Andrew Moody
Andrew Moody lives and writes in Melbourne, Australia. He sometimes works as a lay theologian, sometimes as a graphic designer, and was the inaugural editor of The Gospel Coalition Australia from 2016 to 2023.* Andrew is married to Jenny and they have two grown-up children.
* You can see some more of his old TGCA posts here.
Considering Barbie (and Marriage and Singleness)
Being human can be very uncomfortable … People make up things like the patriarchy and Barbie to endure how uncomfortable it is. Jen and I saw Barbie over the weekend. We both liked it; were both surprised by it. I thought it was funny and smart and multi-layered to a degree that I still haven’t fathomed. The film’s reframing of sexual politics as an existential problem allows it to address deeper human questions that apply to both men and women. I also found it surprisingly compassionate. It managed to proclaim the let’s-take-down-the-patriarchy part of its message without anger and without, as Jen put it, being preachy. Barbie’s final rejection of…
What’s the Point of Christian Fiction?
What’s the point of Christian fiction? Can it do any good? Should it even exist? These are some of the questions I have been mulling over as I have been working on several novels over the last ten (or thirty) years or so. I have found them difficult to answer, but here are some scattered ideas that I have tried to rake into a pile. Should Christian Fiction Even Exist? From one point of view, the whole notion of “Christian fiction” is dubious or offensive From one point of view (often a “literary” point of view), the whole notion of “Christian fiction” is dubious or offensive. Christians should seek to…
The Little Hunter Who Ran on Water
One of the projects I am currently working on has required me to generate several background myth-cycles. Here is a story from one of those mythologies. In the larger novel it appears as a tale from a children’s book called, “Tales From Lands Afar”. Perceptive readers might recognise allusions to several other stories from the real world within it. Here is a tale that the old women of the Kalari tell in their hoop and skin houses on the shingle coves of the great and dark Otter River. It comes from long ago and tells of Irgolan, who is also called Tamashye, in stories from other places. In the days…
Medieval Bikkies for Jen
Back in June 2021, I made some bikkies for Jen’s birthday. I wanted to copy Dr Ella Hawkins’ amazing and painstakingly hand-painted masterpieces but I didn’t have the skill / patience / time / eyesight. Fortunately, I do have a bit of technical cunning, so I found a whole lot of images of illuminated manuscripts online, cropped and imposed them in a grid, then sent them to a cake shop that was able to print edible ink onto fondant sheets. Meanwhile, I made some gingerbread dough, rolled it out and cut it into a grid of 40mm squares. I made a 38mm square cardboard stamp (I think I covered it with…
Reading and Writing – Literal Magic
I recently had the opportunity to talk about “Reading and Writing to the Glory of God” at the RTC in Melbourne. Here is an expanded version of some of what I said. Is there anything closer to magic than reading and writing? The idea that by making some marks on a page, you can send your very thoughts into another person’s brain is bananas. And it gets even wild when you realise it works with dead people too. How can we ever get used to being able to read the minds of people who lived 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia? How is it possible that even then, those people possessed…
I2C Multimedia Project
Please note, this won’t look much good on anything other than a landscape display—i.e. desktop or iPad etc.—sorry mobile users. Many years ago, I worked with AFES Victoria and Mustard Schools ministry to produce a Flash-vased CD-Rom for an evangelistic event at the Melbourne Forum. It was complicated project and had its share of technical challenges. Our video quality was pretty low too (as you will see if you run it). But it was a lot of fun to make and I learned a lot. I loved talking to the staff and students who contributed. And I enjoyed working with the very clever Josh Johnston who built the rotating-cross animation…
Review: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Minor spoilers for the novel follow. Published in 2021, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun predates the excitement and consternation generated by the advent of large-language-model AIs. Yet this astonishing novel has some important things to say to us about quasi-intelligent machines, and how our interactions with them might affect us. Klara, the protagonist and narrator is an android—or AF (artificial friend)—built to provide companionship to a human child. As we first meet her in her shop window, waiting to be purchased and looking out on the world, we encounter a mind that is charming and strange. Klara is curious, childlike, innocent and compliant, but she is also highly perceptive…
Toy Story 4 and the Gods That Fail
Recently I have been listening to, and very much enjoying, Nate Morgan Locke. Nate appears regularly with Glen Scrivener on the “Speak Life” podcast and vlogs on his own Youtube channel as the “Reformed Mythologist”. Nate thinks deeply about fun things—especially movies. He explores the nature and history of our cultural artefacts and ferrets out their themes and their appeal with a clear-eyed appreciation of the world as the Bible describes it. Most of the time, I think he gets things right. But not always. And that brings me to Toy Story 4. You. Are. A. Toy! As you can see if you watch his discussion, Nate is a big…
Gravity Waves and Singing Stars
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Last week, scientists announced the discovery that the universe is vibrating with low frequency gravity waves. Music analogies proliferated. It was a “cosmic bass note”, a “hum”, a “chorus”, the “background sound of the universe”. Astronomer Adam Frank, writing in The Atlantic, put it most poetically: The whole universe is humming. Actually, the whole universe is Mongolian throat singing. Every star, every planet, every continent, every building,…
Idol Prayers
John Calvin famously declared that humans are, by nature, always creating idols. I’m afraid to say that is especially true for people like me who find that creativity itself is our chief idol. I am tempted to find my own invention more interesting than God’s. I am tempted to find greater satisfaction in the things I might make or write than the infinitely greater things God has done for me. I am disproportionately attracted to ideas (even theological ideas) that I have worked out for myself. I don’t want to reject my creativity—it’s a good gift of God. But nor do I want it to have free rein over my…
