So, convinced deep down that there’s a part of me even God can’t love and won’t transform, not in this life, I hide. Stuffing my dirty laundry under my bed, quietly guarding my dark corners. And, in the process, I deny the Spirit’s power, God’s love, and Jesus’s death on the cross. I don’t mean to; but I do it anyway.
Source (Well worth hopping across and reading in its entirety)
There’s quite a buzz of excitement on the Interweb over news of a discovery of Biblical scrolls and lead codices, purported to be of first century origin.
The BBC has furnished us with some images.
There’s some quite fantastical claims doing the rounds such as: This represents the greatest ever archaeological find, this is more significant than the Dead Sea Scrolls, this will change Christianity, this will shine a light on Jesus’ missing years, and so forth.
Whilst I don’t wish to be a party pooper, both Maggi Dawn and Larry Hurtado are quite right in urging some caution.
Time and study will reveal the truth about this.
In the meantime, if I happen upon any interesting articles relating to this, I’ll post the link here.
UPDATE: Fr Stephen Smuts has quite a bit of background info on this, which is worth checking out.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Clayboy adopts the sceptical line and links to some useful sources.
I’m not at all comfortable with this one.
Manchester Cathedral is to host a ‘new age’ festival featuring tarot card readers, crystal healers and ‘dream interpretation’.
Local Anglican leaders have agreed to throw open the doors of the historic cathedral in a bid to embrace alternative forms of Christianity.
Fortune tellers, meditation experts and traditional healers will fill the pews during the day-long festival in May. The Bishop of Manchester, Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, said he wanted to celebrate ‘all forms of spirituality’.
What are your thoughts on this?
UPDATE: The Manchester Cathedral Website has now published an article on this event, and I must say that it casts rather a different light to that presented in the mainstream media.
Clayboy has now posted on this.
A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:
Epiphenom – Religion and conflict: cause or coincidence?
British Religion in Numbers – Church Attendance in England, 1980-2005
Sultan Knish – The Second Time as Farce
Psychology Today – 10 Things Not to Say to a Depressed Person
Religion Law Blog – Church Volunteers and Employees
People ultimately want love, not answers. Answers are not the capstone; love is. Most can do without specific explanations. No one can do without love. Even when sufferers cry out, “Why?” they are not asking for answers. They are expressing pain and hoping someone is there to hear their cries. Above all, they want to know they are not alone, not abandoned, not rejected. They want love. They want the presence of someone who cares. They want reassurance that someone is there to embrace them, listen to them, hold their hand, be their friend.
Fascinating comments from Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, on working towards an alliance between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
My previous posts on the Orthodox – Catholic relationship can be found here.
For your information the term “Uniatism” is defined as: The union of an Eastern Rite church with the Roman Church in which the authority of the papacy is accepted without loss of separate liturgies or government by local patriarchs.
The Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church should accept each other not as rivals, but first and foremost as allies, working to protect the rights of Christians, said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the ROC’s Department for External Church Relations in a speech at an international meeting of Christians in Wurzburg, Germany.
“The future of Christianity in the third millennium depends on the joint efforts of the Orthodox believers and Catholics,’’ Hilarion said.
Bishop Hilarion later expanded on his statement:
“The idea of a strategic alliance with the Catholics is an old idea of mine. It came to me when the Catholics were electing the new Pope. Although I would like to point out that what I am suggesting is, in essence, the direct opposite of Uniatism, which is a way toward a rapprochement based on doctrinal compromises. In our point of view, the policy of Uniatism had suffered complete failure. Not only did it not bring the Orthodox Christians and Catholics closer together, it actually distanced them. And Uniatism, as is currently recognized by both Orthodox believers and Catholics, is not the path toward unity.
‘‘I, on the other hand, am asking us to act as allies, without being a single Church, without having a single administrative system or common liturgy, and while maintaining the differences on the points in which we differ.
‘’This is especially important in light of the common challenges that face both Orthodox and Catholic Christians. These are first and foremost the challenges of a godless world, which is equally hostile today to Orthodox believers and Catholics, the challenge of the aggressive Islamic movement, the challenge of moral corruption, family decay, the abandonment by many people in traditionally Christian countries of the traditional family structure, liberalism in theology and morals, which is eroding the Christian community from within. We can respond to these, and a number of other challenges, together.
‘’I would like to stress, once more, that there are well-known doctrinal differences between the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, but there are also common positions in regard to morality and social issues that today are not shared by many of the representatives of liberal Protestantism. Therefore, cooperation is first and foremost necessary between the Orthodox and Catholic Christians – and that is what I call a strategic alliance.
Christian Today has a short article with this headline:
Christian in Bangladesh goes to prison for evangelism
This article is particularly interesting in that although it’s quite short, the term “creating chaos” is cited some four times. In fact, “creating chaos” is the very accusation levelled against Biplob Marandi as a result of him distributing Christian booklets and tracts.
Here’s a couple of snippets from the article:
Compass Direct News (CDN) is reporting that a Christian in Bangladesh has been sentenced to one year in prison for “creating chaos” by selling and distributing Christian books and other literature near a major Muslim gathering north of this capital city.
[.....]
“The accusation – creating chaos at a Muslim gathering by distributing Christian booklets and tracts – against him was read out in the court before him, and he admitted it. He also told the court that he had mainly wanted to propagate his religion, Christianity.”
Is this not reminiscent of New Testament times? In fact, this could have been lifted directly from the Book of Acts. Here’s the accusation levelled against Jason as a direct result of proselytising:
These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also
or
These men who have upset the world have come here also
or
They that set the city in an uproar, are come hither also
or
These men that have set the world in tumult, are come here also
And so on.
The more things change…..
The term ‘biblegod’ is a pejorative and slippery title employed with increasing frequency by some atheists.
‘biblegod’ atheists cherry-pick Old Testament texts that are assumed to present God in a poor light. For example, the flood, genocides, wars, and so forth.
Notably, this process involves a simplistic and literalistic reading of the Scriptures, entirely out of context, and without nuance or balance. The accusation is then levelled against Christians of the absurdity of believing in such a heartless, vindictive, manipulative God.
Whilst musing on this, it struck me that these particular atheists are in fact attacking a caricature of our faith, that most of us don’t subscribe to.
A serious problem exists however, in the fact that some Christians do subscribe to this caricature. They operate in exactly the same manner as the ‘Biblegod’ atheist, namely, adopting a simplistic, literalistic reading of cherry-picked Scriptures, entirely out of context, and without nuance or balance.
As a result, these same Christians do indeed derive a heartless, vindictive, manipulative God.
This gives rise to a situation in which ‘biblegod’ atheists and Biblical literalistic fundamentalists war with each other from antipodal positions, that are paradoxically entangled in an intimate symbiotic relationship.
The irony is that these extremist positions actually serve to strengthen one another, providing fuel for the validation of further polarisation, with each provoking the other.
In short, who can blame the ‘Biblegod’ atheist if there exists Christians who hold to such a caricature?
It’s with all of this in mind that I came across the following quote by Sister Wendy Beckett, from her book entitled: Sister Wendy on Prayer, which succinctly sums up and crystallises some of my recent thoughts around this.
Page 73:
Sometimes I blush for those who think themselves Christian and yet the God they worship is cruel, suspicious, punitive and watchful. Who could love such a God? If that is you idea of God, you are obliged by all the rules of morality and common sense to become an atheist.
I have the greatest admiration for atheists, because by definition they have rejected a false ‘God’. The true God, if you have the privilege of knowing Him, you cannot reject. Anybody who truly understands what God is cannot but believe and love. There are no lapsed Catholics, no lapsed Christians, but there are very many, far too many, who thought they were Catholics, Christians, but did not have the good fortune to be taught the truth about God. They looked at this hideous image and said that if that were true, they refused to believe. Too few move on the next stage and wonder if, in fact, their image of God is not true, or to the stage beyond when they realise that, in actuality, it is not true. If they could accept that the picture they have of God is wrong from the start, it would bring them to search for the truth.
This is absolutely super news folks.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – comprising 57 Islamic nations – have been trying for years to introduce a ‘Defemation of Religion” UN resolution. They have now dropped this pursuit.
This would have only favoured Islam and ushered in a dangerous global blasphemy law.
I think we’ve all seen how blasphemy laws are used in Islamic nations to terrify, subjugate, and in some cases, murder religious minority groups.
Previous posts on this can be found here and here.
Islamic countries set aside their 12-year campaign to have religions protected from “defamation”, allowing the U.N. Human Rights Council to approve a plan to promote religious tolerance on Thursday.
The ever interesting Clayboy has a post giving some advise on blogging, and looking at differing styles.
Clayboy makes this observation regarding his own blogging:
My blog is now fairly chaotic, mainly because I have a butterfly mind. I’m not convinced that while this blog is going there’s much point in changing it. I think I should have been clearer about my aims, and more disciplined in deciding what the flavour of the blog was going to be, and sticking to some chosen areas which I either know something about, or at least have clear opinions on. Instead I seem to wander happily but ignorantly into other people’s minefields, and then wonder why they get upset with me. I think I’d encourage myself to be clearer and more focused.
I too have become somewhat chaotic in terms of subject matter, aims, and flavour on this blog. I began with a consistent, unwavering, fixed, black and white approach, but have since undergone profound – to me – paradigm shifts, and my blogging mirrors this.
These ‘shifts’ are still ongoing.
In some respects, if we are on a journey and not in a fixed place, then this lends itself to a degree of chaoticism. I mean, I could only be 100% [message] consistent if I never went through any changes of opinion and so forth. I would have to of reached the point whereby I was totally fixed in my belief systems, never wavering, never doubting, never questioning, never changing. Is that a place in which I’d like to dwell? Sometimes, yes.
There’s no doubt that since I started blogging for the US based Credo House Ministries, the flavour of this blog has started to shift. I never used to be personal here, but simply chart and comment on current events, news etc.
The Credo House blog is as it says on the tin, namely: “Theology in the News”. It is also evangelical in keeping with the ministry, and so I am most certainly more on message over there, as the boundaries are fixed. This actually simplifies the blogging process for me, but as I noted above, the unintended consequence is that I have become progressively more personal and somewhat chaotic on this blog.
To make a confession, I no longer know what the aim of this blog really is.
I don’t necessarily feel that being chaotic and personal on a blog is a bad thing, but I will say that the most successful blogs have a specific and unwavering subject matter, aim, and flavour, which pulls together a faithful following engaging in mutual self-reinforcement.
Pax Pentest