Category: <span>Christianity</span>

Published October 22, 2007 by

Swear and tear

The Art of Cussing

Worth a read.

I think I agree, maybe not to quite the extent said as I think there are other factors involved when it comes to swearing.

I don’t as a general rule swear much. Sure words crop up in my head now and then and occasionally make it outloud… I mean when your friend’s car is moments prior to being t-boned by a 4wd and you’re in the passenger seat you don’t much care that you happen to swear (That was ages ago, the whole car accident thing)…

Meanwhile, my thoughts on replacement words such as ‘fudge’… they are kind of irrelevant (except to soften it for the oldies)… your intention is the same. Right.

I still don’t really like swearing.

Christianity

Published October 22, 2007 by

I am the Church

I really like this concept I am the church.

Geoff talked about this when he was running youth this morning, about the necessary collective of Christianity.

Sooo… can a hermit off in the forest on his own island be a Christian? Must belief be accompanied by action?

I think so.

I like how God made two people to start us off.

I like how God is three.

Christianity Church

Published October 16, 2007 by

Homosexuality

Over on the Jesus Creed blog is a story/article about homosexuality.

You should go and read it, even if you don’t read anything else today (unless it’s my survey).

Go here > Click!

Christianity

Published October 16, 2007 by

More on chairs

chair.jpgA chair is a very human thing, infact the whole shape of a chair reflects the human body. Despite the millions of varieties the chair has a fairly standard structure: legs, a seat, usually a back and sometimes arms.

In the lecture I went to yesterday we stopped to consider chairs and took this consideration further in looking briefly at thrones.

A throne is chair, a grand chair mind you, and yet carries with it some kind of symbolic influence.

There’s the whole kings thrones in reality, movie and theatre set. There’s the unspoken throne of a ‘man’s castle’ and hence his English wingback chair-throne as the head of the family.

A chair can oddly dictate a position of power. (And also strip the person of power if it happens to be something like a dentist chair).

I find it interesting that the Bible often speaks about the throne of God. Revelation 4 is set around the ‘throne’.

“At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne. Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God. Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.” (Rev 4:2-6)

A chair, a throne a ‘seat of power’ seems a very human concept. So is Revelation talking literally or figuratively? I never really know how to interpret Revelation. I usually avoid it to spare confusion. Pathetic but true.

After a discussion a few weeks back around the confusion about God appearing to ‘kill people’ in the Old Testament, I went home and read a big fat chunk of Revelation. I’m not sure why I went there, but it was startlingly relevant.

I don’t want to interpret the whole Bible figuratively as much as I don’t want to interpret the whole Bible literally. Who knows where to draw lines? Here, there. They intersect and overlap, we can only hope for those rare moments of insight.

Hit things home. Place them in the context of our lives, our minds, our will and lack of understanding. And hope we don’t give up reading and looking for them in the meantime.

It’s a funny thing, building a biblical framework without a distinct frame to put it in, but surely it’s the way it must be done.

Christianity Design

Published September 25, 2007 by

Praying for perspective

glasses.jpgI like sermons. I like them better than the singing part of church for the most part. My mind likes to work and I tend to wind up discovering or even just seeing a bit more of God through exploring ideas.

This week Kevin kicked off his second sermon on prayer. I missed the first one… I could go and listen to it here, but that would require some more time.

He took us through the Lords Prayer. Now I’ve heard this done before, but for the sake of letting it stick (and I do appreciate repetition occasionally) here it is in outline form with some of my scrawlings.

Praying the Lords Prayer

Our Father in Heaven (where and who) – A prayer of focus and relationship

Hallowed (ascribe worth to/holy) be Your name – A prayer of worship

Your Kingdom come – A prayer of purpose

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven – A prayer of surrender

Give us today our daily bread – a prayer of request (dependence)

Forgive us our sins (us/me collective?) – a prayer of confession

As we also forgive anyone who sins against us – a prayer of reconciliation

And lead us not into temptation – a prayer of protection

But deliver us from the evil one – a prayer of deliverance

For yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory – a prayer of confidence

The last bit stuck out to me the most. The reminder that God is God is an interesting thing in prayer – most of the time I think prayer is fantastic and I really like it, however there are also times where its like you are sitting there talking to yourself or your conscience and wondering if your just praying out of this intrinsic unexplainable desire/need to, and that’s sort of it. I know not the ins and hows of God’s prayer listening/answering system but it’s a curious thing that points strongly towards humanity and our utter inability to do anything that we can’t. Beyond the obvious trust element: faith/belief, this confidence thing is a direct correlation with our dependence – which could be why lots of people don’t recognise God. If God is so insanely good, it clearly points to us being far less. We’d all like to be top dog in some form or other however much we deny our pride.

This to me feels relatively simplistic in theory and yet I don’t think we go about living very well.

The other night I watched Blood Diamond, it’s fairly full on. As with movies such as Hotel Rwanda you come away with this monster of a hole inside because you cannot do much, if anything at all about situations like those shown. It hit me strongly.

And we (collective) have the western gall to go about being frustrated at something as minor as it raining on our washing.

We really do miss the bigger picture sometimes.

In our confidence, let us pray our confession, in our confession let us recognise our dependence, in this reconciliation and surrender, protection for His and our joint purpose that stems from worship and relationship with the one who has got this kingdom thing sorted through his goodness and wisdom.

We need some perspective.

apologies I cannot remember the image source

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