cross of Christ, Stott examines a number of traditional views of what 'satisfaction' is achieved on the Cross. Was Jesus satisfying the devil?

The idea that on the cross Jesus satisfied the devil was apparently widespread in the early church. Stott suggests that the early church fathers were sometimes 'extremely injudicious' in the way they presented the devil's power and how the cross deprived him of it.

It is true that the Bible tells us that since the fall, mankind has been in captivity not only to sin and death, but also to the devil. Some of the (post-apostolic) early church fathers therefore thought of him as the major tyrant from whom Jesus came to liberate us.

Stott suggests that, with hindsight, we may detect three errors made by the early church fathers:

The Cross – Who is Satisfied??

Chapter 5 of John Stott's The Cross of Christ is on 'Satisfaction for Sin'. As Stott says, there are no words more likely to cause offence in discussions of the atonement than 'satisfaction' and the related term 'substitution'. He quotes Sir Alister Hardy, former professor of Zoology at Oxford and researcher into religious experience who describes his inability to come to terms with the 'crude' beliefs of many 'orthodox churchmen. Quoting from The Divine Flame (c. 1965) he says:

I feel certain that he [Jesus] would not have preached to us of a God who would be appeased by the cruel sacrifice of a tortured body. . . I cannot accept either the hypothesis that the appalling death of Jesus was a sacrifice in the eyes of God for the sins of the world , or that God, in the shape of his son, tortured himself for our redemption. I can only confess that, in my heart of hearts, I find such religious ideas to be among the least attractive in the whole of anthropology. To me they belong to quite a different philosophy – a different psychology – from that of the religion Jesus taught.'

Stott reminds us that opponents will often caricature the Christian understanding of the Cross in order to more readily condemn it. "The real question", he says, "is whether we can hold fast to the saving efficacy of the death of Jesus, and to its traditional vocabulary (including satisfaction and substitution) without denigrating God". His answer is "I believe we can and must."