Christian
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"Knowing me, knowing me…": on knowing ourselves
Aristotle once said, “knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”. What do you think about that? Do you agree, disagree? Let’s park that there, I’ll come back to it in just a moment. At church yesterday I preached a sermon about Jesus’ famous words from John 8:12: “I am the light of the world.
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Gay marriage and the power of stories
Although same-sex marriage has been legal in the UK now for nearly a year, I still think it’s worth reflecting on the road which brought us to where we are. In fact, I think it’s probably good to reflect on what happened with the benefit of hindsight. One thing which is clearer to me now than
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Update: Was Stephen Fry speaking ‘hypothetically’?
A quick post-script to my previous post about Stephen Fry’s diatribe about God and evil. A few people have come back and said to me, “Ah, yes, but Fry was speaking hypothetically – assuming that the question was true for the sake of argument. He doesn’t actually believe in evil.” It’s interesting, because I think
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Evil and the problem of Stephen Fry
… or do I mean, Stephen Fry and the problem of evil? Either way, one of the links which has been doing the rounds on Twitter today is that of Stephen Fry talking to Gay Byrne about God, and more specifically, about what he would say to God if Fry died and found out he was wrong
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Water into wine: what’s going on?!
Yesterday at church the theme was ‘Jesus turns water into wine’, from John 2:1-11. It’s a well-known story – if you’ve ever been to a wedding in an Anglican church, for example, you will have heard it mentioned in the introduction – but the story is nonetheless quite puzzling. To be honest with you, I’ve never really
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The Church’s Mission: What’s the point?
I was recently asked to contribute a piece to the “Mission Matters” magazine in our church, a magazine looking at mission in the local area as well as the wider world. This is what I came up with. One of the privileges and joys of training at Oak Hill was training alongside those who were
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Atheism, Values and Sociopaths
I’ve read a couple of interesting articles over the last week or so, and both of them deal with atheism and values (as in the sense of morality). The first article was entitled “Famous atheists… reveal where they get their values from“. I found this absolutely fascinating: too often, atheists criticise religion without offering an
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Sexuality and Friendship: Good news after all?
I recently added a morning conference entitled Human Sexuality: Discerning a Biblical Vision, hosted by the Chelmsford Diocesan Evangelical Association. It was a good morning with three different speakers talking about various issues – theological, pastoral, and practical. One speaker was Lis Goddard, talking about the pastoral issues involved. Of the three sessions, I probably
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Thoughts on the Church from 2 Timothy
In our evening services at church, we’ve been preaching through 2 Timothy. It’s an absolutely wonderful book and I do commend it to you – especially if, like me, you are involved in Christian ministry in some way. As we’ve been going through it, I’ve been reminded time and again how Paul predicts pretty much
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The emptiness of ‘Thought for the Commute’
The British Humanist Association have launched a new campaign called ‘Thought for the Commute’. This involves posters going up on the London Underground (initially) with inspirational quotes from famous Humanists. I say inspirational quotes. The quotes are … well, in my opinion at least, not that inspirational. In fact, to be honest, I think it’s