Revenge, forgiveness, politics, guns and the sanctity of human life

May 25th, 2013

Did you know that since the horrific school shootings at Newtown in the USA in December last year, more than 4000 people have died from gunshots in the US? Let’s try to put this statistic into context.

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Doing without Google Feed Reader

May 21st, 2013

If you read a number of blogs, you need to keep up with new posts. There are several ways to do this, but subscribing to a feed is one of the best ways. And for several years, the easiest feed reader to use was Google Reader. I had Google reader on my iGoogle home page, […]

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Disassembling how we read the Bible?

May 16th, 2013

Last post I looked at some comments by Tim Keller on gay marriage and its possible future acceptance by evangelical christians. I concluded by pointing to a broader issue that Keller also raised. So let’s look at whether changing an apparently Biblical doctrine is acceptable.

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Tim Keller, gay marriage and Bible interpretation

May 12th, 2013

A few weeks back, influential New York minister Tim Keller spoke at a forum run by the US Ethics and Public Policy Centre, during which he made some comments on the issue of gay marriage. What he said attracted a lot of discussion, but was apparently misunderstood by some, and he subsequently issued an explanation. […]

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Christianity is changing

May 8th, 2013

Christianity is changing. Of course it has always been changing – I read once that christianity owes a lot of its success to its adaptability to circumstances and culture. But like most other things, it seems to be changing faster these days. So is it good or bad?

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Miraculous healings: evidence of God's love?

May 4th, 2013

A few weeks back I posted on an investigation by Craig Keener of accounts of healing miracles around the world, which concluded that perhaps 300 to 400 million christians around the world believed they had experienced, or observed, a miraculous healing. Here is some more information, and an estimation of probability.

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The Bible: scholarship vs faith? (2)

April 30th, 2013

I recently wrote about how academics in christian universities and colleges in the USA are finding their professional conclusions coming into conflict with the faith statements of their colleges. But this is an issue that to some degree affects all christians. How should we respond when secular learning seems to contradict traditional christian belief?

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Conflicting emotions on Anzac Day

April 25th, 2013

This morning I attended the local Anzac Day dawn service, which commemorates the Australian and New Zealand soldiers who have died in battle. For many Aussies, this is the most sacred day of the year. I don’t feel that way, and I don’t usually attend, and it was a time of conflicting emotions and thoughts.

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The Bible: scholarship vs faith? (1)

April 24th, 2013

It seems inevitable that there will be a tension for christians between academic knowledge and faith. But sometimes the tension becomes very personal in its impacts, and feelings are high on both sides. These issues have come to a head a number of times in recent years at universities and colleges in the USA.

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The deepest person in a thousand generations?

April 19th, 2013

Many years ago, in a mis-spent youth, I completed some formal theological study. For one subject, I studied the prophet Isaiah. Just this week I prepared and led a study on Isaiah, and renewed my awe of this amazing man. I really think he had the deepest understanding of God of any person who lived […]

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A list of all blog posts, in reverse chronological order, is on the Blog archive page.