Articles
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Christians who remain Christians
Albert Camus, a French atheist philosopher, in 1948 spoke to a group of Dominican scholars. It was a post-war dialogue between believer and unbeliever. In the talk he said,
I shall not try to change anything that I think or anything that you think (insofar as I can judge of it) in order to reach a reconciliation that would be agreeable to all. On the contrary, what I feel like telling you today is that the world needs real dialogue, that falsehood is just as much the opposite of dialogue as is silence, and that the only possible dialogue is the kind between people who remain what they are and speak their mind. This is tantamount to saying that the world of today needs Christians who remain Christians.
He said he was opposed to changing one’s beliefs in order to reach some agreement between views that were really not able to be reconciled. He spoke of a Catholic priest he had heard speak at the Sorbonne who said he was anti-clerical. Camus thought this was a bad thing. He preferred that “Christians should remain Christians”.
It is an important idea. Especially at a time when public opinion on some important moral matters is being swayed by powerful lobbies.
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- Written by: Dale
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Where is God?
Sometimes when I do a crossword there is a clue which says, “A place of worship”. The answer may be “temple”, “chapel”, maybe even “church”. It is a common understanding that these kinds of places are where people worship. The focus is on what people do, although it is not clear whether that is what makes them sacred places.
The Bible has a different angle on this. The Old Testament Temple got its holiness from the fact that God said he would be there. Indeed Israel’s holiness was primarily the result of God’s presence being among them. The story of God’s people is in a way the story of God living among them, or not.
By the time of Jesus it was a moot point as to whether God was living among the people in the way he had been, say, in Moses’ day.
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- Written by: Dale
- Category: Weekly Reflections
What does your family tree look like?
What does your family tree look like? Some of us can trace our ancestors back a very long way. Someone in my family has traced my father’s line back to at least the mid 19th century (when they migrated from England to Australia) and possibly back to the 16th century. The “by” ending is apparently a Viking affix, so my ancestors were one of the many invading groups that helped make Britain the mixed community that it is.
But ancestors are of more than historical or curious interest. Families have values, traditions, customs, and behavioural characteristics that get passed on from generation to generation. Marriage sometime ameliorates and sometimes strengthens these characteristics.
Many of us can look with pride on what we have inherited from our forebears. Some of us have a mixed inheritance. We are not always aware of what has been passed on to us, it is just “how we are”.
However there is a danger when we regard our own heritage as the norm.
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Does Predestination work?
I have just come back from warm and rainy Jakarta. While I was there I had an interesting conversation with two young university students about predestination. Predestination is a favourite conundrum for lots of people. But it is difficult only when it is not defined properly (lots of problems are like that).
Many people think of it as a kind of determinism. Some as a description of a blue-print for life. But the Bible’s idea is much simpler: it has to do with the destination. Where does God want his people to end up? Where will the train terminate?
Another problem modern people have is that we read it as a question of individual destiny. But in the Bible it is first of all a matter of family destiny. In particular the destiny of the family of Abraham. At least Abraham as the key to the destiny of the whole race.
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- Written by: Dale
- Category: Weekly Reflections
What was God doing?
Would it make any difference if Jesus had been born in another place, at another time, of another race, as long as he was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died and was raised again? Was the fact that he was born as a descendant of Abraham and David just an arbitrary fact? Or was he a vital part of the story of Abraham and David?
Or to ask it a different way, is the story of the Old Testament people of God a necessary part of the story of Jesus? Could we skip the Old Testament and still make sense of Jesus? Many Christians think so.
Another question is related to this: what is the point of all the stories of Jesus in the gospels? Are they there just for interest, or are they a necessary part of the gospel story?
In the coming months (beginning on July 21) we will try to understand better how Jesus comes as the fulfillment of an Old Testament story. How Jesus helps us make sense of the Old Testament, and in turn how the Old Testament helps understand who Jesus is and what he does.
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- Written by: Dale
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Fire from heaven?
A Samaritan village snubbed Jesus and wouldn’t have anything to do with him. It was a racial and religious issue. His disciples were incensed. “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” It was quite an offer. Elijah had done something like that before. But they weren’t yet in Elijah’s class.
And in any case Jesus wasn’t impressed. Not the way for his disciples to behave. Fortunately they gave up such attitudes after Pentecost. But the idea of destroying God’s enemies wasn’t new. Jonah really wanted to see the vicious Assyrian regime centred in Nineveh get what they deserved. He got really annoyed when God showed them compassion instead.
It is still true that Jesus and his people have enemies. What to do with them, that is the question.
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- Written by: Dale
- Category: Weekly Reflections
How to grow a Christian
When a baby is born people give presents. Often clothes. Size 0 or if the child is a giant maybe a size 1. But others give bigger sized clothes for when the child grows out of size 0. They do this on the assumption that the docile little baby will turn into a bigger version: crawling, climbing, staggering, walking and then running, jumping and leaping.
The parents have a plan based on the expectation that the child will grow. Some book the child onto the school waiting list as soon as it is born (or onto the Football club membership list – or both).
And send them to school in due course. The long term plan is for the child to become self-providing and a contributor not only to the family but to the society.
But is it the same when a person is born as a child of God?