Change – A virtue or a slogan?
In an age of shallow thinking, it has become all too easy to pass something off as a value – when virtue is what is meant – and sweep the population along in a certain way of thinking – or non-thinking. An example of this is ‘change’. It is like the word ‘diversity’ and is almost invariably associated with whatever is good or progressive. To say that something has not changed for some time is a sure way of damning it. Like diversity, change goes both ways; it is not a synonym for ‘improvement’. When we look at old photographs…
Abortion: Kermit Gosnell and the slide to infanticide.
In May 2013 Dr Kermit Gosnell from Pennsylvania was found guilty of three counts of first degree murder of three children intended for abortion but born alive and then murdered, and one count of involuntary manslaughter for failing to properly look after a woman who had gone through an abortion. Even some hardened pro-abortion people admitted that the whole business was grisly in the extreme. Apparently one of the aborted children was so big that Gosnell quipped that he could ‘walk me to the bus stop’. Photos were shown to the jury which depicted babies with wounds in the back…
The West is becoming hostile towards Christ
Indulgence in nostalgia is commonplace amongst those who are getting on in years. A check to it comes with the warning in Ecclesiastes: ‘Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this’ (Eccles.7:10). Yet we are also encouraged to learn from the men of Issachar who had ‘understanding of the times’ (1 Chron.12:32). So it is with some caution that one might point out some of the increasingly obvious features of the Western world today. First, it has lost any notion of a moral foundation. One is unable to…
Misleading ‘Christian’ slogans are dangerous when they are a substitute for solid biblical truth
There is a strong element of disguise and deception in the spiritual battles that we face. In Paul’s day there were false apostles who disguised themselves as apostles of Christ, following Satan who does great evil while appearing to be an angel of light (see 2 Cor.11:13-15). The covenant people of God are thus warned against slogans that appear to be spiritual truths but which turn out to be false or at least misleading in some way. In the dark days of the Babylonian exile, a proverb was repeated: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are…
God and Caesar: How should we view the state?
Historians invariably speak of every era as a time of crisis, and the Church’s relationship with the state is never what it might be in an unfallen world. Tensions are clearly increasing in the modern Western world, and, for that matter, in many parts of the East and in Africa too. There is, as Ecclesiastes says, nothing new under the sun (Eccles.1:9). In an attempt to trap Jesus, the Pharisees raised this issue with Him, asking whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the idolatrous and pagan emperor or not (see Matt.22:15-22). Jesus’ famous response has been interpreted as…
Banning the Holy Spirit and chaining the Word
As Western societies lurch from one disastrous fad to another, there have been increased efforts to ban what are called gay conversion therapies. Hollywood has naturally offered its obligatory contribution with the movie Boy Erased, Academia chipped in with a report from La Trobe University – the institution that birthed the Safe Schools Coalition – which joined with the Human Rights Law Centre and Gay & Lesbian Health Victoria to produce research to show that ‘LGBT conversion therapy remains a real problem in Australian religious communities.’ The Victorian government over 2016-2017 banned such therapy, and the Conservative government in the…
Is anti-discrimination the first commandment?
Drawing on the work of two American writers, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, Paul Kelly wrote recently of ‘the three great lies corroding Western cultures’. In his view, these are: first, that disputes today are a battle between good (defined as the oppressed victims) and evil (defined as the privileged minority); secondly, that people will be made weaker by being challenged so they need to be protected and made safe; and thirdly, that we must always trust our feelings. All that is undeniable, but associated with these great lies is the confusion in our view of the law. In the…
When there is nowhere else to go
There are times in life when it becomes obvious not only that the God who has revealed Himself in Christ is true, but that there is nowhere else to go. One such moment occurred for the apostles when many people who had been disciples of Jesus left Him because of His hard sayings (see John 6:60-66). Jesus then challenged the Twelve: ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ (John 6:66) Here they were, looking at the backs of the people who were their erstwhile friends and who were now leaving. They must have been asking themselves: ‘Did we get…
Goodness and Meaning: Made for God
Are we made for God, the One who is all goodness and truth, or are we just intelligent slime, thrown up from some primeval soup? In A River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, Richard Dawkins declared: ‘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.’ Is that true? Or does Augustine sound like he gets it right?: ‘You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in You.’ Let us look…
Atheistic Miracles
Those who like to think that they are rational often go back to repeat David Hume’s essay against miracles, written in 1748. Here Hume wrote: ‘A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.’ This is then used as an argument against God’s being the creator of the world. Philosophically speaking, Hume’s statement contains as much assertion as argument, and is certainly vulnerable at…
The Attractiveness of Sin
One of the most startling insights into sin and the nature of this world comes from the French Jewish philosopher, Simone Weil, who died in 1943 but not before she was converted through reading George Herbert’s poem, ‘Love bade me welcome’. She observed: ‘Nothing is so beautiful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy as the good. No deserts are so dreary, monotonous and boring as evil. But with fantasy it is the other way round. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied, intriguing, attractive and full of charm.’…
A tale of two photos
In order to drive home something of the horror of the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-1945), it is fairly commonplace in textbooks and presentations to include graphic photos of Nazi brutality. One of the most piercing is this one of a Nazi soldier shooting a Ukrainian Jew, with the attendant picture of a mass grave. We have all seen photos of Belsen and Auschwitz, as well as horrors from the Burmese railway project supervised by the Japanese. One of the few films I have sat through was one based on Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The…
The Religion of Diversity
If love and marriage go together as a horse and carriage, so too do diversity and progressive thought. To counter any opposition to anything, all one has to do is to claim that it promotes diversity – and no one dares to speak against it. Everything is now about diversity – in football, Anzac Day celebrations, in education, and the media. Apparently, there is nothing that should not be hijacked to celebrate diversity. People may not hope in Christ, but they have a blind faith in diversity. How should the Christian respond? First, diversity hardly ranks as a virtue in…
Same-Sex Marriage: After the plebiscite and the legislation
The results of the same-sex plebiscite were announced on 15 November 2017, and a few weeks later Australia became the 26th nation in the world to legislate for same-sex marriage. The Prime Minister was beside himself, as he punched the air, like an Aussie batsman who had just scored a century against the old foe, England. ‘Australia has done it,’ he proclaimed, ‘What a day for love, for equality, for respect.’ Step aside Neville Chamberlain who was overjoyed at guaranteeing peace in our time in 1938. Here is Malcolm Turnbull in 2017: ‘This belongs to us all. This is Australia…
The Moral Malaise in Public Life
In 1916 and 1917, during World War I, Australia went through two divisive referenda dealing with the issue of whether men could be conscripted for overseas service. In 2017 we have gone through a divisive plebiscite on the issue of whether only heterosexual couples can legally marry. One of the strange features of the whole business was the numerous expressions of moral outrage without any basis in a thought-out moral system. This is disturbing but hardly surprising. Unaccustomed as one is to agreeing with anything David Marr comes up with, he did recently point out in the Guardian that the…
Teaching An Angry Prophet (Jonah 4:1-11)
God has been gracious to Nineveh and to Jonah – sending Jonah to the pagan city, chasing the disobedient prophet across the Mediterranean, preserving him in the great fish, and finally using him to reach the Ninevites. In many ways we could expect the book to finish at the end of chapter 3 – the king of Nineveh is walking about in sackcloth, and the people have turned from their wicked ways. Maybe a little prayer of thanksgiving would have been a nice way to finish the book. Instead we get one major temper tantrum from one cantankerous minor prophet.…
Nineveh Repents (Jonah 3:1-10)
God has chased Jonah across the Mediterranean Sea, and finally brought him to the point where, in the belly of the great fish, Jonah repented, looked to the sacrifices of the temple, and declared that he would obey God. God is now ready to use Jonah again, so Jonah is spat out onto the beach – all rather undignified but effective (2:10)! God’s grace in recommissioning Jonah The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time (3:1-2). Some have tried to see a slightly different message here but it seems essentially the same as the original message. There…
Coming to One’s Senses (Jonah 2)
Jonah rebelled against God’s clear command to go to Nineveh, and instead took off to Tarshish in a ship. But you cannot hide from God, and God sends a great storm which eventually leads to Jonah’s being tossed overboard, and spending three days in the belly of a great fish or whale. This has caused a lot of controversy. Many whales cannot swallow an orange, let alone a man, although sperm whales are the exception. One hears all sorts of stories – C. F. Keil tells of a whole horse (dead, admittedly) being found in a shark, and also of…
Trying to Flee from God (Jonah 1:4-17)
Jonah had been given the onerous task of going to Nineveh to preach against its sins. Instead, he had taken off in the opposite direction, not because he was a coward but because he feared that God would forgive the Ninevites. He wanted God to do to Nineveh what He had done to Sodom and Gomorrah. Before God dealt with Nineveh, He had to deal with His backsliding servant, Jonah. Because God loves His people, He chastens them (Heb.12:5-6). God closes in on Jonah. God chastens the backslider The Lord sent a great storm which threatened the ship. So afraid…
The Prophet Commissioned (Jonah 1:1-3)
Everybody knows the story of Jonah – how he tried to run away from God, but was swallowed by a great fish, and then went on to preach at Nineveh. But there are actually two main stories going on – how God deals with Jonah and how God deals with Nineveh. So we will be looking at both subjects in our study. Martin Luther commented about the prophet Jonah: ‘a queer and odd saint who is angry because of God’s mercy for sinners … And yet he is God’s dear child.’ Jonah is all about history We have to say…
You must be logged in to post a comment.