Is Eternity (the newspaper, not the final state of Christians) worthwhile? As editor, I am probably the worst person to ask. But one good test of a newspaper or magazine is if anybody ever wants to reprint it in the shape of a book.

Eternity has now passed this test. Or at least a key component of Eternity has. A selection of the regular columns by Michael Jensen is now available as a handsome book Pieces of Eternity published by the Melbourne based Acorn Press.

Michael’s column has been eclectic—ranging from cricket to confession (both of which are good for us).

In the book, Michael recounts me telling him to be another Alan Ramsay, the now retired columnist of the Sydney Morning Herald who would harass the government of the day each Saturday.

As it turns out, the column could be given something like the title “As I please,” a column by George Orwell in which the contents of a well stocked mind surprised readers each week in The New Statesman.

For example, Michael tells us to welcome the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

What is especially helpful about his approach is that he helps us think out why we should welcome it—he connects our instinct to welcome it with our theology. And he makes it clear that the easy path of thinking that it’s about some other brand or denomination of Christians is not open to any of us.

In this book, The Gruen Transfer, Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook fame), John Foxe (who wrote about martyrs), philosopher Alvin Plantinga and theologian John Calvin rub together reasonably well.

On Zuckerberg, Jensen notes Facebook is bigger than porn on the net. It seems “we need relationships even more than we want sex.”

TV, that “radiant glow against which we warm ourselves” is a challenge to Christians not be guided by easy rules. Certainly not by a plan to watch only the best.

“ABC TV’s The Gruen Transfer actually helps us to be alert to the seductions of advertising. But it is also the case that TV’s use of visual short cuts and titillations can deaden us to the real world.”

Jensen does not parade his considerable academic credentials in this book. In fact he goes to jail to see if the gospel can work there.

When I first heard about this book I was worried that even the best bits of Eternity were not so long-lasting that they should be a book. But I shouldn’t have worried.

There’s material for a million conversations in this book.

Pieces of Eternity by Michael Jensen is published by Acorn Press. You can purchase it on shop.biblesociety.org.au for $24.95.