Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 30, 2011,
In :
Post-Christendom
So Christians in the UK feel
marginalised. So says the latest opinion poll conducted by ComRes on behalf of
Premier Christian Media Trust. The full details of the poll can be found at BRIN here –
but basically 544 Christians were asked whether they thought ‘the
marginalisation of Christianity in British public life was increasing,
decreasing, or staying the same in public, the media, the government and the
workplace’. Some two thirds thought the process was increasing overall – with
7...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 29, 2011,
In :
Random
It’s biblical! What is?
Hell; transubstantiation; purgatory; penal substitution; heaven; speaking in
tongues; the rapture; pacifism; the Second Coming; being born again; just war
etc. etc. etc. It’s all biblical. And that’s the trump card that’s presented
with such a flourish whenever theological issues are debated. ‘My view is
biblical and so my view is correct.’ It’s such a powerful word and in its
negative is actually quite a powerful weapon. ‘You’re being unbiblical.’ ...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, November 28, 2011,
In :
Post-Christendom
Every once and a while the
hymn singing in our school assembly got so bad one of the teachers took it upon
himself to march up and down the aisle shouting at us to ‘Sing!’. The truth was
only the second years, some sixth-formers and teachers sang the obligatory
hymn. The rest of the school – all 700 of them – just didn’t bother. A portion
of Scripture was read (I used to love doing that when it was my turn) and then
a short homily was shared by the head of R.E. The headmaster then g...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 24, 2011,
In :
Hell
Jesus’ use of the image of
fire to describe God’s judgement has now been investigated but there are a few
other examples in the New Testament that need our attention. First is the
passage in Jude’s letter with its reference to Sodom and Gomorrah being an
example of those who will have to undergo ‘the punishment of eternal fire’
(verse 7, also 2 Peter 2:6).
Destruction
If the cities mentioned in
Genesis 18 and 19 are meant to be an example of how this punishment will occur
then it seem...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 23, 2011,
In :
Random
As we have a thirty minute
car journey to our Sunday morning meeting place we usually put on a worship CD
and sing along to the music. We are still good charismatics, after all, and
believe it’s good to be stirred up before the meeting begins. But this last
Sunday things were a bit different as we listened to a Radio Wales programme on
the supernatural.
A passion for his presence?
Roy Jenkins (‘Baptist
minister of Cardiff’ as he is always referred to on Thought for the Day) had
four guest...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 22, 2011,
In :
Random
There must have been a dozen
of us in the room when our host began to tell us the story of how he had
managed to secure additional income for his large family (five children at the
time). The new family tax credit system had only just come into being and he
had heard the news that he would receive a significant sum to supplement his
salary. Excellent news indeed, we all concurred. And it was at this point he
said, ‘Praise God! It’s such a miracle!’
Brian
McLaren’s seventh question has the power to be very explosive for it is here
that he addresses the issue of sexuality. And he certainly does not shy away
from the controversy in this chapter. ‘No group can exist without a devil,’ he
says, suggesting that homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered people have
become the focus of much Christian fundamentalist anxiety and anger. However,
the question he poses is not ‘should homosexual people be included in church’
or ‘is homosexua...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, November 18, 2011,
In :
Random
Love the sinner, hate the
sin. A great saying but so often not practised – especially when it comes to
issues of sexuality. Consider two, three, four stories that have
hit the headlines in the past couple of weeks.
Nazis
The first is an article
published in the Church of England’s newspaper referring to gay people as Nazis
– using terms like ‘Gaystapo’, ‘pink jack-boot’ and ‘gay Wehrmacht’. The second
is the story about a church in Liverpool that had a ‘Homosexual fact-shee...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 17, 2011,
In :
Hell
The parable of the sheep and
goats (Matthew 25:31-46) is another one of those stories that Jesus used that
speaks of a dividing between the righteous and unrighteous at the end of the
age. The righteous will enjoy ‘eternal life’; the unrighteous won’t. Indeed
according to most English and Welsh translations the unrighteous will ‘depart
into the eternal fire’ (v.41) and ‘will go away to eternal punishment’ (v.46).
A clear statement?
And that surely settles it.
These verses are clea...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 16, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
In asking the question ‘What
would Jesus do?’ in the context of the spat between the Occupy camp and St
Paul’s Cathedral a reference was made by some to the Gospel story about Jesus
cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem. The inference was that just as Jesus cleared
out the Temple of its commercial aspects he would also bring judgement upon St
Paul’s tacit support of Western capitalism. Not only was this a simplistic
account of the Cathedral’s position it also rests on a wrong interpreta...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 15, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Reforming my theology can be
both easy and difficult at the same time. One of the difficulties is trying to
find a new language that gives clear expression to my reforming stance –
especially, I find, in my own spirituality. Take the prayer ‘Come, Holy
Spirit,’ for example. It slips so easily off the tongue following years of
being involved in the charismatic stream.
Absent Father?
But why do I call for the
Holy Spirit to come and why do I call for God’s presence when I believe that
God...
The
conclusion to Brian McLaren’s first five questions was that God in Jesus has
come to transform creation through the restoring power of the resurrection. His
sixth question, almost inevitably, turns to the church and what we do about it
in response to the answers offered to the first five. His first point is one
that all of us have been witnessing in the West – for many who have been asking
similar questions and issues of faith, their response to the church question is
to leave, with t...
Posted by Dyfed on Sunday, November 13, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
There are times when all followers of Jesus struggle with their faith -
though rarely do they own up to their struggle. At such times what we need is
some encouragement but what we sometimes get is someone poking us in
the eye and telling us to get over it.
Here's a great song by The Proclaimers about those very same people who
have an ability to make us feel guilty about where we're at.
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, November 11, 2011,
In :
Politics
There is something profoundly moving in listening to the stories told by
the brave men who have fought in any war. On Monday I listened to a piece on
Radio 4’s Today programme about the work done behind enemy lines in Burma
during the Second World War. A new book is being published about their story
and the author was the piece’s main contributor but they also had one of the
soldiers who had actually seen action at the time.
Nightmares
As this was a covert operation it would have been impos...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 10, 2011,
In :
Hell
If it can be argued that the
burning of the chaff (Matthew 3:12) is a reference to the dividing off of evil
from an individual rather than the dividing between two sets of people, then
the same cannot be done with the parable of the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30) and
Jesus’ subsequent explanation (13:36-43).
Judgement within history
Here the picture is clearly
about the division between two different sets of people ‘at the end of the
age’. Less clear perhaps is the meaning of the phrase ‘end...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 9, 2011,
In :
Random
US President Barak Obama has decreed that from now on Christmas trees in
the White House should be called ‘holiday trees’. Obama’s latest attack on the
Christian faith in the US is being repeated the Western world over and we need
to wake up to this reality. Or at least we should if it were true. Because it
isn’t and it’s time we stopped falling into the trap set for us by cranks with
nothing better to do than send hoax messages.
I used the personal pronoun in the plural in that last...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 8, 2011,
In :
Random
Jesus had an accountant – so said a Nigerian pastor on a recent Channel
4 documentary about the prosperity doctrine being preached in that country. He
said it without any sense of irony and as a response to the challenge put to
him that Jesus was poor. No, he insisted, Jesus was rich. He then produced the
accountant line in order to ‘prove’ his point.
Ridiculous, I know, but it got me thinking about how the image of Jesus
is manipulated so that it’s a little easier for us to believe in...
On
the face of it Question 5 of Brian McLaren’s list seems a very surprising one:
What is the Gospel? Surely there is no need to unpack this one since we all
know so well what the good news is about – it is the news about God sending his
Son Jesus to the cross to die for our sins so that we could be forgiven and
have our place secured in heaven and that this is possible for us simple
through grace.
In
asking the question, however, McLaren is suggesting that we may have got the
answer wrong...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, November 4, 2011,
In :
Random
Over the past four nights I’ve been watching Channel 4’s excellent
drama, Top Boy. Set in a large London estate it was the story of how one gang
took over the illegal drug market on the estate. It was gripping stuff – well written,
well acted, brilliantly produced. There was so much tension it had my stomach
in tight knots by the end of each hour.
No justice
But it ended on a very dissatisfying note. There was no justice. All the
main character villains ended up in a better position than ...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 3, 2011,
In :
1859 revival
‘I know your deeds, that you
are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other.’ This was to
be the text that struck deep into Dafydd Morgan’s heart and that was to begin a
process that turned him from being a mediocre preacher into one that became the
1859 Revival’s greatest voice.
Suspicions
Humphrey Jones had probably
preached from Revelations 3:15 on numerous occasions during the revival but
surely at no other time did his words have such an effect as that second
ser...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 2, 2011,
In :
Hell
If it can be argued that the
burning of the chaff (Matthew 3:12) is a reference to the dividing off of evil
from an individual rather than the dividing between two sets of people, then
the same cannot be done with the parable of the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30) and
Jesus’ subsequent explanation (13:36-43).
Here the picture is clearly
about the division between two different sets of people’ at the end of the
age’. Less clear perhaps is the meaning of the phrase ‘end of the age’ – which...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 1, 2011,
In :
Random
Jesus made an appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight last night. He was also
on Question Time last Thursday. In fact he popped up in quite a few mainstream
media places during the week and all because of the Occupy protest in London.
Or to be more precise because of the spat between the protestors and St Paul’s
Cathedral.
I don’t think anyone intended to give him so much exposure – there was
no planned crusade, they weren’t the right sort of tents; there was no great
supernatural sign and...
