Comment

Barry Jones
On faith and the exit ramp

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
– Dylan Thomas (1951)

Australians often seem rather uneasy about attempting to examine the range and depth of their religious beliefs. Like most people, other than fundamentalists, I feel shifty and inconclusive, because of a deep uncertainty about what I believe.

That a God, however defined, exists? Probably. That Jesus was a uniquely powerful and charismatic teacher? Yes. That he had a special or even unique relationship with God? Possibly. That the Church is a divine institution? Well, yes and no. That the Bible is infallible? No. That there is a soul, linked to a collective consciousness? Possibly. That there is life, as we know it, after death? Unlikely.

If pushed, I generally describe myself as “Christian fellow traveller” or sometimes “a northern hemisphere Christian”, because most of my transcendental experiences have been in Europe.

Whenever I arrived in London, Paris, Florence, Palermo, Istanbul, Kyoto or Yangon, I would make a beeline for a cathedral, mosque or temple, something I would never do in the Antipodes.

I am not confident enough to be an agnostic. While committed to rationality as a principle, I feel uneasy when it turns into dogma or rigid instrumentalism. Habitual mistrust is unattractive and dangerous, especially if linked with fear of difference or fear of the unknown. I am more of an ironist than a rationalist – an isolated position in Australia, where irony never took on, except as a form of mockery.

I struggle to define my core beliefs. The Apostles’ Creed reads well but is of little help because it raises too many unanswerable questions.

Paradoxically, doubt takes me away from materialism and certainty. I cannot be satisfied with simple materialist explanations when too many elements fill me with awe or perplexity. Religious issues and philosophy are constantly boiling around in my head. So, dubito, ergo sum, as René Descartes should have said. I recognise that many secularists have a commitment to goodness, generosity, truth, justice and courage: they feel no need for a revealed religion.

I cannot rule out whole areas of knowledge because of my incapacity to verify or falsify them through knowledge or experience. I would fail at once with quantum theory: the Higgs boson and string theory, for example.

The word “numinous”, from the Latin numen, meaning deity, is defined as “awe-inspiring” or “filled with a sense of the presence of divinity”, a sense of overwhelming, urgent and inexplicable power, the mysterium tremendum.

I recognise the numinous immediately, responding with a shuddering in my spine, changed breathing, faster heartbeat, heightened emotion, the lightning strike of imagination, an unexpected sense of familiarity with something completely unknown, places, sights and sounds that transcend the normal and quotidian – the Stendhal syndrome. This sense, which bursts beyond rationality, often explodes in contact with creativity, music, literature, painting, sculpture − but also with landscape, nature and the night sky.

To provide some context, I should explain that three months ago, on Saturday, September 20, I had a ridiculous fall. I say ridiculous because it was avoidable: my walker, named “Trust”, developed a life of its own, with one wheel straight ahead and the other caught in a crevasse between cobblestones and a thick tree trunk. I fell – gracefully, an observer said – with a three-point landing: head, right buttock and base of spine. It was not particularly painful. By a stroke of luck, an emergency nurse was standing barely a metre away and she took charge.

I was escorted home by my wife, Rachel, and two friends with whom we regularly share Saturday breakfast. I soon found that my left leg had done an Optus, the lines of communication were cut and I could no longer walk.

My life changed forever.

What followed was 40 days in hospital, like the Great Flood.

My incapacity could have been a stroke, but an MRI at The Royal Melbourne Hospital eliminated that thesis.

The exit ramp is looming.

In hospital, medical treatment was exemplary, compassionate but oddly segmented.

The visits, from Peter Doherty, Rai Gaita, Malcolm Turnbull, Steve and Terry Bracks, Simon Holmes à Court, John Faulkner, Bill Kelty, Hugh Taylor and Liz Dax, Barbara Howlett, Francis Ebury, Ranald Macdonald, Esther Anatolitis, Kate Baillieu, Monique Ryan, Barry McGaw, Jill Smith, Ralph and Ruth Renard, and many others, were extraordinarily stimulating. We ranted on about the future of our planet, but when they left depression and frustration set in.

Music, especially instrumental works by J. S. Bach and two amazing Beethoven piano concertos played by Maria João Pires, kept me away from the slough of despond. Loving conversations on my phone helped, too. ABC Radio National, and its podcasts, was a major factor.

Within the religious family, there is a clear difference between those who see God as “order” and those who see God as “freedom” – analogous to those who begin with a conviction of original sin and those who yearn for the perfectibility of humanity.

Religion, especially the Christian religion, or what might be described as the Hellenistic–Judaeo–Christian tradition, if that doesn’t sound too much of a mouthful, has shaped Western civilisation so profoundly that our thinking, our language and our value systems cannot be seen in isolation.

They are part of a seamless garment. Many politicians, even those who would not accept the description of Christian fellow traveller, whether atheist or agnostic, are still within the culture shaped by Christianity and its forerunners. It is almost impossible to think outside that context.

As Jaroslav Pelikan has argued persuasively, every generation, every society, has adapted the figure of Jesus to its own purposes – so that even the nonbelievers in the tactical sense can adopt him as a model or even a T-shirt.

This is Jesus as a hero for liberation theology in South America, as a worker priest in France, as a missionary colonist in Africa or Asia. Various people see Jesus as an advocate, or opponent, of the ordination of women, as a promoter of Indigenous land rights. In parts of the world, especially the United States, he is a property developer, the head of Jesus Inc.

The nature of work as a social and economic issue has generated intense controversy throughout the world and the churches have been deeply divided. In the Bible, God imposed work as a punishment on Adam and Eve for their disobedience in eating fruit from the tree of knowledge. The loss of innocence involved in this “fall” led to God’s curse on Adam: “In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return.” God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and commanded Adam to “till the ground from whence he was taken”.

In the Greek creation myth the beautiful Pandora, the first mortal woman created on Zeus’s orders, was given a lidded vase containing all the ills afflicting humanity and was forbidden to open it. She disobeyed and the evils flew out. One of them was work – in classical Greek, ponos – the root from which the words pain and punishment are derived.

If technology can quadruple total outputs and reduce labour inputs towards zero, what should be the basis for payment? Hours worked? Seniority? Size of family? Whether the job is boring or interesting? More pay for boring jobs? Less for interesting?

To paraphrase André Gorz: Labour time can no longer be the measure of exchange value, nor exchange value the measure of economic value. Wages can no longer depend on the amount of work performed, nor the right to income on having a job … The right to work, the right to a job, the right to an income have been confused for a long time. They cannot be confused any longer.

I write this now, in respite care, wondering.

The world I am about to leave has changed for the worse. Facts, figures, evidence, testable proposition and rational debate no longer count. Liberal democracy is in sharp decline.

The Hanukkah massacre at Bondi Beach was a demonstration of a worldwide phenomenon – visceral anti-Semitism. It could be a turning point in Australia, in which there is the use of force to suppress cultural positions. Conversely, it might unite us.

US President Donald Trump has succeeded in overturning the law of gravity and the laws of physics, chemistry, mathematics and the practice of medicine. Attempts to correct Trump’s outrageous dismissal of evidence are described as “fake news”, while his grossest assertions are accepted as gospel by millions, not only in the United States.

Trump dismissed climate change as “absolute crap” and has pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement. However, global warming will open up the very lucrative North-West Passage, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He has planned to annex Greenland to guarantee access.

Can both propositions be correct? In a Trumpian universe: Yes.

Eric Trump says “the thing I love about my father is you never know from day to day what he is thinking”. Trump is “saving Christianity and saving God”, who presumably becomes a dependant.

I prefer Jesus’s advice in John 13:34-35, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.”

This thought is essential, whether read as secular or religious.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on December 20, 2025 as "On faith and the exit ramp".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

Send this article to a friend for free.