Good thing

It was a good thing to hear Tim Costello at one of our local churches last night. The CEO of World Vision Australia was congratulating the local Blackwood community for last year's support of the 40 Hour Famine and inspiring us for this year's (see the You Tube clip below)

Whilst the worship was nothing like my cup of tea (despite the younger S Clark leading the worship team and the youngest S Clark singing alongside her) Costello spoke gently and persuasively. It was in fact good to be allowed to hear him, a Baptist minister, address the Gospel; so often he has to speak in a secular context that ti was good to hera him preach.

He spoke about Luke 8:26-39. An exorcism story in which Jesus casts out a whole lot (legion) of demons into a herd of pigs who then career into the sea of Galilee. Almost worthy of Monty Python!

I found myself wondering how he was going to connect it. His point. It is not until we go over the other side, and prick the bubble of our sheltered lives that we even begin to understand these complex problems.

His point being that the 40 Hour Famine (as tokenistic as it might be) goes a little way to prick the bubble. An interesting and, I thought, helpful point.

It was also good to see the young Greens' Senator Sarah Hansen-Young there and have a little chat with her. I'll tell you about that in the next blog

I quite like gambling as fun

I like the idea of gambling as fun, the trouble is that it easily degenerates into something nasty.
It was interesting to watch Peter Newell at the National Press Club yesterday trying to justify Clubs Australia's massive ongoing investment in poker machines. As a media professional he handled himself competently and dealt with tricky questions by not answering them or by answering another question altogether.
Controversial amongst his answers was the proposed '6 Point Plan' which includes a strategy to allow family members to dob problem gamblers in. This would seem to be fraught with difficulty, and even in SA where this has had some limited testing the results have been woefully small (less than 15 people in two years).
I feel sorry for the community clubs, they are not the real villains I suspect. Casinos and other totally dedicated gambling venues are a different thing altogether; hotels who have totally redesigned their operations around cheap drinks and food designed to lure the gambler in; are these ethical.
Tim Costello asked Newell "What level of revenue is it ethical for venues to make from problem gamblers?" He had the good sense to not answer it, it is a wife-beating question. It is also like asking a publican how much money they can ethically take from alcoholics and other problem drinkers! Or supermarkets how much chocolate they can ethically sell to the obese.
In a State where a person was shot this week because they were dealt a 'lucky hand' at cards, which someone didn't like, we can indeed see that gambling is fraught with high emotions and distortions