One of the most startling insights into sin and the nature of this world comes from the French Jewish philosopher, Simone Weil, who died in 1943 but not before she was converted through reading George Herbert’s poem, ‘Love bade me welcome’. She observed: ‘Nothing is so beautiful, nothing is so …
About mid-way through his epistle to the Ephesians, Paul pauses to utter a doxology: ‘Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ …
If love and marriage go together as a horse and carriage, so too do diversity and progressive thought. To counter any opposition to anything, all one has to do is to claim that it promotes diversity – and no one dares to speak against it. Everything is now about diversity …
One of Augustine of Hippo’s most stimulating insights concerned that of ‘disordered desires’, often translated as ‘disordered loves’. In life we sometimes battle outright temptations to commit evil deeds, but more commonly our lives consist of trying to getting our desires in the right equilibrium. Sometimes it is quite clear. …
Our Puritan forebears used to refer at times to ‘darling sins’ or ‘besetting sins’, meaning there are sins that can keep coming back at us and show us how fallen we still are, even after trusting in Christ. One of the most common sins is that of harbouring a spirit …
The results of the same-sex plebiscite were announced on 15 November 2017, and a few weeks later Australia became the 26th nation in the world to legislate for same-sex marriage. The Prime Minister was beside himself, as he punched the air, like an Aussie batsman who had just scored a …
For some time there has been an error which has been nurtured in evangelical circles which sounds thoroughly evangelical yet actually undermines the whole message of the evangelical, that is to say biblical, faith. Because our greatest need as sinful human beings is for God to show His grace to …
As Christ speaks to the seven churches of Asia in Revelation 2-3, there is a refrain: ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches’ (Rev.2:7, 11, 17, 29: 3:6, 13, 22). In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus warns us: ‘Take care then how …
It used to be taken for granted that, by and large, many people who did not give much thought to the matter would almost instinctively agree with Peter’s words that Jesus of Nazareth ‘went about doing good’ (Acts 10:38). They might not think that this means much more than what …
In 1916 and 1917, during World War I, Australia went through two divisive referenda dealing with the issue of whether men could be conscripted for overseas service. In 2017 we have gone through a divisive plebiscite on the issue of whether only heterosexual couples can legally marry. One of the …
