Quotable: Greg Sheridan and God is Good for You – Take 2
A few weeks ago we had an initial look at a few gems from Greg Sheridan’s excellent new book God is Good for You. Here is a second look… Materialism, the most boring as well as the least accurate way of experiencing the world and recording experience, is the dominant mindset of the Western intelligentsia in our day. – Quoting A.N.Wilson (p35) Militant atheists deny any validity to the testimony of anyone in history who, through mystical prayer or contemplation or the irruption of God into human consciousness, claims any direct personal experience of God. But the testimony of this...
Read MoreQuotable: Brian Harris, The Big Picture – Take 2
Last week we looked at a few of the statements made in the opening chapters of my 2015 book, The Big Picture: Building Blocks of a Christian World View which people sometimes cite back at me. Here are a few more insights from the book which I hope you will enjoy pondering… Election is not about privilege but responsibility. We are blessed to bless. It is a biblical truth with challenging implications, but if we are to build a Christian world view we must repeatedly affirm that every God-given blessing is for the greater good of all. Brian Harris (p35) Moral instructions in the Bible...
Read MoreQuotable: Brian Harris, The Big Picture
I guess it was an inevitable question: “You have been quoting several different authors in your blog. When are you going to quote yourself?” A simple answer follows… “this week!” Here are a few of the statements made in the opening chapters of my 2015 book, The Big Picture: Building Blocks of a Christian World View which people sometimes cite back at me. I often have a sinking feeling that if Jesus were to revisit this planet, he would feel a need to birth something fairly different from the church as it currently exists. As I read the Gospels, I do not get the feeling that the Jesus...
Read MoreIn Praise of Smaller Churches: 10 Positives…
Almost every church I come into contact with (and over the years, that has been a fair few), wants to be bigger than it presently is. They look a little enviously at churches in the next size category, and imagine that if that were them, most of their problems would be solved. Their pastor (if they have one) assumes that if they were larger, they would be more respected by their colleagues and – well, let’s face it, we live in an era where bigger is usually assumed to be better. To be sure, large churches have many things going for them – and I certainly don’t want this post to...
Read MoreQuotable: Greg Sheridan, God is Good for You
Greg Sheridan’s latest book God is Good for You: A Defence of Christianity in Troubled Times (2018) is well worth the read. It starts memorably… What will it mean for us, when God is dead? Who, then, can humanity converse with, when we lose our oldest friend? The loss of Christianity, and not only of Christianity but of much other religious belief and practice, will change us in ways we cannot possibly imagine. There will be no purpose beyond ourselves and ultimately Western humanity will look in the mirror and say: I’m bored with myself. And then, out of that boredom, who can imagine?...
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