For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
Most days I feel like I have the emotional strength to deal with life. Today isn’t one of those days. And that is not a request for advice, or consolation. I don’t admit to this because I am desperate for help; I write it because I process by reflecting, and I reflect by writing. ... Continue Reading →
I am painfully aware that to many of my fellow Christians, especially those who have walked some way along life’s road with me, my rejection of the inerrancy of Scripture and of a Penal Substitution understanding of atonement has seemed like an abandonment of my faith. I also realise that many take my criticisms of... Continue Reading →
So here I stand, with the spectre of the cross looming large, staring up at a Jesus who seems to me to be at once completely alien and yet so intimately familiar. The more I have read, the deeper I have delved into Jewish thinking in an attempt to better understand this most beautiful of... Continue Reading →
If I asked you what it meant to “believe” in Nelson Mandela, say, or Martin Luther King Jr, or Germaine Greer, or Ché Guevara, or Charles Darwin or Donald Trump or Margaret Atwood, how would you respond? In all likelihood, you would understand that “believing” in a public figure entails resonating with their core ideologies,... Continue Reading →
I can sympathise with Peter. In so many ways he is just like us. If you have grown up in the church, as I have, you will know what I mean when I say that “being on fire for God” is regarded as the optimal state of being for any believer. In other words, the... Continue Reading →
I have done some fairly heavy-duty thinking about how to start off the new year’s blog programme. I am not big on new year’s resolutions: if you have to wait until a new year to make an important change in your life, then you don’t fully buy into the necessity for change, in my opinion,... Continue Reading →
Newsflash: the purpose behind any debate is not to determine who is right and who is wrong, but to further understanding. I am not a major fan of Christian apologetics, because – by and large – I think it perpetuates the disturbing anti-intellectual culture that seems to characterise much of Protestant and Evangelical Christianity. To... Continue Reading →
Goldfish seemed like a good idea at the time. Somehow these things always do. After all, Nathan (my almost five-year old son) could learn about responsibility and develop empathy by having to care for other creatures that would be dependent on him. And all the experts on child-rearing seemed to think it was an imperative.... Continue Reading →
The problem with believing that God was punishing Jesus on the cross for our sins, as Michael Hardin points out, is that it doesn’t take sin nearly seriously enough. It limits the power of sin to the personal. In other words, it implies that the primary problem with sin is that I will be harshly... Continue Reading →
