Blending Amish and 21st Century…
OK, so I accept some will think this is one of my sillier blog posts, but I recently wondered if it might be possible to navigate life part Amish, part 21st century. Of course a whole lot of qualifiers need to be thrown in, and I realise the thesis would never stand up to serious scrutiny, and those in the know will want to correct me on endless aspects of Amish life. But I am a big picture person and I really just want to explore if its possible to opt out of our overly complicated 21st century lives periodically and travel back to a simpler time – and in doing so to find sufficient...
Read MoreBecause Our Habits Form Us…
Though I no longer remember her name, I remember the enthusiastic student teacher in my primary school teaching us about habits, and how important it is to form good ones. “A habit sticks with you,” she proclaimed. She wrote the word HABIT on the chalk board, systematically then rubbing out one letter at a time – creatively turning the lesson into an exercise in both spelling and ethics. You take out the H, and it is still there A BIT. Work harder, and remove the A, but BIT is still left. Yet more effort, and the B disappears – but IT is still left. “And so children,” she finished, “That’s...
Read MoreQuestions for the New Year: Two Prompts from Genesis 16
Photo by Zane Lindsay on Pexels.com Genesis 16 is one of the more troubling passages in the Hebrew Bible, dealing as it does with Abram and Sarai’s initial attempt to deal with their childlessness by having a child through Sarai’s servant, Hagar. Though the plan originates with Sarai, when she sees that Hagar is pregnant she feels very differently about it, a reminder that there is usually a significant gap between theory and practice in all matters of the heart. This is not Sarai or Abram at their finest – Abram giving his consent for Sarai to abuse Hagar so horribly that...
Read MoreOn not making great things small…
I recently listened to a podcast in which Fuller Seminary President Mark Labberton lamented that religions (including Christianity) have a habit of making great things small. He said he initially heard the sentiment from his father – who at best was on the fringes of faith. He hadn’t really understood his father’s point until his own God encounter when he was about 18 years. His mother, who attended church periodically, realised that her son had experienced something meaningful, and so invited a pastor to come and see him. Labberton says that the meeting felt awkward from...
Read MoreDoing what Love Requires: Exodus 1, Murder, Myths and Morality…
Photo by Alex Green on Pexels.com I recently preached at the wonderful Westcity Church of Christ, taking part in their sermon series on Disruptive Stories. My disruptive story was from Exodus 1:15-22, a story of enormous courage and surprising ethical complexity, which we usually gloss over too quickly. Several people asked for a copy of my notes, so I thought I would make them more widely available and post them on the blog. Hope you find yourself drawn into this extraordinary story…. Have you ever had to make an impossible decision? Perhaps you run a company – and it has some...
Read MoreA Cohort of Courage…
Photo by Eric Sanman on Pexels.com Have you spared a thought for students who studied their pivotal year 11 and 12 in the shadow of COVID – with disrupted classes, lockdowns and great uncertainty? What would you say to a year 12 graduating class? Last week I spoke at the Carey Baptist College graduation ceremony for 130 year 12 students. This is what I said, and because several people asked for a copy, I am posting it here… Congratulations on being the graduating class of 2021. You have the special honour of being the cohort whose year 11 and 12 experience was lived in the shadow...
Read More4 Fields of Listening: To God, to Others and to Self
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com Most of us prefer to be listened to than to listen. However, as is often noted, God made us with two ears and one mouth, perhaps indicating that we should listen twice as much as we talk. Are there ways to listen that are more rewarding and which might tempt us to lean in to what others are saying, rather than impatiently waiting for our turn to dominate the conversation? C. Otto Scharmer (of “Theory U” fame) suggests that there are four fields of listening, and in this post I’d like to very loosely interact with his ideas, applying them to how we...
Read MoreIt says what! Making sense of impossibly difficult Bible passages…
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com In my recent post On Being a Progressive Conservative, I mentioned that I had drawn the short straw on our preaching team and had to speak on some impossibly difficult Bible passages from Deut 19-26. Several of you asked what I landed up saying, and so I thought I would post the notes from the message. Actually it went surprisingly well, and many people said they found it helpful. Most commonly cited was the insight that when we read scripture we should pay more attention to the concern behind a passage than to its specific instruction. What to do...
Read MoreSigns of a healthy relationship
Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com I’ve been asked the question often enough, “How can we be sure our love will last? How can we know if our relationship is more than infatuation?” Many decades ago I was helped to explore the question by Anthony Kosnik’s (ed) work Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought. It provoked more than a little debate when it was first published in 1977, which explains why the reviewers on Amazon who give it four or five stars, are countered by those who give it a scathing one star. As I say, many considered it extreme when it first came...
Read MoreOn being a progressive conservative (or a conservative progressive)…
Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels.com Is the world so simple that we can quickly attach a valid label to everyone? We often act as though it is – or certainly we do in the world of theology, where we try to separate between those who are theologically conservative and those who are progressive – although we might use slightly different language, and suggest someone is a liberal or a fundamentalist or an evangelical or whatever. Single descriptors (conservative or progressive) usually make the error of assuming a world without nuance, a world where things fit tidily into a box… but when...
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