Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
He's not the one who pays the price. Too much, too young, too much, too young.
That's me and my best mate Ben Shaw playing Too Much Too Young.
which we wrote and recorded together back in... I can't even remember when. It was a fun song. We never really took ourselves seriously playing that one. And whenever we have played it since, it's almost a joke. If you're a regular listener to Undeceptions, you'll remember Ben from an episode back in Season 2 called It's Cancer.
where Ben shared his wrestle with a pretty bleak cancer diagnosis. Cancer was growing in his jaw. It was squamous cell carcinoma.
Surgery cut it out, and that was meant to cure him. Doctors took a bone from his leg and shoved it in his jaw, which was also the subject of quite a few jokes since. But it didn't cure him. The cancer came back in a slightly different spot, this time more aggressively. In about June 2020, he was given months to live.
We spoke to Ben again for the podcast earlier this year after he'd been given the news by his doctors that there just wasn't anything more they could do for him. He and his wife, Karen, had made their way back to Sydney from London in January this year, wanting to be with close friends and family for the end. Ben and Karen lived with me and my family for the last five months and it's been wonderful.
The end came for Ben last week, Thursday 17th of June, around 1am in the morning. The week leading up to his death, he was surrounded by people he loved. We sang psalms and hymns, we prayed and read the Bible with him. He was 53 years old. Ben had been working on a book for a few years, actually he started it before his cancer diagnosis.
Just two weeks before he died, we had the great privilege of launching that book here in Sydney. It's called Seven Reasons to Reconsider Christianity. Ben got special medical leave from his doctors and he made it to the book launch. To be honest, we weren't sure he was going to be able to do that, but he was brilliant.
It was a glorious night. I interviewed Ben about his journey with cancer and his book. And I'd love to share with you a bit of what Ben said, how he described the way he faced the end of life, which he thought of as the beginning of new life, and the way he thinks about the Christian faith that grabbed hold of both of us when we were 15. Okay, let's go.
So, I mean, I want to just ask the obvious question. Why did you write this book? Thanks very much. Writing is easier than speaking these days. I realise you can get to a larger audience when you write something. And the greatest way to communicate the gospel is to write something.
I mean the Apostles spoke throughout the Greco-Roman world in the first century and they reached so many people over so many a course of years, decades even, but their writings enabled them to reach far more people including you and me 20 centuries or so later. So the inspiration for writing came about largely from that,
be able to write about what's on your heart, what you've come to find as a most amazing discovery and to tell others as best as you can. I mean when you write you can craft your words, take your time and have your best friends and team edit it to make it even better than you could possibly make it on your own.
So that's how it's done. I've seen you speak this message in Aboriginal communities in Outback Australia, maximum security jails around Australia, posh auditoriums in Wimbledon. Yeah. Why do you think – well, I see this book as your greatest hits.
The guy who's preached in more settings than most people could ever imagine. You've put it into this one book. Why do you think this message just reaches so many different kinds of people? What's its core relevance to Aboriginal communities, posh Wimbledon people, etc.? That's because it's a message for humanity. It's not a message for race or a particular sex or a particular age.
or a particular social group. It's a message for every single person, whether you're here your last breath, possibly me, or others who are here on some of their first breaths. Wherever you are in life, this is a message for you. It's a message for everyone and it resonates with everyone.
so that you've got people, a small group of people throughout history who have embraced it and loved it and gone on to teach it themselves because they know it's a message for all people. Your lips know that words are played The bloodied soil beneath you Absolution or rashes
I guess the obvious question to put to you, you know, faced with what you face, is has what you're going through, particularly in these, you know, really hard days, caused you to reconsider Christianity yourself? Have I reconsidered Christianity for myself? Yes and no. First of all, no, I've had such a strong faith growing up. You and I have been...
tremendously privileged to be under the teaching of Glenn Davies and many others, Moore College, Glenda Weldon, this church, churches associated with it, that it should be of no surprise to you that I haven't had to reconsider my faith. It's blindingly obvious to me. It's so true. It's so factual. It's so...
But having said that, it's also caused me to rethink, to reconsider. Because you are facing eternity. You're looking at it squarely in the eye and you must reassess yourself. And I think everyone who is in my position does that, at least at some stage, even on their deathbed.
And it's caused me to do that. But I'm glad to say it hasn't budged me absolutely one inch. Amen. Well, I'm recording this on the morning of Ben's funeral. It's a little bit of mayhem here in the house. But I do just want to add here at the end that Ben died yesterday.
Here in my home, not five, six meters away from me, with profound trust. I'm not sure there is such a thing as the award for best Christian. But if there is, it's a person who...
trusts Christ most. What I've seen, not just over the decades, but especially these last five months, it convinces me that Ben takes that award. He still loved going for walks, fishing, heading to Balmoral Beach, knocking down a Guinness beer, even if he had to bring it straight back up.
He loved playing Scrabble, recording music, but most of all, in these final months, he loved hearing the Bible read to him, daily psalms and prayers, and our occasional hymn singing sessions around him. It is really weird, actually, for me personally, to have known Ben intimately for 42 years, and then in these final months, to find myself in awe of him.
like he's some kind of holy man, which he would say he's not. But he trusted Christ in a way that has challenged and changed me and my family. I'm off to his funeral now, and he put me on the eulogy and the sermon. I go with a measure of grief, of course, but also great hope in the resurrection and trust. See ya.
You've been listening to the Eternity Podcast Network.