Tag: Theology and Culture

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I Am Not OK

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Theology and Culture

Rev. Maddy Svoboda looks at not being ok, but embracing the quiet optimism of longing for a new world and to be new creations.

I am not ok

I In May 2024, an American rapper turned country and western singer (yes, you read that correctly) named Jelly Roll (you also read that correctly) released a song called ‘I am not OK’ at the season finale of American Idol 25. The song took with his raw, vulnerable and authentic lyrics centred around the challenges of living life in this day and age.  

Jelly Roll. PHOTO: Facebook @therealjellyroll

The chorus offers an open invitation to the listeners to join him in this modern version of a lament: 

I know I can’t be the only one who’s holding on for dear life. 

But God knows I know when it is all said and done 

I’m not ok, but it’s all going to be alright. 

It’s not ok, but we’re all going to be alright.

The quiet optimism of the hook

One article I read spoke of the “quiet optimism of the hook…building to the crescendo of ‘I’m not ok, but it’s all going to be alright/it’s not ok, but we’re all going to be alright”. What stood out to me as I listened to the song was the word ‘but’. It is a word that displays mystery and hope for me all at once. Mystery because I think we are living in an age where there is a prevalence of ‘I’m not ok/it’s not ok’.  

Justin Brierly, in his book ‘The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God,’ says younger generations are living through an ‘identity and meaning crisis’. We have an abundance of personal freedom (in our part of the world), but when our freedom cup runneth over, it leaves the cups of meaning, community and even identity depleted.  

We live in a world for our younger generations where mental health issues are pervasive, environmental issues and climate change leave people wondering what the future holds not in ethereal way, but in a tangible sense of danger and ominousness, and injustice appears rampant in most systems within our world.

Tolkien based Rivendell on his 1911 visit to Switzerland. Photo
By chensiyuan – chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
How do we get there?

In the midst of all this, the “but” speaks to a way of hope. I am not ok… “but”. It’s not ok… “but”. Things don’t have to stay here. I feel as though we have the longing for a new world and for us to be new creations but we are unsure of how to get there.  

Like the hobbits in the Prancing Pony at Bree, we need to get to Rivendell without knowing the way. We need a Strider who knows the way through the wilderness. Someone who has been through brokenness and come out beautiful. 

The story of Jesus is the story of someone who goes through death and comes out into new life. The story of someone who knows deeply who they are and because of that, they can serve with a subversive, self-sacrificial love and they set us an example to do the same (John 13:1-17). May we become people who become like Jesus, willing to die to ourselves and be raised to new life for the sake of others. 

Maddy Svoboda
Rev. Maddy Svoboda


Rev. Maddy Svoboda is the pastor at Summerhill Baptist, and represents the Greater Launceston churches on the Tasmanian Baptists Mission Leadership Team.

I am not ok

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Demolishing Barriers, Crossing Divides

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Deep Thought

Easter has come and gone for another year. It’s a wonderful time to celebrate the heart of our faith—the death and resurrection of Jesus and the hope that comes with it.  

Now that Easter is over, it’s valid to ask, “so what?”

Sure, it’s a reassurance that death is not the end of it all, but what difference does it make to your life today, tomorrow or next week? 

At Hobart Baptist Church, on Resurrection Sunday, I focussed on the event recorded in Matthew, where the Temple curtain is violently torn, from top to bottom. This happened the moment Jesus died.  

The curtain was a massive fabric barrier made of purple, blue, and scarlet material, interwoven with fine linen. It was about 18 metres high and 100cm thick. Its presence was to set a boundary between the Holy of Holies, the most sacred space where God was present and humans were not, from the rest of the Temple.  

Although God put this barrier in place in the design of the tabernacle, now God sets about destroying it. That’s the significance of it being torn from the top. 

A Holy Place

The Jews thought they understood holiness, and the temple was central. Jesus, however, had a very different vision and that’s what got him killed. He was Immanuel, God with us, crossing that barrier that divides. Sure, God is holy, righteous and pure, just as the curtain illustrated, but not in a way that makes God distant and hateful of whatever is unholy. God is love, pure unadulterated love.  

Image of torn paper with quote: Jesus was Immanuel, God with us, crossing that barrier that divides.

But that’s not all. The gospel writers record a second important event. At exactly the same time Jesus died and the curtain was ripped, the Centurion executing Jesus had a profound “ah-ha” moment.   

As high-ranking officer in the Roman army, he had most likely witnessed hundreds of crucifixions. Yet, this one was somehow different, and he was deeply moved. 

This is profound. Not only because he responded, “Surely this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39), but because God met him in a most unholy place. Here, in a pagan setting outside the temple and the city while executing God’s specially chosen Messiah, God is still at work, demolishing the barriers, crossing the divides.  

Image of torn paper with quote: God the Centurion in a most unholy place. Here, in a pagan setting outside the temple and the city while executing God’s specially chosen Messiah

This changes everything and should change our tomorrows. The God who is there, who Jesus revealed through his death and resurrection, is most surprising. Contrary to our expectations… if God can meet the centurion while he supervised the crucifixion of the beloved son, God can meet you anywhere. Your ordinary life, no matter where it is at, is no barrier to God meeting you, if you are willing to meet God.  

This is a “so what” worth celebrating every day.

Stephen Baxter

Stephen L. Baxter is Mission Director for Tasmanian Baptists

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Gender Diversity

Gender Diversity. Theology and Culture - a new column in reCharge

Theology and Culture

A new regular offering in reCharge

Your daughter is wearing pants, your son wears nail polish, and you’re not quite sure if the person behind the counter was a man or a woman. Scare tactics and confusion around the younger generations focus of gender is everywhere. How we handle that as Christians matters for the mission of Christ.

By Liam Conway

Gender is the broad characteristics of women, men, girls, and boys that are socially constructed. It includes social rules for what a man does, what a woman does, what toys we give children, and who takes whose last name when we’re married. Gender bumps shoulders with sex, and sexuality, but it is primarily social, the rules and scripts for who does what. Different cultures will have different rigidity between sex and gender, and that rigidity is presently very loose in modern western culture.

A lot of our gender rules come from Victorian era or post-WWII understandings of what men and women do. Men work, women stay home; men do public things, women deal with private things; men are protective, women are nurturing. And whilst there is some biological basis in these divisions, the main reason we have these rules is simply because we have them.

Biblical Context

The Bible’s context for gender is bound in culture. Whether that be the context of Ancient Israel, or the Roman Empire, there was a gendered understanding of family. The Father was the head, and the rest of the family was subordinate. Men could contemplate God, woman were at higher risk of being unclean. Rarely did both sexes mix in religious contexts.

Until Jesus. Jesus is often seen in womanly spaces like wells (John 4:4-42) and he encourages women to sit with him and learn (Luke 10:38-42). Jesus scandalously broke from purely male spaces, and he sat in them, such as the courts of the Temple debating pharisees.

Early Church

In the early church, women sat as deacons, Paul sends greetings to the woman Junia, “apostle with them” in Romans 16:7, women learnt and spoke alongside men in services, a practice unheard of and bizarre to the Roman world. In the early church, some gender norms were upheld, but others were able to be rejected for the sake of the kingdom of God.

For early Christians both men and women all needed Christ, so all were welcome. Many of the earliest followers were women, giving the Faith a sense of being womanly, and unbecoming for the Roman Man. Gender roles and rules have their place, but they have always been flexible within the faith.

What is our Call?

Theologically speaking, our call is to serve and live with God and be conformed to God. Gender can be an element of that. For some of us, it is very important that we are conformed to the rules that our body aligns with most. For others these rules can highlight the effects of sin in our world as they discriminate the image of God, and conforming to them would diminish the ability to conform to God. We should trust in God, and remember Romans 14 that we should not judge, and trust in God’s work in the hearts of those we may disagree with.

Liam Conway

Liam Conway is Associate Pastor at Riverlands, Longford.
He was born and raised in Hobart, graduated from UTas with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Psychology. He is now the associate Pastor of Riverlands community church and is studying his Master of Divinity.

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What do we do with the Past?

What do we do with the paast? Theology and Culture - a new column in reCharge

Theology and Culture

A new regular offering in reCharge

Both remembering and forgetting are important actions

Our country is currently grappling with the referendum. The question of the past is at the core of why this referendum is taking place, and why it is so difficult to discuss. Ponder on these thoughts as Australia moves closer to the referendum date.

By Rev Dr Megan Powell du Toit

Nations, families, relationships, and individuals all have pasts and memories. We all know the difficulty of a relationship in which hurts of the past are continually brought up and rehashed, with no real resolution. On the other hand, it is also a common experience to be frustrated by situations in which the past is ignored, even though it continues to affect the present.

Memory is an oft-visited topic within the stories we tell. Apple TV series Severance, released last year, imagines a company in which people are able to sever their work memories from their outside work memories. It is sold as an ideal work-life balance in which work does not impinge on your outside life. But human life is not so easily divided, and memory is core to identity. Memory is essential to living as a moral human being in the world.

"Memory is essential to living as a moral human being in the world." Megan Powell du Toit

A 20-year-old movie comes to my mind as I think about the significance of the past. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a film in which two people decide to undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories. But the film suggests reality and identity are more complex than that. Forgetting parts of the past will not bring about the desired change. The sun does not shine for the amnesiac.

In the Scriptures

How is the past treated in the Bible? The concept of remembering is laden with the idea that memory affects action in the present. When God remembers the people of Israel, it means God keeps the promises made to them.

Memory is connected to faithful love. God sees their troubles and acts to save. In Exodus 2:24 tells how the saving act of the exodus occurs because “God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.”

The people of Israel are also to engage in remembering. They are to remember the God who saved them and not to lose heart. They also have a law code which insists upon their active remembering of their past as enslaved people.

This memory is to continually result in just action in the present towards others. For instance, in the Deuteronomy 5 account of the 10 Commandments, they are to keep sabbath along with both servants and foreigners, for they are to “remember that you were slaves in Egypt.” (v15).

"The Israelites have a law code which insists upon active remembering of [BEING] enslaved." Rev. Megan Powell du Toit Publishing Manager Australian College of Theology

Action in the present

Yet we are also told, God will remember our sins no more (e.g. Jer 31:34, Heb 8:12). Forgetting, like remembering, is about action in the present. This means that God will not act in judgment against them. This is the consequence of what Jesus has done on the cross.

Yet we are also told, God will remember our sins no more

Our sins have been borne by Jesus. So, sins cannot ever be treated as if they did not occur. They are “forgotten” here because restitution has been made.

After weeping recently, I was comforted when I recalled that God wipes away tears as we enter the time to come (Rev 21:4). That is, the tears are not forgotten. They are lovingly tended as we enter into new life.

So, what do we do with the past? The past, and our memories of it, are part of who we are and how we love. As we exist within our various communities, we are called to remember, and forget, in ways which seek the good of all and enact justice. 

Rev Dr Megan Powell du Toit is a Sydney-based Baptist minister, editor, writer, academic, and podcaster. She is Publishing Manager at the Australian College of Theology and co-hosts the podcast With All Due Respect. She is also the Editor of Colloquium: The Australian and New Zealand Theological Review

October/November/December 2023

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