Abstinence at the movies
The recent media attention on the issue of sexual abstinence of the past two to three weeks – which I wrote a commentary piece on over at The Aristophrenium – led me to watch a movie that I would not have ordinarily have watched. Not 15 minutes into the film I was beginning to regret watching it – I wasn’t expecting it to be as crude and as base at it actually was. In hindsight, knowing our culture and the way in which it views sexual topics and issues, perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. In any case, I got the kids off to bed and settled down with my wife to watch The 40 Year Old Virgin
Poem: Of Love and Logic
This was written in the early part of last year … if you can work out what it’s saying, be sure to let me know. I’m curious myself!
Of Love and Logic
The logical thing about Love
Is that Love precedes logic in all instances
Logic reasons and condemns –
For good or bad –
Love reasons and,
On finding logic inadequate,
Forgives
For
Good
Yet forgiveness is often too difficult to conjure
To offer
And to utter
So we default back to the coldness of logic
That reasons
And when you reason,
You discard,
Like babies with bathwater –
Because that’s what logic leads to
Offering forgiveness bears a love
That smoothes creases
Patches hearts
And pardons grievances,
Yet does not necessitate
A call… Continue reading ...
Contradiction? No. Misunderstanding? Yes.
Lately I have been working my way through CS Lewis’s classic, The Problem of Pain. In it there is one line that I lifted out of its pages and plugged into my Twitter timeline – and after that there started some dialogue with a fellow (we’ll call him Pete) who believed that the statement was contradictory and who subsequently mocked it as such.
Well, either this Pete is a very intelligent man and CS Lewis was an idiotic fool or, quite probably, the quote I twittered was most likely misunderstood.
Speaking on the necessity of God’s love for us and of the characteristic of God’s love for us, Lewis wrote “[that it is because God] already loves us… Continue reading ...
Quote: Hope, faith and love
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from ours. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love … which is forgiveness.
Reinhold Niebuhr, philosopher and theologian… Continue reading ...
Your love is like a beetroot stain
There are many grand, romantic, humorous and satirical quotes on the topic of love that anyone could find nowadays. It seems that we toss the word ‘love’ around quite freely – perhaps we have even diluted it to an extent – so that it becomes just something that is so abstract as to be almost meaningless or at least devalued. We say things like ‘I love Nutella’, or ‘I love my cat.’ What we really mean, of course, is simply that we really like the object of our ‘love’. Yet scripturally, love means something much, much stronger than for what we give it credit. Truly, there is no greater love, as the Lord Jesus says, than to give up one’s life for another.
CS Lewis wrote about the variations… Continue reading ...
Quote: to love is to be open to hurt
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960)… Continue reading ...
Repenting in the face of unforgiveness
How hard is it to forgive? Is there a point where you have hurt someone so much that, despite the deep sincerity of your apology, the humbling act of admitting you were wrong, and the heartfelt plea for another chance, that there is absolutely no room to be forgiven?
I know that God, in his perfect grace, offers his forgiveness – and I take that with gratitude and thankfulness and joy. I know also that, while we are made in the image of God, we’re not perfect – every human is flawed and sinful. We hurt each other – even those we love – sometimes often without realising. And in our sin, perhaps we come to a point where offering forgiveness to another becomes nigh impossible for us because… Continue reading ...
To God the glory (even when difficult)
After my last post, When God says ‘No’, it seemed an obvious step to share some other learnings on 2 Samuel 12:13-23. To some, this passage can be difficult to accept; to the skeptic, it’s a verse they pull to label the God of the Bible as a cruel and unjust God. Why? Well, because God takes the life of David’s son – seemingly without just cause.
In all our Bible reading we must understand that the wages of sin is death and that this entails justice. We see this requirement met for us by the substitutional death of Jesus on our behalf – Jesus paid the full ransom for our sin by taking the punishment we ourselves deserve. In David’s case, is it that the child’s life… Continue reading ...
God’s a real ‘devil’?
We look around us and see all the evil in the world and those incited by the mass injustice (whether personally against them, or against groups of others) brings with it a cursing of God. God’s the real devil of it all, apparently. After all, if He is as good and all benevolent as some believe Him to be, how can he let the things that have ravaged human history and cause pain and suffering to millions to this very day?
I was reading an address on this earlier today, and the following proverb was mentioned:
A man’s own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the LORD. (Prov 19:3)
This goes as much as to say that our own poor choices are the ones… Continue reading ...
5 signs that (and 1 reason why) you’re self-righteous
Many non-Christians will label Christians as being an overtly self-righteous bunch. Is there truth to this claim? Well … yes. A lot of truth, actually.
The dictionary says this about self-righteousness:
convinced of one’s own righteousness especially in contrast with the actions and beliefs of others : narrow-mindedly moralistic.
There’s a common theme going on here. See if you can pick it before you reach the concluding remarks at the bottom of the post. Here’s my brief 5 signs that (and 1 reason why) you’re self-righteous:
#1. Denial
When faced with the charge of being self-righteous, you immediately defend yourself. In your defense, you will typically throw back reasons as to why you are righteous and not self-righteous.
#2. Everyone else is substandard
You’re… Continue reading ...
Fruit-loops and ding-a-lings
Sometimes the most insightful tidbits you learn about the Christian faith come neither from the church pulpits nor from the myriad of sermons/messages available on the internet. Sometimes they come from estranged conversations with faceless strangers. The one I’m about to extrapolate a little on happened in a Christian channel on an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server. The simple truths just blew me away at the time. Let me try to relate them.
I have long had a feeling that the segregation of the mainstream churches into its various denominations (and non-denominations) has made genuine Christian worship a stale affair. That is, each church community has enmeshed its specific style of worship into its doctrinal beliefs – which serves only to muddy the waters of true and effectual gospel… Continue reading ...
Christians: not perfect, just forgiven!
For the skeptic, Christians are nothing but a hypocritical community group, bent with the same greed, self-promoting motives and double-standards as that of many individuals out in the secular world. And you know what, the skeptic is right.
There is a small church I drive past almost everyday on my way back from the office. It is situated on the corner of a reasonably busy intersection and is making good use… Continue reading ...
Last Roll of the Dice for Gary Gygax
Mr Gary Gygax died on Tuesday morning, 2nd March 2008.
My high-school friends (who are also my old Dungeons & Dragons playing co-horts) may know who Gary Gygax is. My church-going friends might not – though I know the odd one or two who may be able to cast their memory back to younger days. For those of you playing at home, Gary Gygax was the co-founder of the… Continue reading ...
Next stop: Karma Central
It’s a subtle reference, to be sure. Unless you’re in the clutches of the menace that is Melbourne’s public transport system, you are probably blissfully unaware. Fare evasion is nothing new to any transport system, but in Melbourne’s beloved train, tram and bus network, Metlink believe it’s a big deal. A big enough deal to presume guilt on its patrons before innocence. A big enough deal to launch a quasi-spiritual campaign against the ticket evaders and freeloaders that must ‘surely be the reason’ for our failed and troubled transport system. A’la karmacentral.com.au.
Their whole campaign revolves around the simple notion that if you don’t buy a ticket or otherwise avoid paying your way on public transport, somewhere, somehow, something bad is going to happen to you. Their billboard… Continue reading ...
Not so much a ‘handout’ but a ‘handup’
Some time back I was involved in a discussion about Jesus’ redemptive work. My chief point was essentially that there is nothing that we can do in order to please God by our own efforts. We are so decrepit and sinful by nature and by choice that we cannot help but sin and, therefore, can never hope to reach the purity of God’s standard. Enter Jesus into human history – God’s plan to set the record straight: acknowledge your sin, trust in Jesus (and let him take our punishment in our place) and obtain redemption.
The person I was discussing this with surprised me with his response. He said, in more or less these words: if the only way to be accepted by God is to let Jesus… Continue reading ...
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