word | spirit | world | church
You’d be forgiven for thinking I was speaking of January, named after the Roman god Janus who had two faces to look forwards and backwards in the year. Rather, Advent—the first season of the Christian year—has two faces. One face is a face of joy, the face we associate with our Christmas traditions, with chocolate… Continue reading The Month with Two Faces
Once a day dawned dark, the clouds hanging limp like wisps of smoke that clog the lungs after a fire has burned beyond its life. Tear-stained faces watched a man displayed, his torn body nailed to a tree torn from the ground and weeping over its foul fate. His face contorted with pain as his… Continue reading Last Words
Last week I argued that the Bible requires Adam to be the first human and the father of us all. I went through some scriptures that support this, especially Acts 17 and Romans 5. I argued that the Bible says he is, but also that he has to be to be our federal head. Paul’s… Continue reading Adam the Head
Knowing your heart is harder than you think it is. Your intentions are often not transparent, even to you. Sin’s dark shadow means we must always think that there’s an iceberg of ourselves we haven’t fathomed, with much unseen and looming beneath the surface. The motivations for our actions, our thoughts, our feelings, even for… Continue reading Know Thyself
Getting your head around the sacrificial system in the Old Testament can be difficult. Here’s my attempt to briefly summarise the various sacrifices. I’ve been helped by Leithart’s summaries in In Earth as it is in Heaven in this, but I haven’t followed him entirely (mistakes mine etc!). Tribute Offering The first sacrifices we find… Continue reading 7 Kinds of Sacrifices
There’s a sort of language in charismatic culture that love the word ‘freedom.’ That’s great, right? Who wouldn’t like our freedom? Who would want to give up our freedom (cue William Wallace memes)? Who would want to live in… unfreedom (the opposite of freedom is ‘bondage’ but people really get the wrong idea these days)?… Continue reading Freedom isn’t a thing
AI is sycophantic, did you know that? Antropic AI, recently published a paper explaining their recent research in Large Language Models (LLMs, what we have taken to calling Generative AI). They found that LLMs have a bias towards answers that they defined as sycophantic but incorrect. In other words, the AI tells us what we… Continue reading Sycophants and Liars
No. That was easy. Except, I think most readers will expect me to say ‘yes.’ Aren’t we all without excuse before the wrath of God (Romans 1)? Yes, we are. Yet this is not saying the same thing. Having been fed—mostly evangelistically—on the (true!) idea that even the smallest sin is the enough to damn… Continue reading Is all sin equal?
Sayeth Taylor the prophetess. Wouldn’t be the first time she’s said something that at least has the ring of wisdom to it. Ok, so I’m mostly doing that terrible Jesus juke thing where a perennially uncool youth pastor type points at a thing in popular culture and then does a fairly clunky move towards something… Continue reading It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.
A while back I was sat talking with a group of young Christians who would fit within what’s commonly called, ‘Gen Z,’ and one of them turned to me and said that the greatest issue facing her generation of believers was the proliferation of sources of authority. Which is quite a claim, I don’t think… Continue reading Youtubeification
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