Pointing, postulating, praying, preaching and pondering...

I’d like to point you to a couple of things that have popped up in the blogosphere…

Firstly over on Photizo is an incredibly challenging post on our continual betrayal of Jesus:

“I mean don’t you hate Judas? Don’t you want to punch him? “You betray Him, the Son of God with a kiss!? You scumbag Judas, you son of Satan, if your heart was so against Jesus why not point to Him, or say “He’s that one there”…. But no, you kissed Him!”

Yet every sin we commit is just as horrific as that, if not worse. Judas sinned with a kiss. Our sin is equivalent to prostituting ourselves out to another, proclaiming that Christ, the Husband of the Church, isn’t enough for us.(Isaiah 1: 21/Jeremiah 2: 20)

Jesus displayed grace the measure of which you or I will spend eternity being amazed by His grace in letting them lead Him like a Lamb to the slaughter. That same grace and infinitely more beside it is given to us each day.”

One of the books that we have to read before we start the Relay scheme with UCCF is “The Discipline of Grace” by Jerry Bridges. One of the phrases and ideas used in that is the idea of preaching the gospel to ourselves. There is a really encouraging and helpful interview over on C.J. Mahaney’s blog between C.J. and Jerry – really worth listening to here (although for those of you who have no interest in American Football you can probably stop listening for the last 5 minutes or so!)

Click here to listen.

I’m currently in the process of writing a talk for a lunchbar at Northumbria University for next Monday. The topic is “Is Jesus the Only Way to God?” I’d appreciate prayer as I got about that – I currently don’t particularly like what I’ve written, but time is also rapidly running out.

God bless.

Dear Freedom

UPDATE: The talk went well. There were very few people there - good for my pride and desire to "preach to the masses" - but those who did turn up responded well. We ended up sitting round a table and me doing the talk on a bar stool, which felt slightly weird! I don't write full transcripts and so don't have anything easily postable, but I will maybe put my notes up for people to look at.

Hitchens vs Wilson... a collision of lives

Over the last couple of days I've watched the debate between Christopher Hitchens and Doug Wilson that happened at Westminster Theological Seminary a few days ago.



I think of all the "new atheists" I find Hitchens the most intriguing as he seems to be the one most interesting in discussing things and not just insulting and lambasting the "cognitively defective" that "have faith". You see great evidence of that in his willingness to go to somewhere like Westminster and his desire to engage there.

You can see the video here – unfortunately I can’t imbed it.

I do find the words and ideas of Hitchens deeply saddening though. I’ve been looking at Romans 1:18-32 quite a lot recently and these words that I wrote recently seemed particularly applicable as I considered Hitchens ideas:

“Romans 1:18-32 gives us one of the clearest descriptions of the state of humanity with darkened hearts, debased minds and degraded bodies. These verses show that the source of our state is that those who are not living in right relationship with God, the unrighteous, have suppressed the truth. The truth suppressing nature of rebels is what has lead God to give them up to the lusts of their hearts, to dishonourable passions and debased minds.

“Romans 1:18-32 tells us that "...what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them...they are without excuse... they knew God... they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened... they became fools... they exchanged the truth about God for a lie... they did not see fit to acknowledge God... they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die.””

It is deeply sad that Hitchens so suppresses the truth, but we must continue our prayers for him and for all those who are continuing to live in rebellion against God.

God bless.

Dear Freedom

Diagnosing the human condition...

Last week I read Mark Dever’s new book “The Gospel and Personal Evangelism”, (read a chapter here) which is excellent – I thoroughly recommend reading it and being challenged and inspired by Mark’s passion for evangelism and making the name of Jesus known. Today I’ve been looking at Jesus’ diagnosis for the human condition and his self-giving cure. Mark talks about it in this way:

“True Christianity is realistic about the dark side of our world, our life, our nature, our heart. But true Christianity is not finally pessimistic or morally indifferent, encouraging us to merely settle in and accept the cold, hard truth. No. The news that we, as Christians, have to bring is so great, so tremendous, not only because our depravity is so pervasive and our sin so widespread, but also because God’s plans for us are so different, so wonderful.

“And when we begin to realise it, we become thankful for the fact that Christianity is not finally about anesthetising us to life’s pain, or even about waking us up to it and teaching us to live with it. It is about teaching us to live with a transforming longing, with a growing faith, with a sure and certain hope of what’s to come.”

God bless.

Dear Freedom

“Bad”, but “sound” theology…

“Everybody does theology.” That’s the assertion of Mike Reeves (theological advisor for UCCF). The question is whether we do “good” theology or not. Rob Bell in the beginning of his book “Jesus Wants to Save Christians” (see my review here) says this about theology:

“The word theology comes from two Greek words: theo, which means “God”, and logos, which means “word.”

Theology, a word about God.

Anybody can do theology.”

Even those who claim that God doesn’t exist have a theology. Their “word about God” may be that there isn’t a God, but the fact is that such a presupposition goes on to affect every area of life. My staffworker has really helped with understanding this by saying that we all believe particular things and we stake those in the ground and then proceed to hang our worldview or our theology on those presuppositions. As people who trust the good news of Jesus Christ we must take our stakes from the Bible and stake them within the boundaries that God’s word ascribes as being appropriate.

The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about what constitutes good and bad theology…:

Firstly I think as sinful human beings, and particularly in the individualistic West, we confuse anthropology with theology; that is that we often neglect to start with God and instead place “me” at the centre of thought, when actually we should be theocentric and not anthropocentric. I think this confusion is often the source of much of our struggle with difficult questions and concepts.

Secondly, and I think this is particularly applicable to those of us who enjoy “academic” theology, good theology is theology that is grounded in reality and seeks application in our lives on a day to day basis. Ultimate reality is described in God’s Word, but if we do not seek to apply such a reality to our lives and keep it purely applied to the lives of others or keep it in the theoretical world then we have missed the point of theology.

Finally, the Bible allows us to say certain things and to draw certain conclusions, but there are also conclusions that it does not allow us to draw. I’ve spent a lot of today thinking through the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility and my fruit has simply been a list of things that I can say and things that I can’t say with certainty, but it’s very difficult to say with any certainty (hence the huge debate!) where it is that we should “place the paradox”, as a dear friend of mine says.

I think that we often define, rate and categorise theology by “soundness”, but I wonder whether we are quite capable of “bad”, but “sound” theology… thoughts?

For a great resource on theology check out UCCF's theologynetwork.org

God bless.

Dear Freedom

Reflections on "Jesus Wants to Save Christians"...

On Monday I had the day off after a busy weekend at the University of Newcastle Christian Union Houseparty. It was great to go and sit in a café, read a book, drink some good coffee and spend some time thinking… The book I was reading was Rob Bell’s new book “Jesus Wants to Save Christians”, which he has co-authored with Don Golden.

I’ve read both of Bell’s other books, “Velvet Elvis” and “Sex God”, I’ve watched the majority of the “Nooma” DVDs, I’ve also watched his “The God’s Aren’t Angry” tour DVD and I’ve been to see him speak on his “Calling All Peacemakers” tour. I find him absolutely fascinating. I’ve said before that he’s an excellent communicator and that he asking many of the right questions that need to be asked of the church in the west today…

But [formatting in true Bell style!]

I struggle with a lot of his ideas, I struggle with many of his answers, I struggle with much of his theology and I struggle as I’ve watched him seemingly progressively drift from a more orthodox stand point. So, it was a huge surprise when I had got to the half way point in this new book and I looked up and told my friend who I was drinking coffee with that so far it was “brilliant”!

Bell opens the book with the following premise; “In the Scriptures, ultimate truths about the universe are revealed through the stories of particular people living in particular places.” I totally agree with this statement and Bell then goes from this to do a fascinating Old Testament overview for ninety pages looking at the themes of New Creation, Slavery, Empire and Exile through the places of Egypt, Sinai, Jerusalem and Babylon.

Bell’s contention in the first half of the book is this; “God had brought their ancestors out of the nation-state of Egypt, but there’s a far deeper, more insidious kind of Egypt, the kind that warps the heart and causes people to hurt and abuse and exploit each other. The real problem, the ultimate oppressor, is something that resides deep in every human heart. The real reason for their oppression is human slavery to violence, sin and death.” In the second half of the book he continues to pull his threads together showing how in Jesus’ death “sin would have to be dealt with in an entirely new way” and the role of the church in making this good news known.

I found the book fascinating, I found the book challenging, I by no means agreed with everything that he said, I don’t agree with all of his theology and I am very unsure of his exegesis of Revelation. I would, however, encourage people to read it an discuss it. Bell draws some very challenging parallels between the Empires of the ancient near east and the God’s chosen people then and the Empires of the modern day west and God’s church today and I think that many of those parallels are issues that we must seriously consider.

Is Bell’s theology changing? I don’t know, but I found this book strangely intriguing and would welcome the thoughts of others…

God bless.

Dear Freedom

Blog update...

Blog update...

I've made a few changes to the blog and have had a bit of an "umm" and "arr" about the way forward. I'm no longer anonymous, as you can see from the profile on the left, which is mainly because it is becoming more or less impossible to stay anonymous on the internet as well as people becoming more and more antagonistic toward those that don't reveal their true identity...

I've also added a link at the top to Mark Driscoll's free book "Porn-Again Christian", which is available if you click the image. Brothers, as I've said on the image, click this link, download the book, read it, digest it and pass it on. Let's get accountable, let's encourage one another and let us fight sin together... I just received this email from a dear friend of mine which I think is very helpful: "As we wait for the new creation when our corruption will be dealt with forever, we are called to "fight the good fight". I hope this will help you. Pass it on, if you feel it's appropriate, I suggest reading it first as some might find it a bit too frank in it's discussion."

One other thing I'd like to point you to. Dave Bish, found over at the blue fish project, has started a new UCCF bloggers blog where you can find other people who work with and for UCCF and catch an overview of their blogs too...

God bless.

Dear Freedom

Me myself and the Trinity... continued

The background and first part can be found here...

The Christian life is founded on the Trinitarian God, indeed without the Trinitarian God we lose the Christ of the Christian. We believe that Jesus “tabernacled” (John 1:14) amongst us; that he came to live the life that we would not live, to suffer the punishment that we could not bear and to die the death that we should have borne. Only in the Trinitarian God can “God damn God” (C.S. Lewis – I think), only in the Trinity can God the Son bear the righteous wrath of God the Father (Romans 5:9-10), for it is only in Jesus the God-man that one can die for the sins of many (Hebrews 9:28) and it is only through God the Holy Spirit that many can come to a saving knowledge of the salvific work of Jesus. Only by trusting in the comprehensive work of the Trinitarian God can the relationship, for which we were created, be restored.

The Christian life must, at the most basic level, be seen as the outworking of a God given desire to pursue the restoration of relationship and the building of community; it is altogether “other-centric” (Philippians 2:3). Whether it is evangelism, social action or environmentalism, if indeed they can be separated, we are always seeking the restoration of right relationship, but it is fundamentally necessary that our understanding of the Trinitarian God of the universe feeds our desire to go about this “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). If our evangelism, our social action or our environmentalism does not spring from the Trinitarian nature of God, from an understanding that Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father” (Galatians 1:4) and that there is a sanctifying work of the Spirit of God in the life of the elect (1 Peter 1:2), if we do not work from this foundation and if we do not allow the priorities of the Trinitarian God to inform our actions then “everything is meaningless, utterly meaningless” (Ecclesiastes 1:2 (NIV) - slightly altered).

If we desire to be in the business of the restoration of right relationships then we must work from the biblical foundation that “the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” (Hebrews 9:14 – slightly altered) This must be our identity, our foundation and the reason for our Christianity. This is how the Trinitarian God makes a difference to the Christian life.

We cannot say with the Orange advert that “I am who I am because of everyone.” We can only say that “I am who I am because of I AM.”

God bless.

Dear Freedom

Me, myself and the Trinity...

Variations of Orange's "I am who I am because of everyone" adverts have been on radio, television, the internet and billboards... I've found the tag line interesting and have written a little something on it. You'll find it below the video...

The Orange advert claims: “I am who I am because of everyone.” But what does the Trinitarian God say to that? How does the Trinitarian nature of God shape our identities as Christians?

The nature of who God is matters to us immensely. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me.”” (Exodus 20:2-3). Evidently our understanding of the nature of who God is matters to God immensely, for He is “a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5). We must ensure that we have a clear understanding of who God is if we are not to stumble into sin, that is the rejection of God, and, in positions of Christian leadership, potentially lead others into sin also (1 Timothy 4:16). For, when we worship God we are worshipping the Trinitarian God, if we are not then we are idolaters.

The God of this universe is a Trinitarian God; that is, He is one God, but He is three persons. The God of this universe is community; He is perfect, true and complete community. This means that community, that relationships, matter to God – it is central to His very nature. Consequently these things must matter to us too, they must also be central to who we are, both collectively, as we seek to demonstrate something of that community together (Acts 2:44-47), but also individually as we go about seeking to develop relationships with others and especially as we make that relationship that God desires with everyone known to the world around us (1 Peter 3:15-16).

When we consider the opening chapters of Genesis we are told that mankind has been made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), that we have been made for relationship with God, but that the relationship that we are made for has been broken, that the image has been altogether distorted and that we are now alienated from our Creator (Genesis 3:23-24). We are now enemies of God (Colossians 1:21). This poses an enormous question; how can the relationship, for which we were created, be restored?

More to come...

God bless.

Dear Freedom

A long silence...

It has been a long time since I've updated my blog for a number of reasons - none of which are lack of time! Over the last few weeks I've had a number of requests to pull my digit out and to write some more stuff for this blog... so I will. This is no promise of it being regular or having any longevity, but I'll give it a shot.

Since I last wrote I've graduated from university, got engaged and started working in a new city and so consequently I'm seeing some different aspects of the world in which we live, but Christ is still Lord of all and so I feel that I'm looking in a new direction rather than through a new set of glasses...!

God bless.

Dear Freedom