Whose Timetable?

I made the decision to follow Jesus and join the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in 1980. From early on in my subsequent journey I felt certain I would one day end up in the Ministry. Back then that would have meant leaving a young family in Melbourne - my wife and I having divorced - while I went off to Avondale College to study. That I felt was God's way of telling me the time was not right.

In 1989 I started working for the Church in occupational health and safety and then, in 1996 I was transferred to Sydney. The feeling grew stronger. In 1999 I discussed the matter with someone whose counsel I valued. At this stage I had a Diploma of Science (OHS) and a graduate diploma of health education. If I had held a degree I would have qualified for entry into a graduate diploma of theology - a two year program. My friend counselled me to pray about the calling, to apply for Avondale on the basis of my qualifications and see what happened. Given my family situation - I had remarried and had a young child - he advised that if I were accepted into the graduate diploma I should see that as a confirmation of the call and if not, then perhaps I should give the idea of ministry away.

Avondale replied. They would accept me into their degree program and give me recognition of three units towards it which meant almost four years study. A month or so later I was accepted into a graduate diploma of OHS by Newcastle University with advanced standing of three subjects. That left me five to complete, which I did in 2000, the year of the Sydney Olympics.  That was hard work, with three second semester subjects. But I came very close to making a mess of one unit.

Most subjects were assessed on the basis of assignments presented over the course of the semester.  In the second semester there were two exams at a centre in Redfern. On the exam notification letter the exams were listed, but in reverse order. That is, the exam for Tuesday was listed below Wednesday's exam. So, on Tuesday morning, after taking the day off to study believing the first exam was the following day, I had a relaxed breakfast and then for some unknown reason checked the timetable one last time. Then the panic hit. I had an exam at an unfamiliar location in Redfern in a little over an hour and I was still in my pyjamas. Quick change - long pants, tee-shirt and thongs. Grab a few pens, wallet, and call my wife to drive me to the nearest train station - Waitara. I got her to stop opposite the station, figuring it would be quicker to risk all by dodging the traffic rather than wait for the lights to change so she could to turn across it into station dropoff area. Hardly a ‘put safety first’ decision but as it turned I just made the train.

Fortunately I had a map showing the location of the exam centre and I memorised that on the train. Disembarking at Redfern I ran towards my destination, getting ever more drenched by the pouring rain and trying to avoid slipping in wet thongs. I made it, 10 minutes into the 15 minute reading time. Five minutes later I would have been refused entry. And there I sat, with a combination of sweat and rain drops dripping continuously onto the paper. The rain had not let up by the time the exam was over so after I had walked home from Wahroonga station I could not have been more bedraggled. 

As I reflected on that hectic morning I felt assured that I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do. At the end of the year I had achieved the standard required to gain entry to the university's Master of OHS degree which I completed in 2002. This required the successful completion of a research project of my own choosing. I focussed on  what it took to effectively manage OHS and compared this to the current practice in selected denominational workplaces.

I looked at topics such as leadership, total quality management,  management systems, risk management and best practice. As it was only a short work from home to my office I did most of my work in the office after dinner to avoid distractions. There I sat one night with all these different topics running around in my head when suddenly it was as if the lights were flashing and the bells ringing. In that moment all these different concepts meshed into a unified whole. Now I understood how each related to the others.

This one moment changed forever the way I approached my job and it enabled me to see how OHS fitted into the bigger picture of organisational management.

It was not long after this that I was driving north to Yarrahapinni, a Church youth camp at Grassy Head on the NSW North Coast not far from Macksville, to present at an outdoor ministry leaders’ training weekend. Mainly through local churches the Adventist Church runs various outdoor adventure activities for teens, such as bushwalking, camping, canoeing, kayaking and abseiling. Safety management is of course essential to the proper conduct of these activities.

As I travelled alone in the car with nothing for company but my thoughts I was reflecting on one of my presentations and my recent learnings. ‘If only I had completed my Master’s earlier’ I was thinking. ‘I could have done my job so much better.’ Then it happened. It was clear, distinct, masculine, as if someone were sitting in the seat next to me. ‘Whose  timetable are you following?’ It was both sobering and humbling.

If not that same weekend it was not too much later that I made a presentation giving a Biblical basis for the importance of health and safety management to the leaders. I focussed on Jesus's concern for the physical well-being of people as evidenced by His healing ministry and how that concern was demonstrated in well planned activity where priority was given to making sure it was planned and run safely.

It was well received. People came up to me with words like ‘Thanks Ken, what you are doing is real ministry’. They are words I would hear again, especially from those who worked with children and young people. 

Never again did I feel that call to ministry, for in that experience I knew that I was ministering in a unique way to the Church. More importantly, I had been taught a valuable lesson, one I have often needed to remind myself of. It is summed up in these words from Psalm 37:5 ‘Be still in the presence of the LORD, and wait patiently for him to act ... ‘ (TLV).

Design's Appeal

A quest for knowledge can at times take one to places they would never have imagined. This was my experience on my second posting to Butterworth, Malaysia, with the RAAF in the latter half of the 1970s.

Soon after arriving I took up Taekwondo, determined to achieve black belt in the 30 months I would spend there. I did. But as I got fitter I began to wonder about diet and whether or not I could improve physically through it. So I began to read. The first book I read was  written by Adelle Davis. She advocated high amounts of meat protein along with whole grain foods and vegetables, a strange start for someone who eventually reached the conclusion that a predominantly plant based diet was the way to go. But that is a different story.

I remember reading a discussion on a wheat grain. It has all these layers, each one providing something essential for our wellbeing. Once we start playing with that, throwing one part away to get more of another, we begin to upset our nutritional balance. For the first time in my life I began to wonder at the complexity of life, how one thing seemed so dependent on another, and I came to the firm conviction that all of this could not happen by chance.

You may have heard of the anthropic principle. In effect, this says the entire universe looks as if it was designed to support life as we know it. According to proponents for life to exist the universe must be a certain age, the expansion of the universe after Big Bang must have been at the right speed - not too fast or too slow. Our sun must likewise be a certain age, our planet a certain size and distance from the sun, have the right atmospheric mix, and more. The odds of one of these factors occurring by pure chance is astronomical, the odds of them all occurring makes our existence as a result of pure chance entirely unbelievable.  

Of course those such as Professor Richard Dawkins dismiss the idea, arguing that we are here and as improbable as that may be, luck happens.

Michael Denton, in his 1985 book ‘Evolution: A Theory in Crisis’, writes:

The intuitive feeling that pure chance could never have achieved the degree of complexity and ingenuity so ubiquitous in nature has been a continuing source of skepticism ever since the publication of the Origin of the Species; and throughout the past century there has always existed a minority of first-rate biologists who have never been able to bring themselves to accept the validity of Darwinian claims …

Perhaps in no other area of modern biology is the challenge posed by the extreme complexity and ingenuity of biological adaptations more apparent than in the fascinating new molecular world of the cell … To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the portholes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity …

… Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which - a functional protein or gene - is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, in every sense of anything produced by the intelligence of man?

Not the latest military jet. I spent more than seven years with the Mirage
Australia's first supersonic aircraft.

That, for me, is the challenge. Imagine if you will a room full of all the components to make something like a car, computer or the latest military jet. Then imagine we could in some way continually shake and shift that room, allowing all the components to move around and come in contact with each other. How long would it take for that car, computer or jet to be ready for use? And remember, we have already assembled the various components. For that living cell, something far more complex, to develop by chance each of its component parts would first need to self assemble from raw materials.

Science is basically built on observation, measurement, experimentation and testing. The more we observe, measure, experiment and test the more certain we can be of our conclusions, provided of course that our efforts and that of others lead to the same results.

We have all seen something as common as a house brick of a wooden plank. Intuitively we know that someone somewhere designed that brick or plank, and that whoever made the product followed the designer’s pattern. Bricks and planks have been fundamental to human housing and other projects for thousands of years, yet there is no known incident of such simple articles happening by chance. This afternoon I walked up the street. No one in their wildest imagination would suggest the road, the footpath, telephone poles or fences I saw all just happened as a result of chance, let alone be assembled in the way they are in my street. Yet I am supposed to accept that the flowers, trees, birds and other living things I saw, exceedingly more complex, just happened.

I can’t. It contradicts everything I observe, and it contradicts all that has ever been observed, measured and tested in human history. You all know the story of the Emperor's New Clothes - everyone commended the Emperor on how magnificent he appeared until a little boy called out ‘The Emperor has no clothes.’ I feel the same way about the claims that we are all here by nothing other than chance random processes.

Made for Life

In my mind Genesis 1 is perhaps the most majestic statement in Scripture. God speaks, His will is expressed. I fear that we have lost sight of this in all our arguments over the literalness or otherwise of the creation days.

In the New Living Translation the word ‘said' appears 10 times, each time the speaker being God. As it was commanded into existence the earth was an expression of its Creator’s will. It was made to teem with life in all its different forms.

So we find in Isaiah 45:18 the following words: ‘For the Lord is God, and he created the heavens and earth and put everything in place. He made the world to be lived in, not to be a place of empty chaos’, a statement that clearly recalls the chaos of Genesis 1:1,2.

Human beings were charged with responsibility to care for the creation in Genesis 1:28 when God said “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”

Responsibility is always accompanied by accountability. A time will come when humanity is called upon to account for the responsibility entrusted to them as is seen in Revelation 11:18: ‘The nations were filled with wrath, but now the time of your wrath has come. It is time to judge the dead and reward your servants the prophets, as well as your holy people, and all who fear your name, from the least to the greatest. It is time to destroy all who have caused destruction on the earth.”’

And that is all of us. Yet the whole purpose the Bible exists is to point us to Jesus Christ whose grace means we can if we want to experience the earth as it was meant to be experienced in the beginning.

Bible quoted: The New Living Translation.