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Very quick plug for street parties, John. They are so easy to organise. We say street parties, I don't actually mean closing down the street. That bit turns out to be kind of complicated due to strange local council rules. But if you want to have your neighbours around for a barbecue in December, it is fiendishly straightforward to organise. Tell me how to do it. We pull out last year's invitation. I
I can send you the invitation if you like. We change the date. The magic acronym of BYO means we don't have to buy food for the entire street. We letterbox it a couple of weeks beforehand, and then magically on the day the neighbours turn up, we spend two hours on a Saturday afternoon getting to know them. Now, we really quite like our neighbours.
But it would be worth doing even if we detested our neighbours because we live off the benefits of that street party for the rest of the year. We say g'day to people in the street. When we go away on holidays, someone will bring in the bins or collect the mail. And as I said before, if anyone walks out the front of our house wearing a balaclava, it is a neighbour who's been to the street party who's much more likely to call the cops than someone who hasn't.
That's Andrew Lee talking about his own street in Canberra where he lives with his family as a federal member of parliament and the shadow assistant treasurer. He thinks Australia is disconnected and he's written a book about it called Disconnected. He spends a whole chapter outlining why the decline of religion is making social cohesion in Australia worse.
And he also describes the benefits to society of having more religious believers. Now, to be clear, Andrew says in his book that he's an atheist. That made me want to speak to him all the more. He can't sign on to the church's theological views, but he can see the good that religion does in society. And he's done a truckload of research to prove it. I'm John Dixon, and this is Undeceptions. Undeceptions
Every week we'll be exploring some aspect of life, faith, history, culture or ethics that is either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. With the help of people who know what they're talking about, we'll be trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth out.
Social capital is the idea that the networks of trust and reciprocity that link us together have some inherent value. Economists have long recognised that physical capital like bridges, roads and cars has value. And in the 1960s we came to agree that human capital, the skills and education that we acquire also has an economic value.
And then in the beginning of the 21st century came the idea of social capital, the notion that the networks themselves matter, that societies can do better when they're better interconnected and individuals are more likely to prosper when they have more ties to others.
Andrew Lee is pretty impressive. Professor at 36, PhD from Harvard University, a lawyer in one of London's top law firms, associate for the then Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby. Andrew also hosts his own podcast, The Good Life, where he interviews people on living a happy, healthy and ethical life. You should really check it out.
I drove down to Canberra to talk to him and found him to be incredibly personable and really easy to talk with. For a nerd's nerd, he was fab. It's worth heading to his website actually just to see his chosen profile pic. A seemingly loving family photo until you spot his youngest boy off to the left looking super grumpy. It's seriously cute. We'll put a link in the show notes of this episode.
Lee worked in Robert Putnam's research team while working at Harvard. This is one of the big names in social capital research. It prompted Andrew to come back to Australia and figure out what's going on here. His book, Disconnected, took him 10 years to write because research on social capital in Australia isn't easy to find.
Pretty much I found that the measures for Australia looked to be on the wane. Whether it was churchgoing or union membership, membership of the scouts, guides, rotary lines, political engagement, all of those things seemed to be on the wane in Australia. Hence the title Disconnected.
I asked him if this was just part of a desire to go back to a simpler time, you know, looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses, you know, a time when there was no social media to distract us and so on. But Andrew said, nup, there's hard data to underline the fact that civic connectedness is slipping away.
So we know people who are more socially connected tend to be healthier. It's been suggested that complete social isolation can be as bad as being a chronic smoker or a chronic drinker for your health. We also know that we've seen significant declines on a whole range of metrics.
One of the ones that worries me is we surveyed Australians on the number of friends and neighbours that they're close to and estimated that from 1984 through to 2018, where we've just updated the survey, the average Australian had shared two or three neighbours who they knew well and five to six close friends. So we'd seen this complete collapse in informal socialising.
which I think not only has economic consequences, but also means we're missing out on one of the wonderful aspects of life. Social capital makes economies work better. If I don't trust you at all, it's very hard for the two of us to do commerce together. John, you think about all the ways in which I might diddle you, and I'm constantly thinking of all the ways in which you might rip me off. We have to write a tremendously complicated contract, whereas if we trust one another, we can do commerce by a handshake.
At a local level, social capital means that organisations function more effectively, more people on the P&C helps the school prosper. And at an even more local level, knowing people on your street means that if someone, a stranger is seen carrying your television out the front door, your neighbour is more likely to stop than if they have no idea of your name and couldn't tell you from a bar of soap.
There's a really substantial chapter on religion and social capital. And you begin, I don't know if I detected nervously, but you begin the chapter by sort of saying, you know, you like the new atheist outlook on science and rationality. I bristled a little bit at that. But then you sort of said there is a perception amongst that set, not you, but that set, that religion poisons everything.
Just before we get into the details of that, where does that perception do you think come from?
Well, I think there's many people who look at religion purely theologically and feel that they're not able to accept the beliefs in certain religious texts and therefore reject not just the books but the community that is built around those key books. There's people who argue that religious violence has harmed more people than religious altruism has helped.
I think empirically that's incorrect but certainly the world has seen significant outbreaks of religious violence at certain moments in history. You just need to think about the history of Northern Ireland or of Iraq to see instances in which religion has caused mayhem at certain moments in history. So I think that's the kind of critique that people are coming to religion with but missing the fact that...
Traditionally, those who have gone to church have been more likely to volunteer in their local communities, even putting aside their religious volunteering.
more likely to donate money, even putting aside their religious giving. Churchgoers, for example, are more likely to donate blood, a fact that Robert Putnam uncovers in his terrific book American Grace. Putnam sums it up by saying that religious people are just nicer, not because they're congenitally nicer. They weren't nicer before they turned up at the church or the synagogue or the mosque. But being there puts them in a milieu in which people ask them to help out and in which they become more involved in their community.
Hello. Hi. Good morning. How are you? Good, thank you. I'm here to give blood. Yes, and what's your name? My name's Mark Hadley.
Mark, this will be your first time donation ever? Yes. It turns out producer Kayleigh and I can't give blood right now. One of us is pregnant, the other travels to too many exotic countries. So we used Andrew's statistics about Christians being more likely to give blood to bully director Mark into doing it for us. I mean for others. Which is really good because he's normally a bloodsucker.
Basically while you're on the couch we want you to do some exercises. It's basically crossing and uncrossing your legs at the ankles. Can you see? Yeah I can see. You want me to cross my legs every now and again? Yeah. Basically do that for about every five seconds. Hold for five seconds with your legs crossed. Yep.
And then relax. Do a little bit of a point in your toes like a ballet dancer. Yep, I can do that. And sit and pull up. Give your bum cheeks a little squeeze. It just helps everything go round. Okay, sure. Okay, so cross legs, point toes, squeeze bum. Exactly. Gotcha. Basically keeps everything just moving about. Okay, so just get ready for that needle to come in now. Okay. Okay.
How do we get ready? Oh, good lord, there it goes. Right, okay, I think I'll just look over here for a bit.
Yeah, so what could possibly go wrong? So we've come to the end of the donating process, but now I'm going to sit still because I have done a very good thing and have depleted my body and must allow it to recover. And so Brenda, who has just been a nurse for 30 years, she was telling me, told me I did very well. So I feel some sense of accomplishment there. And now I'm just going to relax until it's time for me to have...
my milkshake and all sorts of other snacks are awaiting me. Actually the thing I'm really really looking forward to strangely is the next time. I kind of think this could be a fun thing to get into. It's kind of a really nice club of people here.
Wouldn't it be great if all the people listening to this podcast went and gave blood? It really does save lives. So a quick plug, head to donateblood.com.au, donateblood.com.au to find out how you can donate, just like Director Mark.
We're going to leave Mark there with his milkshake and bonnocks and a lie down and get back into our statistics with Andrew Lee. From Andrew's research, churchgoers are 16 percentage points more likely to have been involved in a voluntary activity and 22 percentage points more likely to have helped the needy. But how exactly do we know this?
Well, we're simply looking there at the correlations between the activities. One of the striking things is this doesn't seem to have to do with how fervent your beliefs are. So we don't see a greater level of civic activity in those who hew more closely to the theological beliefs of their particular religion.
Those who are only weekly attached to the theology but who attend regularly are much more likely to be involved in the community. And indeed Putnam goes further with the thought experiment that were an atheist to attend church on a weekly basis they would probably get all of the community benefits that come with church going. It's not in the theology, it's in the community.
I must admit, this is one point where I have a gentle disagreement with Andrew. The fact that atheists also benefit when they come into a church community doesn't negate the fact that it's the ideas at the heart of Christianity that lift the whole community above itself, even those who don't believe in those things. Can we even imagine the communities and activities of church life today?
continuing to exist without their beliefs in God's love, the centrality of love for one another, and so on. So I'm not sure it's possible to say that it's not, at least in some part, the ideas, the theology that's having the impact.
these effects. Apart from all that, it's important to emphasise here that when Andrew's talking about churchgoers being more likely to volunteer or being more active in their communities, he doesn't just mean within the church community. We're not talking about volunteering for the flower committee or playing guitar up front on Sunday mornings. They're out there in the world volunteering. I think of my local Hackett church, which is a fascinating church because it is the combination of
two denominations. There's an Anglican and a Uniting Church that share the same space of worship. And together they also have a range of social activities. So they organise toy library activities
where low-income families can come and borrow toys. They have a tucker box, a food bank that's offered every Saturday. They run an assisted living facility for people with intellectual disabilities. Kipax Uniting Church here in Canberra is one of the most impressive organisations in the city for distributing information.
food hampers at Christmas and providing social services for new mums through programs such as Newpin. I'll occasionally joke to them that they're a large social service agency with a small religious chapter attached to the side of it. But of course that social service activity wouldn't happen without the religious glue to hold it together. We sometimes hear that churches are holy huddles.
homogeneous units fenced off from the nasty world. I love that phrase. But the data suggests otherwise. How so? People who attend church are more likely to know somebody who's on welfare and more likely to know a CEO. Churches in Australia have done a terrific job of cross-cutting class differences.
Possibly not so good a job at cross-cutting racial differences, but still pretty effective at bringing together people who would not otherwise rub shoulders in the streets.
Putnam refers to two kinds of social capital: bridging and bonding. Bonding is social capital with people who are like you on many dimensions. Bridging is to spend time with somebody who's different from you. And churches can be very effective in that bridging social capital sense, which is important then when we go and generalise that in our broader life.
So if you've just taken communion next to somebody who's unemployed, it's far less likely you will go out into the world and stigmatize or demonize somebody who's jobless and say, well, the only reason somebody would be without a job is if they're a worthless drag on society.
it's much more likely that you'll see them as a fellow human being and you'll build those connections. Much more likely you won't just turn up your nose the next time you pass a homeless person but might stop and sit down with them and find out how you can help.
In Disconnected, Andrew offers 10 ideas to boost social capital. These are tips for individuals like you and me to do as soon as we close the book. Hold a street party is one of them. And I actually went home and talked to my wife about hosting one in the new street we've just moved into. I'll give you an update on that closer to Chrissy.
Contact two politicians is another tip. Not to berate them, they're people just like us right, but contact them when you want to say you like something they've done.
This might be cheeky, Andrew, but given all that you say, in your 10 tips for boosting social capital in the book, why isn't go to church one of them? Perhaps it should be. My wife and I both grew up in religious households and we make our way down to church a few times a year. But every time we do, we find this interesting thing, John. We find that our three little boys have walked out of church a little bit nicer than when they came in.
They haven't always loved every aspect of the sermon, they haven't always loved having to sit still, but taking a little bit of time to think about others, to go through those sort of basic truths of life is important. I've always quite liked the Alain de Botton approach of saying that modern philosophy is all about the fresh new insight.
Alain de Botton is a British philosopher who's written a book called Religion for Atheists. It's essentially a non-believer's guide to the uses of religion, which also recognises that religions have a peculiar capacity for community building. But so much of listening to a good sermon is just hearing basic truths which are simple to explain but hard to live.
Be nice to your spouse. Be generous to your children. Recognise that we're all pretty fallible, but that if we keep on trying, we'll get better. I interviewed...
Lala Slavin and her husband Rabbi David Slavin who run Our Big Kitchen in Bondi this week. And I was just struck by their extraordinary earnestness about helping others. They really do feel they've been put on the earth in order to make a difference, doing things like bringing together Jewish and Muslim kids to cook a meal, providing food for vulnerable groups around Sydney.
and also just creating a community through the lens of food. And it's hard to be around people like that and not be uplifted by the power of humanity to make a positive difference.
I'm really enjoying my conversation with Andrew Lee, and it all sounds pretty good for Christians, right? You know, they're a pretty useful bunch. But Andrew's not under any illusions, and nor am I. There's plenty of done stuff that Christians have done through the years. There are many questions that need to be raised about the value of churches in contemporary society, and stuff like, should they pay tax? In what sense should they be regarded as chastisement?
charities. I mean think of the horrendous child sex abuse scandals and the cover-ups that followed. After the break we tackle all that stuff.
This episode of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new book, ready for it? Mere Christian Hermeneutics, Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically, by the brilliant Kevin Van Hooser. I'll admit that's a really deep-sounding title, but don't let that put you off. Kevin is one of the most respected theological thinkers in the world today. He's a
And he explores why we consider the Bible the word of God, but also how you make sense of it from start to finish. Hermeneutics is just the fancy word for how you interpret something. So if you want to dip your toe into the world of theology, how we know God, what we can know about God, then this book is a great starting point. Looking at how the church has made sense of the Bible through history, but also how you today can make sense of it.
Mere Christian Hermeneutics also offers insights that are valuable to anyone who's interested in literature, philosophy, or history. Kevin doesn't just write about faith. He's also there to hone your interpretative skills. And if you're eager to engage with the Bible, whether as a believer or as a doubter, this might be essential reading.
You can pre-order your copy of Mere Christian Hermeneutics now at Amazon, or you can head to zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions to find out more. Don't forget, zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions.
68-year-old Tirat was working as a farmer near his small village on the Punjab-Sindh border in Pakistan when his vision began to fail. Cataracts were causing debilitating pain and his vision impairment meant he couldn't sow crops.
It pushed his family into financial crisis. But thanks to support from Anglican Aid, Tirat was seen by an eye care team sent to his village by the Victoria Memorial Medical Centre. He was referred for crucial surgery. With his vision successfully restored, Tirat is able to work again and provide for his family.
There are dozens of success stories like Tarat's emerging from the outskirts of Pakistan, but Anglican Aid needs your help for this work to continue. Please head to anglicanaid.org.au forward slash Tarat.
and make a tax-deductible donation to help this wonderful organisation give people like Turat a second chance. That's anglicanaid.org.au forward slash Undeceptions.
I've travelled to Canberra to have a chat with federal member of parliament, Andrew Lee, who's written a book called Disconnected that has long intrigued me with its incredibly positive take on religion's role in society. But now it's time to ask some of the harder questions. Despite all the good Andrew reckons churches and other religious institutions do, is that enough to justify the benefits and special position under the law that many churches have?
You're the Shadow Assistant Minister for Charities. Can you give me a working definition of charity in the Australian context?
So a charity is an organisation set up to help others rather than to make a profit. They can have various sort of structures, whether that's an incorporated and unincorporated structure. And in many cases they'll have tax deductible gift recipient status, which means people can give money and they don't get taxed on those dollars. So effectively the taxpayer is helping them out.
The category of charity though includes far more than what people normally think of as welfare and that sort of thing. It even includes one of the subheadings is advancing public debate to oppose or promote a law. So what's the logic of including something like that as a charity?
Well there's a great virtue in a democracy like ours in having organisations that are championing democratic change. What we want is people who are banding together for a common cause not to take up arms against the state but to look at persuading their fellow citizens and their legislators to make change. You think about campaigns like the Every Australian Counts campaign that led to the creation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
an extraordinary grassroots campaign that brought together many disparate causes, different groups of people with intellectual and physical disabilities, a whole lot of different kinds.
united in the notion that Australia could do better than the patchwork of supports we provided to people with disabilities. A campaign like that changes the place for the better and should have tax deductible gift recipient status. We see a lot of this in fostering stronger community conversations.
So for example, we've got the religious freedom debate at the moment. We had a debate over same-sex marriage, which many religious groups were involved in, both in favour and against. And so to the extent that those religious groups can be part of a public conversation, I think that's a healthy thing.
Advancing religion is considered another charitable purpose under Australian law. Religious congregations, religious education bodies and so on fall under this category. Now I've heard it asked many times. In this day and age, why in the world should religion, which an increasing number of Australians just disagree with, still be considered a charity?
I think for many of the reasons we've talked about before, the notion that in the main attending a temple or a mosque or a synagogue or a church does appear to have positive benefits for the society as a whole. It's a moment in which people look beyond their own immediate needs and think about how they can assist others.
and in so doing tend to reach out to the broader community. So I think about the Gungahlin Mosque which is just around the corner from here and the work that they do in engaging with local community support activities. They're very good in getting out to the local community and they've always worshipped with food and recognise the value of providing that food to other people who are in need.
So there's a lot of good altruism going on right across different religious groups. I've come across quite a few people who are calling for churches and, of course, synagogues and so on, to lose their tax concessions and be taxed like any business. They earn money, so why shouldn't they be taxed? How likely is that as a proposal and what would be your response to it?
Look, I think it comes up perennially. It certainly was an issue that arose when many people were angry about certain religious groups not signing up to the recommendations of the Royal Commission against child sex abuse and the compensation scheme that flowed out of that. Look, it's a good question. What taxes do churches pay? That's Anne Robinson, an expert in charity law. So when people ask that question, they often really mean what income...
income tax do churches pay? Do they pay income tax? And the answer to that question is fairly simple and it is no, they do not pay income tax.
But that's not special treatment. They are registered charities in Australia. Even if churches were not registered charities, they wouldn't pay tax because of this principle of mutuality, which means if you and I pay personal tax and we get together for a common purpose, that is public benefiting,
we don't pay tax again because we've already paid tax. That's the logic. So even if churches didn't have a tax exemption when they came together, they would not pay income tax on what they collect to run the church. Different question whether churches should pay or do pay income tax on, say, property investments in Australia because they are registered charities. They don't pay income tax on investments.
And that's usually what people feel is a bit sensitive. Anne says there is a whole range of concessions for churches and religious institutions in the tax system at the federal, state and local level. They include a concession on fringe benefits tax for religious practitioners like ministers. And also at a state level, they're exempt from things like payroll tax.
But churches don't get an across-the-board exemption on, say, stamp duty. The only exemptions are for church buildings that are used for educational or benevolent purposes, not for worship buildings. Every state is a bit different on this, so it's complicated and detailed.
Which I guess is why there is so much misunderstanding about what taxes churches do and don't pay. The main thing is, yes, churches do receive tax concessions in a variety of places, just not everywhere. And Andrew argues that where those concessions are applicable for churches...
there's a good reason. Tax concession has been there for a long time and I think serves an important social purpose just as I think religious organisations serve that local purpose in our community. Now most Australians won't share the theological views of most organisations
These religious organisations, after all, have theological views that are generally in direct contradiction with one another. But that doesn't mean that we can't see society as being richer for having their involvement in our community life, just as we see society for being better off for having multiple political parties.
And the greatest challenge to Australia right now, John, is that we disappear into the corners of the ideological debate, that we don't have a common conversation about the challenges of homelessness, joblessness, inequality, climate change, but instead we're in our little echo chambers shouting along with people who share our views. The great thing about religious organisations is they do act as more effective melting pots.
And that's a vital role in a very polarised politics that we have at the moment. Andrew ends his book with a suggestion to try a new activity, like lawn bowls. Meet people and learn something new. New activities and provocative conversations, he says, help the brain stay supple.
And he even says you might perhaps consider joining a church. Imagine that. Though Andrew puts church in the same list to consider as joining a political party or a union. Which, considering Andrew's a labour man, is a pretty high compliment. Hey, you can press pause. I've got a five minute Jesus.
According to Jesus, love was to overrule our petty prejudices and inspire heroic acts of compassion, whatever the inconvenience.
These themes come together in what is perhaps Jesus' most famous parable, the now proverbial Good Samaritan, in which a needy individual, half dead on the road, is overlooked by two of Israel's leaders, a priest and a Levite, but cared for by a non-Israelite Samaritan. The parable is found only in Luke, but it's not his own creation, in the opinion of most scholars. It comes from his unique source, known as El.
Before I quote the parable itself, let me highlight three historical things that help the story come to life from its original context.
First, the priest and Levite introduced to us in the parable were privileged members of Jewish society with special responsibilities in the temple. A statement in the Mishnah, the second holy book of Judaism, puts it like this. A priest takes precedence over a Levite. A Levite over an Israelite. Both priests and Levites had really high social standing and were usually pretty well off.
The second historical thing is that in ancient Judaism, touching a dead body was believed to defile you. It made you ritually unclean and therefore unable to enjoy God's presence. This was a particular concern for priests and Levites, of course, because they had to go into the temple and you couldn't go into the temple if you were ritually unclean. Now, here's the thing.
The fact that the injured man in the parable is left, quote, half dead, that's hemithanes, half dead, means...
means that there's a potential for defilement from these characters in the story. The third thing to hold in mind is that Samaritans, who lived in a discrete region just north of Jerusalem called Samaria, shared some heritage with Israel but were hated by first century Jews as heretics and half-breeds, and the feeling was mutual.
A classic example of the hostility between Jews and Samaritans can be seen in an incident reported by the first century Jewish writer Josephus. It had been a custom in Jerusalem at the start of the annual Passover festival to throw open the gates of the temple at midnight so that eager pilgrims could start filing into the national shrine in preparation for the coming day's service. It's like opening the gates of a football match early.
On one of these occasions, Josephus tells us, some Samaritans snuck into the temple area undetected. They would have been killed on the spot had they been detected and began, quote, to scatter human bones in the portigos and throughout the temple, thus defiling the place.
This was such a scandal when people discovered it that new security measures around the temple had to be brought in immediately following this. Now, the incident occurred when Jesus was a teenager.
So it's well within the living memory of everyone in Jesus' original audience for the parable of the Good Samaritan. Now, to the parable itself. According to Luke, a religious scholar had just asked Jesus, who is my neighbor in the biblical commandment, love your neighbor as yourself? The parable is Jesus' answer to this question. Here's producer Kayleigh. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers.
They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine."
Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. "'Look after him,' he said, "'and when I return I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'" Jesus concluded, "'Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?' The expert in the law replied, "'The one who had mercy on him.'" Jesus told him, "'Go, and do likewise.'"
Making a Samaritan the hero of the parable was a pretty daring thing to do, and it added to the inherent critique in Jesus' teaching. He's saying that religion can sometimes be a hindrance to universal love. And if that sounds particularly modern, that's only because Jesus' teaching here has massively influenced our own outlook, whether we're religious or a secular humanist.
All of this makes really odd the claim of Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion that Jesus never implied that love should be shown across racial or religious boundaries. In that book he says, quote, Jesus was a devotee of the same in-group morality coupled with out-group hostility that was taken for granted in the Old Testament.
This will come as a great surprise to anyone who's done some reading in the scholarship about the historical Jesus or even read the Gospels for themselves. I once had the privilege of interviewing Gezer Vemesh, the leading Jewish scholar of the last generation. He was a professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University.
And actually, Director Mark was with me when we did this. Am I not right? Yeah. We walked around the gardens of that beautiful centre for Jewish studies. And his incredibly impressive study. Yeah, absolutely. A gorgeous man. Anyway, I was there to interview him about the origins of...
of the love command in Judaism and in Jesus. And it was extraordinary. He led us through the gardens, talked to us. Then we went into his study and we had this long discussion about love. And he read us from the original Hebrew command, you know, to love your neighbor as yourself. Anyway, he said to me, now, John, you know that Jesus got his emphasis on love.
from the Hebrew Bible. You know that, don't you? I said, yes, Professor Vermesh, absolutely. I've read that Bible and I've read your writings. I know that. And then he said, but Jesus radicalized it so that now love of neighbor crossed boundaries, so that it was love of leper, love of Samaritan, love of sinner, love even of enemy, he said.
It was very confronting to be reminded by the preeminent Jewish scholar in the world of just how radical Jesus' teaching in the peril of the Good Samaritan really was. You can press play now. Got questions about this or other episodes? I'd love to hear them and we'll have a go at answering them in an upcoming episode.
Leave your question as a voicemail by calling 02 9870 5678. That's 02 9870 5678. Or head to underceptions.com. And while you're there, check out everything related to this pod and sign up for the Underceptions newsletter to get access to bonus content and plenty more for each episode.
Next time, we're speaking to one of the world's leading theoretical physicists about life, evolution, and whether we really need proof that God exists. See ya.
Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dixon, produced by the productive Kayleigh Payne, and directed by the bloodless Mark Hadley. Our theme song is by Bach, arranged by me and played by the fabulous Undeceptions band, editing by the lovely Bella Ann Sanchez. I'm sure she's lovely, I met her online just the other day. Haven't met her in person, looking forward to meeting you, Bella. Head to undeceptions.com, you'll find show notes and everything related to this episode.
It turns out producer Kayleigh and I can't give blood right now. One of us is pregnant, the other travels to too many exotic countries. So we used Andrew's statistics about Christians being more likely to give blood to bully Director Mark into doing it for us. I mean for others. Which is really good because he's normally a blood sucker.
I don't think we should have that. I just wanted to do that for your benefit. For your joy. Bella, leave that in. No!