Book Review: The Hansie Cronje Story

I have always been interested in Hansie Cronje.  As younger boy growing up Hansie was a great nemesis of the Aussie cricket team.  But he was also a Christian.  This fact made it extra interesting when in the early part of this century (2000s) it was revealed Cronje had gotten himself mixed up in the bookmaker crowd and was given money by bookmakers to ensure them favourable results, amongst other things such as pitch information.  I remember then a few years after this hearing one morning that Hansie Cronje had died in a plane crash.  What a fascinating story.

So when I was in Koorong a while ago and saw, The Hansie Cronje Story I picked it up and read it with interest.  I think my first reflection would be that this book is not worth reading unless you know who Hansie is and are interested in just how he could fall so spectacularly from grace as he did.  My other main problem with the biography was it was occasionally preachy.  It would move from talking about Cronje and his faith into a little gospel presentation and then back into the story.  In fact the last chapter is almost entirely of this nature.   I've got no problem with preaching the Gospel, however the way this book did it seemed often awkward.  It was also obvious this book was written at the request of the family as Cronje's flaws were easily forgiven and his best features sung with much praise. I also feel a nervous even criticising the book at all because it's obvious as you read that the family and friends of Cronje don't take well to all the criticism that Cronje recieved - unjustified as much of it probably was.

In this book then you get the picture of Cronje being an intensely driven man.  Driven to succeed in whatever he did.  He made his first real commitment to becoming a follower of Jesus after he ran over and killed a child whilst driving on a freeway to an interstate cricket game.  It seems with the pressures of international cricket he waxed and waned in intensity of his faith and had some sort of crisis of faith after the bookmaking/match fixing scandal came out in public.  In the 2 and a bit years he lived after this scandal that bought him down from the heights of well loved cricket captain he got his relationship with his wife and his creator back on track.  In many ways he died at exactly the right moment.

And that's really what I take away from this book.  Our days are numbered and God knows when they will be up.  I don't think Hansie really could have lived a long happy life been baned from cricket (the game he loved) and still knowing he had let down his friends and family and country so badly by getting involved with the bookies.  But after the scandal broke God gave him enough time to make some restitution for his sins and to clear the slate.  It was at this moment he was taken home.  It was sad that he died, but in many ways a happy ending.  I pray that when my time is up, I too will have my house in order.

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Support School Chaplaincy

In Australia we have an awesome privilege where the Government financially supports the placement of chaplains into state schools.

This blessing has enabled our Youth Ministry access to students at the local high school that we would never have got.

Sadly however this funding is coming to an end and the current government is seeming unlikely to renew it.  This would be a pretty devastating blow!

However, there is still something that can be done.  If you live in Australia, please visit this website to voice your concern to your local MP in the run up to the election.

If you can't vote in the next Australian election, then please pray for a government that will be favourable to school chaplaincy and continue to financially support it.

http://schoolchaplaincy.org.au/

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Criticing the 'Jesus is my boyfriend' critic

If you hang around evangelicals for long enough you will start to here things like, 'Hillsong songs are all Jesus is my boyfriend type songs'.  This critic seems to apply to any song where if you replaced the word Jesus or God you could perhaps imagine singing part or all of the song to your boyfriend/girlfriend.  For example a song might say, I love Jesus or You (clearly implying God) are my everything.

I would now like to make a radical suggestion.  At least a suggestion that is radical to my mind.  What if this so called 'Jesus is my boyfriend' critic doesn't actually reveal a shallowness in the songs lyrics but an idol in the heart of the person criticizing.  Our society is filled with false ideas about how one person (your boyfriend or girlfriend) can fulfill all your wants and desires, can make you eternally happy, will love you no matter what etc.  That's what pop culture sings about all the time (mind you actually mostly these days pop music sings not about relationship but random sex so the critic may also reveal a lack of cultural awareness?).  The critique, I can imagine singing this song to my boyfriend, might actually just mean you have bought a lie.

Jesus is the only person who can fulfill all our hopes and dreams.  Jesus is the only person who can really love us no matter what we do unconditionally forever.  It seems entirely appropriate then to replace the idol of our boyfriend/girlfriend relationships with Jesus who loved us and who we love.  That we should make Jesus the object and centre of our love, affection and desire not our boyfriend or girlfriend.  Your boyfriend is going to fail you.  Jesus will never fail you.

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