Gender Dysphoria: Tentative Theological Reflections on the Transgender Question
A few weeks ago I was the theological consultant on a panel looking at gender dysphoria at a conference in Canberra. It was a helpful gathering and I think we all learnt a lot. I am presently working on an article on the topic and will post on it in more detail at a later stage but thought I would make a tentative start in this post. Your comments and pushback will help me to clarify some of my own thinking. What theological tools can we draw upon to guide us when we consider the issue of gender dysphoria? First we need to be sure what we are talking about. Gender is usually defined as the...
Read MoreTo Strive for Great Things: Is Ambition OK?
J. Oswald Sanders starts his classic book Spiritual Leadership by contrasting 1 Tim 3:1 To aspire to leadership is an honourable ambition with Jeremiah 45:5 Are you seeking great things for yourself? Seek them not. There is a creative tension between the two sentiments. Is there a place in the life of a Christ follower for ambition? If you listen to some worship songs, or pay attention to the names of many Christian groups, ambition seems the new norm. We are going to be planet shakers and kingdom builders and our lives are going to count like no other has. Our church will be the centre from...
Read MoreFor better, but not worse: Marriage and Divorce in the 21st century
I still remember the day. A woman had moved into the town where I was pastor, and on arriving at the church, announced that she was trying to build a new life for herself. She and her husband had separated after 30 years of marriage. He was now living with a much younger woman, and she doubted he would ever return to her – though she would be happy if she was wrong. She wasn’t. After 18 months of agonising and of all attempts at reconciliation failing, she filed for divorce. On the day her case was to be heard in court, she asked if I and another person from the church would go...
Read More3 Ways to Decide: Some Models to Navigate Ethical Dilemmas
Ever been in the position where you scratch your head and ask, ‘So what should I do now?’ And as you ask, your thinking is not only moving along the track of what might work, but you are also wondering, ‘regardless of what works, what is the right thing to do?’ The right thing is invariably defined by a cluster of factors such as our faith, upbringing and cultural background. We may or may not be aware of how these impact our decision making. But enough pontificating. In real life situations, how do we go about making ethical decisions? There are three kinds of models...
Read MoreRemembering what Matters: Ethics and Exodus 1
In 2011 I was asked to deliver the TB Maston lecture on ethics at Carson Newman University in Tennessee, USA. I spoke on the ethical dilemmas inherent in Exodus 1 in a talk entitled ‘Remembering what Matters: Ethics and Exodus 1’. If you want the full text of that talk you can access it here. It starts on page 91 of the journal. What follows is an edited version of that talk. As we start to think into the field of ethics, I want to underline (and emphatically underline) that we should not think in terms of trite and easy answers to complex questions. We all know that they really...
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