Wrong Paradigm, Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Solution
The world has created its own problems – it has taken morality out of sexual relationships; it sees uniformity as the answer to all ills; and it calls on the law to achieve these goals.
Victorian Government Pressures Police to Issue Arrest Warrant for Holy Spirit
It has been reported that the Victorian government has been pressing police to issue a warrant for the arrest of the Holy Spirit.
What You Might Not Know About Margaret Sanger, the Founder of Planned Parenthood
Sanger feared what she called ‘the sinister forces of the hordes of irresponsibles and imbeciles’. Her whole approach to life was racist and elitist to the core.
Anti-Discrimination Claim Against the Prophets
Reports have surfaced that the serial litigant, Gary Burns, is on the warpath against the Hebrew prophets. More particularly, he’s proposing to take the prophet, Ezekiel, to the Anti-Discrimination Board. Ezekiel is cited as condemning the sins of Sodom as haughty and ‘an abomination’ before God (Ezek.16:50). Strangely enough, Mr Burns has drawn inspiration from the history of the papacy itself. In 897, Pope Stephen VI (896-897) is supposed to have taken a dislike to the teaching and practices of his predecessor, Pope Formosus (891-896). As a consequence, Stephen had the remains of Formosus dug up, arrayed in full papal…
What is the Christian to make of natural disasters?
Some readers may have struggled with the drought for years, and now, especially in NSW and Queensland, may be confronted with the more immediate threat of fire. Television brings the story to the wider population, but it tends to have a deadening effect too. To watch uncontrolled fire for a minute, then sit through an advertisement for something one does not need, and then, worse, have to endure an ad for Bride and Prejudice, would desensitise anyone’s moral sensibilities. Given all that, what is the Christian to make of what we call natural disasters? 1. We are to do good…
Failed Amendments in the New South Wales Legislature
In August 2019 the NSW parliament tried to rush through a misnamed Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill. It was hardly reproductive as it was designed to aid killing, not the nurturing of human life. Nor did it have much to do with health care, especially not for the babies. Finally, ‘reform’ implies improvement of some kind but this was a big step backwards. To its disgrace, the Legislative Assembly passed the bill which had an unprecedented fifteen co-sponsors. Yet it was the dismissal of various amendments which indicated just how dark Western society has become. Tanya Davies moved an amendment…
The Most Impact Awards, Bledisloe Cup 2019
It has been decreed from on high that these awards are no longer to be called the ‘best and fairest awards’ but the ‘those who made the most impact awards’. Now that the Bledisloe Cup for 2019 has been decided, the winners can be congratulated, in terms of their contribution to the All Black victory: 1. Three points to Raelene Castle. Her contribution to the All Black victory was invaluable. Having left Bulldogs in her wake, she now leaves Wallabies in the same condition. At times her profession and her accent seemed to indicate a divided loyalty but when the…
Insults and Sarcasm in the Bible
To criticise and insult people is a somewhat precarious activity. In fact, for one sinner to have the temerity to criticise another seems particularly galling, and liable to do more harm than good. Therefore, it is not altogether surprising that one should hear praise, especially at funerals, that a certain person ‘never said a bad word about anyone’. It reflects a sentiment which is not without truth, but there is also truth in Richard Baxter’s barbed comment, cited by J. C. Ryle in discussing the parable of the talents (Matt.25:14-30), Â ‘To do no harm is the praise of a stone,…
Rugby Australia to release the ‘New Rugby Revised Version’ of the Bible
There are well-substantiated rumours that Australian Rugby is seeking to produce a coffee table revision of the Christian Scriptures, to be called the New Rugby Revised Version (NRRV). Some of the contents have had to be changed. Sodom and Gomorrah are showered with blessings, and Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of the PC establishment. No real place could be found for John the Baptist, who has been relegated to a footnote while Herod Antipas receives an unusually favourable press. But the enduring message remains the same: Christ Jesus came into the world to try to make people nice.
There were two people in the temple, a journalist and a footballer
A response to Claire Harvey, deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph: “I’m more of a Christian than Israel Folau is. I’m more of a Christian than anyone at the Australian Christian Lobby – and I don’t even go to church.” There were two people in the temple – a journalist and a footballer. The journalist could hardly be bothered going in because she was superior to all those inside. But on this occasion, she deigned to stoop down and enter. ‘I thank you, God, that I am not brainless like all those who worship you as this footballer does. I…
Justice and Truth in the Public Square
It is fearful how often the condition of ancient Israel resembles that of the modern world. One example of this is found in Isaiah 59: ‘Justice is turned back, and righteousness is far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey’ (Isa.59:14-15a). A modern journalist could have written these words, assuming there is a modern journalist with some understanding of these things. Because Dietrich Bonhoeffer became involved in the conspiracy against Hitler, he had to be unnaturally guarded in all relationships, and…
How do the Old and New Testament fit together?
Many people in the Christian Church have wondered how the Old and New Testaments are to be connected. Partly this is because of the widespread teaching of the German liberal Protestants who had no idea how to tackle this issue. One of the few who was not personally anti-Semitic was Adolf Harnack whose famous lectures of 1899 asked the question What is Christianity? He answered in terms of the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the infinite value of the human soul, and had little time for the evangelical emphasis on the death and resurrection of the God-man, Jesus…
Christianity is a hoax if Jesus did not rise from the dead
The historian, Philip Schaff, is often cited regarding the resurrection of Christ: ‘Truly, Jesus Christ, the Christ of the Gospels, the Christ of history, the crucified and risen Christ, the divine-human Christ, is the most real, the most certain, the most blessed of all facts. And this fact is an ever-present and growing power which pervades the church and conquers the world, and is its own best evidence, as the sun shining in the heavens. This fact is the only solution to the terrible mystery of sin and death, the only inspiration to a holy life of love to God…
God is Obvious
Is it obvious that God exists? Richard Dawkins does not think so: ‘The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.’ Sam Harris is of the same ilk: ‘nature offers no compelling evidence for an intelligent designer and countless examples of unintelligent design.’ Yet the Bible regards it as so obvious that from the creation we should know that there is a Creator that it declares that if we do not see this, we are without excuse (Rom.1:20). The…
Relativism doesn’t open the mind, it constricts it
In The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987, Allan Bloom lamented that virtually all American college students believe that there is no absolute truth for all truth is relative. He goes on to comment that the only virtue left now is tolerance and that relativism has extinguished the real motive of education. With the declared goal of opening up the human mind, relativism has actually succeeded in constricting it. Perhaps we ought to begin with the simple and helpful distinction made by John North and Rob Forsyth. They distinguish between what they call ‘Beetroot truth’ (which you either like…
Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st Century: A Christian Response
There are good reasons for rejecting the diagnosis that the problem with religion is that it discriminates, and the proposed cure that it not be allowed to discriminate any longer. 1. The whole approach is putting Australian law on a radically different basis. Christianity teaches its followers to think in terms of right and wrong, but the Australian Human Rights Commission, naturally, thinks in terms of rights. In Christianity, it is a sin to bow down to idols, to murder, to commit adultery, to steal, to be covetous or proud, and so on. The basic law is summarised in the…
The Cult of the Celebrity
Recently, I was watching the evening news on television, and becoming increasingly irritated at the rot that was being passed off as newsworthy. Virtually all the news was gossip about celebrities. The antics of film stars and drunk footballers are hardly what make the real world go round. Celebrities, heroes and personalities have come in all shapes and sizes down through the age, but they seem to be converging these days to one common factor: one need not do anything worthwhile, just being famous is enough. On 25 February 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, of all people, delivered a stinging attack ‘On…
Civil Days and Holy Days: ‘as Western society unravels at the seams, the celebration of days becomes more problematic, and indeed vacuous.’
It just so happens this year (2019) that Easter Sunday and Anzac Day fall near one another – on the 21 April and 25 April respectively. Given that the New Testament does not over-emphasise days (Gal.4:10-11), one is still meant, as an Australian, to appreciate Anzac Day in some kind of civil sense, and as a Christian, to recognise that Jesus Christ defeated death forever on Easter Sunday. However, one cannot help noticing that as Western society unravels at the seams, the celebration of days becomes more problematic, and indeed vacuous. In a secular society, Anzac Day – like Harmony…
Faith and reason are NOT polar opposites, they are connected
In the minds of many people today, faith and reason are polar opposites. Richard Dawkins, for example, maintains that ‘Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.’ We are meant to believe that no Christian has any reason to be a Christian; it is all a matter of blind faith. And atheists are presented to us as illustrations of Matthew Arnold’s ‘sweet reasonableness’ – or reasonableness at least. Since Dawkins is keen that those with faith should argue, let us do just that. How does reason connect to faith? God is the source of…
Christian social policy should consist of more than just demanding the freedom to say some things in our own little corner of the public space.
As Western society becomes more bullying in its attitude towards Christians, there has been an increasing tendency on the part of many believers to be content with arguing for our space in the public square. There has been a reluctance to call on unbelievers to repent, and even an assumption that unbelievers cannot be expected to hold the same moral views as Christians. It is true that without the Holy Spirit, the Christian message will simply seem to be foolishness to those who hear it (1 Cor.2:14). However, God has written His moral law on the hearts of all human…