Category Archives: Family & Society

‘A better story’ – intro

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Two movies illustrate the sexual revolution that has been taking place since the 1960s:-

The Magdalene Sisters tells the story of four women incarcerated, in the 1960s, in one of Ireland’s ‘laundry asylums’.  For the ‘crime’ have having an illegitimate child, such a woman could be kept out of sight and out of mind for years on end, and her child quietly removed and put up for adoption.

By contrast, in recent years Ireland was, in more recent years, the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, and over one-third of births now take place outside marriage. …

Praying the Psalms politically

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John Goldingay writes:-

In his book Where Your Treasure Is: Psalms that Summon You from Self to Community, Eugene Peterson studies “psalms that shaped the politics of Israel and can shape the politics of America” [or Great Britain]:

2            the unselfing of America
87          unself-made
110        unself-centered
93          unself-government
46          unself-help
62          unself-assertion
77          unself-pity
14          unself-righteous
82          unself-serving
114        unself-sufficient
45          unself-love

He comments, “writing about prayer is not prayer; neither is reading about it.…

Gender confusion

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I don’t often expect to be in agreement with Robert M. Price.  But, looking for something else on his blog, I found this:-

‘I view the burgeoning gender confusion, as I consider it, a major symptom of the dissolution of Western culture and civilization. Various factors are fragmenting the “sacred canopy” of values and beliefs that historically hold any society together, providing a common identity. Definitions of marriage and family, together with wise child-rearing, are rapidly eroding.

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The child in Jesus’ teaching

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In Matthew’s Gospel, the figure of a child features prominently in the teaching of Jesus.  It:-

  1. expresses a doctrine of revelation and election. The Father and the Son are made known to the least likely, to “babes” (nēpioi, Mt 11:25–26); those, that is, who recognize their weakness and utter dependence upon divine grace and accept the invitation of Jesus as the Wisdom* of God (Mt 11:27–29).
  2. expresses a requirement of membership in the kingdom of God: radical humility (Mt 18:1–4; cf.
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Gambling

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“I was very sorry to hear, some days ago, that a member of the Church had won a prize in the State Lottery. Gambling is a great social evil, and when a thing like this happens I think that it is my duty to say something about it.…

“Money is the most inclusive sign of the material aspect of human life. It represents the results of man’s labour made available for use of others. We accept it as a gift from God, and we offer a part of it in worship as the token of our gratitude to Him.…

Prostitutes

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According to David Instone-Brewer, the people often referred to in the Gospels as ‘sinners’ (as in ‘tax collectors and sinners’) were actually prostitutes:-

‘Prostitutes at that time were called “sinners” in polite company, just as they were called “fallen women” by the Victorians. Interestingly, the Gospels never record Jesus using a euphemism, so when he condemned the Pharisees he said: “Tax collectors and prostitutes will get to the Kingdom of heaven before you” (Matthew 21:31).’

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Equal, but different

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Egalitarians often complain: ‘When you complementarians claim that women and men are “equal but different”, you really mean “unequal and different”.’

This is a charge that must be taken seriously.

But what says Scripture?

In Gen 2:18, ‘the woman is called the man’s helper; not the other way around. From a fair reading of Genesis 2, it doesn’t seem that male-female roles are reversible.’ (Kostenberger, AJ & ME, God’s Design for Man and Woman.

In their commentary on Genesis 2:18, Bruce Waltke and Cathi Fredricks, while affirming the essential equality of the man and the woman, suggest that role of the latter as ‘helper’ to the former does imply a certain structure of relationship.  …

Grow your congregation in ethnic diversity

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If, like me, you’re slightly nervous about today’s social agenda of ‘inclusion and diversity’, then you, and your church, may need an injection of real gospel diversity to set the record straight and (to change the metaphor) adjust the direction in which we are traveling.

Greg Morse has some helpful guidelines, addressed especially to pastors, but useful to us all.  I summarise:-

1. Don’t dismiss social justice as “not a gospel issue.”  True, social justice is not the gospel, but it is just as true to say that it is an essential and inevitable outcome of the gospel.…

Pray to be gay?

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So The Very Reverend Kelvin Holdsworth, provost of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow, has urged people to pray for Prince George ‘to be blessed one day with the love of a fine young gentleman’.  This, he thinks, would eventually help move the Church of England into a position where it would allow gay couples to marry (which his own church – the Scottish Episcopal Church – voted in favour of earlier this year).

The Church of England has excused itself from commenting, since Mr Holdsworth is not a member of the C of E. …

Jesus, the ineligible bachelor

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In the Jewish society of Jesus’ day, it was almost unthinkable that a man would remain unmarried beyond the age of 20 or so.  After all, the very first commandment of the Torah is to ‘go and multiply’).  Few indeed are the recorded instances of unmarried men.  There was a studious rabbi by the name of Simeon ben Azzi.  And even he probably had been married, but had become a widower.

Girls were usually married by the age of twelve, and men by the age of twenty.…