100 posts - yay

I cracked the 100 post mark!

Kids: Smarter than you think

I think I underestimate the perceptive abilities of kids.

This year I've been teaching 7 & 8 year olds in my SRE class at a local public school.

They ask great questions.

Although their attention spans are short, once they're onboard - especially with a narrative - then they really get into it. 

One of the girls has been thinking deeply through some of the stuff we've taught. Here's some of her questions:

• So why did Jesus have die in order to forgive us, why couldn't he just do it while he was alive?
• So you've been saying that Jesus is God.  But Jesus prayed to God.  How can he be God then?
• How do we know this stuff about Jesus?  How do we know that the Bible is true?

Another kid had a cool question today:

• You said that Jesus is a judge, so how come in the pictures of him he doesn't have a hammer?

What a privilege and delight to be able to teach these kids!  I pray that they'll come to grasp the things of God (including the mystery of the limits of our knowledge), but more than that I pray that they'll put their hope in him.

Our Father will certainly welcome them.

blissful rest

This may seem a very strange thing to be feeling at the end of semester with exams looming, but I'm feeling incredibly relaxed.

No, I'm not completely on top of everything yet...

But God has granted me this amazing peace.  I've not been stressed about exams.  I've not been flustered.  I've not had that icky feeling in my gut.  I've been totally calm.

I've even been so calm that I've been wandering around singing.  Even more amazing is that I've pulled out my guitar to play it (it has been months since I've done that!!).

Wow.  Thanks heavenly Dad!!

dishonouring God?

For a little while I've been pondering the outworkings of an honour and shame worldview.

In Western societies (generally speaking) we operate on a guilt-innocence worldview, whereas typically in Eastern societies they operate on an honour-shame worldview.

I'm certainly no expert in these things, but it has been pointed at to me that a person with an honour-shame worldview will not be as gripped by being told about their guilt as they would about being told about their shame.  "Objective" guilt or innocence is not as significant as the perception of honour or shame.  Whether people think you are honourable or not is a bigger concern than doing the right thing.  It doesn't matter so much that you do the right thing or not.  The important thing is not to get caught.

When seeking to explain the Christian gospel, most Westerners (myself included) have learnt how to express the gospel in terms of guilt-innocence.  Jesus takes away our guilt and makes us innocent before God.  But if Easterners respond better to honour-shame, how can we express the gospel terms of that worldview?

This is something I'm continuing to ponder.

The Bible teaches us that his people are able to bring shame upon him.  As his people, their behaviour reflects on him.  For example, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you" (Rom 2:24, quoting Is 52:5).

So God's people can bring dishonour upon him, but what about everyone else?  Do they dishonour God by their actions?

Anselm (archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th & 12th C) says yes:

"To sin is to fail to render to God what God is entitled to. What is God entitled to? Righteousness, or rectitude of will. Anyone who fails to render this honour to God, robs God of that which belongs to God, and thus dishonours God."

What do you reckon?

Being a regular...a pathway to relationships and evangelism

Being a regular somewhere is fantastic.  It helps you to build relationships with people. It can be at the gym, a cafe, a park, church, a book club.  Whatever it is, being a regular is fantastic.

In our society we don't spend a lot of time with our physical next-door neighbours.  We're always out and about.  But we do still spend time with people.  We have workmates, baristas, check out chicks, fellow public transport takers.

It surprises me when Christians talk about not knowing many non-Christians, or don't have time to meet with them.  The reality is we have lots of opportunities.  The issue is whether we make the most of them.  Are we being intentional?  Are we taking a little bit extra time?  Are we going to the same place regularly, so that we get to know the people there?

If you're at a cafe why not take 10 minutes at the shop instead of 2?  If you're at the gym why not go to a class at the gym rather than work out individually?  If you play sport why not join a team?  Why not pray for opportunities to share the gospel as you make your way there?

I have been blessed in my time down in Sydney by being intentional.  In Brisbane my life had become so full of church people and events.  But now I have so many non-Christian friends outside of College, all because I was intentional.  By God's grace I get to share the gospel a lot.  And by God's grace I pray that they too will come to Jesus for forgiveness.

Arius: more of a heretic than I thought he was...

Last year in church history we heard about a number of heretics in the early church.

Our lecturer was really great at helping to be sympathetic to them.  That is, to listen carefully to what they say, weigh it carefully, not react to hastily to them, and to see the good things in what they were trying to do.

Arius was a a guy who said that 'there was a time when the Son was not'.  Well today I've been reading a bit of Arius' work for myself.  This is an excerpt in Athanasius' work where he quotes Arius at length.

Moreover he has dared to say, that ‘the Word is not the very God;’ ‘though He is called God, yet He is not very God,’ but ‘by participation of grace, He, as others, is God only in name.’ And, whereas all beings are foreign and different from God in essence, so too is ‘the Word alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence and propriety,’ but belongs to things originated and created, and is one of these. Afterwards, as though he had succeeded to the devil’s recklessness, he has stated in his Thalia, that ‘even to the Son the Father is invisible,’ and ‘the Word cannot perfectly and exactly either see or know His own Father;’ but even what He knows and what He sees, He knows and sees ‘in proportion to His own measure,’ as we also know according to our own power. For the Son, too, he says, not only knows not the Father exactly, for He fails in comprehension, but ‘He knows not even His own essence;’—and that ‘the essences of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, are separate in nature, and estranged, and disconnected, and alien, and without participation of each other;’ and, in his own words, ‘utterly unlike from each other in essence and glory, unto infinity.’ 

Cited by Athanisius in Discourses Against the Arians (1.2.6)

I'm struggling to be positive...

Thankfully we can have confidence that Jesus - the Word - is truly God and as such, truly reveals the Father to us.

John 1:1-2

 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:18

18 No one has ever seen God; the only One, who is God,  who is at the Father's side,  he has made him known.

John 14:9

The one who has seen Me has seen the Father.