September 23rd, 2006
OK, over past week and a half of being a relay worker I have:
* Read really amazing stuff (Packer’s essay on penal substitution, Romans 9-11 several times)
* Read worthwhile stuff that isn’t quite as awesome (one-to-one by Sophie De Witt)
* Read pointless stuff (i.e. my core study on ‘why study theology’ - I was already convinced, actually!)
* Been for two days of team days (which were great - I was somewhat knackered which added to my natural quietness in such circumstances, but everyone there was great, and I enjoyed it massively.)
* Met the leaders of the brum RTSF group and had worthwhile and enjoyable (for me, at least) discussions about many subjects.
* Met my staff worker, Melinda Hendry, for my first ever supervision, which I found just awesome.
I guess basically that’s roughly what I’ve been doing.
Oh, and in response to my blog, some bloke I’ve never met before today made a joke about my search for a simple explanation of double predestination! I didn’t realise quite how absurd that post much have been before then!
Friday, April 20, 2007
Good post :)
September 21st, 2006
Came across UCCF Staff Steffy B’s blog today, which I thought seemed great - full of lots of really funny insanity, and some quite helpful wise comments thrown in. Was pleased particularly by this post about our response to suffering and how it’s legitimate to even question and argue with God - something I think the church has lost out from not doing of late. Psalms of lament are the most common form of psalm, after all. We need to learn to be honest with God, even about feeling rubbish.
Will probably post something more substantial fairly soon, possibly give you an actual update on how my first week and a bit of relay work has gone!
Came across UCCF Staff Steffy B’s blog today, which I thought seemed great - full of lots of really funny insanity, and some quite helpful wise comments thrown in. Was pleased particularly by this post about our response to suffering and how it’s legitimate to even question and argue with God - something I think the church has lost out from not doing of late. Psalms of lament are the most common form of psalm, after all. We need to learn to be honest with God, even about feeling rubbish.
Will probably post something more substantial fairly soon, possibly give you an actual update on how my first week and a bit of relay work has gone!
The ‘horrible decree’…
September 17th, 2006
Was recently having a conversation with a dudette who is very close to me. I was on the comp reading reviews of Piper’s commentary on Romans 9, and she decided to look up the chapter in the Bible. I asked her what she thought, she concluded she didn’t like it. We ended up having a lengthy conversation about justice, sin, and double predestination (esp reprobation), during which I was also on the computer and thus probably did not pay anything like enough attention to her - as I realised when I turned around and saw tears in her eyes. A little comforting her, and asking about what she was getting upset about, clarifying that I wasn’t going to judge her, she eventually said something to the effect of:
“I’ve always half believed and half not believed - I’ve wanted to believe because without God everythings meaningless, but now I also don’t want to believe because if there is a God, it sounds like he’s mean and nasty and evil.” Comforted and chatted, maybe helped a bit, and gave her a copy of Christianity Explored (most relavent basic book that I have lying around - it discusses sin, but can anyone think of a better book of a similar-ish level that might cover double predestination at all?)
Really made me think. From my reading of the bible, it seems that double predestination is true. That we are sinners deserving of death, temporary hell, and then annihilation, definitely is (save that some people might say everlasting hell rather than temporary hell + annihilation). But if I think about it - I really can see that such things might sound evil, especially when I don’t explain them VERY well to people who aren’t already familiar enough with my understanding of human nature, theology, etc, to not have it take some effort (perhaps too much) to hold all such data in ones head.
Anyone have any words of wisdom of how to explain reprobation etc to non-Christians or Christians who have their doubts and issues (well, that’s pretty much all of us, but I mean surface level doubts and issues in particular)?
I really welcome any words of wisdom from other people - this is something I’ve readlly struggled with explaining in the past when talking to people who aren’t committed evangelical Christians (or very well read in such things).
Was recently having a conversation with a dudette who is very close to me. I was on the comp reading reviews of Piper’s commentary on Romans 9, and she decided to look up the chapter in the Bible. I asked her what she thought, she concluded she didn’t like it. We ended up having a lengthy conversation about justice, sin, and double predestination (esp reprobation), during which I was also on the computer and thus probably did not pay anything like enough attention to her - as I realised when I turned around and saw tears in her eyes. A little comforting her, and asking about what she was getting upset about, clarifying that I wasn’t going to judge her, she eventually said something to the effect of:
“I’ve always half believed and half not believed - I’ve wanted to believe because without God everythings meaningless, but now I also don’t want to believe because if there is a God, it sounds like he’s mean and nasty and evil.” Comforted and chatted, maybe helped a bit, and gave her a copy of Christianity Explored (most relavent basic book that I have lying around - it discusses sin, but can anyone think of a better book of a similar-ish level that might cover double predestination at all?)
Really made me think. From my reading of the bible, it seems that double predestination is true. That we are sinners deserving of death, temporary hell, and then annihilation, definitely is (save that some people might say everlasting hell rather than temporary hell + annihilation). But if I think about it - I really can see that such things might sound evil, especially when I don’t explain them VERY well to people who aren’t already familiar enough with my understanding of human nature, theology, etc, to not have it take some effort (perhaps too much) to hold all such data in ones head.
Anyone have any words of wisdom of how to explain reprobation etc to non-Christians or Christians who have their doubts and issues (well, that’s pretty much all of us, but I mean surface level doubts and issues in particular)?
I really welcome any words of wisdom from other people - this is something I’ve readlly struggled with explaining in the past when talking to people who aren’t committed evangelical Christians (or very well read in such things).
Some things wot I said…
September 13th, 2006
Was chatting to my housemates recently about how silly it was that I could get involved so much church, religious, and suchlike stuff to the exclusion of anything else… then went on to complain “at this rate, my entire life will be dominated by Christianity.” Then paused as I realised what I said, and laughed when I realised that my housemates knew what I meant to say.
Other words of wisdom from me include: “Jesus is the best way to God,” and “Jesus isn’t alive anymore.”
Y’see, this is why I don’t say too much.
Was chatting to my housemates recently about how silly it was that I could get involved so much church, religious, and suchlike stuff to the exclusion of anything else… then went on to complain “at this rate, my entire life will be dominated by Christianity.” Then paused as I realised what I said, and laughed when I realised that my housemates knew what I meant to say.
Other words of wisdom from me include: “Jesus is the best way to God,” and “Jesus isn’t alive anymore.”
Y’see, this is why I don’t say too much.
Really exciting post!
September 12th, 2006
A while ago, Screech commented on my subtitle, “Explaining the exciting world of relay”, that my blog was neither exciting nor explaining.
Shut up Screech.
A while ago, Screech commented on my subtitle, “Explaining the exciting world of relay”, that my blog was neither exciting nor explaining.
Shut up Screech.
The cross
September 12th, 2006
Just thinking vaguely about the cross. We just had a conversation about Fusion in our house (I’ve spend probably about half of my waking hours since returning to brum sitting in the same chair in my living room with my laptop on my lap with my housemates in the room, chatting about stuff and watching TV and me and screech playing with our blogs), and it made me think about the centrality of the cross.
Luther said “the cross is our theology”, and it seems clear that it belongs at the absolute center of our understanding of God (and thus the whole realm of creation). One cannot understand anything without understanding who God is; God reveals himself primarily through Jesus, and the key to understanding Jesus is to understand his death on the cross - that’s what the New Testament keeps on talking about all the time.
A lot of Christian organisations tend to have the culture that the cross is for non-Christians, even if they wouldn’t say that. That’s wrong, and very damaging… but I wonder whether it’s partly a reaction against an oversimplistic approach to teaching the cross in some churches.
My feeling in some churches is that they simply try to get across simply the fact that “God propitiated his wrath on the cross” again and again, rather than apply more deeply the cross in the way the New Testament does. Instead of just repeating that fact (though I do think it’s so important we need to remember it and the wonder of the grace revealed there etc all the time), I think we ought to regularly preach how the cross fits into the Christian life and the world - “Jesus died out of love to propitiate God’s wrath - that shows us how much God loves us, and completely deals with our sin and makes us worthy of God by God’s grace, which should be the source of our self esteem” or “Jesus died to propitiate God’s wrath against sin - this should help us realise how terrible sin is and help us resist temptation” or “Jesus died to propitiate God’s wrath, remake humanity, and restore the whole creation to it’s pre-fall state and indeed a greater state - therefore we should work on climate change.”
There’s a few examples of how that kind of teaching might work in practise. It obviously was limited by the single sentence nature - it didn’t offer me much chance to work through how our theology of the cross might be more complex and than a single sentence, or the theology of other stuff might be more complex, but you get what I mean.
It’s a whole lot harder for people to take seriously as helpful constant cross-preaching when it doesn’t make connections with the whole of reality - so perhaps at least part of the solution to people dis-emphasising the cross is simply to talk more about the cross in a better way. Leading aside that the kind of teaching about is all through the bible - say Paul using the cross as an illustration for all sorts of topics of his teaching.
Just thinking vaguely about the cross. We just had a conversation about Fusion in our house (I’ve spend probably about half of my waking hours since returning to brum sitting in the same chair in my living room with my laptop on my lap with my housemates in the room, chatting about stuff and watching TV and me and screech playing with our blogs), and it made me think about the centrality of the cross.
Luther said “the cross is our theology”, and it seems clear that it belongs at the absolute center of our understanding of God (and thus the whole realm of creation). One cannot understand anything without understanding who God is; God reveals himself primarily through Jesus, and the key to understanding Jesus is to understand his death on the cross - that’s what the New Testament keeps on talking about all the time.
A lot of Christian organisations tend to have the culture that the cross is for non-Christians, even if they wouldn’t say that. That’s wrong, and very damaging… but I wonder whether it’s partly a reaction against an oversimplistic approach to teaching the cross in some churches.
My feeling in some churches is that they simply try to get across simply the fact that “God propitiated his wrath on the cross” again and again, rather than apply more deeply the cross in the way the New Testament does. Instead of just repeating that fact (though I do think it’s so important we need to remember it and the wonder of the grace revealed there etc all the time), I think we ought to regularly preach how the cross fits into the Christian life and the world - “Jesus died out of love to propitiate God’s wrath - that shows us how much God loves us, and completely deals with our sin and makes us worthy of God by God’s grace, which should be the source of our self esteem” or “Jesus died to propitiate God’s wrath against sin - this should help us realise how terrible sin is and help us resist temptation” or “Jesus died to propitiate God’s wrath, remake humanity, and restore the whole creation to it’s pre-fall state and indeed a greater state - therefore we should work on climate change.”
There’s a few examples of how that kind of teaching might work in practise. It obviously was limited by the single sentence nature - it didn’t offer me much chance to work through how our theology of the cross might be more complex and than a single sentence, or the theology of other stuff might be more complex, but you get what I mean.
It’s a whole lot harder for people to take seriously as helpful constant cross-preaching when it doesn’t make connections with the whole of reality - so perhaps at least part of the solution to people dis-emphasising the cross is simply to talk more about the cross in a better way. Leading aside that the kind of teaching about is all through the bible - say Paul using the cross as an illustration for all sorts of topics of his teaching.
Relay1/Forum
September 11th, 2006
Having just come back from relay1 and forum, I figured I would post some random thoughts and news.
Firstly, I figured I’d let you know how great I found it. First few days were well tiring - both due to lacking sleep and having to spend lots of energy taking in lots of input and talking to people I don’t know - and thus I found myself in a bad mood at about the 2 day mark. However, this quickly resided - I got to know some people fairly better which is always cool, met some really cool people who I began to feel much more comfortable with.
Highlights of the two weeks:-
* Mike Reeves, RTSF co-ordinator, giving a talk on the cross.
* Getting to know the midlands relay team (me, Frithy, Screech, Anna B., Caz, Kat, and Chris) all to some extent - all of them seem really cool as far as I know them.
* My fellowship group being a really awesome group of people.
* There being all sorts of awesome new relay workers around who did not come under either of the categories mentioned above.
* Spending a bit of (tho not much in most cases) time with people that I always knew well enough to know were cool and thus kinda wished I knew better, but never actually did (eg. Tor, Screech, Kimber)
* Having some lovely chats with my staff worker, Melinda Hendry. She seems absolutely awesome!
* Meeting Rosemary Grier, who I expect I will turn out to be a really interesting person to discuss stuff with (even if, in Chris’s words, she “whooped me” in debate!)
* Just being amazed at the awesome centrality of the cross for the whole of human existance and our understanding of all that is.
* Picking up the phrase “the cross is our theology” from Luther via Mike, which just encapsulates so much truth that the church needs to hear, and thus which I am now able to repeat endlessly to hopefully get across.
(NOTE: I have realised that I have described lots and lots of people as really cool/awesome, etc, above. I’ve been thinking recently about the fact that doing that about too many people devalues the meaning of the word, but I think in this case it was actually suitable and true - I just praise God for so many of the people that I met while away!)
I was really challenged by two things - firstly, the centrality of cross, which i’ve mentioned a bit above and may well post something later on, but also the crucial importance of prayer, and how much the western church plays it down.
I remember one of the guys in the small group I led at forum, when I asked him what role he was in the CU, he responded to the effect of “oh, just prayer” - which really does I think reflect badly on the state of the church that that position can be seen as insignificant or unimportant. Prayer secretary is a very important position on exec - in fact, it is the most important position on exec. Without prayer, nothing else in the whole CU could be done. If we never evangelised, we could still to some extent grow in godliness, although that would be much weaker. If we never taught, we could still to some extent grow in godliness and evangelise - although both would be much weaker. In either case, we could do a little to spread the kingdom - albeit only a little. But without prayer, we are nothing - God can act without prayer, but he normally chooses not to. It has been said that “prayer is the first thing, and the second thing, and the third thing”. But tragically, the bloke in my small group seemed under the impression that it was quite possibly the last thing.
No wonder the UK church is lacking if we have attitudes like that floating around. We must all emphasise prayer more and more.
Having just come back from relay1 and forum, I figured I would post some random thoughts and news.
Firstly, I figured I’d let you know how great I found it. First few days were well tiring - both due to lacking sleep and having to spend lots of energy taking in lots of input and talking to people I don’t know - and thus I found myself in a bad mood at about the 2 day mark. However, this quickly resided - I got to know some people fairly better which is always cool, met some really cool people who I began to feel much more comfortable with.
Highlights of the two weeks:-
* Mike Reeves, RTSF co-ordinator, giving a talk on the cross.
* Getting to know the midlands relay team (me, Frithy, Screech, Anna B., Caz, Kat, and Chris) all to some extent - all of them seem really cool as far as I know them.
* My fellowship group being a really awesome group of people.
* There being all sorts of awesome new relay workers around who did not come under either of the categories mentioned above.
* Spending a bit of (tho not much in most cases) time with people that I always knew well enough to know were cool and thus kinda wished I knew better, but never actually did (eg. Tor, Screech, Kimber)
* Having some lovely chats with my staff worker, Melinda Hendry. She seems absolutely awesome!
* Meeting Rosemary Grier, who I expect I will turn out to be a really interesting person to discuss stuff with (even if, in Chris’s words, she “whooped me” in debate!)
* Just being amazed at the awesome centrality of the cross for the whole of human existance and our understanding of all that is.
* Picking up the phrase “the cross is our theology” from Luther via Mike, which just encapsulates so much truth that the church needs to hear, and thus which I am now able to repeat endlessly to hopefully get across.
(NOTE: I have realised that I have described lots and lots of people as really cool/awesome, etc, above. I’ve been thinking recently about the fact that doing that about too many people devalues the meaning of the word, but I think in this case it was actually suitable and true - I just praise God for so many of the people that I met while away!)
I was really challenged by two things - firstly, the centrality of cross, which i’ve mentioned a bit above and may well post something later on, but also the crucial importance of prayer, and how much the western church plays it down.
I remember one of the guys in the small group I led at forum, when I asked him what role he was in the CU, he responded to the effect of “oh, just prayer” - which really does I think reflect badly on the state of the church that that position can be seen as insignificant or unimportant. Prayer secretary is a very important position on exec - in fact, it is the most important position on exec. Without prayer, nothing else in the whole CU could be done. If we never evangelised, we could still to some extent grow in godliness, although that would be much weaker. If we never taught, we could still to some extent grow in godliness and evangelise - although both would be much weaker. In either case, we could do a little to spread the kingdom - albeit only a little. But without prayer, we are nothing - God can act without prayer, but he normally chooses not to. It has been said that “prayer is the first thing, and the second thing, and the third thing”. But tragically, the bloke in my small group seemed under the impression that it was quite possibly the last thing.
No wonder the UK church is lacking if we have attitudes like that floating around. We must all emphasise prayer more and more.
Monday, September 11, 2006
All good things...
Right, it is looking a lot like I ought to announce the upcoming end to posting on this 'ere blog, which it seems is to be replaced by my relay blog, over at relay.pindancingangels.com. How very exciting/thrilling/mind-numbingly dull.
[Note: I did move to that blog, but then it was deleted, and all its content was moved to this blog!]
[Note: I did move to that blog, but then it was deleted, and all its content was moved to this blog!]
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Interesting thoughts on Calvinism and the Sovereignity of God
See http://alastair.adversaria.co.uk/?p=171 - I'll hopefully post my comments on that when I have time and energy and suchlike.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
God's desire to bring glory to Himself: Seven Theses
1: God’s love is concerned, and only concerned, with other persons (and not with abstract qualities or love of self).
2: One of the ‘other persons’ this involves is human beings. This is not simply for the sake of God.
3: God’s love is also concerned with the other within God – i.e. the different persons of the trinity love each other. This is a more significant part of God’s love than the love for human beings.
4: God’s acts in bringing glory to Himself are partially motivated by a love for humanity and a desire for humans to know God.
5: God’s acts in bringing glory to Himself are partially motivated by an inter-Trinitarian love.
6: Other than the above two concerns, there is no other motivation for God’s desire to bring glory to Himself.
7: All of God’s acts, and all of God’s attributes of character, are based upon or aspects of, His love.
2: One of the ‘other persons’ this involves is human beings. This is not simply for the sake of God.
3: God’s love is also concerned with the other within God – i.e. the different persons of the trinity love each other. This is a more significant part of God’s love than the love for human beings.
4: God’s acts in bringing glory to Himself are partially motivated by a love for humanity and a desire for humans to know God.
5: God’s acts in bringing glory to Himself are partially motivated by an inter-Trinitarian love.
6: Other than the above two concerns, there is no other motivation for God’s desire to bring glory to Himself.
7: All of God’s acts, and all of God’s attributes of character, are based upon or aspects of, His love.
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