Firstly, i'd like to apologize for the reduced amount of content over the last week or two. We've been suffering through one of the worst heatwaves we've ever had. I'm talking public transport system failing due to melting train tracks, widespread powercuts from system meltdowns and having to turn the car air-conditioner on a while before you plan to go anywhere so you don't fry kind of heatwave. The heat has been messing with my head which has made being focused enough to write kinda difficult. Hopefully everything will be back to normal soon.
Secondly and on a totally unrelated topic is David Batstone's book Not For Sale. I've had a lot of people recommend this to me and have wanted to read it for a while. For February only you can download it in your choice of a number of audio formats for FREE at christianaudio.com.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
A tale of two saviors
There has been a great deal of excitement going on around the world about yesterdays inauguration of Barrak Obama as the president of the United States. Even here thousands of miles away in Australia there is a lot of talk and expectation about it. Amongst many of the interviews about it i've seen from America, Australia and around the world, there is a strong idea directly stated or otherwise implied of Obama being a savior. I fear that a lot of people are going to start feeling really let down pretty soon. I'm sure there is many things Obama will do well. But there is some things he might not do well or not be able to fix. He is only human. He cannot be the savior everyone is craving so badly.
This craving for a savior is nothing new. About 2000 years ago, people were craving a savior who was going to set things right and liberate them from an oppressive empire. Jesus came as their savior but he wasn't what they were expecting. Jesus is our savior too but he doesn't fill the savior role people have been grasping at Obama to fill.
Instead of saving us from terrorists,
Jesus saves us from our sins.
Instead of making things right in the health system,
Jesus makes us right with God.
Instead of delivering us of a falling economy,
Jesus delivers us from evil.
As well as being different in what they do, they are very different in the extent of their power. Obama is just a fallible human. Jesus is the perfectly holy and righteous God. Obama can help people in little in this life, what Jesus does extends through this life and the next. Obama will only be in power for a few years, Jesus will reign for all eternity. Obama is only in charge of the USA, Jesus rules the universe and everything in it.
It is tempting for us to grasp at politicians like Obama to be our savior, but ultimately they cannot take that role. Instead, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the true savior of the world.
(No discussions about Obama's policies in the comments please)
This craving for a savior is nothing new. About 2000 years ago, people were craving a savior who was going to set things right and liberate them from an oppressive empire. Jesus came as their savior but he wasn't what they were expecting. Jesus is our savior too but he doesn't fill the savior role people have been grasping at Obama to fill.
Instead of saving us from terrorists,
Jesus saves us from our sins.
Instead of making things right in the health system,
Jesus makes us right with God.
Instead of delivering us of a falling economy,
Jesus delivers us from evil.
As well as being different in what they do, they are very different in the extent of their power. Obama is just a fallible human. Jesus is the perfectly holy and righteous God. Obama can help people in little in this life, what Jesus does extends through this life and the next. Obama will only be in power for a few years, Jesus will reign for all eternity. Obama is only in charge of the USA, Jesus rules the universe and everything in it.
It is tempting for us to grasp at politicians like Obama to be our savior, but ultimately they cannot take that role. Instead, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the true savior of the world.
(No discussions about Obama's policies in the comments please)
Monday, January 19, 2009
New project: Christian Blog Roundup (christianblogroundup.com)
I have started a new site, www.christianblogroundup.com. I will be using Christian Blog Roundup to provide a selection of worthwhile posts from other Christian blogs.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Book review: Max Lucado- For these tough times
For these tough times: Reaching toward heaven for hope and healing
Max Lucado
Published by Thomas Nelson 2006
In For These Tough Times Max Lucado attempts to provide encouragement and guidance to people who are experiencing tough times in life such as grief.
The book is quite a short one at only 81 small pages with decent sized print. This is probably a good thing because I know when i've been suffering I haven't wanted to wade through dense books. He writes in a beautiful and often moving but easy to read style.
Despite being so short, the book doesn't lack in substance. Unlike many Christian explanations of suffering that falsely ether reject that God is truly good or that God is truly in control Max clearly presents both as true. I particularly appreciated him explaining how the cross demonstrates that God really does love us rather than just explaining the love of God abstract terms. He also encourages readers to keep praying because God is listening and explains some of the ways that God can bring good out of what seems to us like horrible events. I'm not entirely sure if I agree with what he said about the limitations on the devil but other than that I didn't have any significant theological concerns about the content.
If you are suffering right now, I encourage you to read this book because I think you will find it helpful. Even if you are not suffering right now, I still think it is worthwhile to read it as it reminds us of some important truths about God.
Max Lucado
Published by Thomas Nelson 2006
In For These Tough Times Max Lucado attempts to provide encouragement and guidance to people who are experiencing tough times in life such as grief. The book is quite a short one at only 81 small pages with decent sized print. This is probably a good thing because I know when i've been suffering I haven't wanted to wade through dense books. He writes in a beautiful and often moving but easy to read style.
Despite being so short, the book doesn't lack in substance. Unlike many Christian explanations of suffering that falsely ether reject that God is truly good or that God is truly in control Max clearly presents both as true. I particularly appreciated him explaining how the cross demonstrates that God really does love us rather than just explaining the love of God abstract terms. He also encourages readers to keep praying because God is listening and explains some of the ways that God can bring good out of what seems to us like horrible events. I'm not entirely sure if I agree with what he said about the limitations on the devil but other than that I didn't have any significant theological concerns about the content.
If you are suffering right now, I encourage you to read this book because I think you will find it helpful. Even if you are not suffering right now, I still think it is worthwhile to read it as it reminds us of some important truths about God.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Timeless relevance
Being relevant seems to be an obsession of much of the church today. Normally this takes the form of trying to look and communicate as much like the culture as it is possible to do without sinning. I'm sure you've all seen some of the many examples of this. There's the events, the magazines, the websites, the T-shirts, the marketing and lots of other attempts at being a lot cooler than we probably are.
I know in most cases these attempts at relevance via being like the culture are well intentioned. The problem is they tend to fall flat. One of the major reasons is that the culture moves so quickly that it is not easily possible to keep up with it all. What is cool comes and goes quickly, often lasting only as long as it takes for the not cool people to catch up. When we get in wrong, we easily look very stupid. The other risk is that the message gets lost under all our attempts at cool. We risk making it look like since we are so much like them we must have nothing of substance to offer that they don't already have. I think it is time that as Christians we consider what it really means to be relevant
Love is always relevant
There has never been and will never be a time where people don't need to be loved. There is no social or age group that can go without it. Love is always relevant to people regardless of what trends are happening at the time. People always want to know that they are cared about and listened to. People always crave being truly accepted by someone. People always could benefit from having someone to help them out when they hit a rough patch in life. All the advances society has made throughout the years haven't diminished these needs, if anything some of them have made people more disconnected and therefore in more need of being loved. Us going out of the way to show love to someone will leave a much longer and more impacting impression than us trying hard to be cool ever could. Showing people love can also open a way for the second thing we have to offer that is always relevant, the Gospel.
The Gospel is always relevant
While experts have created lots of big new words to describe it, human nature hasn't really ever changed. We battle many of the same problems we have been up against since the fall. Sin is as much a problem for people separated from God as it ever was despite millenniums of effort and plotting to improve humanity. Because us humans haven't changed, the gospel is still as relevant as it has ever been. The good news that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins making us right with God is still good news for everyone, everywhere. We don't need to dress the gospel up because it is the truth of the message that contains the power to change people, not our fancy forms of presentation.
So be relevant, but may it be our love and the gospel that define our relevance, not passing fads.
I know in most cases these attempts at relevance via being like the culture are well intentioned. The problem is they tend to fall flat. One of the major reasons is that the culture moves so quickly that it is not easily possible to keep up with it all. What is cool comes and goes quickly, often lasting only as long as it takes for the not cool people to catch up. When we get in wrong, we easily look very stupid. The other risk is that the message gets lost under all our attempts at cool. We risk making it look like since we are so much like them we must have nothing of substance to offer that they don't already have. I think it is time that as Christians we consider what it really means to be relevant
Love is always relevant
There has never been and will never be a time where people don't need to be loved. There is no social or age group that can go without it. Love is always relevant to people regardless of what trends are happening at the time. People always want to know that they are cared about and listened to. People always crave being truly accepted by someone. People always could benefit from having someone to help them out when they hit a rough patch in life. All the advances society has made throughout the years haven't diminished these needs, if anything some of them have made people more disconnected and therefore in more need of being loved. Us going out of the way to show love to someone will leave a much longer and more impacting impression than us trying hard to be cool ever could. Showing people love can also open a way for the second thing we have to offer that is always relevant, the Gospel.
The Gospel is always relevant
While experts have created lots of big new words to describe it, human nature hasn't really ever changed. We battle many of the same problems we have been up against since the fall. Sin is as much a problem for people separated from God as it ever was despite millenniums of effort and plotting to improve humanity. Because us humans haven't changed, the gospel is still as relevant as it has ever been. The good news that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins making us right with God is still good news for everyone, everywhere. We don't need to dress the gospel up because it is the truth of the message that contains the power to change people, not our fancy forms of presentation.
So be relevant, but may it be our love and the gospel that define our relevance, not passing fads.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Whoops!
I recently installed a new layout onto the blog. I did some testing of it but one thing i forgot to test was that comments posted correctly. That ended up being the thing that didn't work! Apologies to anyone that has tried to comment since the new layout and had it not work. It should work fine for you now. And thanks to Matt for pointing out my oversight.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Read hard things
I came across an interesting little new testament in a charity store recently. It was called the Possibility thinkers edition. Instead of the normal concordance or topical index it just had a list of the miracles of Jesus. It came with verses that were of a positive nature highlighted like blessings and miracles. It sometimes had whole paragraphs highlighted minus one inconvenient verse in the middle. It was an interesting exercise to go through passages reading only the highlighted text! Needless to say, it often left an incorrect picture of what was being communicated in the passage most of the time.
While we might critique the idea of bibles pre-highlighted to only point out the positives we often read as though such highlightings are there even when they are not. It is easy to read through a passage and latch onto a promise for blessing but totally ignore the attached command of obedience. Sin is a super easy topic to race past in the search of something more pleasant. We might get a more enjoyable reading but we end up missing important things in the text and therefore risk an unbalanced theology if we focus on only what we want to hear.
So if you are like me and tend to read looking for the stuff you like and discarding the stuff you don't, i challenge you to deliberately read the hard things when you read the bible. Spend some studying the things in the text that annoy you or you secretly wish weren't there. Often the commandments and teachings that annoy us are a great pointer to areas of weakness that we need to improve in. Reading the hard things can be...well...hard! But i think it is worth it!
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Quotable: Our greatest criticism and affirmation
I read a great quote on buzzardblog.com that i think is worth pondering on
"The cross of Christ is simultaneously the greatest criticism and the greatest affirmation you could ever receive.
The great criticism of the cross is that you are so sinful that God had to sacrifice his Son on the cross for your sins. The great affirmation of the cross is that you are so loved that God sacrificed his Son on the cross for your sins."
"The cross of Christ is simultaneously the greatest criticism and the greatest affirmation you could ever receive.
The great criticism of the cross is that you are so sinful that God had to sacrifice his Son on the cross for your sins. The great affirmation of the cross is that you are so loved that God sacrificed his Son on the cross for your sins."
Friday, January 2, 2009
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