I am, for better or for worse, an educator. I have been doing this for the better part of the last twenty-five years, but it has only been the last few years when I have been teaching in a secondary school. I teach in one of the toughest schools in the city and it has taught me a lot about myself. One of the lessons that took the longest for me to get was also the one of the most profound as a Christian.
I recall bumping into a minister of the Baptist church once in a café just after I had started my first year of secondary teaching. He asked me what I did for a living and, when I told him, he asked if it was my calling from the Lord. I said it was not, and it “was just a job” for me. This was despite knowing God had opened the door to the school and gave me an opportunity to work with the very people I wanted to have a positive impact for. This was a phrase I would repeat many times after that: “it's just a job.”
In the early twenty-first century, much as people did in the late nineteenth, we like to consider ourselves something of the epitome of civilisation and culture. I posit we have not progressed very far at all in the last two thousand years or so.
Societies have long used violence as a tool for their own interests. At times, this was carried out by smaller groups within a given society, but at others, an entire social collective wielded violence through those acting on their behalf. It is hard to accept the idea a human being is naturally a peaceful creature when one considers how little it requires to incite someone to acts of terrible violence.
Over recent months, the Lord has put the question of Hell and its eternity on my mind. I was raised with very universalist ideas, such that Hell does not even exist in any ontological sense, but I confess I never really delved into the question after becoming a Christian of a more 'Biblical' type. Added to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, people had urged me read That All Shall Be Saved by David Bentley Hart (DBH). As DBH clearly stated in his book, he would pull no punches. Allow me to also be rather bald about what I found. I came out of the book thinking DBH was way off mark.
As Christians, is it ok to make people angry? In short, yes. Allow me to spit-ball here and think out loud with barely any Biblical references or authority for what I am about to write.
Jesus did not compromise the truth. Where He saw sin, He called people out on it. He made quite a number of people furious and, in the end, that cost Him His life. Well, for three days, anyway. From the Samaritan woman to the man whose friends brought him in on a mat, Jesus did not let the issue of sin slide by with a patronising “God understands and accepts your sin” garbage that is so common to these days.
Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution triggered some reasonably vituperative criticisms on different platforms. Very few rated this film highly. These responses raise a few interesting points about our culture and reveal a lot more about the people making the criticisms than might be expected. In this post, I will be exploring one or two of those criticisms.
I am a thief. I half inched the title from an interesting tome about Gnostic beginnings; one of many that have attempted to establish a point of origin for the movement as a whole. However, this has nothing to do with what you are about to start reading.
When I read Tusiata Avia was the recipient of over 300 complaints for hate-speech, racism and inciting violence, my attention was caught. The fact that David Seymour from the ACT party accused her of being racist only confirmed to me I needed to read The Savage Coloniser Book. Coupled with Alice Te Punga Somerville's Always Italicise: how to write while colonised, one gets a rather unified perception of reality and life in Aotearoa.
The reaction, in some cases, comes from people merely jumping on the bandwagon. They even attribute the content to the wrong poem, showing they have not even bothered to read Avia's work.
The church gets the heretics it deserves. – Unknown
The debate between so-called progressive Christians and conservative Christians is one that, until recently, I had little idea existed. I have not read much about it, as I prefer to spend my reading time divided between the Bible and fiction like Fat Vampire. However, from the little I have read about it, I do have a thought, as unqualified as it is. There is really no debate. It's a false dichotomy in which both sides have missed the mark terribly and both are the heretics we deserve as a church.
A side note: I like the word heretic, despite the bad rap it has received over the centuries.
Sin doesn't make people bad, it makes them dead. – Ps. Anon
Sin – perhaps the second most unpopular word in modern Christendom to only “hell”. Any discussion of sin, I believe, needs to be based on one of Jesus' key teachings. In fact, so key to His ethics that it was included in the Sermon on the Mount. It is also a teaching that Christians have, in my experience, most often failed to spectacular degrees.
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. – Matthew 7:1-2
Prophesy must always uplift people. – Pastor of an Apostolic church
Jesus famously accused Jerusalem of murdering just about every prophet sent by God to that city. If you're like me, when that is talked about in church, we like to exchange knowing looks. We know the truth and would never do such a thing to people who speak the truth. But would we? Would we be any better? Looking at the church these days, I have my doubts.
I am, for better or for worse, an educator. I have been doing this for the better part of the last twenty-five years, but it has only been the last few years when I have been teaching in a secondary school. I teach in one of the toughest schools in the city and it has taught me a lot about myself. One of the lessons that took the longest for me to get was also the one of the most profound as a Christian.
In the early twenty-first century, much as people did in the late nineteenth, we like to consider ourselves something of the epitome of civilisation and culture. I posit we have not progressed very far at all in the last two thousand years or so.
Over recent months, the Lord has put the question of Hell and its eternity on my mind. I was raised with very universalist ideas, such that Hell does not even exist in any ontological sense, but I confess I never really delved into the question after becoming a Christian of a more 'Biblical' type. Added to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, people had urged me read That All Shall Be Saved by David Bentley Hart (DBH). As DBH clearly stated in his book, he would pull no punches. Allow me to also be rather bald about what I found. I came out of the book thinking DBH was way off mark.
As Christians, is it ok to make people angry? In short, yes. Allow me to spit-ball here and think out loud with barely any Biblical references or authority for what I am about to write.
I am a thief. I half inched the title from an interesting tome about Gnostic beginnings; one of many that have attempted to establish a point of origin for the movement as a whole. However, this has nothing to do with what you are about to start reading.
When I read Tusiata Avia was the recipient of over 300 complaints for hate-speech, racism and inciting violence, my attention was caught. The fact that David Seymour from the ACT party accused her of being racist only confirmed to me I needed to read The Savage Coloniser Book. Coupled with Alice Te Punga Somerville's Always Italicise: how to write while colonised, one gets a rather unified perception of reality and life in Aotearoa.