word | spirit | world | church
“God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” Is this a helpful ‘creed’ for thinking about the faith and the Bible? I don’t think it is. There’s a lot of commend about this approach, people who say either the cliché or a more nuanced view of it tend to trust God. They tend to… Continue reading Ask Why
If I asked you to summarise the story of the Bible, I wonder what you’d say? I do often ask this in classroom settings with Christians and there are a whole host of frequently given answers. Typically, people tell some version of the story of redemption from sin involving the fall and then Jesus’ incarnation… Continue reading The Bible’s 3 Stories
I’ll give you, it’s not the best question. We all intrinsically know what books are and how they work, it’s not a complex technology. A couple of boards with some paper glued or sewn between, right? Except, I fear that as we move into a post-literate society, its less instinctual than you might think. If… Continue reading What is a book?
There can be a tendency in a certain kind of academic work on the Bible to heavily assert that the Bible is a collection of documents written by a diverse array of authors in different settings and time periods (so far, that’s entirely true) and that therefore it isn’t reasonable to speak as if the… Continue reading Is the Bible a cacophony?
Yes. But not like you think I mean. There are a number of passages in the New Testament which speak about perfection. Perhaps most famously, and challengingly, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount declares that we should “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” Matthew 5.48 It is common to wave this away.… Continue reading Can We Be Perfect?
Are we supposed to judge others, or not? D. A. Carson has quipped, and is often quoted, that John 3.16 is no longer the best known verse of the Bible in western cultures. Instead, it’s Matthew 7.1: ‘judge not, that you not be judged.’ Which tells you a fair bit about our culture’s reception of… Continue reading On Judging Others
Christians are supposed to be the wise. I often wonder if we really are. While my own preaching and teaching, as well as that of others I know well or have sat under, contains a lot of practical application, I am beginning to suspect that I haven’t spent a lot of time teaching about wisdom… Continue reading Repost: Get Wisdom
I’ve come across the idea, a few times recently, that the Bible doesn’t speak to everything. In the context I’m hearing it, this means that there are lots of matters of faith and practise that the Bible doesn’t tell us what to do on, so we have to figure it out for ourselves. Which is… Continue reading The Bible doesn’t speak to that
Technology changes our lives. That’s a truism, you wouldn’t find anyone to disagree. The disagreement comes when we speak of particular technologies—whether pesticides or automated looms or Bluetooth speakers—and the particular ways they change our lives. Then we need to add an extra layer, not only are there specific ways that technologies change our lives,… Continue reading The digital world shapes us
Israel had a cycle of a weekly Sabbath, seven feasts a year, a sabbatical year every seventh year, and a Jubliee year every seventh sabbatical year. Their days were patterned for them, and it was wisdom to follow them. They function how the Church calendar was designed by our Christian forbears to function for us—now… Continue reading Our Church Calendars
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